Category: Language

Sleep is one of the most under appreciated sources of energy and clear thinking. Because of the multi sensory experience of living outside my comfort zones continuously and trying to wrap my brain around new words and a brand new culture, my early days in Jordan were enveloped in a dull cloud of tiredness. At times I felt like…

There are some of us who learn really well directly from books. But most of us are wired to learn experientially: by doing. Although this applies to other spheres, it’s especially true of language learning. Learning a language isn’t just about the words that we’re speaking, but about the whole culture that those words belong to.…

Words get caught up in our memory much more easily when they have hooks to hang them on. Stories act as great hooks for these words. I find this particularly true of stories that I know well in my mother tongue. Movies are great for this. Or if you know a lot of Bible stories…

This is where emersion can come in handy, but it’s not essential. The key is to do the ordinary, habitual things that you do, in your target language. If you watch movies to unwind, switch to movies in your target language. If you use Twitter, start an account in your target language and follow people…

This might seem super obvious on paper, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget to carry around some kind of recording device for the new words you’ll discover in your target language. I take a belt-and-braces approach with my word collection and carry a paper notebook and have the Anki app on…

I write this blog to document and explore change.  At the moment the biggest change I’ve been going through is the transition from being a mono-and-a-half-lingual to bilingual. I’ve spent the last year and eight months learning Arabic. Before this point I was a mediocre Swedish speaker. I’d picked up most of my Swedish by osmosis,…