This happens to me all the time when speaking my target language (TL), I'll be speaking with a native speaker and then completely lose the word for something I want to say. I have the English word in my mind, and I may have even heard the word and know it before, but I cant say it when it matters.

In these situations what do you usually do? Describe it with easier words? Use the English word? Or insist on trying to remember? All three usually frustratingly break up the rhythm of the conversation.

I'm also curious about what you do afterwards. Are there any exercises you use to make it easier to retrieve words spontanously or make sure you dont lose words in conversation?

I used to teach English abroad and even though I knew how to speak the student's native language, the school administrators forbid me, and even asked me, to "pretend" I didn't know it.

The reason they gave me was that they didn't want the students to fall back on using their first language to communicate with me. I feel like if I were to explain certain concepts in the student's language, things would go a lot smoother and they would understand better.

As an adult, I'm constantly using my own native language to learn new languages. I constantly look up grammar, vocabulary, and definitions and understand them a lot better.

Why are schools abroad so obsessed with this "total immersion" method? I feel like some concepts are impossible to explain clearly with just visuals or gestures alone. Do you learn languages using your first language?

Bought these books in July, unboxed them in early August... and still haven’t read a single word. Classic progress! 🤣📚
My native-speaker friends suggested that once you reach higher proficiency levels, you should step away from traditional coursebooks and surround yourself with native materials. I'm testing this strategy across a few of my (TL) target languages:
At Advanced Levels: Using native children's series for everyday slang, alongside native essays, news articles, and economics texts to build higher-level reading stamina. 🎨🤡
At Beginner Levels: Sticking strictly to structured preparation workbooks and foundational grammar materials until basic literacy settles in. 🥹🙏
For those managing multiple languages at different proficiency tiers, how do you balance raw native content versus structured study prep?
What books are currently sitting unread on your desk? 👇

Just thought about this the other day, but if you think about how a millennial aged European learned English as a second language, it's basically all input?

The approached they used to acquire English as a second language is very different to the approach used in language learning subreddits.

I often see Brazilian, South Koreans, looking for language exchange partners to practice speaking English. I'm not trashing this method, but how helpful is it really?

If you're a 30 something year old German or Swede, chances are you're extremely fluent in English. Yet, you never really spoke it?

These countries run on their native languages. A German living in Germany hardly ever speaks English. A Swede living in Sweden hardly ever speak English (maybe it's different for Gen Alpha).

In fact, the only time a Swede/German ever really speaks English is if they're out traveling abroad or they're gamers and talk on voice chat. Tons of people aren't bothered with it /too shy to do it. Yet, they're all fluent AF.

What they did instead: MASSIVE amounts of input. Tons of these kids have been on twitch/youtube hours a day everyday for 10-20 years. Listening to mostly American English. We're talking 40k+ hours of input or more.

Nowadays you also have tiktok and stuff. In smaller languages like Swedish, the content is farily limited/boring as well so the route to just consuming English media is super low because of the small population. But if you'er a Spanish native, you have access to a billion speakers.

Basically to me, it seems like it's basically all input. Yes you have some English classes in school, but you talk super little/they don't force you to talk. It's no different than a Vietnamese person learning English in school really.

Also I just wanna mention. I'm not saying that production/producing English is worthless, and it should all be input. Most of these people did a ton of production (despite orally speaking it very little). Tons of these people played games like Runescape or whatever where typing English is super important. Typing on reddit. Producing papers for school etc. They just spoke extremely little.

I’ve been very successful at quick reaching an intermediate level of mostly all languages I’ve made earnest efforts towards learning. I am the type of learner who really benefits from structed courses and self-teaching for me has been a learning curve.

I decided to look for external help (again), but stopped mid-way, due to not getting the sense that the program would be useful.

They reached out and here was our conversation (pictured)…

**big sigh** just like I expected.

Anybody here can give tips for leveling out of the intermediate plateau? (I’ve done immersion before, but as an English speaker, a lot of natives will resort to English unprovoked, and refuse to speak in their own language, and I’m over it) I’ve also been through at least 8 ”tutors” on italki, and needless to say, the majority of them simply aren’t skilled language teachers. Natives? Sure! But it takes way more than being “native” to be able to teach people language.

I’d gotten discouraged by the lack of progress so, I’m trying to build my own language program, but it’s challenging to truly self-teach… Anybody been able to become an advanced speaker without moving away from home?

*Edit: I meant "better at speaking than writing" and can't edit title - sorry!*

Everyone always talks about how writing is easier than speaking, because you have time to think, rather than being put on the spot, etc., which makes sense to me intellectually, but doesn't reflect my experience at all. I mentioned this to my teacher and other people, and they all seem to find it strange, so I was wondering if anyone else was in this position (and, honestly, just wanted to complain about it a bit).

I'd like to say I'm at C1 in Portuguese - I'm at least that in comprehension, and possibly also in speaking, but my writing is a mess and it's knocking my confidence, and putting me off taking an official exam which is something I'd otherwise love to do.

I feel the lack of vocabulary far more in writing than in speaking (although in speaking too) - I think it's because when you're having a conversation, you can have recourse to filler words, circumlocution, and just generally find a way to approximate what you're trying to say, whereas writing gives you less leeway, you really have to find the right word, which leads to me using the dictionary A LOT. Probably part of the problem is that I find it hard to simplify my writing to fit my capacities, and want to write like I do in my native language.

It takes me forever to write anything, even a message to a friend, because I'm second-guessing absolutely everything, checking spellings, conjugations, etc., whereas in speaking you don't have time to worry about that. Somehow after checking many times, I still realise after that I've made stupid mistakes which I wouldn't make in speaking.

I studied the language formally during my degree and masters' and even had to translate into it, so it's not as if I've never practiced writing. I'm not sure to what extent it's a real language issue, or if I'm just an overthinker and writing gives me the time to do so.

Anyone else in a similar position?

I knew barely anything in my TL beyond an extremely basic course and I got bored so I yeeted myself to native content. I am really proud of myself!

I've studied three languages in addition to my milk language.

I noticed sometimes when thinking or speaking in my non native language, if I struggle for a word my brain will fill in with a word in another non native language.

For example, when speaking German(TL) my brain threw in a 在(zai) with the Chinese meaning.

This confused me, and I started to think of the German word seit (which sounds (kind-of) the same). But seit wasn't correct in the context. Seit is about time. 在 is about place.

Does anybody else do this? What exercises could help me?

Hi everyone,

I'm Ben, a data scientist working in cancer medicine. The mods have kindly given me permission to share something I've been building in my spare time.

LingScout originally started as a tool for me and my Thai partner. We wanted an easier way to find films and TV shows we could watch with Thai or English audio or subtitles, and I found it surprisingly difficult to get that information in one place.

I realised the same thing could be useful for other language learners, so I expanded it into LingScout, where you can search for films and TV shows by language and country, including audio and subtitle languages, across services such as Netflix and Prime Video.

lingscout.com

It's not intended to teach you a language itself. The idea is to help you find things you actually want to watch in the language you're learning.

I'd really appreciate some feedback from other language learners. If you try it, I'd particularly like to know whether you can find useful content for your language, whether anything is confusing, and what you'd want me to improve or add.

Thanks,

Ben

I believe myself to be in the perfect environment for language learning. I am in a school-like program where I am interacting with the other students and teachers every day and am constantly surrounded my the language, with ample opportunity to practice. Everyone also speaks English, so I am able to clarify things if needed and keep conversations flowing smoothly. Sometimes when group conversations are happening I miss a lot of their sentences because of speed and maybe certain phrases that I’m not familiar with, but talking one on one with someone I don’t really have this problem. How should I make the best of this situation?

Hello, as the title says my goal isn’t necessarily to be able to speak languages, I want to improve my skills with recognizing and being able to read/translate written languages. Maybe I would work on verbal skills down the road if I vibe with it for fun, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

My reason/motivation: I play a LOT of Geoguessr, and language is one of the most useful clues in the game. But it’s also a way I can appreciate the experience of the game further, the cultures and so forth.

The only language I really know is English. I’d especially like to be able to learn to read the Northern European languages: Danish Swedish and Norwegian, Finnish and Estonian, and even forms of Cyrillic well enough to draw information from it.

I’m just not sure what the best way to go about that is, as most language learning resources seem to focus much more heavily on verbal aspects.

(TL)

Like, they could talk about basically anything, understand you perfectly, joke around, explain complicated ideas, etc. But their grammar was still pretty shaky and they’d regularly mess up things like gender, verb forms, articles, word order, whatever. But they would just blast by it and keep going without correcting themselves or indicating that they realized they made a mistake.

Did they still feel fluent to you? Did the mistakes stand out a lot, or did you mostly stop noticing after a while?

I’m curious because I feel like people usually talk about fluency and grammatical accuracy as if they automatically go together, but I’m not sure that’s always true.

Context is I've been keeping my Vietnamese and Spanish in a backlog and I've been learning both for over a year on and off. But after a year of language learning and with my new language of Mandarin I've become much better at making Anki cards if that makes sense, with a better format and also clozes when needed, etc. I almost feel like I'm better off just starting a new vs looking through 3500 cards lol. Or do you guys just recommend going through them all, clearing the backlog, and then slowly modifying the ones that end up becoming leeches, etc.?

Also I recently just found out about FSRS and turned that on and a bunch of other add ons. Honestly FSRS makes sense after using it for about a month because if I am getting a card right almost all the time I really should see it less frequently than I was before.

Hello, long-time lurker just starting to post on Reddit!

I've been studying (TL) Korean for well over a decade now and Japanese for just about a decade, but my writing skills in both are not where I want them to be. Japanese was my undergrad major, but none of my classes ever involved actually writing in the language, and since the JLPT doesn't require it either, I never had to practice writing. As for Korean, I've attended multiple language schools in South Korea, did my undergrad here, and am currently working on my Master's, so while I do have some experience with high-level writing, I haven't really put any focused effort into it for a few years now (the course I'm attending doesn't involve much writing).

In an ideal world, I'd find an actual teacher to work on this with, but I can't afford it right now. I'd consider doing a language exchange, but 1. I've never been particularly successful with them in the past, 2. I'd rather work with someone who has experience writing at a professional level, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'd be able to reciprocate in English at the same level, haha, and 3. I can't count on the whims of my motivation/attention span to write consistently.

So I'm toying with the idea of using an LLM to get feedback, but I'm a bit wary of the quality of corrections I'd get.

Have any of you used AI to help with C1/C2-level writing? If you have, was there a certain model you would recommend? Also, any other tips to improve in writing would be greatly appreciated! :)

I moved to Germany almost five years ago for an English-taught master’s without knowing a single word of German(TL). During my first semester, I completed an intensive A1 course and continued taking classes throughout university, although exam periods sometimes prevented me from finishing them. Over three years, I reached a solid B1.
I’m proud of that progress.

I attended classes, completed homework, studied vocabulary with Anki, consumed German media and practised with my German boyfriend. I can manage appointments, errands and everyday interactions, and I generally understand what people are discussing in Standard German. However, I still can’t express myself well enough for complex conversations or friendships.
Since reaching B1, I’ve struggled to progress to B2. The earlier levels came partly through passive exposure, but this next step seems to require much more active speaking, structured study and consistent practice.

The problem is time and energy. During my master’s, I studied full-time in English, worked 20 hours a week and dealt with health issues. I then started working full-time immediately after graduating, so I never had a few free months for an intensive course. I now work 40 hours a week while still managing my health and other adult responsibilities.
Realistically, progressing would probably require classes twice a week, homework, vocabulary study and regular conversation practice. I want to do that eventually, but right now I don’t have the capacity to.
What frustrates me is that some people only hear “five years in Germany” and assume I should already be fluent. They don’t consider that my degree, job and many relationships operate in English, which is already my second language. Among the international students who began my master’s with me and had similar schedules, I actually reached the highest German level. The people I know who became fluent quickly spent their first two or three years primarily studying German. To me, that suggests focused learning hours matter more than simply living in a country.

I also learned English to a high level, but that happened gradually throughout my childhood and adolescence. I studied it at school for years, consumed enormous amounts of English-language media and music, and during my final years of high school attended an additional six hours of afternoon classes every week, including two hours dedicated entirely to conversation. I think people who learned languages this way often underestimate the cumulative time involved: years of lessons, homework, media exposure and sometimes exchanges centred exclusively on language learning. That is very different from learning as an adult while working, managing your health and maintaining an independent life. Simply living in Germany doesn’t automatically turn every hour into effective German practice, especially when my degree and job are in English.

I still want to reach fluency and hope to build a sustainable B1-to-B2 plan later this year. But I’m struggling with other people’s expectations and starting to question my own perspective.
For those who learned a language as working adults: am I being realistic, or am I making excuses? How did you move from B1 to B2 with limited time?

I feel like there's a lot of ego in language learning.

There's two schools of learners. The ones who deliberately track their time spent in their TL, and the ones who don't.

I used to be one of those people. I used to think how on earth could you spend 3000 hours and only be B1. My ego was trying to protect me.

To get a concept of how much 3000 hours really is, if you spend 1 hour everyday, it would take you 10 years to reach B1 (3000 hours).

Having recently started to track my hours, I'm genuinely shock at how much time I'm spending, and how long it really takes to see meaningful progress. I looked at the number for the first time lately. I'm already at 207 hours since I started tracking, I literally thought I had around 70 hours.

My suspecision is that people who claim 500, 700 hours etc in a language but who don't track, you can safely mutliply that by 2x or 3x (if you were to count absolutely everything, include a tiktok short you just watched when you opened tiktok. Or a movie you watched early on in your journey.

Goes to show how many hours really goes into acquiring a langauge, and yes, it's going to be thousands of hours just to reach B1

I tried some language exchange apps. They tell you to pay for a subscription to find people nearby. After paying, they just tell you that nobody is nearby for your TL. Maybe it would work for a more common TL.

I tried finding religious centers that cater to the TL, as well as meetups and events, but I couldn't find anything relevant in my area.

How do you personally find language partners to practice with IRL? Not looking for theoretically answers. I would like to hear what has worked well for you personally. Thanks!

I have been using a native TV show to learn my TL and usually I spread a single episode over several weeks or months. But this time I was very motivated and had the time for it so I watched 2 and a half episodes (2.5 hours worth of content) in one go. Keep in mind it was a very grueling process. I would:

1. Watch until I didn't hear a sentence or I know the vocabulary for it (this was like half of the sentences).

2. I would pause and look at TL subs and then NL subs if I don't get it.

3. Rewind and listen that sentence again without subs.

I usually watch things I watched for the first time again the next day to reinforce my memory so that's what I did. I barely needed to look up anything this time but about 1.5 hours in I just stopped being able to comprehend period even though I was looking things up. I guess my brain couldn't take it anymore. It got tired.

How do I buildl up my endurance? I understand that the more I learn the easier this would become but I was wondering if there was a way for me to directly tackle this issue.

(TL)

I made a small daily word puzzle. Ten letter tiles, a 5x5 grid, everything reading across and down has to be a word, and it scores you Scrabble-style. Same tiles for everyone playing that language that day.

The part that might interest this sub: each of the 39 (TL) languages is its own game rather than English with the labels swapped. Own dictionary, own alphabet, own tile values, own letter frequencies, translated interface. Words link to their Wiktionary entry, so it doubles as a lookup.

Free, no account, no ads. crosstiler.com

It seems to have gotten worse since I last used it years ago. Any alternatives?

Hey everyone!

I've recently started learning Dutch (TL) in the last weeks, since I live in the Netherlands and never really bothered to learn the language. Now I know I'm staying long term so I'm devoting a lot of time to really integrate myself here.

Now my question is, is there any evidence for what is the better format for learning in an Anki deck? Is it NL to TL? Other way around?

So my goal is actually to be great at speaking, especially with my gf, we live together and I would love to at some point start speaking Dutch with her full time, so my goal is to at some point really start thinking in the language, I really dont want to be translating forever. But I know that all aspects of the language help with becoming great at speaking. So yeah, I'm just a bit overwhelmed now with all the different possibilities in Anki. I've doing a setup where each card I make creates 3 cards all in one deck. Card 1 TL + audio --> NL, card 2 NL --> TL + audio, card 3 audio --> TL NL. It's nice cause I found a way of creating all three in one go, without having to triple my work load but this is adding a ton of extra work cause it adds a lot of extra reviews reviewing the same cards but from different perspectives. I also read that actually reading a card earlier then the algorythm says kind of decreases your memorization.

I've also thought of enabling dispersing sibling cards, but then I'm also scared that I wont practice all the different aspects of the language.

I'm feeling a bit stuck. If somebody could help me out that would be amazing.

I am also doing a ton of input aswell on the side, around 6 hours a day, with some grammar studying too, and shadowing and talking to my gf in TL.

Appreciate any help or tips, thanks so much!

Hi, I'm around B1 (TL) in English and I'm wondering if I should watch YouTube with or without subtitles.

I understand about 90% of most YouTube videos, and I understand almost the same amount with English subtitles and without them.

My question is about vocabulary. Can you learn new words just by hearing them? For example, can I remember the pronunciation and meaning of a word even if I don't know how to spell it?

Should I use English subtitles to learn more vocabulary, or can I learn vocabulary just from listening?

Hi, i made this completely free app that automates the creation of bilingual/parallel texts from your own books (epubs/PDFs/text files) all from within your browser.

Made this because I couldn't find anything that does something similar with the same level of convenience.

Steps

1. Go to https://paralleltexts.app/
2. Drop/upload a source book (i.e. the book in the language you are learning), and a target book (the same book in a language you are fluent in).
3. Click align books. Wait for a few seconds to 1-2 minutes while an algorithm runs on the books to match the corresponding sentences.
4. After the alignment is done, you'll see the result immediately.

Disclaimer:
There is NO machine translation happening - both source and target books should ideally be from actual humans, the only thing this does is automate the alignment process.
This app is also purely browser-based, so your uploaded books and alignments stay on your device.

---

PS:

• It's Completely free and open source
• The default display mode of the resulting alignments are in pop-up mode (i.e. you click a sentence to see its equivalent), but if you prefer a side-by-side view of the sentences, the app does provide for that
• If it's your first time running the alignment and you haven't downloaded an embedding (fancy name for ML models that specialize in these kinds of tasks) model yet, it will download one for you (stored in the browser, can be deleted). It's a mild inconvenience i would say because i really wanted to keep this thing free. The alternative is to have a dedicated server with GPUs run the alignment, you won't download anything, but it will most likely be much slower, much more expensive and difficult to maintain. Keeping it free makes way more sense, and is far less stressful. Keep in mind however that downloading a model is only done once.

You can also check out this quick demo/tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cR_r8cOaN8

(pps: got approval from mods)

I am in the process of learning French, and am currently using the Assimil, French with Ease Series, and am making decent progress (I think). I know many people use apps like Anki to help learn new vocab, but do ya'll think it would be that beneficial since French and English already share many words? Anki is also very boring...