A few days ago I was invited to dinner and I started to chat with a guest. He was German and we started the conversation in German but it was obvious that, even if I could understand about 70% of what he was saying, I had also to struggle a bit. He suggested that we…

Many people in the language-learning community argue that watching movies is a good way to learn languages. Of course, almost everybody likes the idea of learning a language by watching a movie but then, when you try, you may find that most of the conversations in movies are really difficult to understand, if you are…

In a previous post, I explained the reading-listening method that consists in reading a book while listening to its audiobook version. As an alternative, I found very useful to use free online content that is available both in the audio version and in the text version. For example, I found that both audio and text versions of…

In this post, I am going to explain why learning a language is similar to forming a new habit and why you should never stop learning until you have reached fluency. It is easier to lose a habit than to create oneIf you are a runner you know that once you stop running you lose…

The law of effect states that if the responses to action produce a somehow pleasant or satisfying feeling we are more likely to repeat the same action in the future when we are in a similar context. In other words, actions that produce a pleasant effect in a specific context are more likely to occur…

When I was a child my parents bought a table game called “travels in Europe”. The players had to travel through the map and to answer some geography questions to advance and travel more. My parents probably bought the game because they understood the principle of incidental learning. What is incidental learning? (or accidental learning)…

Psychologists recognize several principles the can help learning and efficient use of memory. Among these principles the following seem to be particularly significant: Meaning Organization Association Visualization Attention In this post, I want to focus on the role that Meaning has on learning and memorization. Why when we have to chose a password or a secret…

Few months ago I stumbled upon a research paper that discussed the relationship between living abroad and creativity. The authors suggest that somehow living abroad may increase your creativity. Why so? Living abroad and creativity If you think about it, it does make sense. When we live abroad we come in contact with another culture and…

In this post I will explain how learning German has helped me to learn to identify medicinal plants used in the Amazon. These are apparently two unrelated skills but here I want to show how the principles of learning can be relevant in different fields such as botany and languages. Many believe that with the…

One of the most common errors, when people want to learn a new skill such as speaking a language, is to focus too much on theoretical knowledge rather than on methods to acquire the skill. That is often why people tend to not clearly differentiate between these two aspects of learning. For example, think about…