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14 Crucial Questions to Keep Conversation Flowing in a New Language

August 24, 2017 By Sophie Austin 17 Comments

(And their pronunciations…)

How do you learn new words in your target language?

Do you read books? Do you watch movies?

Or do you ask your friends?

Depending on how far along your language journey you are, you might already be doing a combination of all of these. If you’re quite new to a language, chances are you may be making the mistake of reading new words and hoping they’ll sink in.

Wrong.

Flashcard apps might be fun, but they teach you how to memorize words out of context.

They also won’t help you make the leap between those words and the real-life conversation, which is the whole point.

With The Mimic Method, you develop the ability to acquire new words just by listening to and mimicking people in real conversation.

It happened to me today.

4 Language Learning Truths to Fight Your Fear of Strangers

August 18, 2017 By Idahosa 11 Comments

There are two types of fear: Good Fear and Bad Fear.

You’re hiking through the woods, you turn a corner, and you stumble upon a bear. It’s drinking from a river and hasn’t noticed you yet.

In this moment, it’s the “Good Fear” that takes control of you:

“OOOOH CRAP! STOP STOP STOP! TUUUURN AROUND! WALK AWAY SLOWLY! DON’T LET IT HEAR YOU!”

You get away safely, get back to your car, and return home safely. You wake up the next day, give thanks that you’re still alive, then get ready to head to work.

Now you’re walking through the office, you turn a corner, and you stumble upon a coworker you’ve secretly loved for months but never spoke to. She’s drinking from a water fountain and hasn’t noticed you yet.

In this moment, it’s the “Bad Fear” that takes control of you:

“OOOOH CRAP! STOP STOP STOP! TUUUURN AROUND! WALK AWAY SLOWLY! DON’T LET HER HEAR YOU!”

The good fear is good, because it keeps you alive. The bad fear is bad, because it keeps you from living.

All the good things in life come when we overcome the bad fears- the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of embarrassment – and these fears are all present when we learn a foreign language.

We all know that the only way to learn a foreign language is to have lots of conversations with natives. But sometimes, approaching a native speaker for conversation can be as scary as approaching a wild bear for conversation.

So to inspire you to overcome this fear, I have a challenge for our favorite twin brothers (click here for details on this case study). They had to approach five random strangers in the streets of New York and San Francisco to try their basic Spanish skills on.

As we watch video footage of their interactions, I’ll remind us all of four important language learning truths…

24 Ridiculous Foreign Language Idioms (and their Pronunciations)

August 15, 2017 By Sophie Austin 10 Comments

French idioms

The Oxford English dictionary defines idioms and phrases as:

A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.

Put another way: idioms are sentences that sound ridiculous to everyone but the native speakers who use them.

That’s why it’s always fun to learn idioms in a foreign language. If you randomly bust out one of these idioms in conversation with native speakers, they will be pleasantly surprised.

Then in that moment of surprise, they may realize for the first time just how ridiculous that idiom sounds. Then they will laugh, and think you’re even cooler than you already are.

But you won’t get your desired effect on the audience unless you nail the pronunciation.

That’s why we’ve included slowed down audio and phonetic transcription for 24 idioms in Portuguese, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian, French and German.

5 Language Learning Accountability Tools You’re Probably NOT Using

August 14, 2017 By User Test 2 Comments

Have you ever thought to yourself, “if I could just practice 10 minutes a day, I would really start to see some progress…” but then found it surprisingly difficult to set aside those 10 minutes?

Maybe you’ve even gone to the trouble of setting a reminder in your phone or in an app, but then become all too familiar with ignoring it?

The truth is, if you’re not consistently practicing your target language, you’re never going to get any better.

Here are 5 great apps and websites to keep you accountable to your language learning goals.

How to Learn Basic Conversation By Ear

August 11, 2017 By Idahosa 5 Comments

In our current case study, twin brothers John and Bryan Tublin are competing to learn Spanish before they turn 30.

This is the first foreign language they’ve learned, and they’re doing it with The Mimic Method.

In The Mimic Method, there are three stages to learning a foreign language:

Capacity
Conversation
Command

In the first posts of this series, we discussed how the Tublins built their capacity to hear and pronounce the sounds of Spanish.

First, they focused on the 39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish. Then, they practiced combining these sounds in syllables. Finally, they practiced pronouncing whole sentences by memorizing song lyrics.

Through this training, the Tublins built the ability to mimic native speakers of Spanish. With this ability, they can now build their conversational ability through mimicry.

In this post, we will look at what they did to build their simple conversation abilities

Twins Connect with Native Speakers Through Singing

August 4, 2017 By Idahosa 3 Comments

There are two reasons why I chose to incorporate music into our language learning process. The first reason is practical.

Mastering pronunciation in a foreign language requires lots of repetition to ingrain the muscle patterns.

Rote repetition is boring, but musical repetition is fun. So the musical element is a sort of motivation hack for language learners.

But I also had a more philosophical reason for linking our brand to music.

Language is a tool for connecting with people, and so is music.

To demonstrate this point, I had the twin brothers from our current Spanish case study (read more about that here) go out and ask native speakers to teach them a song in Spanish.

At this stage in their learning, they haven’t learned any vocabulary or grammar, so they can’t converse yet.

They did, however, complete our musical pronunciation training program – The Flow of Spanish. Therefore, they now have the ability to listen to Spanish and mimic it.

In this post, you’ll see how they use that skill to connect with native speakers on their favorite music.
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