<story><title>I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language</title><url>https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/how-i-used-the-internet-to-painlessly-relearn-a-foreign-language-and-you-could-to-63139f0dc5b6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>surfsvammel</author><text>I had to learn french a couple of years ago. And I had three months to do it. It was perfectly doable, but my method did cost a bit of money.&lt;p&gt;I did all the things described in the article, more or less. 
This was my approach:&lt;p&gt;1. I had a 1h lesson with a private tutor over Skype (via italki.com) every single day. This was the part which cost me most money. But private tutors from italki is fairly cheap.&lt;p&gt;2. Listened to the news every day in easy french (RFI has a great short podcast).&lt;p&gt;3. I watched LOTR (the only one I had available where I could change language and subtitles to be the same) first with English audio and french subtitles, and then french audio and french subtitles and lastly only french audio no subtitles.&lt;p&gt;4. Listened to french kids books as audiobooks.&lt;p&gt;5. I read kids book in french.&lt;p&gt;6. I finished the 3 months with a week of immersive french course in France and then spent another week travelling France alone, committed to only speak french.&lt;p&gt;7. During this whole time I added 10 words per day into my Anki deck. I also added any other words that I learned along the way. This was quiet a lot of work.&lt;p&gt;8. During the three months I also went through the Duolingo French course.&lt;p&gt;After three months of hard work I passed the fluency test for french.&lt;p&gt;It took quiet a lot of time and quiet a lot of money. But it got the result I was after.&lt;p&gt;Ps.
My tutor also wrote a nice review for me on LinkedIn which I’m very proud of and look at every now and again:
“Xxx has learned French with my company. He became fluent in 3 months in has now reached a level close to B2 on the European Framework of Reference, starting from scratch. He has been an extremely hard-working and committed student, with classes every day at 6.30am.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mumblemumble</author><text>Specifically to point #2:&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend RFI&amp;#x27;s podcast (Le Journal en Français Facile). At first, it&amp;#x27;s intimidating, and, despite the name, doesn&amp;#x27;t feel easy at all. They use simpler vocabulary, but still talk at full speed. You might need to listen to each episode a few times in a row, and read the transcript. And that&amp;#x27;s exactly what makes it such an effective tool. Struggling through it is part of training your brain to make sense of the sounds of the new language.&lt;p&gt;There are other options out there that try to be easy for learners by speaking very slowly. That&amp;#x27;s a trap. It&amp;#x27;s absolutely easier to understand, but you&amp;#x27;re learning to understand the wrong thing. The phonics of many languages undergo some subtle mutations when they are spoken slowly. This is especially true in French. So if you only listen to slow language that&amp;#x27;s over-pronounced to make it easier for learners to understand, you&amp;#x27;ll end up training your ear to understand the phonics of slow language that&amp;#x27;s over-pronounced for learners. Which isn&amp;#x27;t how actual people actually speak.</text></comment>
<story><title>I used the internet to painlessly relearn a foreign language</title><url>https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/how-i-used-the-internet-to-painlessly-relearn-a-foreign-language-and-you-could-to-63139f0dc5b6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>surfsvammel</author><text>I had to learn french a couple of years ago. And I had three months to do it. It was perfectly doable, but my method did cost a bit of money.&lt;p&gt;I did all the things described in the article, more or less. 
This was my approach:&lt;p&gt;1. I had a 1h lesson with a private tutor over Skype (via italki.com) every single day. This was the part which cost me most money. But private tutors from italki is fairly cheap.&lt;p&gt;2. Listened to the news every day in easy french (RFI has a great short podcast).&lt;p&gt;3. I watched LOTR (the only one I had available where I could change language and subtitles to be the same) first with English audio and french subtitles, and then french audio and french subtitles and lastly only french audio no subtitles.&lt;p&gt;4. Listened to french kids books as audiobooks.&lt;p&gt;5. I read kids book in french.&lt;p&gt;6. I finished the 3 months with a week of immersive french course in France and then spent another week travelling France alone, committed to only speak french.&lt;p&gt;7. During this whole time I added 10 words per day into my Anki deck. I also added any other words that I learned along the way. This was quiet a lot of work.&lt;p&gt;8. During the three months I also went through the Duolingo French course.&lt;p&gt;After three months of hard work I passed the fluency test for french.&lt;p&gt;It took quiet a lot of time and quiet a lot of money. But it got the result I was after.&lt;p&gt;Ps.
My tutor also wrote a nice review for me on LinkedIn which I’m very proud of and look at every now and again:
“Xxx has learned French with my company. He became fluent in 3 months in has now reached a level close to B2 on the European Framework of Reference, starting from scratch. He has been an extremely hard-working and committed student, with classes every day at 6.30am.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>philshem</author><text>Indeed, the “trick” to learning any language is money and time.</text></comment>