Benny Lewis's Blog, page 87

10 Must Watch German Language Movies

I love watching German language movies to help with my German missions.

Watching movies is an effective way to develop an ear for the language. You also get to experience the spoken language in many different social situations you would probably never find yourself in.

One of the main reasons I study languages is to experience the culture, and movies also provide you with valuable cultural exposure.

The following is a list of German films to help give you get a closer look into the language and culture of German speakers. If you’re learning German, then this list should help you come up with enjoyable options for those days when your brain hurts from studying and you just need to relax for a couple hours.

1. Das Boot (The Boat)

Released: 1981

Directed by: Wolfgang Peterson

Suitable For: War Movie Buffs

IMDB Average Rating: 8.4 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 98%

The Story

A gripping, tense and somewhat claustrophobic movie about a German submarine crew fighting the Allies in 1941.

Language Hacker’s Notes

While there isn’t a tonne of dialogue in this film, it’s rich with World War II references and military-speak that you may not normally hear while walking around the streets of Frankfurt.

2. Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)

Released: 1998

Directed by: Tom Tykwer

Suitable For: the MTV Generation

IMDB Average Rating: 7.8 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 90%

The Story

An energetic and fast-paced film about a woman who needs to get 100,000 Deutschmarks in 20 minutes or her boyfriend will die. An engrossing performance by Franka Potente (who you’ll recognize from The Bourne Identity) who steals the show. It’s like Crank (with Jason Statham) meets Sliding Doors (with Gwyneth Paltrow), but in German!

Language Hacker’s Notes

A film geared towards a younger generation, you’ll find lots of fun slang and colloquialisms to spice up your German!

3. Good Bye Lenin!

Released: 2003

Directed by: Wolfgang Becker

Suitable For: Fans of Social Commentary and Comedy

IMDB Average Rating: 7.8 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 90%

The Story

A hilarious film about a young man whose socialist mother awakes from a heart-attack induced coma, unaware of the recent German reunification. To keep her from having another heart attack, he must scheme to make sure she has no idea anything has changed and that the German Democratic Republic is still alive and well.

Language Hacker’s Notes

Plenty of interesting cultural notes on a German perspective of reunification. Plenty of useful vocabulary to help you talk about political ideology.

4. Ostwind – Zusammen Sind Wir Frei (Eastwind – Together We Are Free)

Released: 2015

Directed by: Katja von Garnier

Suitable For: Children and Families

IMDB Average Rating: 6.9 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: n/a

The Story

A touching family film utilizing the tried and tested formula of pairing a girl with a horse. A story you’ve seen many times before, but this time it’s in German!

Language Hacker’s Notes

A brilliant way to experience the German language from a child’s perspective. Also lots of useful vocabulary for the equestrians out there.

5. Downfall (Der Untergang)

Released: 2004

Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Suitable For: History Buffs

IMDB Average Rating: 8.3 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 91%

The Story

An intense and gripping look at the last 10 days of Adolf Hitler’s life in his bunker during the end of World War II.

Language Hacker’s Notes

If you want to get a taste of the Austrian accent (Don’t forget they speak German in Austria!), then Bruno Ganz gives you a taste of the real thing in his amazing performance as the Austrian-born Hitler.

Also, wait for that one scene which went viral all over the Internet about Hitler complaining about… anything they decided to put on the subtitles. Very random!

6. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant)

Released: 1972

Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Suitable For: Relationship Experts

IMDB Average Rating: 7.7 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

The Story

A classic German film and an excellent exploration of the dynamics of human relationships. While some of the interactions are adult-themed, this film is considered a good introduction to the world of New German Cinema and the work of acclaimed director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Language Hacker’s Notes

If you want some ways to talk about love and hate, then this is your film. You also get the added bonus of the rarely heard Bavarian accent.

7. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex)

Released: 2008

Directed by: Uli Edel

Suitable For: Action Fans

IMDB Average Rating: 7.4 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 85%

The Story

A look at the controversial Red Army Faction (RAF), the left wing militant group who terrorized Germany during the 60’s and 70’s.

Language Hacker’s Notes

An action-packed film with enough slang words to fill a dictionary!

8. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes)

Released: 1972

Directed by: Werner Herzog

Suitable For: History Buffs

IMDB Average Rating: 8.0 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 98%

The Story

One of the most impressive German films of the 70’s thanks to the fantastic acting performances and this classic pairing of actor Klaus Kinski and director Werner Herzog (the German equivalent of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese). This film follows the story of a conquistador’s descent into madness as he searches the Amazon for El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold.

Language Hacker’s Notes

An enjoyable film to watch for pure entertainment value, but probably an overly intense way to learn German. Due to the complexity of the German language in this film, it’s best to use this for study when you get to a more advanced level.

9. Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa)

Released: 2001

Directed by: Caroline Link

Suitable For: History Buffs

IMDB Average Rating: 7.7 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 85%

The Story

This 2003 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Picture tells the story of a Jewish family from Germany relocating to Kenya during World War 2.

Language Hacker’s Notes

If you’re relatively new to German, then this film may be perfect for you. The actors speak a clear and easy-to-understand German, perfect for those still early in their study of the language.

10. Die Vorstadtkrokodile (The Crocodiles)

Released: 2001

Directed by: Christian Ditter

Suitable For: Kids and Families

IMDB Average Rating: 6.2 / 10

Rotten Tomatoes Page

The Story

Based on a popular young adult novel, this is basically a German version of “The Bad News Bears”. Two outcasts join up with a local gang and subsequent hilarity and hijinx ensues as they take on a large foe. It was so popular it even spawned two sequels!

Language Hacker’s Notes

This is another film to help you learn some German “kid speak”. You’ll experience a youthful version of German spoken by 21st century kids. So, that means you’ll finally learn the German word for “gummy bears” (Gummibärchen).

What Are Your Favourites?

So, now that you’ve read the list, you probably have some movie-watching to do

Mistakes are the ONLY Way to Learn a Language

Being wrong is painful. Nobody wants to look stupid. And making mistakes feels really stupid.

That’s why learning a new language is so scary. You have to make mistakes. It also explains why so many people give up at the first hurdle – they want to be perfect from day one.

Making mistakes is the only way to become fluent in a language. That’s why I’ve written about it so often.

As much as I emphasise this point, I still hear from language learners who are afraid to say the wrong thing.

What if there was another way to look at mistakes? What if you could embrace mistakes with the same excitement you’d feel about winning the lottery?

What is a Mistake Anyway?

Look at any dictionary, and the idea of making mistakes is riddled with judgement.

Mirriam-Webster’s definition talks about making a “wrong judgement”, while dictionary.com states that a mistake is “an error or fault resulting from defective judgement, deficient knowledge or carelessness”.

With these negative connotations you can’t really be blamed for being afraid of mistakes.

Here’s the truth: making mistakes is something we all do. A mistake is unintentional. It doesn’t have to be tied up in emotion or self criticism. And making mistakes certainly doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

In fact, mistakes can be really positive.

How Kids and Nobel Award Winning Scientists Handle Mistakes

When parents gleefully encourage their baby to say “mama” or “papa”, and their child spits out something that sounds closer to “morp morp”, what is their reaction?

Do they scold the child for poor pronunciation? No! They smile and clap their hands. They reward the effort their baby has made.

This is a profound lesson in how to feel about mistakes. The baby says something incorrectly and is enthusiastically encouraged to keep trying!

This is also how things work in the world of science. Mistakes are as a vital part of the scientific process. In scientific experiments, scientists make a hypothesis then try to prove themselves wrong. Messing up is not part of the deal, it is the deal. Making mistakes, says science writer Adam Frank, is “the essence of scientific heroism“.

Every time scientists make “mistakes”, they learn something new. In other words, mistakes aren’t about doing the wrong thing, then judging yourself for it. They’re about educating yourself towards future success.

What To Do When You Make a Mistake

In his book, The Perfect Wrong Note, William Westney says honest mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. “If you take the time to immediately process the mistake, your learning will be pure and lasting,” Westney writes.

According to Westney, the more mistakes you make, the better. Mistakes provide feedback that “reveal[s] the underlying specific reason for a particular glitch.”

Essentially, the more mistakes you make, the more you learn.

That’s why I try to make 200 mistakes a day on my language learning missions.

What Aeroplanes Can Teach Us About Mistakes

You may not realize this, but aeroplanes are almost never on course. In fact, due to random gusts and changing wind conditions they are off course 99% of the time.

Will knowing this deter you from getting on a flight then next time you want to travel? Probably not.

Learning a language is like steering a plane. Just like a plane, you will make mistakes. You will be blown off course. And just like a plane, this is the only way to reach your destination.

Why Are Mistakes so Terrifying?

What makes mistakes so scary?

According to education specialists Hunter Maats and Katie O’Brien, students don’t view mistakes rationally but emotionally. In other words, students feel shame when they make mistakes. The natural response to shame is to avoid its source.

Ironically, if you want to improve your skills, avoiding mistakes is the opposite of what you should do.

Why Perfectionism Hurts Language Learning

Perfectionists hate making mistakes. Mistakes are the only way to learn a language. That’s why perfectionism hurts language learning.

Perfectionism is a belief that mistakes are wrong. As Martin Anthony and Richard Swinson put it:

We don’t actually fear making mistakes. We fear what we believe about making mistakes. That’s what’s upsetting or anxiety-producing for us.

**Perfectionism is the enemy of skill development.

That’s why reaching perfection has never been my goal. I aim to make mistakes. Not to be perfect.

The only way to be perfect at a new language is to never speak it. And if you don’t speak your target language language, two things happen:

You never build any confidence in your ability




You never receive feedback on where you need to improve.

Perfection is a lonely path. Walk it, and eventually you’ll lose motivation because you’re unable to connect with people in your target language.

Mistakes are the Only Way to Learn

Here’s what to do to make the most of your mistakes:

Make Mistakes Often: The more mistakes you make the faster you will improve and the less they will bother you. The best cure to feeling uncomfortable about making mistakes is to make more mistakes.
Learn From Your Mistakes: After you have made mistakes, study them! Record yourself so you can see what you need to work on. Or better yet, ask your tutor or teacher for feedback so you know where to target your studies.
Appreciate Your Mistakes: You now know that mistakes are the fastest way to speak a new language. That is something to be thankful for, not to resent or be afraid of! As I’ve said before you need to learn to love your mistakes because they are the keys to future fluency.

Time to Take Mistake Medicine!

What if I told you I had a magic pill? Swallow this pill, and you’ll become fluent in your target language faster than you ever thought possible.

What’s the pill? You’ve probably guessed it by now: mistakes.

You don’t need to be afraid of mistakes.

Mistakes are the natural result of taking action. Without mistakes, you’d never make any progress.

What are you waiting for? Get out there and make mistakes!

The post Mistakes are the ONLY Way to Learn a Language appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

How to Speak Spanish in 4 Days

While you can’t master or reach fluency in a few days, you absolutely can start to speak a language in this time. I famously aim for Day 1 (or even hour one), but experience in doing it so often has given me a big edge. Passing the speaking barrier is one of the most important steps in your entire language learning journey, so the sooner you conquer it, the better.

That’s why I love the blow-by-blow details of this intensive coaching effort that Aran gave his student Martyn. Intensive learning like this is painful, but it by far the best way to push yourself and make true progress.

Let’s hear their story and what a difference four days made!

I’d been teaching Martyn Spanish for three days, and I thought I was about to lose him.

He was brutally tired, yawning every few seconds, and obviously not having a good time. He looked as though he might kick me out.

He didn’t, though. He pushed through the pain, and that turned out to be a good thing, because something rather surprising was just about to happen.

If he’d left, he’d have missed all the fun.

Martyn’s journey had started a week before, when I arrived at his house in Llannor, near Pwllheli in the north of Wales, just after 9am. He already looked slightly nervous, and with good reason.

Martyn is a tutor of the minority language Welsh, which is spoken in Wales, UK by around 500,000 people. I met Martyn at a language conference, where I had given a presentation on intensive language learning. My presentation sparked Martyn’s interest, and he asked me if I’d teach him Spanish from scratch. This was perfect, as I wanted to test my intensive learning methods on a willing victim.

The Plan to Create a Spanish Speaker in Four Days

We’d agreed a structure I wanted to test. We were going to do two intensive days in a row, then give Martyn five days off for a little consolidation (and to avoid tears), and then follow up with another two intensive days. At the end of it, he’d try to speak some Spanish on a Skype call with Gaby, an Argentinean opera singer and polyglot living in the north of Italy.

As you’ll know if you’ve done serious intensive work, that’s a reasonably tough schedule.

But the schedule was a piece of cake compared to the method…

The Intensive Learning Method

Martyn was going to be working through material I’d put together with help from Gaby that was designed to give Spanish learners a very difficult time.

Our materials often remind people of the work of Michel Thomas. The Michel Thomas method involves CDs where Michel gives a prompt in English, followed by a pause for the listener to translate the prompt into the target language. The correct answer is then given.

The Spanish materials Gaby and I created for Martyn were like Michel Thomas on steroids, in that they were much more difficult than the traditional Michel Thomas approach. In fact, “steroids” is an understatement. Our materials were more like Michel Thomas on a shipping-container-full of dangerously experimental Class A drugs, on a stormy night, blindfolded, with police sirens somewhere in the background.

All Martyn was going to do, all day long, was hear prompts in English, have a few seconds to translate them into spoken Spanish, and then hear them twice in Spanish (first from our female voice, Rosa, and then from Gaby, the opera singer). Again and again and again. Mercilessly. The prompts were going to get longer and more complicated, the pause button was banned, and he wasn’t allowed to repeat any sessions at all – no matter how difficult he found them.

No, I wasn’t joking about the tears.

Spanish in Four Days: Day One

It was just after 9am. I’d dropped the kids off at school, and there was Martyn – looking nervous. He wasn’t expecting to learn much in four days, he said. He’d be happy if he could say a few simple phrases ‘in a fairly robotic manner’ by the time we finished.

I felt confident that we could go further than that.

My confidence lasted until Martyn needed some painkiller tablets after the first 30 minute session.

He was doing well, though, apart from turning to drugs so early in the process. He got through 4 ‘half-hour’ sessions of English to Spanish drilling that morning (despite the fact that most of them were closer to 40 minutes than 30), and he was often saying the Spanish correctly ahead of Rosa. He hadn’t got a grip on ‘estoy tratando’ (I’m trying) or ‘estaba tratando’ (I was trying) (no, we don’t do things in anything like the usual order), but he wasn’t letting that dampen his spirit.

Things changed after lunch, though.

Maybe Martyn should have taken on a bit more protein, or a decent kick of caffeine. All he had was a ham sandwich and a banana. Bananas may be okay for tennis players, but language learning is serious work! Raw steak and guarana might have been a better choice. Or maybe it was my fault – maybe the work was so hard, his brain was going to fall to pieces whatever the hell he ate.

Most people get miserable and give up when they start making mistakes.

Martyn didn’t give up..

The turning point

It was starting to feel as though we’d got ourselves caught up in a Rocky film, and couldn’t get past the point where Sylvester Stallone was taking enormous (and unrealistic) punishment. Smack! Punch! Headbutt! Elbow in the ear!

As he made more mistakes, some interesting patterns appeared. Martyn would swap consonants inside a word – ‘como se dice’ (how do you say) would become ‘como de side’. He was doing the same with vowels – ‘quería’ (I wanted) might turn into ‘quiara’, for example. He was also getting some individual consonant shifts happening – he’d say a ‘d’ instead of a ‘t’ (or the other way round), or swap a ‘p’ for a ‘b’, that sort of stuff.

If you’ve worked in the field of language learning, my guess is that you’re hearing a little ‘dyslexia’ bell ringing round about now. I certainly was – and I was increasingly aware that Martyn’s short-term memory wasn’t very strong (which is another possible marker of dyslexia).

Martyn was swapping consonants and vowels all over the place. He was getting fewer and fewer sentences out before Rosa. His short-term memory was making it hard for him. And he was starting to look a little pale!

We decided to call it day at 5:15pm. I didn’t want blood on my hands.

It wasn’t looking promising…

Martyn had finished 7 sessions, and had worked with enormous determination – but I was starting to wonder if the spaced repetition built into the sessions could possibly work in the face of so many difficulties. If he wasn’t saying the second half of most of the sentences, how could they count as spaced repetition?

Just before I left, though, Martyn said something that gave me hope.

‘It feels odd,’ he told me. ‘It’s as though there are lots of new things sloshing around in my head.’

“Aha!” I thought…

Spanish in Four Days: Day Two

The next day was a lovely, sunny day. A good day for some hard work, I told myself, as I drove slowly down the countryside lanes to Martyn’s neat and tidy home. When I say “neat and tidy”, I mean absolutely perfect. You could use Martyn’s home in an IKEA TV commercial.

‘I do like to keep it tidy,’ he said, as though he was admitting something. It wouldn’t last long if my 6 year old and 4 year old came to visit, I thought. ‘I like structure,’ he added. ‘I like to be in control, and to make sure I know what I’m doing.’

I tried not to look as worried as I felt.

I was glad he hadn’t told me about his love of control the day before. The kind of intensity we were using needs people who don’t mind making mistakes. Lots and lots (and lots) of mistakes.

Martyn had made a lot of mistakes on day one. He’d been swapping consonants, he was forgetting the ends of phrases, and he was having a tough time with his short-term memory. Now it turned out that he didn’t like making mistakes, either. It wasn’t going to be easy.

We threw ourselves back into the hard work with little cries of delight. [Well – they were very little, and maybe there wasn’t all that much delight in them, now I think about it. Perhaps they were just quiet sobs.]

And, hallelujah! Martyn had another treat in store for me. His Welsh was starting to interrupt his Spanish…

‘Decir’ would shapeshift into ‘dweud’ (to say), ‘pero’ would hiccup into ‘ond’ (but). It seemed that Martyn’s Welsh didn’t like the idea of him learning another new language. But Martyn, ladies and gentlemen, is a fighter.

I was tempted to start using the pause button to help him, but he was jumping up at the end of a session, grabbing a glass of water, saying ‘agua!’ cheerfully, and then sitting straight back down ready to carry on. In the course of the day, he got through another eight sessions, for a total of 15 half-hour sessions finished in the the first two days.

It didn’t matter that by now he wasn’t managing to say any of the longer sentences before Rosa – I can remember the look of surprise on his face when he managed to say one long sentence correctly in the middle of the afternoon. It didn’t matter that ‘no entendí como hacerlo’ (I don’t understand how to do it) became ‘no centindé’ followed by a sigh and a look of despair. It didn’t even matter, apparently, that he was starting to hit his head in frustration on a regular basis. It didn’t matter that in session 13, Rosa started speaking so quickly I got the impression she was late for a vital appointment.

Martyn just kept going. Terminator style.

I brought proceedings to a halt at 5:00pm. Martyn, as far as I could see, would have carried on until his brain fainted in self-defence, but I needed to get home and help myself to a very strong drink or three (whatever the kids would say). ‘Mam, Tada’s drinking your Scotch again! It’s not even tea-time!’

Before I left, I gave Martyn the rules of the game for the next 5 days.

No revision. No extra sessions. Fifteen minutes of listening exercises each day, and nothing else.

Time to forget the pain, and let some consolidation happen.

Spanish in Four Days: Day Three

When Martyn returned for his third day of Spanish, I was expecting him to be looking cheerful. “He’ll have enjoyed the break,” I thought. I hoped he’d have bits of Spanish playing hide-and-seek in his head, and he’d be looking forward to starting again.

Instead, he opened the door with bags under his eyes, yawning, and not looking very excited to be alive. He told me he’d had a tough night. He was painfully short on sleep, and we were managing to tick even more boxes in what was rapidly becoming a list of ‘Not Perfect Ways To Learn Spanish’.

It felt like the right time to tell him that today, we would only be talking in Spanish. We hadn’t kept to Benny’s Speak from Day One mantra – Martyn had spent his first two days saying things in Spanish, true, but only after a prompt in English. Today was going to be different. No Welsh or English. Just Spanish or deep and beautiful silence.

I thought I might lose Martyn. All the hours of intensive learning were obviously hurting. ‘Acabo de comenzar’ (I’d just started) kept turning into ‘abaco de’.

I was grateful that Martyn hadn’t read Benny’s tips about swearing in Spanish.

Then the phone rang, and Martyn had a 10 minute conversation in Welsh. He came back looking as though he’d been punched. It was surely only a matter of time before he fell over. He was fidgeting in his seat badly by now, as if his body was begging him to stop all this hard work.

We made it to lunch, just about.

Then, as we were about to eat, the magic happened.

A Short Break, And Some Unexpected Magic

Martyn got up, and began to take food out of his kitchen cupboards.

‘Key? Ust? Ust key? Na. Quiere usted? Quiere usted algo? Quiere usted algo comer?’ (Do you want something eat?).

I might have looked a little over-excited.

‘Sí! Sí! Quiero algo de comer!’ (Yes! Yes! I want something to eat!).

‘Muy bien (very well),’ he answered calmly, and there it was: his first communication in Spanish.

It was, of course, just the beginning.

Martyn was still exhausted, but you could see the excitement bubbling up to the surface. He started to reach for more to say – more little moments of communication – and he was understanding most of what I was saying back to him. It encouraged both of us. A few simple moments of real communication, and suddenly all the worry that the method wouldn’t work disappeared.

The afternoon went past in a blur.

Martyn was still making mistakes. Mountains of them. At a guess, he was getting about 10% of the target phrases right before he heard Rosa. But it didn’t matter any more. We could both see that he was genuinely learning.

He was starting to fine-tune, as well. ‘Usted habla lo’ became ‘usted lo habla’ (you speak it) without any clues from me, and then ‘Puede usted lo decir?’ switched itself back to ‘Puede usted decirlo?’ (Can you say it?). I kept wanting to high-five him.

I’d decided, more or less at random, that the first 25 sessions we’d built were our ‘Level One’. Martyn had session 22 finished by half-past three – and despite his new enthusiasm, he was yawning too much to answer at least half the time.

We decided that we’d earned an early finish – partly because there was something worrying me. I wanted Martyn to have a good night’s sleep.

In less than 24 hours, Gaby was going to call him on Skype, and speak Spanish at him. And we were going to record it. Martyn obviously felt a little stressed about this, and I can’t say I was calm. I imagined finishing this experiment with a video showing Martyn failing to remember any Spanish. Pressure can make anyone crack, and it’s worse for a brand new learner.

But we were committed…

And as I’ve said before, Martyn’s not the kind of guy to back away from a challenge.

Spanish in Four Days: Day Four

I used to teach languages in a British high school, and I can still remember the sense of helpless worry I’d get when my students were going into exams. It’s a horrible feeling. You want to freeze time so that you can give them a month or two of last minute reminders. But you worry that if you throw any extra details at them, it’ll push the other stuff out of their brains.

This feeling came back to me in unpleasant detail as I drove to Martyn’s house on the morning of Day Four.

I’d emailed Gaby asking him to use questions that Martyn had covered in Level One. I know how easily fluent speakers can start talking about things that a learner doesn’t understand! Martyn and I decided that we’d just finish Level One by doing the last three sessions, and we wouldn’t move onto Level Two.

We jumped straight back into the ‘Only Spanish’ rule, and Martyn was communicating more and more.

By 1:00pm we’d finished three sessions, and Martyn was consistently speaking in groups of five or six words together. This would have been impossible on Day Two. Even on the particularly difficult last session, which revises everything we’d done in the whole of Level One, he was doing better than on Day Three.

It was promising, but I was still worried that Martyn would freeze in front of the camera.

We decided to take the last couple of hours as a chance to relax on the sofas in his living room. We played around with possible questions, and tried out different answers. Martyn was starting to achieve real communication – talking about real things, about the process he’d been going through, about what he wanted to do. It felt like much more than you’d expect from a standard beginner.

I was getting more and more optimistic, but I couldn’t stop worrying that the camera would make him freeze.

There’s a moment when something you’re worrying about becomes inevitable, and time suddenly accelerates. It’s like the moment on a roller-coaster, at the top of the climb, when your fear gives way to excitement, and everything becomes a blur.

It was like that when we heard Skype ringing.

There was Gaby, appearing on the iPad like the friendliest great white shark you ever met.

Ready… ready… ready! I pressed play on the camera, and suddenly there was Gaby throwing Spanish words at Martyn. I knew for a fact Martyn had never heard these words in his life. It’s all going to fall to pieces! But no… wait… what’s this?

Martyn’s answering him! Martyn’s heard something in all those words which makes some sense for him! And he’s talking! He’s talking in Spanish! He’s saying whole sentences in Spanish!

What the…? He’s just said something in Spanish I have never heard him say before!

Martyn does not freeze in front of the camera. In fact, the camera seems to inspire him. He’s putting words together in ways he hasn’t tried before . That’s the final ingredient that turns speaking a new language into a magical experience.

I thought that I would record 10 minutes or so of Martyn speaking, and choose the best two or three minutes. That didn’t happen. I only recorded the first 3 minutes, and left it at that. By the time they’d finished speaking, Gaby and Martyn had arranged to meet up and have a Welsh/Spanish intercambio (language exchange) in the Welsh National Eisteddfod in August. To be fair, by that point the Skype conversation had become something of a Welsh/Spanish intercambio itself. When Gaby switched to speaking Welsh, Martyn said he’d never in his life been so relieved to hear a language he really understood!

Here’s the video of Martyn speaking with Gaby:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdaLd5ytTAQ

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Lessons Learned from Four Days of Intensive Spanish

We learned a huge amount from our experience:

Four days is enough to go a long way beyond rote-learning, if you focus on communication.
Making an incredible amount of mistakes is one of the most valuable skills any learner can have.
If you’re willing to keep on making mistakes, you gradually acquire new words, as if by magic. You can get a word wrong 10 times, and then discover it’s become easy on the 11th attempt.
Running out of time and accepting it means you learn faster than if you use the pause button all the time.
Five days of consolidation might just help make some magic happen.

Are you tempted to give an intensive language project a try? Let us know in the comments.

 

How You Can Learn Spanish in Four Days

You can learn Spanish in Four Days with the exact same audio lessons as Martyn.  Buy the Fluent in 3 Months guide Why Spanish is Easy using this link, and you’ll receive a voucher to download the audio lessons for free!

Limited Time Offer: Buy Why Spanish is Easy using the link above before 4th August 2015, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win four days of intensive language coaching with Aran! There’ll be one lucky winner, who we’ll announce on Facebook.

 

About the Author: Aran was brought up in Wales, England, Germany, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and worked in Zimbabwe and Dubai until he realised he wasn’t very fond of sand.  He tweets @aranjones and discusses intensive learning in a Facebook group.

The post How to Speak Spanish in 4 Days appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

How to Speak German: The Faster Way to Learn German

In my travels around the world and my conversations with language learners I’ve noticed that German is often seen as a difficult language.

Yes, German vocabulary is gendered. Yes, there are some really long words to learn. And yes, the grammar isn’t always intuitive.

But there’s plenty about German that is easy too.

I’d like to share six steps to that can help you learn how to speak German. This is the language hacker’s approach to learning German, so give these steps a try and you’ll be speaking German faster than you ever thought possible.

Step 1: Find Your Big Why for Learning German

Even before you think about which materials to study, or your method for learning German, you need to take a step back and understand your underlying reason for wanting to speak German. This is your Big Why.

My “Big Why” is an unquantifiable passion for languages. It isn’t something measurable like “So I can speak to X number of people in the world”, but it has to do with enriching my life with friendships and experiences, which you can’t really measure.

Here are some reasons for learning German that could be your Big Why:

To have conversations with German speaking family members
To find a job in a German company (Germany is one of the biggest economies in the world)
To speak with natives as you travel in the heart of Europe
To read the classics of German literature (think Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Hesse and Franz Kafka)
To get an inside view of German culture

Find your Big Why and you’ll discover that learning German becomes a challenge you’ll love.

Step 2: Create a Mini-Germany in Your Home

You don’t need to live in Germany to immerse yourself in the German language. There are many ways to plunge yourself headfirst into German wherever you live. Here are a few of my top ways to bring Germany to your hometown:

Make Your Computer Multilingual. Why not turn your computer into a German-only system?
Find the German Speakers in Your City. Believe it or not, there are many communities of German speakers around the world. You may be near one and not even realize it!
Watch German Television and Movies. Force yourself to focus by watching without subtitles.

Not sure whether this approach is for you? Read more about how I learned Japanese while living in Spain and Egyptian Arabic while living in Brazil.

Step 3: Use Language Hacks to Learn German Fast

Language hacks are shortcuts that help you learn a language faster.

Here are a few of my favourite language hacks that can help you learn German fast:

Use Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS). SRS is a great method for memorizing vocabulary and phrases. It is probably the most effective hack you can use to pick up new vocabulary.
Use Mnemonics. Mnemonics help you create associations to easily recall German words. The key to mnemonics? Use your imagination.
Focus Your Study with the Pomodoro Technique. This technique allows you to break up your study sessions into smaller chunks of time resulting in better focus and a more effective learning experience.

Step 4: Use Conversational Connectors – How Beginners Can Get their Flow

Like most languages, German uses a set of call and response phrases that I call conversational connectors. These are crucial to everyday conversations, but they aren’t usually found in phrasebooks.

When my friend Anthony Lauder introduced me to conversaltional connectors a few years ago, they blew my mind. They’re a great technique for sounding more like a native speaker, for removing the awkwardness from conversations, and for giving yourself time to recall vocabularly.

Here’s an example of how they work. When someone asks you “How is your hotel room?” instead of answering with “um … good”, which pretty much ends things right on the spot, you might add in phrases and expressions to create a more organic feel to what you are saying. You could say: “To tell the truth, that is a good question. The hotel room is good. Thanks for asking. How is your hotel room?” . This is exactly the same answer with conversational connectors added in.

Conversational connectors are extremely helpful because you can use them in a variety of situations such as agreeing with someone, sharing your opinion, or changing the subject.

Step 5: Find Native Speakers and Speak from Day One

To improve your German quickly, you must speak from the very first day you start learning German. This speak from day one approach is the fastest and most efficient way to learn German – especially if you speak with native German speakers.

How can you find native speakers to practice with? It’s actually much easier than you’d think.

No matter where you live you can still find people, either online or offline, to speak with in German. I connect with German speakers by:

Browsing italki. italki is my go-to place to find native German speakers. The prices are reasonable (especially compared to private, face-to-face lessons) and you can meet in the comfort of your own home.
Meeting Up With German Learners. On MeetUp.com you can find weekly German meetups in many major cities around the world. I’ve also been successful using CouchSurfing to connect with German learners and native speakers.
Installing the HelloTalk App on my smartphone. This handy language-learning app helps you connect with other language learners around the world and is a great place to practise speaking German.

You may also like to join my Speak in a Week crash course to give yourself a huge boost in confidence at speaking German after just seven days. It’s free!

Step 6: Focus on the Easy Parts of German

Lots of people think German is a really difficult language to learn. I don’t buy that point of view.

In fact, German has a lot of things going for it that make it considerably easier than many other languages. When learning German, the trick is to focus on those parts of German that are easy to pick up. Alongside that, you can find hacks to help you get around the parts that are perceived as more difficult.

German is an easy language to learn because it has:

No tones, as there are in Chinese or Thai
No liaisons between words, as there are in French
Many of the same letters as English, unlike Japanese or Korean
No postposition or preposition suffixes, like in Hungarian or Turkish
No strings of difficult-to-pronounce consonants like in Czech.

Plus, German is a phonetic language. This means that (with very few exceptions) you know exactly how to pronounce a word when you see it spelled. Likewise, when you hear a word you can almost always write it out. English, by contrast, has all sorts of funky issues with pronunciation. “Corpse, corps, horse and worse” all sound different despite having the same “or” in the middle of them.

On top of that, many parts of German grammar are the same as English since they are both part of the Germanic family of languages. Older Anglo-Saxon texts are particularly close to the German language. Even more recent classics, such as Shakespeare, are closer to the German roots of English.

Another way of looking at this is to ask yourself, “How would Shakespeare have said it?” For example, “thou” is not far from German’s “du”. Likewise, “thine”, is very similar to “dein” in German.

There are many more ways that German is actually really easy, so be sure to check out my guide Why German is Easy where I explore this in a lot more detail.

Become a Confident German Speaker, Fast

There are many ways to study of German that accelerate your learning.

Just remember these important steps:

Find your Big Why for learning German
Immerse yourself in the German language by creating a Mini-Germany in your home
Make smart use of language hacks
Use conversational connectors to sound fluent and buy yourself time
Speak from day one – especially with native speakers
Realise that German is much easier than you think

Conversational fluency in German is just around the corner! And now you have the tools to help you make the most of your German studies.

P.S. My friend Nomadic Matt has just launched a charity to help schools send economically disadvantaged students overseas. Check it out!

The post How to Speak German: The Faster Way to Learn German appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

How to Improve Your Listening Skills in a New Language

Listening comprehension has been one of the hardest skills for me to develop in language learning. It’s usually my worst result in a language exam (I recently struggled to make the grade with listening in a mock advanced French exam, and had similar issues in my real German and Spanish exams).

That’s why I was happy to see from this guest post by Andrew Barr of Real Fast Spanish that I am not alone in listening being one of my biggest language problems. Let’s see how he tackled the issue!

As a language learner, I found listening the hardest skill to improve – and that might be because I went about it the wrong way.

I sometimes hear other language learners say that even from the early stages they understood their target language perfectly fine.

That wasn’t me.

I also hear language learners say that after practicing for a while “it just clicked one day”. After that they could listen to their target language and understand everything being said.

That also wasn’t me.

In my language learning journey, developing listening comprehension was a long, slow and painful grind. The adage of two steps forward and one step back comes to mind but that doesn’t really capture what I went through. It was more like one inch forward, two steps back, two months pass, half a step forward, then sideways. Basically it sucked!

In the end, I discovered why I struggled so much with my listening skills: I’d been developing my listening skills in the wrong way.

In this post, you will learn the one activity most students use (including myself) in an attempt to improve their listening skills. I’ll explain why this activity doesn’t work, and give three other activities that are far more effective for improving your listening skills.

If like me you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by listening to your target language, there are steps you can take to solve the problem.

Before I dive into these strategies, I’d like to tell you about a painful moment I will never forget…

My Scariest Day in Language Learning

It was day one of a four-week stay in Madrid that I had planned to work on my Spanish.

I had signed up for a Spanish school and on that first morning they made me take a placement test to work out which class I should be in. My reading, writing and spoken Spanish were good and so after the test they put me into a class at level B2.

Later that morning, I joined my new class. From the very first minute I was lost.

The teacher – speaking only Spanish – whizzed through some complicated grammar structures that I had never seen before. I was straining to keep up.

I wanted to say “I quit” and walk out of the classroom.

Instead, I pretended to understand and asked a question or two based on what I read in the book to avoid any unwanted attention. After two hours of intense grammar I wasn’t the only one who was drowning in information overload.

The teacher picked up on the lack of student presence and said something like:

Ya hemos hecho bastante gramática por hoy. Vamos a jugar un juego que se llama el “teléfono roto”. (Now we have done enough grammar for today. We are going to play a game called “broken telephone”)

¿¡¿Teléfono roto?!?

“Do you know what it is?” I asked the Italian girl next to me.

She shrugged.

Soon enough, with a quick visual demonstration from the teacher. I realised we were about to play ‘Chinese Whispers’ (Telephone) in Spanish.

My heart rate soared and I could feel my stomach bottom out.

The teacher was planning to whisper something in the first student’s ear that would then get passed from student to student until the last student read out the final message. I was the last student.

I’m sure you could imagine what happened next. It didn’t go well.

I was the only student who couldn’t make out the message. Everyone was waiting for the fun of the final message to be announced. I couldn’t say a word.

The teacher said that the girl next to me could break the rules and whisper the message again. I still couldn’t make out a word.

I felt like a fraud. I felt like I shouldn’t have been in that class.

I felt like I had let everyone down.

Despite this emotional experience I didn’t want to quit. It was horrible but afterwards I was determined that next time I would be able to pull my own weight.

Next time I wouldn’t be the weakest telephone!

I told you this story for two reasons. Firstly, because even when it feels like things are really bad, they aren’t that bad, I was only embarrassed in front of other language students. Secondly, stress plays a very important part of performance and improvement. More on this later.

The #1 Listening Mistake Most Language Students Make

When I first started learning a second language it didn’t take long to realise how difficult it was to improve my listening skills.

I tried watching movies without subtitles, I tried with subtitles in my own language and I tried with subtitles in the target language. I tried listening to podcasts and I watched the Spanish news every saturday morning.

Even when I knew what was being said, by following along with movie subtitles or an audio transcript, the sounds I was hearing weren’t connecting with the words I understood on paper.

I thought maybe the answer was more listening. So I did just that—I listened for hours.

The problem was, even after hours of listening, I still wasn’t improving.

After a few years of studying the language in my own country, it wasn’t until I went on a trip to Spain that I realised what the problem was…I had fallen for the passive listening trap. It wasn’t until I had spent time using the language and interacting with locals that I realised that my passive listening was the reason I hadn’t made any significant progress.

What is Passive Listening?

With passive listening you simply listen to a recording of your target language or watch a movie. The idea is that even though you don’t understand it now, over time you will start to understand more and more through a natural process of absorption.

The problem is…it doesn’t really work.

Students often fall for the idea of passive listening because many language programs are based on the practice. These programs suggest that you can improve your listening skills while doing the dishes, driving to work or even while sleeping.

It is also such an alluring concept—learn a language while you sleep. It doesn’t get more enticing than that!

Sadly, like most ideas that promise maximum results with minimum effort, it rarely delivers.

Why does passive listening fail? To answer that question, you need to learn a thing or two about performance and stress.

Performance vs Stress: What You Need to Know

I have a confession—whenever I’m not working on my language skills or helping my students with theirs, I’m watching or playing sport. I love sport! I’m just as obsessed about sport as I am about languages.

Even if you aren’t a fan of sport, you can still take advantage of a valuable lesson I was given by a respected coach while playing Ultimate Frisbee.

The idea is simple. It’s called the Performance-Stress Curve.

What the curve illustrates is that there is an “optimum” level of stress for maximum performance.

If you aren’t nervous or you are too nervous your performance won’t be as good as when your level of nerves is just right. You could call it a “Goldilocks” level of stress.

When I was in the Spanish school playing teléfono roto I was way too stressed. I was well beyond the point of optimal performance. I could barely function let alone focus on the sounds of a language that wasn’t my first.

The reverse situation is passive listening. If you are listening to a recording or watching a movie; it is simply way too easy to lose focus. When you are feeling relaxed and your stress levels are low your performance and your ability to improve will drop away.

When you are listening passively, there is nothing on the line. There is no consequence of not understanding what you have heard.

Passive listening doesn’t work because there isn’t anything to push you to improve. If you want to improve your listening skills you need to have something that forces you to concentrate and focus.

In order to develop a new skill that you have never had before you need to introduce some stakes into the game.

The Most Effective Way to Improve Your Listening Skills

The most effective activity for improving your listening skills is something I call “high stakes active listening”.

Active listening, by definition, is an activity that requires you to listen to something and take action based on what you have heard.

Active listening is separated from passive listening by the simple requirement that you have do something in response to what is entering your ears. This change causes you to move up the Performance-Stress curve from your baseline. But, it isn’t enough to just actively engage.

If you want to start getting into the “Goldilocks” area of stress where you performance and rate of learning is the highest, you need to have some stakes on the line.

One of the best forms of high stakes active listening is speaking with a native in a one-on-one situation.

Speaking in a one-on-one situation is miles ahead of passively listening to a recording because it forces you to concentrate and be actively engaged in the dialogue.

I remember vividly one critical encounter that opened my eyes to the power of high stakes active listening when I was trying to find parking in Madrid.

My girlfriend and I entered an undercover parking garage. There were no signs explaining opening times or prices for parking.

We drove up to the parking attendant window and I asked in Spanish “how much to park the car?”

The attendant responded “12 euros al día”.

Good start.

I then asked “what time do you close?”

That question was followed by an onslaught of Spanish that went straight in one ear and out the other.

Our accommodation for the night was over an hour away and we were afraid that if the parking garage closed while we were hanging out late in the city, we would be stuck there until morning.

I had to find out when they closed.

If the car got stuck for the night my girlfriend would never have forgiving me. The stakes were officially high!

Over the next fifteen minutes I asked a series of questions, most of which were followed by a torrent of information that I struggled to put together. But, after fifteen minutes the ideas that the parking attendant were throwing at me started to take shape.

It the end, the message became clear. The parking lot was open 24 hours a day and if we stayed past midnight they would charge us for a second day.

Hallelujah. ¡Genial!

I got the message. And better yet, I learnt more about the process of improving listening comprehension in that fifteen minutes than I did all the way up until that point.

From then on I have always looked to practice my listening skills with a native in a one-on-one situation.

Another great way to find this type of practice is in a language exchange. Language swaps are perfect for forcing active engagement. Especially if you meet someone new and you want to make a good first impression. There are a number of resources you can use to find a language swap no matter where you live.

It may sound scary to speak with someone if, up until that point, you haven’t really understood your target language yet but do not underestimate the progress you can make with this type of practice.

Another Solution: Low Stakes Active Listening

I’ll admit there are two potential problems with practicing in high stakes active listening scenarios:

Sometimes language exchanges are hard to find and schedule—especially if you aren’t living in a country where you can find native speakers of your target language or you have timezone issues for a Skype conversation.
A high stakes active listening scenario could push you into the red zone of performance if you are just too nervous to practice.

If you are struggling with problem number two, I encourage you to just give it a go. Nerves subside after you try something once.

I personally know the fear that comes with looking silly; I pointed this out at the start of the post. But, it does get easier when you try it more often.

See if you can find someone you trust who speaks your target language. Or alternatively, to start with, you might like to practice with someone you know you will never see again (like a parking attendant).

If you have problem number one, then you need to find active listening challenges that don’t involve another person.

These types of activities I call “low stakes active listening”.

Low stakes active listening activities are better than passive listening because they still require you to actively engage in the training materials. These types of activities can’t be done while doing something else, like driving to work.

Examples of this type of training include software courses and apps.

Duolingo includes simple active listening exercises that require you to answer questions and solve puzzles in response to a short audio clip.

If you can’t find software courses in your target language then, where possible, make an active game out of an audio recording that would typically be used for passive listening.

Rather than listen to a podcast in the car, listen to it at your desk with a pen and piece of paper (or a computer) and start to transcribe what you hear.

Write down what you do understand and see if you can fill the holes by guessing the missing information from context. Or try listening to a short section of the audio a number of times to fill in the blanks.

This type of training isn’t as effective as high stakes active listening but it will take you much further in a short period of time than passive listening alone.

How to Work on Your Listening Skills with Activities Other than Listening

There are two main reasons people struggle with listening:

You can’t connect the sounds of the language to words that you know on paper—this could be due to the speed of the speaker, their accent or simply a lack of high stakes active practice. Or,
You can make out the sounds of the language and you can connect those sounds with words, but you just don’t know what the words mean. This could be because you don’t know enough of the language yet.

If you have spent a lot of time buried in books with your target language then chances are you are struggling to understand because of reason number one. You need to put yourself in more high stakes active listening scenarios or, at least spend more time doing low stakes active listening activities.

In other words, you need to put yourself in situations where you can develop your ear as effectively as possible by increasing the stakes (use techniques above).

Alternatively, sometimes the reason language learners struggle with listening comprehension is because they simply haven’t developed vocabulary or grammar in their target language.

When I was first starting to learn a second language, I remember putting on movies in my target language without subtitles and thinking “this is impossible, I’ll never be able to learn this language.”

But this was bad feedback. The fact that I couldn’t understand movies had nothing to do with my potential to learn the language.

What I realised later was, when I turned on subtitles or followed an audio with a transcript, I didn’t actually recognize the words I was listening to on paper. I needed to improve my knowledge of the language in general.

No amount of passive listening was ever going to solve this problem.

The best way to solve this problem was to simply to do more study without listening.

If I turned off the movies and sat down with a book or spent time on a beginner focused language learning website, I felt much more at ease. I could feel good again about my progress as I added new words and grammar to my knowledge of the language.

After sufficient time studying the language I could return to the audio with accompanying transcripts with new found solace that I could at least understand the words on paper. Once I was at that point, I could use the high stakes active strategies to increase the rate my ear could get used to the sounds.

Listening Skills: Pulling It All Together

Apart from being ineffective, passive listening practice can be a source of frustration that, in an absolute worst-case scenario, could cause you to give up your language studies altogether. At best, passive listening is great for demonstrating that you have made progress using other, more effective, listening techniques.

If you really want to accelerate your listening comprehension skills:

Put yourself in high stakes active listening situations. See if you can use your most powerful weapon for performance—stress—to increase your rate of learning.
Spend more time actively engaged with software tools and apps, or podcasts and movies with pen and paper in hand.
Use non-listening activities like reading to boost your vocabulary.

No matter if you think you have a disadvantage with listening skills, you can improve as long as you are spending time doing the right kinds of effective practice.

Andrew Barr is a native English speaker and has studied Spanish for 7 years. He writes and podcasts for language students who want to be conversational in Spanish at RealFastSpanish.com. If you want to be conversational in Spanish, start with the Spanish grammar hacks. 

 

 

 

 

The post How to Improve Your Listening Skills in a New Language appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

125 Ways to Start (and Maintain) a Conversation in English

Are you learning English and want to start real conversations with native English speakers? Or perhaps you’re learning another language, and would like ideas for how to get speaking practice.

I know it can be scary to start a conversation with someone, or to join a group conversation – especially in your second language. You might be wondering “what do I say?” or “what if I say the wrong thing?” or “what if people think I’m stupid?”

Here’s the problem for language learners: What you learn in the classroom sometimes just isn’t relevant to everyday situations. You would never start a conversation with “How many uncles and aunts do you have?” or “What is the colour of your hair?”

Here’s another problem. All languages – including English – are much more than just a list of words and grammar rules. Language exists for communication. It’s about connecting with people. Speaking conversational English is usually just about knowing the right thing to say in any given situation. That’s rarely taught in classrooms.

With that in mind, this article answers the question “What’s the right thing to say when you want to have a conversation in English?” You’ll learn questions, phrases and expressions that you can use to confidently start conversations with native English speakers. Think of this as your guide to starting conversations with English speaking strangers in a natural way.

In this article, I cover two types of situations:

Speaking one-on-one
Speaking in a group

I’ve also included specific phrases and expressions based on the context of where you’re speaking.

Context: Location — Seeing someone in a restaurant, cafe, airport or at school can have an impact on the sorts of things you can say.
Context: Event — Are you at a party? Attending a wedding? At a concert? We’ll share some phrases that will help you based on what is going on around you.

Using these phrases will improve your conversation skills, so practice them and soon you’ll be starting conversations in English!

How to Get Over the Fear of Starting a Conversation in English

Before we get into the thick of things, I’ll let you in on the mindset you need to have when starting up a conversation.

The fear of speaking to strangers really comes from the fear of seeming “weird” or looking foolish. You’re essentially afraid of the other person’s reactions, like a strange look that says “I don’t want to talk to you”, or even someone laughing at you. (Of course, this very rarely happens in real life!).

To be honest, I still experience moments of fear when I start conversations in a language I’m learning. It sometimes takes me a few minutes to get into the flow. Just know that this feeling is totally normal. Try to accept it as normal, and not to worry about it too much.

Step 1: Be Friendly!

The first key to feeling relaxed and getting over your fear is to have a good time and be friendly. Smile and enjoy the experience of meeting someone new. If you can relax and enjoy getting to know someone, then that will be felt by the other person and it will put them at ease.

Talking with someone who is super serious and has a grave expression is rarely enjoyable, so why put someone else through that? Relax your face and turn that frown upside down!

Talk to people as you would talk to a friend, and they may just become one.

Step 2: Take the Pressure Off

A lot of fear around starting conversations comes from putting pressure on yourself to have a certain result from the conversation.

So, stop having specific expectations about what will happen! Whatever happens happens. Don’t expect anything from yourself or the other person other than getting to know them a little better.

Also, don’t force a topic or be aggressive in what you’re trying to say. That type of energy is a turn-off to someone you’ve just met. Let the conversation flow naturally.

Finally, realize that you don’t need to become BFFs (“Best Friends Forever”) with your conversation partner. There are millions of native speakers out there, so becoming friends with this one person won’t determine your success as an English speaker. If the conversation doesn’t go well, that’s okay. The next opportunity is just around the corner.

Step 3: Remember, the World Doesn’t Revolve Around You

Don’t make the conversation only about yourself. Try to ask questions about the other person’s life. Only interject things about yourself when they are actually relevant to the topic.

What if they ask you a question about yourself? Answer it. But then ask them the same question. Often people ask questions they secretly want to be asked themselves, so turn the question around and see what your conversation partner has to say.

The most important thing is to not be forceful or seem desperate. Bring things up naturally and casually. People should never feel pressured to talk with you, so help them feel comfortable.

Step 4: Be Honest

When asking questions or talking about something, don’t make something up just because you memorised a particular phrase.

For example, don’t say “I love cats too!” if you actually hate cats. Or avoid saying “My uncle works in a factory” when you don’t even have an uncle, let alone one that works in a factory.

Make sure you say things that are true, even if it means searching for the words you need. Otherwise you could end up in a really awkward situation.

Step 5: Avoid Closed-Loop Questions

Questions that can only be answered with “yes” or “no” are what I call closed-loop questions, because they close down conversation. Open loop questions work much better when your aim is to keep a conversation going.

Let’s look at the difference between these through a couple of examples. Instead of asking the closed question “Do you like apple juice?”, ask the open question “What is your favourite type of juice?”

Or, instead of asking “Do you like spaghetti?” you can ask “How often do you eat Italian food?”

Open-loop questions invite further discussion, whereas a “yes” or “no” question usually just invites an end to the conversation.

Now that you have the right mindset, let’s get into what you can say to start up and maintain some great conversations.

Conversation Starters for Speaking One-on-One

A conversation has specific phases that it goes through. These include starting the conversation, elaborating on a topic, inviting a longer conversation, changing the topic, and closing the conversation.

When talking to someone one-on-one, you’ll find it helpful to look at each phase and figure out your approach for the phase. Here’s a specific structure you can follow:

Phase 1: Starting the Conversation

The best way to start up a conversation with someone you don’t know is to ask a question that’s not too personal. Here are some examples of polite questions you can ask to get things going:

“Excuse me, do you have the time?” or “Do you know what time it is?”
“Hi. Is this seat taken?” if the answer is “no”, then you can follow up with “Do you mind if I sit here?”
“Pardon me. Do you know what time this place closes?” (assuming you are in a place of business, where “place” can be replaced with “restaurant” or “cafe” or “store”).

Even better, start a conversation by noticing something about the other person and commenting on it in a nice way. Here are some examples:

Note: whatever you see in [brackets] can be substituted for something specific to your conversation.

“That is a really nice [hat]. Can I ask where you got it?”
“I really like your [shoes]. Did you get them near here?”
“That’s a cool looking [phone]. Is it easy to use?”

Phase 2: Elaborating on a Topic

Now that you’ve started talking, you will need to elaborate on the established topic and continue talking.

If they answered your question, you can ask one or two follow up questions to get more details, such as:

“Is that store near here?”
“Was it good value?” (Try to avoid asking for specific monetary amounts of items like “How much did it cost?” as that can be considered rude)
“Do they have other colours available?”

Next, provide some context to why you asked them the question in the first place. Here are some examples:

“The reason I asked is because I’ve been thinking about replacing my phone.”
“I’ve been looking for a hat like that to give to my friend.”
“Yeah, the shoes I have are getting worn out. It’s time to get a new pair.”

And, as always, if someone is being helpful, don’t forget to thank them!

“Thanks for the suggestion.”
“I appreciate the information.”
“Thank you. That was really helpful.”

Phase 3: Extending the Conversation with More Questions

You can usually tell when a person is losing interest in a conversation. If you reach that point, then excuse yourself and be on your way.

However, if you feel like the person may be receptive to a longer conversation, then why not talk a bit more and get to know them better? Here are some more general questions you can ask to keep the conversation going.

“Are you from this area?”
“So, what do you do for a living?”
“What brings you here today?”
“Do you come here a lot?”

Each of these questions can be used to extend the conversation and learn more about the other person. The idea here is to find common points of interest. When they mention something that relates to you and your life, this gives you an opportunity to explore that topic more fully.

Phase 4: Exploring a Topic Further

When your conversation arrives at a topic that you’re comfortable speaking about in English, then this is your chance to discuss it in more depth.

As an example, let’s say that you discovered your conversation partner has a cat. You have a cat too. Time to show some photos of your cat on your smartphone!

Or, if the person mentions they are a vegetarian and you happen to be vegetarian, now you have something in common. Why not ask about their favourite vegetarian recipes?

Here are some sentences and phrases that may come in handy to dive in deeper with a topic:

“Really? I’m a [vegetarian] too! What made you decide to [stop eating meat]?”
“I love [cats]! In fact I [have two]. What type of [cats] do you have?”
“[Football] is my favourite sport! What team do you support?”
“You’re kidding! I [drive a motorcycle] as well. What type of [bike] do you have?”

The idea here is to let them know you share a common interest, then ask them to share more details.

Remember to talk about the other person more than yourself. For example, instead of going off on a long tangent about your favourite recipes, ask them for theirs. It shows that you are truly interested in getting to know them and they will be more open to continuing the conversation.

Phase 5: Asking for Opinions

Everyone has an opinion on something, and many people like to share them with others. Here are some questions you can ask to get the other person’s view on a situation or topic:

“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Has that been your experience too?”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
“Why do you think that is (the case)?”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Once people start sharing their opinions, you open up the door for a whole new area of conversation. Just be careful not to probe too far into sensitive topics such as politics or religion.

Phase 6: Changing the Topic

Sometimes a conversation can start to fade and you find things are winding down. If you sense your conversation partner is losing interest in talking about your impressive collection of snowglobes, it’s probably time to change the topic!

Here are some ways you can switch to other topics:

“That reminds me …”
“Oh hey. Did you hear that …”
“Speaking of [horses], I found out that …”

Or, if you want to make a more abrupt change, you can just say it directly with:

“Okay, I’m totally changing the topic now, but I was wondering …”
“Not to go off topic, but I recently heard that …”

Phase 7: Inviting Your Conversation Partner to Talk Longer

After about 10 or 15 minutes, it’s worth checking that your conversation partner wants to continue talking. Get confirmation that they want to be in the conversation so you can be sure they aren’t just being polite.

Here are some questions you can ask to see if it’s possible to maintain a longer talk.

“I’m not keeping you from something, am I?”
“Sorry for taking up so much of your time. Do you need to take off?”
“I just realised you’re probably in the middle of something. Do you have time to chat?”
“Let me know if you need to get going. I don’t want to take up all your time.”

These sorts of expressions show that you are being considerate of your conversation partner’s needs.

Phase 8: Closing the Conversation

Part of being a good conversationalist is knowing when to stop talking. When the conversation ends, find a way for them to get in touch with you in the future. If you feel like they might want to chat again, you can give them an opportunity with some of these phrases:

“Well, if you ever want to chat again, I’m usually here [every Monday afternoon].”
“Let me give you my email address. If you’re ever in the area again it’d be great to meet up.”
“Feel free to call me if you want to hang out. Here, I’ll give you my number.”

And remember to make them feel appreciated too!

“I really enjoyed our chat. Thanks so much.”
“It was really nice meeting you.”
“I had a great time talking with you. Hope to see you again soon.”

Joining and Talking in a Group Conversation

Not all your conversations are going to be a one-on-one encounter. Sometimes you will be joining a group where others are talking.

The most important skill in group situations is listening. Pay attention to the conversation and interject only when it is relevant.

Many of the phrases you’ve learned so far in this article can work in group situations. You can also add to a group conversation with other types of phrases, such as sharing your experiences or thoughts, asking questions to the group, or making connections between two people.

Here are some phrases you can use:

Sharing Experiences or Ideas

If you have something to add to the conversation, here are a few examples of how you can do it:

“Actually, that happened to me once. It was really [annoying].”
“I totally agree. The same thing happened to me too.”
“That’s pretty common. I heard that a lot of people had the same experience.”

You don’t need to share too much, but let the group know that you have more information to add. If they want to know more, they can ask for details.

Asking Questions to the Group

If you notice that some people in a group aren’t participating as much in a conversation you can ask questions for the whole group. Here are some questions to stimulate more dialogue:

“Has anyone ever … ?”
“How many of you think that …?”
“Do a lot of you … ?”
“Which one of you … ?”

Or, you can direct it to an individual. Just be sure not to single them out in an uncomfortable way. Here are some examples:

“What do you think [Diana]? Has that ever happened to you?”
“Hey [Carlos]. Didn’t you also … ?”

Making Connections Between Two People

You may realise that two of the people in the group have something in common. You can make people feel included and connected by sharing these observations with the group. Here are some ways to do it:

“Actually, [Navvab], didn’t you go there last year too?”
“You should ask [Samson] about that. He had the same thing happen to him.”
“[Makoto] has the same phone! Where’d you get yours [Makoto]?”

This can help people feel like a part of the group. Of course, don’t let out anyone’s secrets!

Closing the Conversation or Leaving the Group

If you have to get going and want to excuse yourself from the group, here are some quick and easy ways to do so:

“Hey, I better get going. I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Hey Guys. Sorry, but I have to run. It was great chatting with you all.”
“Oh man, it’s getting late. I better head out.”
“Alright guys. Time for me to go. Have a good one.”

Conversation Starters in Context: On Location

Often what you say directly relates to where you are.

Whether you’re in a restaurant, the airport or on the job, you should have some phrases handy to start up a conversation that relates to your location.

In a Restaurant or Cafe

Here are phrases and expressions you can use to start and maintain a conversation in a restaurant or cafe:

“Do you have a recommendation on any good dishes?”
“What would you recommend for someone who hasn’t eaten here before?”
“What is the best drink here?”
“Do you know if the [chow mein] is any good?”
“Have you ever had the [asparagus]?”
“If you had to eat just one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?”
“What is your favourite dessert?”
“What is your favourite spicy dish?” (They don’t like spicy? Great! Ask them why, and keep the conversation going.)

Finally, here are some phrases you can use at the end of your conversation:

“Enjoy your pasta!”
“Have a good meal!”

In Someone’s Home

If you’re visiting someone’s home you’re in luck! There are an endless supply of possible things to talk about. Just look around the house and you’ll see many things to bring up and discuss.

“How long have you lived here?”
“Where did you get this [bookshelf]?” (or television, chair, porcelain fountain, etc.)
“What is your favourite thing about this house?”
“How many people live here?”
“How many rooms does this house have?”
“Is this house close to [your work]?” (or school, or the park, or the airport, etc.)
“How far away is the [supermarket]?”

And here are a few home-specific statements that you can say when leaving someone’s home:

“Thank you for having me over!”
“Thanks for inviting me to your home.”
“I had a wonderful time.”

In the Street

Sometimes you bump into someone when you are out and about. They might be sitting on a park bench, or waiting in line at the bus stop. Here are some questions and statements you can use to start and keep up a conversation:

“Do you know where a [bakery] is around here?”
“What street is this?”
“Do you know what time [bus 37] comes by?”
“Where can I buy a [bottle of water]?”
“What is your favourite thing about [this park]?”
“How crowded are the buses when they get to this stop?”
“Can you recommend a good restaurant around here?” This can be followed by “What is your favourite dish there?”

At the Airport

From personal experience I know that airports are often a place where you have to “hurry up to wait”. You rush through customs or security only to sit at the gate waiting for your plane for several hours (or longer if it is delayed). This is a great chance to chat to someone in English. Here are some phrases that can get things started:

“Have they announced the boarding time for this flight?”
“Is there a place to charge a phone nearby?”
“So, where are you headed today?”
“Do you know what time we arrive at the destination?”
“Is this your preferred airline?” followed by “why is that?”
“Are you flying home or are you flying away from home?”
“Where is the favourite place you’ve ever visited?”
“Have you ever had the chance to fly in first or business class?” then “what was it like?”
“Can you recommend any good restaurants or sights in [Buenos Aires]?”

Because you’re flying somewhere, odds are you will never see your conversation partner again. That means you don’t have to worry about making a fool out of yourself because your connection with them will be short lived and temporary. Plus, there is a good chance someone you talk to may have some great suggestions about places to see or things to do in your destination city.

On the Job

If you’re working among English speakers, then this is a perfect chance to strike up a conversation. After all, you already have something in common! Here are some phrases you can use to start up a conversation with a work colleague:

“How did you come to work here?”
“What is your favourite place to eat lunch near the office?”
“What do you enjoy most about your job?”
“What is your eventual career plan?”
“What do you think is the most important thing to succeed in this company?”

At School

You may be a student and find yourself surrounded by English speaking students, or perhaps there is an English speaking student at your school. Why not get to know them better? Here are some questions you can use:

“How long have you been a student here?”
“What are you studying?”
“What do you recommend to eat on campus?”
“Do you know a good, quiet place to study?”
“What do you plan to do when you finish your studies?”

As you can see, you really can make friends anywhere, and you should never be at a loss for a way to start up a conversation.

Conversation Starters: Events

You’ve been invited to a special event and want to be able to start up a conversation with the people there. The wonderful thing about events is that you automatically have a point of common interest. Just explore that common thread further to weave a full tapestry of interesting conversations.

At a Birthday Party

A birthday party is a fun place to get to know someone and it’s really easy to start speaking with a total stranger. Here are some phrases to help you get going:

“How do you know [the birthday person]?”
“What do you think of the [birthday cake]?”
“What is the best birthday party you’ve ever been to?”
“If you could re-live any year of your life, which one would it be?”
“When is your birthday?”

At a Wedding

The joining together of two people in marriage is a joyous event, and while you’re there throwing confetti and dancing the Conga, be sure to sit down and have a chat with someone new! Try out these phrases to help break the ice:

“Are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”
“Whats the best wedding you’ve ever been to?”
“If you were going to plan the perfect wedding for your best friend, what would it be like?”
“Do you like dressing up in formal attire?”
“Do you know where they are going on their honeymoon?”

At a Sporting Event

A match or game can be a perfect opportunity to make some fast friends. Connecting with others who share a passion for sport seems to automatically create a bond between people.

Here are some questions you can ask at the next big game:

“Who do you think will win?”
“Have you been following all the matches this season?”
“Who is your favourite player?”
“Do you play the sport yourself?”
“What do you think the score will be?”

At a Concert or Performance

Music fans love seeing their favourite performers on stage. If you have tickets to an event or are just sitting in a cafe watching someone strum a guitar, be sure to strike up a conversation with other music enthusiasts near you.

“What’s your favourite song of theirs?”
“Do you play music yourself?” or “Do you play an instrument?” or “Do you sing?”
“How often do you go to a show?”
“What do you like about this performer?”

Be Friendly, Considerate, and Open Your Mouth!

There you have it. One hundred and twenty five different ways to strike up a conversation and keep it going strong.

Sure, it can be intimidating when you consider talking to a total stranger. Especially when they speak a different language than you. Getting over your fears is the first step, not only in language learning, but in being able to meet fascinating people and make long-lasting friendships.

Just remember these main points:

Be friendly! — Even if the other person doesn’t have time to talk, at least they’ll appreciate your pleasant demeanour.
Take the pressure off — When you come in with expectations you may become easily disappointed. Just have fun and let whatever happens, happen!
Talk about them — They don’t want to hear your life story (At least not yet). Ask them questions that show you want to get to know them better, and they’ll probably reciprocate with the same.
Be honest — No need to make up an impressive story to get someone’s attention. Just be yourself and tell the truth.
Ask open loop questions — A “yes” or “no” can be a conversational dead end. Ask questions that spur on further discussion.

We’ve covered a lot of potential situations and questions or phrases you can use in each one. But whether you use these approaches or just throw on some random accessories, the goal is to speak at every opportunity.

You’ll notice I didn’t say the goal is to talk for 15 minutes. And I didn’t say the goal is to bring up a specific topic. The only goal is to open your mouth and start talking in your target language.

Getting a conversation started is the biggest hurdle. It is the one action that will have the most significant impact on your language learning (and friend making) success. Be open to whatever happens from that point forward and you will multiply your chances of improving your English.

The post 125 Ways to Start (and Maintain) a Conversation in English appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Listen to French: 50+ Incredible French Listening Resources

Happy Bastille Day! Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet !

To celebrate the French national holiday, let’s get into a specific aspect of learning this language.

No matter how much you read French, or even practise speaking French, it can still be tricky to listen to French. Native French speakers can seem to speak really quickly to a beginner or intermediate learner, which makes them difficult to understand.

Listening is one of my biggest challenges. I take a Speak from Day One approach to learning languages, and I always encourage language learners to do the same. That means I’m usually stronger at speaking than listening, as I recently learned when I took an advanced French test.

With that in mind, for both you and me to improve our listening comprehension skills, I’ve put together a huge collection of listening resources to help you listen to French. I’ve organised these into five categories:

Videos: Watching videos helps you understand body language and provides valuable visual cues for your listening practise.
Podcasts and Radio: For covering a variety of topics and speaking styles, podcasts and online radio can’t be beat.
Music: Listening to music gives you a look at the creative and poetic side of a language.
News: This provides you with more formal, standard use of the language, combined with contemporary topics.
Lessons: It is helpful to listen to French in a structured environment, especially when you are first starting out.

Whatever your French level – beginner, intermediate or advanced – you’ll find a French listening resource that’s useful for you.

C’est parti ! Let’s go!

Videos for French Listening: Your Key To Understanding French Body Language

Most emotional communication is nonverbal. Seeing the facial expressions, hand gestures and body postures of French speakers, you will find it easier to understand them.

Video is the only type of listening practice which allows you to practise this important part of French communication. The following resources will help you listen to French as it is spoken with both words and the body.

French YouTube Channels and Web Shows

Here are some French YouTube series channels to help you look at life in the French speaking world.

Mission 404 : This is a fun web show put on by none other than Orangina France (yes, the company that makes fizzy orange drinks) with a plot detailing the end of the internet.
Kutaray : This four part sci-fi web series from 2013 follows the adventures of three women searching for the last man on earth.
Backstage Back Door : This 2010 web series follows the trials and tribulations of an aspiring screenwriter attempting to adapt his novel to film in a world where he is surrounded by femme fatales and extreme feminists.
IRL? : In Real Life? (IRL?) follows the life of an introverted student as he becomes immersed in unpredictable situations.
David Archer’s Channel : David Archer has put together an amazing collection of videos in French, many with subtitles and helpful references.

YouTube is also a great place for French lessons, but we’ll get to those in just a moment…

Live Video Chat with Native French Speakers

I’ve had great success in my language learning missions when video chatting with my tutors and teachers. Watching someone’s body language while they are responding to what you say is much more authentic than just watching actors in a movie.

And the best part? Everything you watch is 100% related to you and your life!

It’s worth checking out the following:

Google Hangouts : You can chat face-to-face using Google’s popular video and voice calling system. To put yourself out on a limb, you can broadcast the call live to the whole world!
Periscope : If you haven’t jumped on the Periscope bandwagon yet, you might not be too familiar with this live streaming video service. Recently I discovered you can search for live streaming video from different countries around the world, including France. This is a direct pipeline to listen to French (or any language) in a very authentic way. (I have my own Periscope profile, so just follow me by searching for “polyglot”.)
Apple Facetime : If both you and your conversation partner have Apple devices, then you can have a free call on Apple’s video conferencing software. This comes bundled with Apple computers, tablets and phones.
Tango : While I don’t have direct experience of this software, I’ve heard it is a good way to have face-to-face conversations with people all around the world.
Skype : The standard for most people when it comes to making video calls online. If you download eCamm’s Skype Call Recorder for Mac, or Pamela on Windows, you can record your conversations to review them later on.

Of course, all this (other than Periscope) assumes you have someone to speak with in French. If you need a language conversation partner, be sure to check out iTalki, where you can find amazing native French speaking teachers and tutors.

How to Watch French Television Online

With so many countries speaking French, you can find a wide variety of television programmes in the French language. French TV channels available online include:

TV5 Monde : This network is one of the leading 24 hour French language networks in Europe and has a wide variety of programming.
TV5 Monde Apprendre : TV5 Monde Apprendre has an amazing selection of French for language learners, organised by level of difficulty. These include study resources to help you learn French.
FranceTV : This website provides a list of series and programs in French from many major networks. You can find news, documentaries, drama and more.
Streema : Streema is a service that provides links to the websites of many television stations in France. You can also search for programmes from other French speaking countries like Belgium or Switzerland.
Disney Channel France : Kid’s programming might not be your cup of tea, but it can open up parts of the language that you may never normally hear. The French Disney Channel website regularly releases full length dubbed episodes of their programmes. You can also check the English episodes on the U.S. Disney Channel site to compare the two versions.

French Movies

Since France is the birthplace of cinema where better to see and listen to French being spoken than with a movie?

The Vore : This page on the Vore website links to a selection of public domain full-length and short films in the French language. All public-domain and legal.
XMovies8 : This website features movies that have been posted on public sites such as YouTube. Much easier than searching through those video directories on your own!
SBS : SBS is an Australian company which provides free streaming of movies in many different languages, including French.
Netflix : Netflix hosts a selection of foreign-language films, including over 30 films in French. Just remember that Netflix is a paid service and you may need a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service to view it outside the U.S.
Fandor : Fandor, similar to Netflix, is a paid subscription site that provides many films from around the world in a variety of languages.

French Video Lessons

Fortunately for French language learners, there are a lot of video lessons online to choose from. The best part about lessons is that they follow a structured format and are perfect for those new to the language.

The following is a selection of some of my favorites, as well as a few that have come highly recommended:

FluentU French : FluentU curates videos from all over the web, includes subtitles in French and English and organizes them so you can study them easily.
Yabla French : Yabla specializes in helping you pick up French through videos in a natural way, with real French spoken by real people. You can check out some of the their sample videos and see what it’s all about.
About.com : About.com has produced some really helpful videos showing different aspects of the French language. From grammar points to travel phrases, you can always find something useful here.
Easy Languages : This is a series of interviews with native French speakers covering a variety of topics to help you learn French. They also have videos in many other languages too!
Learn French and Have Fun : This is one of the largest French language learning channels on Youtube, with over 250,000 subscribers and thousands of videos!
Learn French with Alexa : Alexa teaches French in a fun, unconventional way through her YouTube channel.

Online Radio: Covering All Your Topic Bases

I love listening to online radio because it provides such a wide sampling of topics I am not normally exposed to. Want to hear people talk about video games? There’s a show for that! Need to learn vocabulary related to sports? You can find that too!

What’s more, the way people speak French with online radio is much closer to how you’ll hear it spoken in real life. And you will get a wider variety of accents from many different regions and countries.

Listen Live Europe : This website contains online radio stations for a variety of countries in Europe, including many in French!
Radio Canada’s Baladodiffusion : For the French Canadian enthusiasts, here are a series of podcasts from Radio Canada.
Online Radio French : This list of online radio stations from France, Canada and Switzerland has stations dedicated to music, news and talk radio.
TuneIn French : TuneIn is one of my favorite apps for listening to radio stations from around the world. This is a list of their stations in the French language.
France Culture : This website contains links to a wide variety of podcasts with topics from politics, religion, science and everything in between
Jeux Video Gaming : A channel that provides breakdowns and reviews of video games.
Europe1 French Podcasts : A selection of French language podcasts in a variety of topics.

Music: Exploring the Creative Side of French

We use language differently when we are expressing our creativity. Not only that, but we tend to talk about issues and topics that are closer to our hearts and minds., as opposed to describing the weather or asking for directions to the bakery.

Listening to French music can be a unique and entertaining way to improve your listening skills while immersing yourself in French culture and ways of thinking.

Here are some websites and links where you can find French music online:

Last.fm French : This popular music recommendation site provides great French music and downloadable mp3 files.
8tracks French Playlist : Another music recommendation site where other people create playlists based around various topics.
Online Radio French : This list of online radio stations from France, Canada and Switzerland has many stations dedicated to music.
Surf Music : A German online radio station directory with a vast list of stations from all over France.
TuneIn French : Includes many stations focused on French music.

And for French poetry:

Easy French Poetry : First the poems are read slowly, then faster and then you get an explanation of the cultural importance and significance of the poem in French history and society.

News: Contemporary Topics In Standard Spoken French

Having a conversation about the economy, politics, the latest movies or sports may prove challenging if you aren’t up to date. Listening to the news in French will teach you valuable current vocabulary, and teach you the best way to phrase common expressions on popular topics. Plus, newscasters tend to use very standard pronunciation, so this is a good way to hear things said in a very clear (although somewhat fast) manner.

France24 News : France24 provides 24 hour access to news about France, including live streaming from their network. You can listen to a tricky segment in French and then may even be able to find the same one in English to fill in the gaps you may have missed. As a news station they are high quality too.
News in Slow French : If you are not quite up to speed with the rapid nature of a newscaster’s delivery, then this is the resource for you.
Radio France News : This website streams French news radio straight to your speakers.
RFI in French : RFI is a service based out of Paris which provides global news coverage in over a dozen languages, including French.
FranceTV : The FranceTV website provides many programmes in French, including the news.

Podcast Lessons: Structured French to Help You Level Up

If you’re just getting started with French, then listening to the news or watching television shows might be overwhelming. Online French language lessons and podcasts are a great way to practise listening to the language in a graded, structured approach.

Here are some links to online lessons and materials that will help you learn French, while providing valuable listening practice:

FrenchPod101 : FrenchPod101 is one of the first resources I recommend to new French language learners. Their lessons and materials are top-notch.
Coffee Break French : This popular podcast from the Radio Lingua Network provides an introduction to the French language as the host introduces aspects of the language to a beginner learner. This one was a particular recommendation from my French teacher Léa, and what she directs all her students to. I can’t wait to try it out!
Daily French Pod : This is another podcast with structured lessons for various levels of French learners.
The French Podcast : This podcast aims to bridge the gap between what you learn in a classroom and what you hear on the street. They have natural, authentic French conversations with lesson materials to help you decipher what you hear.
French Podcasts : The host of this podcast has created a resource that allows you to hear real French spoken about real topics, along with translations a super-helpful audio dictionary with thousands of entries.
Learn French by Podcast : This website, started by some Irish folk from Cork, is a podcast series providing real-world conversations in French.
Talk in French Podcast : A podcast for French learners that focuses on culture topics.
Authentic French : This podcast is great for those who are able to read and write French but have a hard time with pronunciation and listening. It’s not really suitable for beginners, but if you need to brush up with your listening then this is exactly what you need.
French Tutorial MP3s : IE Languages is a fantastic resource and this list of downloadable audio files of important phrases will prove extremely valuable to beginner learners.
AiringPods : AiringPods lists dozens of French podcasts you might want to try.

While all of these podcasts are related to French language learners, what if you want to listen to podcasts direct from France? Searching through iTunes is often challenging since they target your search results based on your native language or country of residence. Here’s my hack for finding podcasts in your language of choice which will help you locate the best podcasts in the French language. Be sure to check it out!

Where Do You Listen to French?

Be sure to use these resources to increase your exposure to the French language and soon you’ll be improving both your comprehension and fluency with this wonderful language.

If you have any other suggestions or if I missed your favourite place to listen to French online, let us know in the comments.

The post Listen to French: 50+ Incredible French Listening Resources appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Six Life Lessons from Being a Blogger for Six Years

Today, July 10th, is my 33rd birthday and my twelve year travel anniversary (that’s 12-years of non-stop travel since I graduated university and hit the road).

Since I’ve already contemplated the lessons I’ve learned from years of travel before, today I’ve decided to look at another important life achievement.

It turns out that I’ve been blogging on this site now for over six years. This is a major milestone for me, because it means that I’ve now been writing publicly about travel and language learning for longer than I traveled and learned languages without a blog. This is pretty much now the only life I know!

When I created my wordpress account six years ago, I had no idea where it would lead me. I wasn’t trained in writing. I wasn’t sure if I would be interesting enough for people to actually read my stuff. But I took the chance anyway, threw myself into becoming a blogger, and that choice has led to me now running the world’s biggest language learning blog, and expanded to writing a successful published book!

You may think that travelling while blogging is hardly different from just travelling. Is the only change that I punch a keyboard a bit more often? Not really. Blogging, writing a book, sharing my life in public, public speaking, meeting language learners from all around the world who have been reading my words, and feeling the highs and lows that blogging brings has made these last half dozen years completely different to the previous ones.

So today, I’m sharing you the life lessons I’ve learned from blogging my experiences as a traveller and language learner for the past six years.

1. Telling a Story is A Great Way to Help People

Yes, I actually wear these shoes. I’m a writer down to my sole!

Coming from an engineering background, I used to think that facts and data would be the best way to convince me of anything. To this day I’m still skeptical about many things that other people are confident are true, but don’t have the facts to back up. I’m a humanist (a.k.a. atheist), roll my eyes whenever I hear someone asking me what astrological sign I am, and when I hear someone make an extraordinary claim, then I want to see heaps of evidence to back it up.

That said, many of the biggest decisions I’ve made had nothing to do with facts, data or science.

No amount of convincing studies would have pushed me into language learning. What convinced me? People and their stories. All the people I met who had come to Spain, where I was living, started from scratch themselves, then achieved an ability to communicate in a language that for a long time I believed wasn’t possible for me.

Sometimes the best way to help people, or convince them to help themselves, is to show them your story. If it’s relatable, all the better. It’s why whenever I’m  speaking somewhere, the very first thing I tell people is that I only spoke English until the age of 21. I tell my story, rather than giving advice.

When you tell your story, you inspire people to craft their own story between the lines of yours.

If you’ve considered becoming a writer or blogger, even if you don’t see yourself as much of a writer, ask yourself, do you have a story that can help people? Inspire them? Make them them laugh? In my experience, those are the main ingredients to a successful blog.

2. The Best Way to Learn is By Making Mistakes

I find it incredibly unfortunate when people believe that they’re stuck as they are, and they’ll never be able to change. I often meet people who believe their abilities and achievements are set in stone. They may only have been alive 20 years, but they’ve already decided their destiny.

While some people need a hell of a lot of encouragement to achieve great things, I believe I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t have the potential to do something incredible.

In the summer of 2009, I registered the domain name of this website and wrote my first blog post. I had never written more than just emails my entire life (outside of exam situations). Writing wasn’t something that was natural to me, but like with everything else, I learned it as I went along.

The idea of being a professional writer when I saw myself as just a maths-and-computers nerd was nothing short of absurd. But I gave it a go!

An important part of this is listening to what my readers have had to say. I don’t have to worry about always being perfect, because my readers will tell me if there’s a problem. My first web design was messy and hard to navigate, and people told me that, so I was able to fix it! My first few blog posts had loooong blocks of text, and someone emailed me to say they’d love to see more pictures, so I started doing that!

I’ve surprised myself that I can actually be good enough at this writing thing to make a living from it. But a lot of it comes from putting yourself out there, and not worrying too much about being perfect.

And I’ve found that this can work with so many things. I’ve experimented with a lot more beyond blogging. Some have been successes, and some have been huge flops. Yet with every mistake I’ve made, I’ve learned something new.

3. Authority on Subjects is a Curious Thing

Since getting started, thanks to writing on this blog, I’ve had many interesting achievements like a National Geographic Traveler of the Year award, an international best selling print book, TEDx talks, TV appearances and the blog itself being read by almost a million people a month, consistently.

But what is kind of crazy, is that I was almost as much an authority on travel and language learning in 2009 as I am now. The main thing that’s really changed is that I understand how to best get the message out to more people.

Ultimately, a lot of authority is more about understanding how to get through to large groups of people, than it is about someone being more clever than his or her counterparts. I have found that this applies not just online, but in book publishing, people with their own TV shows, and even those who have gone through the much more demanding academic system.

There are language learners that I definitely feel are more capable than I am of picking up multiple languages, but when they write about it, they may not use a blog design that is easier to navigate or do social media as well.

This is why making it about the story is so important. Rather than abuse authority and tell people you are the guru ninja hotshot Jedi whose advice is good as gold, I find people appreciate it more when I try to make it about simply sharing my story and hoping people take inspiration from that.

4. Everybody is Still Learning, Even Influencers

One of the most interesting things about getting into blogging, writing and speaking at conferences, is that I have met some extremely influential people. While I admit that there was one occasion when I “fan-boyed” out, all other times when I’ve met famous people, I’ve actually found that speaking to them usually shows me that they are just “normal” people, thrown into unique circumstances.

Along the same lines as what I said above, I remember that they may have gotten to where they are through a combination of being good at what they write/speak about and perhaps a lot of marketing know-how, or sometimes even just luck.

If anyone, no matter how many twitter followers or NYT best selling books they have, tells you something is definitely true, try to see past their authority and think more of a friend giving you advice.

When I’ve met some people whose faces I’d been seeing, or words I’d been reading for years and had coffee with them, I always remember that they are still learning themselves. Even if they have a million dollars and are Time’s man of the year, they still aspire to something.

I count myself very lucky that I’ve had the chance to meet some very influential people in the last six years, but I always remember that they are still people.

5. Don’t Take Other People Having a Bad Day Personally

Writing and getting through to so many people has a lot of great consequences, but there is one huge downside: since everything scales up the more people you reach, that has to include negative feedback.

I never could have imagined that blogging about language learning could bring incredibly hateful comments out of the woodwork, but I have been proven wrong time and again.

There are those who hate the title of the blog, those who hate ambitious language projects, those who think that my understanding of fluency of being social equivalency (B2 level) is not only wrong but arrogant, those who have gotten mad at me for having a blog when they deserve an audience more, and others who don’t seem to be mad at anything specific and will just call me random names because others just did too.

At the worst of the negativity, when I was still getting used to it and hadn’t grown thick enough skin yet, but was going through a rough patch in my travels and feeling more angry myself too, I made the huge mistake to keep engaging with people when clearly the purpose of the exchange was for both parties to prove that the other one is wrong.

 

It’s really hard to think logically when you are getting so much negativity directed at you personally, but eventually I started to see how pointless the exchanges were. At first I just decided that a “don’t feed the trolls” philosophy was all I needed. But then I started to meet some of these people in person and see the other side of the story.

For instance, once during my book tour I made it to a town where someone came up to me and said sorry. I was very confused because I had just met him, and was trying to think if he asked me a weird question during my speech. And then he told me his username, and I instantly remembered who it was based on some mean things he had said to me.

But he said that having met me in person, he sees that I wasn’t all these bad things he thought I was. He saw that I genuinely wanted to help people learn languages, despite the impression he had decided to make of me. I gave him a hug to tell him there were no hard feelings!

The Internet is an amazing thing, but it does de-humanize how people interact, and make it feel like you are interacting with representations of concepts. It is incredibly hard to keep this in mind when people are making personal attacks on you, but I’ve found that encouraging it helps nobody.

You simply can’t convince everyone. No matter how positive, or even neutral, your message is, you will eventually get unhelpful negative feedback (not to be confused with helpful constructive criticism). My philosophy when I see that now is to shrug my shoulders, think to myself that maybe he/she is having a bad day, and do something else. It has made my life online infinitely less stressful!

6. Never Take People’s Positivity for Granted: Writing is Definitely Worth It

When you read the above, you may be surprised and think that it’s rough to write publicly if negativity comes eventually no matter what you do.

The sad thing is that you may get 99 amazing emails or comments, but that one bad comment sticks with you and ruins your day. As people, it’s in our nature to look for trouble. It’s a survival instinct to scan the horizon and look for predators, so we can activate a flight-or-flight reaction.

This may have been beneficial when survival was one of our biggest concerns, but in this day and age a minor bad experience doesn’t have to take all your attention.

Because of the nature of what I write, I do get a lot of thank-yous. People email me, tweet me, write comments on posts, come up to me in person to shake my hand, make thank-you Youtube videos for me, write blog posts thank-yous, and say kind things to their friends about me.

I have even passed getting a thousand emails a day from people with positive words about how appreciative they are that I’ve helped them in some way. It is overwhelming – and in a very good way!

To this day, I’m constantly amazed by how me “punching a keyboard” (as I’ve always called it) has helped so many people. It’s an amazing time to be living in, and I’m glad to be in a position to help people, just by sharing a few thoughts.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading along so long, and you can bet that I have plenty of writing still in me!

The post Six Life Lessons from Being a Blogger for Six Years appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Negotiation Tactics: How to Haggle Like Your Life Depends on It

Here’s a secret: most people in the world don’t pay the price on the label.

Instead, they negotiate a better deal. They haggle.

Those of us who live in the Western world are so used to paying the price we’re told that we don’t even think to negotiate. That works okay when we’re at home – but it can be a huge mistake when you’re travelling.

If you don’t normally negotiate for lower prices in your home country, the prospect can seem uncomfortable when you first visit a new culture where haggling is the norm. Plus the fear of getting ripped off or paying too much adds stress to the equation.

The reality is haggling is a valuable skill. In many parts of the world it is a way of life.

Haggling doesn’t have to be an exercise in discomfort and failure. Approach it the right way and it will not only be enjoyable, but an amazing opportunity to practise your target language and learn about a new culture.

When I was visiting India for the first time, I used some tips that a local friend had given me to get the price of my accommodation down to about $3 per day for a beach hut. It was on the beach with a view of the sun setting over an island. The asking price was $20 per day, which is actually pretty reasonable by western standards, but obviously way more than it should have been.

I still remember the exchange – it wasn’t a standard exchange of me quoting a price and us meeting in the middle, but me trying to argue why the price should go down, and keeping a straight face when I said things like “It’s too close to the beach – how am I supposed to sleep with the waves crashing all night!”

I was firm, but friendly, and talked very regularly to the lady who rented me the place for the entire month I was there. I both made a friend, and gained her respect for not being just another white guy made of money. It was one of the things that made my trip to India so memorable.

Let’s take a look at how to approach haggling the right way. I’ll share my top tips on how you can haggle your way to great deals, language improvement and cultural immersion.

What is Haggling?

Haggling is the skill of negotiating over a product or service to agree on a price.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that haggling involves “arguing”. But don’t let the word “arguing” make you think you’ll be stuck in a shouting match with an irate vendor. The key to successful haggling is more about being persistent with your preferred price, and negotiating with a seller to find common ground. Done the right way, it can actually be a lot of fun.

Haggling has an emotional component. The seller often employs negotiating tactics to elicit an emotional response, hoping you’ll feel compelled to pay more than you want to. At the same time your goal is to soften their resolve so they will give you a lower price. Essentially, haggling involves using emotional leverage.

The word “bartering” is often used in place of haggling, and while they both require similar skills of negotiation, bartering is an exchange of services or products, whereas haggling is a negotiation for a lower price, most often paid with money.

“Why do I need to learn how to haggle?” you might ask. “No one does it where I live.”

That might be true. But being a language and cultural enthusiast, I don’t see haggling as an end unto itself. For me, haggling is a way to learn more about a culture, discover social values, and practise valuable language skills.

When I visited Egypt for instance, I didn’t haggle because I had to things to buy, but to test my ability to blend in with the locals. Haggling doesn’t have to be just about commerce. It is an avenue to an enhanced cultural experience.

Common Myths and Misunderstandings about Haggling

There are some misconceptions about haggling that I want to address before we get into specific tips and methodology.

Myth #1: You Are Taking Advantage of the Seller

Many sellers put on an act during the haggling process, like they are being taken advantage of, or you are taking food out of their children’s mouths. Hardly! This negotiating tactic plays into your fears of being a bad person. Given the “emotional leveraging” nature of haggling, they do this because it actually works, not because it is necessarily true.

Here’s the truth: if they didn’t want to sell the item for that price, they wouldn’t. They are under no obligations to sell you the item if the price is too low, and you’ll learn that many vendors are more than happy to have you walk away if they aren’t getting a price they want.

Know that if they agree on a price, they are still making a profit.

Myth #2: It Is Insulting to Ask for a Lower Price

Believe it or not, asking for a better price is not considered rude in many countries. In fact, it is considered the sign of a careful consumer and prudent buyer if you ask for a discount.

This myth stems from the fear of being rejected. But in many cultures if you don’t ask for a better price it is assumed you don’t know any better. It’s an invitation to be taken advantage of.

Is this true in every country? No. So you should make sure you research the social norms in the country and culture you visit. But if haggling is an accepted way of commerce, then don’t be shy about asking for a lower price. You’re not insulting anyone!

Myth #3: Don’t Carry Big Bills

In general, as an international traveler, you should be careful not to flash large amounts of cash in public. But that obvious safety tip doesn’t mean you can’t have cash with you when you go shopping — especially if you plan to spend it.

Some travellers are afraid that, after agreeing on a price, if the vendor sees that you have a lot of cash they’ll insist on a higher price.

This pretty much never happens. They agreed on a price and they know that if they tried to increase it you just wouldn’t buy the item.

Vendors don’t mind giving you change, and seeing you have money will not cause them to rethink the sale. Just be sure not to flash your cash before you agree on a price, since that will lessen your bargaining position from the start.

Be safe, yes. But don’t try to carry exact change with you wherever you go.

Myth #4: You Have to Blend In to Get the Best Price

This myth is partially true, but there are misunderstandings about what “blending in” actually means.

First, realise that no matter how much you try to dress like a local, or wear clothes that make you look destitute, if you don’t truly know the local culture and language you’re not fooling anyone. Even wearing rags, you will still probably stick out like a sore thumb and the vendors will all know you are a tourist or foreigner.

Second, wearing brand name clothes or a nice watch doesn’t paint a target on your back. It is your attitude and ability to negotiate which has the biggest impact on the final price. Wear clothes and act as you normally do. If nothing else, you’ll be much more comfortable.

The best way to blend in? I’ve found that learning the local language and being friendly are the best negotiating tools you can have. Instead of focusing on how you look, focus on what you say and how you act.

Now, with those myths debunked, let’s take a look at specific methods to haggle your way to a great price.

8 Negotiation Tactics for Better Haggling

The following eight negotiation tactics are meant to help you make the most of your haggling experience. But first, let’s look at what your aim should be when you’re haggling. Expectations determine success when hitting the stores and stalls.

I generally have two main goals when haggling with local vendors:

Goal 1: Get to Know the Culture

The first thing I focus on is developing a better understanding of the local culture. Spending time with locals is one of the best ways to do this, and by spending time with vendors, you get exposure to their culture, society and values in a unique setting.

Goal 2: Practice the Language

My second focus is on practicing the language. This allows you to interact with locals in a much deeper way than just shopping as a tourist. You can ask questions and gain insight you may never have known otherwise. If speaking a language is the best way to improve your skill, then talking to vendors is a constant stream of exposure that will help you “level up” quickly.

You’ll notice that these goals have nothing to do with “getting a great deal” or “spending less money.” In my opinion, haggling for the sake of buying something cheaply is a secondary goal. Focus on cultural immersion and language practice to add a whole new dimension to your haggling experience.

Having an emotional attachment to saving money can dampen your enjoyment. While cost is good to keep in mind, solely focusing on money will (ironically) devalue your entire experience.

So, now that we have our goals in place, what is the first key to successful haggling?

Haggling Tip 1: The Haggling Mindset

Before we even step foot out our front door, we need to be in the right frame of mind to haggle. There are three things to keep in mind:

Enjoy the Process

Haggling is about having a good time and getting to know people. So, smile and enjoy yourself. You are in a new country and experiencing a truly authentic cultural exchange! What could be cooler? Enjoy the fact that you’re there and doing something so amazing!

Smile and Be Pleasant

No one likes dealing with a sour-faced person. Smile and build rapport with the vendor. If you are friendly and kind you’ll find they will reciprocate with the same. That way, even if you don’t get a great deal, at least you’ll have a pleasant exchange.

Be Assertive (But Not Too Assertive)

When you say a price, don’t be wishy washy. You are negotiating after all, and you need to be assertive and firm with your prices. They key is to not be so assertive that you make the other person uncomfortable (More on this in a moment …).

Haggling Tip 2: Prepare Your Mind and Body for Haggling

Haggling can be tiring and mentally taxing. You need to approach it firing on all cylinders, so here are a few tips to help make sure you’re in the best mode to get a good deal.

Be Well Rested

Being tired is a surefire way to get taken advantage of by a vendor. Your lowered brain power makes you more susceptible to suggestion and lowers your resolve. If you just flew in, give yourself a day or two to acclimatise to the time zone and rid yourself of jet lag.

Practice Makes Perfect

When you first start haggling, practice with low priced items you’re not too interested in. If the first thing you haggle for is a high-priced piece of art, then you’ll be off your game. Warm up with a smaller item where the stakes aren’t so high.

Cash is King

Don’t rely on anyone taking a credit card. Be sure you have cash with you and have a game plan if you need more money. Be aware of where ATM machines are located, and make sure you have as much money as you need. It’s also worth noting that in many haggling cultures, the US dollar is preferred over local currency.

Haggling Tip 3: Do Your Research

Just because your main goal is cultural exposure and language practice doesn’t mean you don’t need to have a product in mind. Shopping without a game plan means you may end up spending money on things you don’t need or want. If you don’t do some research you might pay more than you intended for something important.

Here are three questions to ask yourself before you head out the door.

How Much Should It Cost?

Know the normal retail value of the item you are looking for. If you start with an acceptable price in mind you’ll be less likely to succumb to pressure from the vendor. It is also a good idea to find out what a local would pay for the same item, which means bringing along a buying buddy.

What is the Exchange Rate?

Know the value of the local currency so you can understand how much something really costs. Using local money can sometimes feel like you’re playing a game of Monopoly and you can end up paying too much.

Definitely have local currency when you go to local markets! You may find some people willing to accept Euros, US dollars or British pounds, but this can’t be guaranteed. If you really like something and don’t have enough local money, be honest with them and ask where the nearest ATM is and tell them you’ll be right back.

Where Should You Shop?

Research the best shopping area for what you want. If you’re looking for electronics, the local market is unlikely to be your best bet. Write down the name and address in the local language so you can show a taxi driver or get directions.

It also pays to shop at smaller, locally owned stores. Smaller businesses are more willing to negotiate prices and probably don’t get as much foot traffic as larger stores.

Haggling Tip 4: Learn Key Phrases

It’s time to make sure you can speak enough of the language to help power through some “sensitive” negotiations.

Knowing the language can go a long way towards forming a good relationship with a seller, and shows that you’re not just a random tourist, but someone who really wants to immerse yourself in their culture.

There are three types of phrases to practise when preparing to negotiate with a vendor in another language. Each type serves a different purpose.

Phrase 1: The Greeting

The first type deal with greeting someone in a friendly manner. The purpose of these phrases is to create a connection with the other person. Just because you’re there to buy something, doesn’t mean you can’t make a friend in the process. Here are some examples:

“Hello! How are you today?”
“What is your name?”
“How is business?”
“How long are you working today?”
“What time do you finish work?”

Once again though, make sure to be aware of cultural norms. It may actually be very odd to in that place to open with a question about how the person is doing, and be more typical to simply start with asking about an item, as much as that may seem too direct in your home country.

Phrase 2: The Ask

The second type of phrase deals with negotiating a good price. The trick is to not be too assertive with your questions and statements. Instead, gently lead someone to the price you’re looking for. Needless to say you should have a pretty good grasp of numbers and how to express prices in the language too.

“How much does this go for?” (This can be more effective than just asking “How much is this?”)
“What is the best price you can give me?”
“That’s a bit expensive. Can you lower the price?”
“It’s still too much. The highest I can go is _____.”
“Can I get a discount if I buy more than one?”

Phrase 3: The Deal

The last set of phrases help you close the deal and make sure you leave with a good impression and potential for future deals.

“Can you make change?”
“Do you have a business card I can give to my friends?”
“Can I get your name so I can ask for you the next time I’m here?”
“What are your hours?” or “When do you usually work?”
“Thanks for your help. I’ll definitely come back next time.”
“Have a great day!”

Haggling Tip 5: Don’t Be the First to Say a Price

One helpful tip is to not be the first person to say a price. Typically the first person to say a number will be in a weaker position since it gives the other person some leverage, especially if the first person to speak is the buyer.

If the seller is insistent that you say a price and you can’t seem to get them to say a number first, then say a price that is half of what you’re willing to pay. But again, the ideal scenario is to go second in the numbers game.

If they really don’t want to tell you their price, try a friendly joke like “You work here and you don’t know how much it costs?”. It may work, depending on their disposition and your tone of voice.

I’ve found in places like India for instance, that you need to go the extra mile and completely avoid saying a price for the entire exchange. I would give reasons for why their price needs to go down. Once you quote a number, then you will very likely be paying more than that.

Haggling Tip 6: Know Your Ceiling, and Never Break It

When you find an item you’re interested in, you should have a firm idea of the most you will be willing to pay for it. You’ve done your research so you know how much you should pay.

Make sure your first offer is far enough below the most you are willing to pay that you have room to negotiate. If the seller has first said a price, then in some places, a good rule of thumb is to offer half what they’ve specified. In well touristed places, they actually expect you to do this, so they quote something up to ten times more than what you could pay them! Be sceptical of whatever price they quote first.

Whatever you end up paying them will most certainly still be high enough to provide them a decent profit. All over the world, I’ve heard the line that the price I’m ready to pay is “below cost price for them” and that they are losing money. It’s just something they say as part of the negotiating process.

Be firm with your price ceiling and don’t go above it. If they say no, there is probably another vendor just down the way who will sell you the same item, if your price is fair.

The trick here is to be assertive, but not to the point of turning off the seller or seeming rude. Be firm but kind. You should also not be so rigid that you aren’t willing to accommodate the seller. Haggling over 50 cents on a $50 item is often not a good use of your time or energy.

Haggling Tip 7: Feign Disinterest and be Willing to Walk Away

The reality is you probably don’t truly need whatever you’re trying to buy. Your life will not end if you don’t buy it, so viewing it as an accessory and not a necessity will strengthen your position in the negotiation.

Getting excited or showing a lot of interest in something can signal to the seller that you’re willing to pay a higher price.

Disinterest can mask your willingness to buy something and the starting price may end up being lower. To put it another way, one of the best strategies to get a good price is being willing to walk away from the deal. Many a time I’ve walked away from a vendor only to have them call after me, offering the same price they just declined.

This is often practised in haggling cultures, so don’t be afraid to walk away and see if that gets you a better price. If not, the same item may be available just a few doors down.

Haggling Tip 8: Take a Negotiating Partner

Having a friend with you can often help you get a better deal. There are strategies of negotiation you can employ with a “wing-person” by your side, which can influence sellers to give you a lower price.

One strategy is for the first person to show a lot of interest, trying to convince the second person, who “controls” the money, to buy the item. This can bring the seller to the side of the first person as they both try to convince the second to buy the product, possibly bringing a lower price from the seller.

Another strategy is to have one person pretend to be in a hurry while the other tries to quickly negotiate before they have to take off. The seller may be more willing to lower if they think their sale is about to walk off.

You can also work out “secret words” ahead of time with your partner so they know if you are interested in the item and can act accordingly. For example, if you are feigning disinterest, but you actually want the item, you say a phrase like “I’m not sure it’s the right colour” to let your partner know you actually want it.

Along these lines, there’s something that my sister and her husband (then boyfriend) did as they were travelling in places like India that I thought was very clever. To indicate to him that she really liked something, she would shake her head in disgust and look disappointed at the item, while saying “Tá sé go han-mhaith. Ceannaigh é!” which is Irish for “It’s really good. Buy it!”

This way the vendor didn’t know how truly interested she was in the item and her partner would know to try extra hard to get it. Irish is a language you can be confident that is very unlikely to be spoken in Indian markets, and worked as their secret means of communicating right in front of the vendor. You could also use a sign language, Esperanto (with carefully chosen words) or any non-major language.

What is the Point of Haggling?

While it can be easy to get emotionally caught up in price negotiations, the most important thing is to remember that haggling, like any cultural activity, should be done with the intention of having fun and enjoying a new experience.

It isn’t about taking advantage of someone, nor is it an opportunity to “steal” goods from unsuspecting vendors. And on the flip side it isn’t an opportunity for you to get taken for a ride with a high price.

Keep in mind that the best part of haggling is the cultural immersion and the opportunity to practise languages, and you’ll enjoy the process much more. Yes, you might get a good (or amazing) deal, which is always fun. But I think of that as the icing on the cake, rather than the cake itself.

Just remember the eight negotiation tactics that form successful haggling experience and you’ll be on the right track:

Get in the haggling mindset
Prepare your mind and body with proper rest
Do your research so you know where to go and what to pay
Learn key phrases to help your negotiations
Never be the first to say a price
Know your price ceiling and stick with it
Be willing to walk away with disinterest
Bring a partner to increase your negotiating power

Haggling can be an amazing way to get to know a new culture and language. Experiment with it, and try out different strategies until you find one that works for you.

Do you have any haggling stories or tips you’d like to share? Join us in the comments.

The post Negotiation Tactics: How to Haggle Like Your Life Depends on It appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

Shit My Non-American Boyfriend Says

To celebrate the 4th of July (American Independence Day) we’re running a bit of a “revenge post”.

Why? Well, because as you may know, I once wrote a pretty popular critique about American culture. I meant it to be tongue in cheek, and I wrote it years ago, but to this day, no one ever lets me hear the end of it!

So today, my American fiancée (who I love very much, so no more of this “the guy who hates Americans” nonsense please!) is getting her revenge by sharing the European things I say and do that she likes to make fun of . Enjoy!

I’ve got a European boyfriend (recently turned fiancé), and as much as I love him, he says all kinds of crazy stuff…

You know how some Americans who visit Europe for the first time come back saying how much better things are in Europe? The trains… the pedestrian streets… the tiny shot-glasses they expect you to drink out of whenever you order a glass of water (when they don’t force you to buy a bottle).

Well, I’m not that girl. I’m more like the girl from the Magic Schoolbus who was always saying “At my old school, we didn’t do things this way at all…”

I’m her. Except I’m more likely to be saying “In America, you can go to the grocery store at 4am in your pajamas to buy bagel bites, and the cashier will smile, ask how you are, and tell you to have a nice day.”

I’m a proud American. And Benny, my fiancé, is a proud European who’s been very vocal about his cultural clashes with America. Naturally that leads to a healthy dose of teasing each other about the special features of our respective homelands.

Since this weekend is America’s birthday, I get to tease him in public, by sharing some of the more head-shake worthy things my non-American boyfriend has said to me. Like…

That Time He Called Me “Hubby”…

This was so cute. Growing up in Ireland, Benny got a lot of American TV, and from that he learned a bunch of American terms of endearment, like “baby” and “sweet pea” and… “hubby.”

Except with that last one, he didn’t quite put together that “hubby” was only ever used by married women talking to their husbands. He thought it was a weird form of “honey”. I had to gently tell him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Why are the water glasses in Europe so tiny? Don’t they know hydration is important!

That Time He Said He Didn’t Understand Why Anyone Would Wear Sweat Pants…

Let’s just get one thing straight. Sweatpants are glorious. Anyone who has ever worn them knows this to be an undisputed truth of the universe.

So when Benny said to me, “I don’t get why anyone would ever wear sweatpants”, it was obvious that he’s never experienced the freedom and comfort that is the sweatpants-wearing-experience.

I get why he said that though. Travelling around Europe, in many countries, no matter how early in the morning it is, people just don’t leave the house until they’re fully showered, groomed and dressed for the day. It’s superhuman. In America it’s totally normal to see people in their sweatpants (or PJs) during their early morning runs to the coffee shop or grocery store. But it looks super weird to Europeans.

That Time I Had to Explain the Easter Bunny…

“So… a giant rabbit breaks into your house to deliver chocolate and hide eggs in your couch cushions…”.

Uh, pretty much!

When you put it that way, yeah, I guess it sounds a little strange, but so do all holiday traditions! Apparently the Easter Bunny was not a thing for Benny growing up in Cavan. He told me that there the chocolate was mostly used as a way to reward children for behaving during long church services.

On a side note, if you’re ever chatting with other non-Americans, ask them about their own holiday traditions. You’ll get into some hilarious stories. I died laughing when my Czech friend Petr told me about their tradition of the Christmas Devil who beats people with sticks and threatens to drag children down to hell. Merry Christmas!

The “Christmas log” of Catalonia. It poops presents. Yes, really.

That Time he Discovered the Dollar Tree…

As a child I was dragged to the Dollar Tree every weekend by my Mom as part of our pre-grocery shopping ritual. But to Benny, the Dollar Tree is a place of magic.

During one trip to America about a year ago, he got so excited about finding a dollar tree that he walked slowly up and down each aisle, pondering over every useless piece of plastic. And he was amazed that it was still open at 8:30 at night. European stores close way earlier (ah, American convenience).

But then he got really mad when the cashier charged him $1.06 for an item (a dollar plus tax). To this day he still complains about “false advertising”, since “you can’t actually buy anything for just a dollar”.

That Time He Freaked out about Red Solo Cups…

The first time he saw people playing beer pong with red solo cups, he said, “Those are like the ones on American Pie!”

…Yes, he actually said that.

So, apparently, in Europe, red solo cups are sold as novelty items. They’re advertised with sales copy like “These are real red American party cups, as seen in American movies like American Pie!” And they’re expensive. I had to explain that in America we use them for beer pong precisely because they’re everywhere and they’re cheap.

“Red American party cups”, otherwise known as solo cups, otherwise known as what they sell at the dollar store.

That Time He Thought Taylor Swift Was a Pickup Artist…

This was a few years ago. I mentioned Taylor Swift in a conversation, and Benny asked me “Is he one of those pickup artist guys?” He asked it with a straight face, so I knew he wasn’t kidding.

This can only be outdone by the time we watched a video referencing Full House, and he said, “I’ve never heard of that show.” My mind was blown. It’s just so hard to imagine – think of all the pop culture references he’s missing!

In Ireland they get American shows like Married with Children, The Simpsons and so many other shows, but apparently Full House never made it across the pond, at least not while Benny was growing up. The one upside to this is that he’ll never know the trauma we had to endure when Bob Saget started doing standup.

Later he made a big deal out of the fact that I’d never heard of Kylie Minogue. It turned out, after some argument, that I had seen Kylie Minogue before as the green fairy in Moulin Rouge. But I’d always just assumed she was a tiny Nicole Kidman.

Every Time He Gets Excited about Free Refills…

Free refills in restaurants are not a thing in Europe. Not for sodas, not even for coffee.

So when we’re in America at a restaurant, he would drain his soda cups as fast as he could and then waits like a kid at Christmas for the next one to arrive without him having to ask, “like magic”.

Of course, this isn’t good for you at all so he only does this now on cheat days!

I used this as an opportunity to explain that the reason food portions are so big in America is -not- because we always eat that much in one sitting, but because we like to extend the restaurant experience by taking the leftovers home for lunch the next day. It’s economical. Two meals for the price of one!

 

Happy birthday, America!

Disclaimer: This post uses hyperbole for comedic effect. In other words, this is meant to be a fun post, not to be taken too seriously. Trolling comments will be deleted.

The post Shit My Non-American Boyfriend Says appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.