AFP 18 – Niels Iversen: A unique approach to language learning

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Today I'm happy to welcome on Niels Iversen to the show, those who have frequented the HTLAL forums will be very familiar with Niels as he frequently posts on there and he has one of the most visited threads on the entire forum, where he posts in multiple languages about learning languages and his unique approach to the whole thing.

He is also very helpful in the other parts of the forums, often helping in languages that he has knowledge of.

NielsJLIversenHe joins me today to talk about his low-tech approach with word lists and how he learns how to read and write before speaking even becomes important. It's a very different approach to the approaches that are being thrown around recently and it is very refreshing to hear about other ways. Personally I'm 100 words into the gold list method as presented by David James over on huliganov.tv and I'm testing out the effect of doing a low-tech approach to vocabulary building.

Berlin Format and Audio Quality

The format of the next few weeks will be similar to that of the normal show, but it will be less formal. You might not even hear me do the stereotypical radio introduction. The audio quality is the best I was able to obtain from a hotel room, so it will sound slightly inferior. I hope you enjoy the content from Berlin. Thank you to all the people who took the time to sit down with me and chat about languages.

The Episode

Show Notes

In this episode you will hear about:

  • What Niels thinks of the Polyglot Gathering Berlin
  • his approach to learning languages
  • His word list method
  • How to effectively learn anything
  • What is most important to learn first in grammar
  • and much more!

Resources mentioned in the Episode

Note: I've removed most of the resources from this section, as I always had Anki/Memrise etc. here every week. Now I will only put resources here that are very exclusive to the episode. For any other resource please go to the resource page here for more information.