The Basics of Independent Language Learning

Welcome to the Actual Fluency Podcast, the podcast that gives you the tools and inspiration to learn languages faster and more efficiently. And now your host, Kris Broholm.

But what I occasionally will do as well, is that I will do these technical episodes or kind of tips and tricks episodes where I don't necessarily need someone by my side. And this also means that I get a little bit more time to talk to you guys directly. When I'm conducting the interviews, often I obviously the focus is on the interviewee, so I don't have time to share some of the lessons I've learned, and therefore I find that doing one of these episodes once in a while, where it's just me, is going to be quite effective. And of course, next week I'm going to be back with a great interview, I've got some great people lined up. And, uh, I'm looking forward to doing that again.

Today's topic, as you may have heard from the intro in the beginning, is the, what I call the trifecta of language learning. And this isn't really something I've published anywhere or written about anywhere, but in my opinion, this is kind of the components of learning a language. And this is kind of based on my own research and my own approach to language learning. And it is my current philosophy as of April 2014.

But of course, this is a concept that changes a lot. It's a concept that is very fluid, and that means that if you ask me about this in a year or two years, I might have discovered other components of language learning that fits better or works better, or I mean, who knows what's going to happen in the in the industry? You know, there might be new courses out, there might be new software, new ways of doing things that are found to be even more efficient and even better.

And I must remind you before I start getting into today's content, that you can always find the show notes and the links and everything included in this episode that I talk about, you can always find it on actualfluency.com/ and then the number of the episode, and this is episode six. So that'll be 06. And since this is an episode with a lot of resources, a lot of different websites and and, uh, just in general a lot of mentions, I strongly suggest that you check that out at your convenience if there are any of the sites or services that I mentioned that you might find interesting.

Alright, so what is the trifecta of language learning that I alluded to earlier? And it's actually quite simple, and it doesn't, it's not an all-encompassing, uh, theory, you know, it it doesn't include any everything that language learning has to offer. But to me, to learn a language, you need some kind of introduction to the language, usually an audio or video form. Then you need a way to learn vocabulary, and then you need a way to learn how to speak and write. Uh, in that also practicing speaking and writing.

And for that, I have gathered a some of my favorite resources that I use myself, and also I've done some research around the language learning community to find what works best for people, uh, around as well. So it's not not just my recommendations, although a lot of the advice you're going to hear are based on my experience with the products and services.

So let's just jump into it. The trifecta has three parts as the name name, uh, sounds like, and the first part is an introduction to the language. And for me, I'm a big audio course guy. I I like audio a lot. So that is my first point of call. If I wanted to learn a completely new language, like I'm doing right now with Russian, I'm going to find an audio course in Russian or about Russian. Starting with the complete immersion is is not really something I recommend. I know some people do recommend it, but for me it's it's not worth it.

So what I'll look up is something like, you know, the Pimsleurs and the Michel Thomases and and the, um, what's that big one? Although I don't recommend Rosetta Stone, you know, it's something like that. It's a course to get your interest piqued and it's a, it's it's some kind of introduction, a soft introduction to the language. And if you have one of these courses, that's great. There's also, uh, Assimil. There's Teach Yourself, Colloquial, and the list goes on. Just be sure that you've read some reviews on each system before you start buying it because they are vastly different and depending on what kind of learner you are, one might suit you better than the other. I have personal experience with Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, and I actually wrote a Michel Thomas review on the Actual Fluency blog, which you can find if you go to the reviews category, I'm also going to be putting a link in the show notes, actualfluency.com/06.

But to me, the courses aren't meant to teach you fluency or even get you anywhere near fluency. What they what they teach you is to get your feet wet in the language and get some basics of a sentence. Because these courses are really good at introducing only what you need to know at a time. You know, the first part of, for instance, Pimsleur has 30 lessons. And that's not a lot of time, that's only 15 hours of of listening, and you have to remember a lot of that time is silence, waiting for you to answer the the host asking you to repeat. So it's not a lot of of content in in reality.

So you're not going from nothing to something, but you're getting, you're introduced to the language in a very nice way because you kind of learn the most important stuff first. And particularly in Pimsleur and and Michel Thomas, they're very focused on sentences that you might need if you went to Russia or any any country, uh, uh, to the to speak the language you're learning. They're very focused on touristy phrases that you're going to need, like, there is the restaurant, it's over there, how much does that cost? But it's giving you wins in the language that motivates you to keep going. So it's not just, you know, I'm not saying that you can get from nothing to fluent in a language using Michel Thomas or Pimsleur. For me, it's just a way to get kind of an introduction to the language itself.

Now, I mentioned Pimsleur and another few audio courses. There are some other resources that you might not know or heard of. If you are looking for either Spanish, French, Italian, German, English, and Portuguese, I can recommend Duolingo.com. And that's a website that's done the that's doing these interactive courses on the the languages I just mentioned. And it's free, it's completely free. And that's a very good way to get introduced to the language as well. And it does have some audio and there's a combination of text and it uses a kind of a refreshing course format to to introduce it.

Just for audio, you can do uh, there's the Pod101 company that does these, for instance, RussianPod101, GermanPod101, ChinesePod101. Particularly the the Chinese version is is really well made. And that's just a really good way to get introduced. You have, you will be shelling out a bit of money for this, but it it's not enough to break the bank. It's nowhere near, you know, Pimsleur levels of paying or or maybe Rosetta Stone is a better example of paying $500 per language, which is just ridiculous. Uh, but if you do a search for a language plus Pod101, you find these kind of beginner podcasts websites, and I've seen them in most languages, so you should be able to find it in yours, assuming it's not too obscure.

The other resource I'm going to mention here for getting your feet wet is a site called LingQ. And it's L-I-N-G-Q, and it's, um, it was founded by the one and only polyglot Steve Kaufmann, who I had on the on the podcast last week actually, uh, episode five. And that was a, a, he talks about the advantages of LingQ and he uses it a lot himself. But it is a great way to get a a small introduction into the language. I don't personally use it early on in my languages, so it depends on what kind of learner you are.

But if you are kind of a a learner that likes to have a combination of audio and text, and a combination of, you know, repetition spaced out repetition, then it might be a website that you could check out sooner rather than later. Because my ambition with with LingQ is to use it to become better at writing Russian and also improving my Russian conversational skills. So for me, it's not at the start of the the process, it's more at the end. But since it does have quite a large audio component, it's probably half of it. It it is quite a big resource to mention here up front in the audio category.

And also it has the ability for each user to do these mini podcasts and it's just a great community to be part of, it seems. I I can't I can't say that I I know it thoroughly from the inside, but I have done quite a lot of research on it and it does look like it's a nice community feeling with a lot of, you know, I help you, you help me and the member members are producing the content and it doesn't cost that much. I think it's about, if you want to pay for a subscription, I think it's about $10 a month. So that's nothing, you know, compared to these insane prices that some of the other courses have.

And the amount of content on LingQ is just staggering, you know, because people are producing the content. And of course that means that some of the content isn't exactly insanely high quality. But there's so much to choose from that if you just do a little bit of research and you pick the high-rated ones, then you will definitely find something very helpful. And there are forums where people can point you in the right direction and you can get help. So for me, that's a a very nice resource to mention here in the first part of the trifecta.

And, um, the second part of the trifecta, which I'll get to now, is word kind of learning words, vocabulary, improving your vocabulary. Because at the end of the day, speaking a language is is speaking words. So every time you say a word, that's because you've learned that word at some point. And of course you know this, but it it it's an important piece of language learning that you learn a lot of words. And not just for the sake of being able to communicate, there's something about confidence as well. If you know more words, you're more confident to speak. If you know more words, you feel more at home in the language and a very, um, a varied vocabulary is very important to anyone who's going out and socializing in a new language.

So what I recommend here are two different tools and they do very similar things, but it it kind of depends on what you prefer. And these are the tools. The first one I'll recommend is Memrise. And if you've followed my, uh, kind of my blog or some of the other things I've been doing, you would have seen me mention Memrise a lot before. Because Memrise uses the spaced out repetition, uh, what's it called, a system where, if you know a word, it's going to put that word lower down in the pile of words that you're revising. So if you know a word really well, it's not going to remind you about that word until days later. And if you then get it right again, then it's not going to remind you until months later or weeks or, you know, it keeps spacing it out.

But if you have trouble with a word, then it the the software is just going to put that word to the top of the pile. So next time you're revising, the word that you didn't know last time is going to be at the top. And eventually you just get it, you know, it's like listening to a CD of Pimsleur and you're like, I'm never going to remember this word for with pleasure in Russian, for instance, which is, uh, um, [Russian word]. I was like, I'm never going to remember it. It doesn't sound like any word I know. It doesn't sound I can't, you know, I can't connect it to anything. I can't use any mental images to to support my memory. I can't do anything. And what happened was that I just heard it enough times that now I remember it. And that's the same with spaced out repetition programs like Memrise, where you might not think that you remember, but it's in there, you know, the knowledge is in there and if you keep at it and do it, you know, I think you should do it every day, but you don't have to do it hours upon hours. You can do a session of say half an hour every day and I think that works a lot towards a higher level of your target language.

The competitor the Memrise works by people again producing community content. It's completely free and a lot of these courses that are offered there also have pronunciation. And of course you learn how to spell as well, which is quite important and also hard when you're learning a new language. Particularly when I'm trying to spell Russian, although I must say that Russian is quite easy to spell compared to something like Danish or English, where a word doesn't really sound like it's spelled, it can sound very different. But in Russian I find that very often the words are actually spelled the way they're said. The only problem I'm having is something like a soft sign, which if you've studied Russian, you'd know, uh, I find it hard to pick up the the soft sign sometimes, particularly when they're in the middle of a word after an L. I I find it hard to distinguish between the hard and the soft L. And the other problem is I sometimes have problems with the S sound. So something like, uh, an S or a or there are quite a few varieties of S sounds. So, but once I know the spelling of a word, I I'll know it for the next time, what what the spelling was. But I'll say Russian does seem it's it's kind of nice to spell and and it it's nice that you learn it as well.

So, that was Memrise in terms of vocabulary training. And the competitor to to Memrise, in my mind, is Anki. And the difference between the big difference between Memrise and Anki is that Anki is an app on your smartphone, and Memrise is hosted on the Internet. So you can always log into Memrise and there's an there's an app for the most popular mobile systems. Whereas Anki you need an app to to run it. And you need a an application as well on your computer.

But other than that, it works kind of similar to Memrise. And the, I guess the only bene I mean, for me, I love Memrise so much, right? I'm not going to lie to you. I I think Memrise is a really great because I tried Anki first, and I was like, this is a bit clunky. Like it works, it's nice, but it's a bit clunky to be honest. So I found Memrise, and to me that's just a great improvement over Anki. But some people still prefer Anki. So I'm I'm not going to just be totally biased in favor of my own opinion and just say you shouldn't use Anki. I think you should try both. And if you get to the same conclusion I did, well that's that's it. But if you find that Anki's better and you like the the way the software is done better, then go with Anki, because at the end of the day it's about what works best for you. I'm simply just introducing them to you.

And if you go out in the language learning community and ask, do you use Anki? A lot of people are going to are going to say yes. So it is a popular software and for it might be good for you or you might find that you go back to the uh, the Memrise, like I did. And a note about Memrise, I would really encourage not to get too crazy about doing 200 million different courses, different languages. Because it is it is quite, you know, it's not because you can't do it, I would just suggest that you don't. Because it's very easy to get flustered with it, not because you're you're doing a lot of languages at the same time, but suddenly, if you've done, let's say 10 languages for a week, suddenly a lot of words need to be revised. I mean, it pops up and says, you learned these words a few days ago. Now it's time to revise them, so you make sure you learn them. And suddenly there's this pressure on you to learn, you know, 50 words in 10 languages. That's a lot of work all of a sudden. And the last thing you want to do is make language learning feel like you're working. You know, you need to do it in a way that you enjoy it.

So, while I I think you could do a few languages at once, I would just rather do different courses. So if I'm studying Russian right now, I have a course called 5,000 Most Common Russian Words, which is a word list sorted by frequency, so all the the the words that are used the most are at the top, so I I'm learning those now. And I'm also using a course called 500 Most Common Russian Verbs. And of course, there's an overlap here, but I feel like verbs are the most important part part of a language. So if you know a lot of verb verbs, you can, uh, kind of fill in the blanks, you know. You can always explain you can always explain nouns in a way or the other by by use of other nouns, but it's really, really hard to explain verbs unless you want to do like charades or, um, something like that or you want to translate it. So that's that's basically my advice on Memrise and vocabulary acquisition.

And for me, it works really well by doing, I mean, this is my routine, in case you're interested. Every day I do I I do plan two new session two new sessions, so that's 20 new words in each course. And then I revise every day before I do that. So all my courses are always planned, they're always up to date. I don't get a backlog of hundreds of words that I suddenly have to remember. And I think that's important you keep it up to date, because that's kind of how the system works. And it even sends you an email saying, you need to revise these words. So it's easy to do, it's easy to follow up on, uh, definitely.

Moving on from vocabulary training, which I called the second part of my trifecta of language learning, moving on to what some people would consider the most important part, and I probably, I mean, if I'm going to do a big blog post about this trifecta, I could consider putting this at the top. Uh, but this is speaking and writing, which is, of course, where we're all going towards when we're learning languages. It is what we all dream about and so on and so forth.

So, what are my specific advice and resources for speaking and writing? The first resource I'm going to talk about is, uh, you what I would suggest is that you get a language exchange setup. So if you're an English speaker and you want to learn French, I would suggest you go on to a website and look for people who are French but want to learn English. And I guess it could also, it doesn't necessarily have to be French people. There are lots of countries in the world that speak French. But if you find a French speaker who's interested in English learning, and then you can kind of swap your time. So he or she helps you with French for half an hour, and you help him or her with English for half an hour. This is by far the best way to get go around doing language exchanges.

And there are a few website websites for this. I mean, you can, uh, you can use a website like Livemocha, which is has received some overhauls in the in lately. I've I used it many many years ago when it was very new and it looked like very bad website. But they've received an overhaul and and now I feel like it's a quite a good community. They also have various lessons and stuff, but in my opinion, they aren't really that high quality. Uh, so I would just use it for the language exchange. And when I went on there recently to test it out, it was not very hard to find language partners.

The other alternative or actually two alternatives. If you want, uh, there's something called iTalki. I-T-A-L-K-I. That's a hub for also for tutors. So if you want to you you're like, okay, I've been doing this language learning for a good few months and I feel comfortable. Now, I I want to pay someone to be my tutor in the language so I can improve even faster. You go on the iTalki and you pay, I mean, almost a symbolic amount because people are, you know, they're they're being paid in a foreign currency, in a country where the this the living standards aren't that high. So you can get, you know, tutors at less than $10 an hour and for European tutors that's quite cheap. Uh, I mean, you can even go lower as well, but obviously, I don't recommend buying the cheapest tutor because, uh, they might I mean, they might be nice, don't get me wrong, but it's just like the good tutors usually know what their time is worth and and therefore I wouldn't recommend the cheapest ones. But anyway, iTalki for getting tutors that way.

It's also a community of language learners where you can uh, you can definitely do language exchange, like I just talked about. And so it's a kind of a website that does both. But if you're interested in tutoring people, I mean, teaching other people your language, then iTalki is also the place for you, because then you can create your own teacher profile and it's free to sign up. Only thing you need to do is create a 30-second video explaining yourself, fill out a ton of forms, and you're rocking and rolling. I'm set up as a Danish tutor in there, and I'm enjoying it so far, so it's something I can recommend.

The third and last site I'm going to mention for language exchange is a site called InterPals. And it's a website for that's kind of designed as an online pen pal website for people who want to meet other people. And it's not a dating site, although it has that capacity in a very small shape and form, it's not really the main part of it. And I don't, if you are, you know, this is a little tip here, but if you are single and you are looking for love, some people might be. Don't put it in the in your in your profile on InterPals. It's it's there's no point. If you find somebody who you really like and you want to meet up that way and stuff, then that's going to happen naturally anyway.

But some people I've talked to on iTalki, uh, sorry, not iTalki, on InterPals have told me, and this is particularly true for us men when contacting females, is that they look at your profile and then they see, oh, he's only interested in flirting and and relationships. Oh, I I don't think I'll respond to him. But if you type you're interested in friendship and hanging out and just chilling, you know, who knows where that might take you, but just a word of warning that some people see it that way.

Um, I used I I didn't use the site that much actually because I I I was just staggered by the amount of response I got. I I mean, I got I I put up, I looked at people around my age who had skills in Russia Russian, and who was kind of, you know, logging on regularly and I just, you know, contacted the first 10 or 12 people. And I was I got responses almost immediately from a handful of people. I talked to some of them for a few days or a few weeks, and then, you know, we just didn't have much in common. But I can say that to this day, I've talked to the same same Russian girl for weeks and weeks. And we just have this great chemistry and it's it's a really good relationship. And I I wouldn't have gotten that if I went on to the iTalki or any other place. It's because InterPals kind of facilitates this, you know, it's kind of a start of a a friendship, and it's it's really beautiful. And, you know, learning Russian, so obviously that's that's perfect for me.

So, wrapping it up, that's the recommendation of finding a language exchange. And I gave you a lot of websites. Again, I must repeat that all these websites and URLs that I'm giving will be available on the blog post, which you can find by easily going to actualfluency.com/06. Alright.

So you've you're learning how to speak and how to write, but how do you get feedback on your speaking and pronunciation if you don't have somebody ready to talk to you on Skype or a tutor? And here are some resources for doing just that. There is the the website called Forvo.com. It's basically a dictionary of pronunciation where there are millions of people who've gone onto there and they've pronounced words in their own language. So if you wanted to know how a certain word is pronounced in Russian or in any language that's on there, you can just go in and type it, and people have uploaded their voices previously. And, um, to me, that's just an amazing service. It's completely free, and actually it also integrates with Memrise. So when you're doing the Memrise courses, it can actually get the Forvo.com audio and thereby having native pronunciation in their courses without even having somebody to sit there and record all the words. So it's it's a very good service actually, and I mean, really invaluable help if you really if you're really struggling to pronounce that last word.

The other one is a little bit it's it needs a bit of a warning, it's called RhinoSpike.com. And this is where you post on their website and you say, I want to know how to say this in Russian. And by say this, I I need to specify that it's how to pronounce it. Of course, part of it is also what is the translation, but I'll get get into a website about that in a second. But it's you put in a text, like you say, I want to say, yeah, I love coffee in Russian. And then somebody looks at it and he records his native Russian voice or I guess anyone who speaks Russian can do it. And he uploads the file, and then you can download it and listen to it.

Now, it's a community-based website. So if you do, if you help other people, you get priority when you want help. So if you help a lot of people with say English pronunciation or your your native language, you can get help faster, you're a priority kind of a member, and you know, that it's just help others, get help in return. That's how it works. The reason I I I said it it's kind of a weird website is because it's not really that well made, you know, it's kind of like it looks like something you just whipped up. And that's not something I I don't judge websites based on how they look, but people have also experienced a bit of, um, what people are saying is that they're afraid of the quality of the recordings because there's no kind of quality control to check that what people are saying is actually legit. Like, there's nothing stopping me from going on there and pretending to speak Russian, although I'm, you know, only two and a half months into it and I could never possibly do any Russian word justice on a website like that. So, as always in language learning, keep, uh, keep vigilant and and use these services with a grain of salt because, you know, they they are community-based most of them.

The alternative that is kind of like RhinoSpike, but for text instead, it's called Lang-8. L-A-N-G-dash-8. And this is for when you're writing something. And by the way, iTalki does that does a similar thing, so you can use this as well. But basically it's when you are far enough into your language learning that you can actually begin to write and formulate sentences. You can write your piece in the language, and then you can submit it to Lang-8 and then somebody else will correct it. And again, it's community-based where if you help somebody else, you can get, you know, you can get your text corrected, and so on and so forth.

So these are basically, this step, the third kind of step in the trifecta is basically on the road to mastery. You know, it's not, it's not the first port of call for for you new language learners out there, but it's definitely a place where you might want to consider, um, taking a look when you're reaching basic fluency, or when you're getting to a point where you feel like you need to improve in other ways than just listening and learning words.

And the, well, I guess the the the what remains is what happens when you're, so to speak, done with the trifecta. Where what is the next port of call when you are really, really good on a basic level? You know, when you reach this basic fluency where you understand most of what is spoken and you can you can make yourself understood, but you need to bridge the gap between conversational and kind of intermediate in the language.

And here I have a few advice a few different resources, and it's some of them are obvious, uh, in fact, most of them are probably obvious for you, but I just need to tell you this because it's an important part of when you've, I mean, this would be something like half a year into your language learning where you're like, okay, I understand a lot of the words and I can speak a lot of sentences, but I I need I I need to bridge the gap, you know, I need to get to the intermediate stages sooner rather than later.

So, the first stop I want to say is iTunes and you might be wondering, well, what am I going to listen to music? And yes, you can listen to music as well. But the reason I put it, mentioned iTunes is because of podcasts. And you're right now you're listening to a podcast that is actually on iTunes, so you you you I assume you know the concept. But basically what you can find is you can find podcasts about your interest areas of interest in the language which you are learning.

So, for instance, Steve Kaufmann did his Korean 90-day challenge and during it he was very obsessed with a it was a, um, a podcast about Korean literature. And he said it was very hard and even if he understood all the words, it was still very hard to understand because it went it was like analyzing Korean literary texts and that can get very hairy even for, you know, if you speak the language. But the point is that he he found the podcast because he was interested in in literature and he was interested in learning Korean. So that's all you got to do. You go to the iTunes and there's a little flag at the bottom where you select your language and your country. And if you change your country to, you know, the the country of the language you're trying to learn, I try to change mine to Russian. And I found some Russian podcasts that I could listen to.

But it has to be said, I'm not far enough into my Russian to be able to enjoy it. And this is right now I'm talking about post-trifecta and right now I'm still in the trifecta, so I'm not, I haven't moved on to podcasts yet. I could, but right now I just don't understand quite enough. It's getting very close. I'm getting to the point where I can pick out words and I can kind of understand a lot of sentences out of context and thereby get the context. But I'm not ready to just open up a a podcast and listen to it, because the thing that happens for me, I don't know if it happens for you, but if I don't understand enough of what is being said, then I just get bored with the material because it sounds like people are just speaking gibberish. I know they're not and I do understand, you know, words here and there. But if you don't understand even the basic of meaning, then to me that's too soon to get started with this serious stuff, like finding podcasts.

Of course, you can find podcasts that are called like slow and simple. I know they exist for Spanish and have I seen one in Italian maybe? Um, but Google that slow language podcast and you can find some of those. Some of them are not free, uh, but if you find some of them, they're very helpful. Uh, the Spanish one particularly sounded really nice. I I don't speak a word of Spanish, so it was kind of hard for me to evaluate, but they spoke nice and slowly and the vocabulary didn't seem too advanced, you know, they were using kind of simple language. So in that sense, you could use a podcast like that for within the trifecta, but I haven't been able to find one for Russian yet. I found some podcasts that are kind of simple, but they're still they still speak a little bit too fast for me. Um, but I I can feel that I'm getting close. So I'm not giving up on the concept yet. But I just want to get through the kind of trifecta phase first before I start to look for the podcast.

But podcasts is a really good, uh, place to start. Find something that you enjoy. If you enjoy sports, go to a podcast about sports in that language, in that country. I happen to know that, uh, SportsCenter from the CNN is broadcast in like nine different languages, in nine different places in the world. Uh, and I know that a lot of you like sports out there, so that's a natural port of call. For me, I like video games. I particularly like the video game Dota 2. And so what I do is I watch Dota 2 games, live games. I watch them with a Russian commentator. And although I don't understand much of it, again, you might say, well, if you don't understand much of it, doesn't that go back to your point about about podcasts? No, because I'm I'm still seeing what's happening in the game, and I do like the game. So, you know, it it's easier for me to kind of brush away the fact that I don't understand what the commentator is saying at all times. Of course, I would love to get to a point where I do understand it. And there are advantages to this too, because there's a lot of kind of English loanwords that was in the game. So I understand a lot of what the game words are, and then I can kind of piece it together with the Russian that I do know. And that's my way of going out of the trifecta, that's my post-trifecta strategy. Um, I just happened to use it in the trifecta because I'm already into video games, and I know some of the lingo, and I can watch the game without actually understanding what the commentator is saying, but it's giving me help in Russian as well.

Other post-trifecta things you can do, and don't worry about, um, if you don't get annoyed by not understanding the meaning of a foreign language show, like a podcast or a television show, or radio, newspapers or or stuff like this. Don't get discouraged by what I say, I'm just sharing my story and that's that's how I work. I I just can't do it. I I want I need to understand at least the meaning or at least get some kind of small understanding snippets. If I don't understand at least the bare the bare minimum, then I just get too bored with it and I have to turn it off. But if you are the person who likes the immersion from a very early stage, go ahead, go out and find the TV shows, the radio shows, the the podcasts and the news and the find the movies and the the all these resources that can help you immerse yourself from day one. Because I do think it's powerful. I just think it's it's something that's better to, like I said, bridge the gap between basic fluency and intermediate fluency or even going beyond fluency but into kind of intermediate knowledge of the language itself.

So that's that's kind of what I wanted to wrap up with. You know, post-trifecta, find resources. And then you can even you can even do things to the resources. If you really like, if you're into politics, you can read the news and you can read international newspapers and you can get them transcribed or you can copy them into something like LingQ where you can work on them, break the sentences down, sentence by sentence and learn the words. Or, you know, you can be like me and play video games. I know although I haven't played the game World of Warcraft in in years, I know that it is currently being offered in a lot of different languages, among others Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, German. And, you know, World of Warcraft obviously being infamous for being a time sink, but a lot of people just call it a glorified chat room. And I think that's so correct. And everything is in the language. It's not just, you know, the the menus and stuff. It is the whole game, so with speaking and everything. So, if you're into the video games, and I know some of you are out there, then something like that could be worth worthwhile to pursue because you're kind of mixing a hobby with the language learning, making it easier, making it, you know, kind of more enjoyable. I'm not saying language learning isn't enjoyable in general. I'm just saying that if you combine your interests in languages and in something that isn't languages, then you learn much faster and more efficiently. And there's also a point to the language all of a sudden. You're like, oh, I want to understand this video game. I understand I want to understand this guy. And and that's basically it.

So with that said, I hope my kind of approach to language learning in this trifecta form has given you ideas about how you create your own trifecta. Because at the end of the day, this is what I do. And if you ask anyone, they they'll probably do it in a different way. But I've listed a lot of resources that you can go and check out. And if you want to get all the links and all the notes and what I'm talking about here, you can go to actualfluency.com/06. And I will have put all the links in there. And all that's left to be said is just thank you for listening and look out for the interview next Friday, where I'll be bringing on yet another amazing guest to talk about language learning. And I can't wait. So see you there.

Thank you for listening to the Actual Fluency Podcast. For more information, be sure to check out actualfluency.com. Until next time, enjoy learning and have a great day.