Speechling Official Blog (Page 19)

6 of the Most Common Mandarin Chinese Words Influenced by Dialect

Dialect can be the bane of any language learner’s existence. Sometimes it feels like the language you’re learning just isn’t what’s in the textbook. It’s as though what you think is correct, is actually only correct in the classroom, or on a whiteboard, or during

French

Reading French: 5 French Easy Books to Start with

Now that you are learning French and have come to terms with some of the basic grammar and vocabulary, it is time for the next step... reading your first French book! In this article, I share my list of my personal favourites with you to get started. This list is

Spanish

The Most Important Business Phrases You Need to Learn in Spanish

With the global reach of organizations, companies are closer and closer than ever before. It’s common for there to be multi-national organizations that send employees all over the world. It seems there’s always someone I know traveling for business. Why learn Spanish for business? Most emerging markets are

English

5 Best TV Shows for Learning to Speak English

Let's face it. It's 2017 and we all have cell phones, PCs, tablets, etc. – you name it! But, apart from all of that, we all share one particular guilty pleasure – devoting too much of our free time and productivity to watching TV shows, whether it be on television or online.

Mandarin

Chinese Internet Slang 101

Whoever said technology doesn’t affect language? It wasn't us, that's for sure! The fact is that technology and language are about as linked as a painter's canvas is to any artwork he creates. Just because the artist might remain the same, doesn’t mean their canvas always will. It's

French

How to Speak French - The Ultimate Guide to French Pronunciation

French is is often thought of as the language of love and romance. I don't know if that is true, but one may say that the beauty of the French language comes from the diversity of its vowels, the right balance between vowels and consonants, and the monotony of its

Spanish

Learn Spanish in 90 Days Challenge: Day #1

This is a challenge to speak conversational Spanish in 90 days starting from a beginner level, using Speechling and other resources on the internet. When I tell people that I’ve been living in Spain for a few months, people always ask for advice. How are you going about it?

English

5 Best Music Genres for Learning to Speak English

As language learners, we are often oblivious to the extraordinary nature of the world that surrounds us, particularly due to seeing mundane, everyday things which supersede our education as exactly such – mundane and everyday type of things; when, in fact, we should attribute our highest attention and admiration to their

Mandarin

How to Speak Chinese - The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Pronunciation

Regardless of whether you have or haven’t started learning Chinese, you’ve probably heard that it’s one of the (if not THE) hardest languages in the world to learn. This is especially true when it comes to speaking. However, despite what you may have heard about how it

French

Should You Join a French Class? 6 Pros and Cons of Language Classes

Learning French is challenging and can easily be overwhelming. For this reason, a lot of beginners choose to join a language class. Is it really the right choice? Some people swear by it, others hate it. Who should you listen to? In this article, we will review the pros and

English

How to Speak English: The Ultimate Guide to English Pronunciation

As an English language teacher, I often find myself amid this conundrum where I have to figure out the most effective lesson plan to make a particular topic at hand as simple as possible for my students to comprehend. Depending on the grade and skill level of students, this more

Mandarin

5 Different Techniques to Indicate Time and Tense in Chinese

When we speak, we tend to communicate differently than when we write. This is true in any language, right? I mean, it’s unlikely you’re going to start your finest piece of prose with an ‘alright mate?’ or a ‘so, like, it all, like, started like this’. There are

French

Incremental Improvement: The Powerful Impact of Small Habits in your French Learning Journey

It should not leave you gawping in astonishment that small habits can make a surprisingly powerful impact. This is something we intuitively know for myriad other domains in life, but it is an important insight which is easy to miss when applied to learning French and languages more generally. Setting

Spanish

5 Ways for Adults to Learn Spanish Quickly

Human beings can be very impatient. It’s not our fault, it’s just our nature. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know we’re especially impatient when it comes to learning new things. We expect to know everything immediately. We want that instant gratification. Instant gratification is nice

English

10 Ways To Improve Your English Vocabulary

When learning a new language, your focal point should always lean more toward finding new ways to improve your vocabulary rather than grammar. Given today's global presence of the English language, this is fairly easy to do. Do yourself a huge favor right now and put your mind into "

Mandarin

5 Tips and Tricks for Omitting Words from Chinese Sentences

No, we’re not talking about forgetting how to say something properly We’re talking about situations where it’s perfectly ok to omit certain words from sentences and phrases. These are situations where one or two words just aren't needed and it can actually be better to omit them.

French

C’est what?! 4 Powerful Ways to Improve Your French Listening Comprehension

You’ve finally arrived in France. You settle down to relax on a terrace in the City of Light, while the sun lazily sets, with French people conversing animatedly around you. What mysterious secrets are they whispering to each other, you wonder, as you lean in to listen. It’s

Spanish

Best Spanish Blogs of 2017 and What Makes Them Special

It's 2017. There are tons of blogs out there on learning Spanish, but which ones are worth your time? It turns out, some blogs are better than others. For example, after learning about the same por vs para rules for days on end, it might not seem like there is

English

How to Recognize and Properly Use Homophones in English

As language learners, we occasionally find ourselves in situations where we either can't think of the word we might want to use. Or we know what we want to say but don't know a single word in English to which expresses that idea. This conundrum gets to a whole new

Mandarin

Why Learning Chinese Sentence Structure Can Be More Important Than Chinese Tones

Almost every Chinese learner has, at one time or another, been at a point where the frustration is just too much. Where they can't even think about Chinese sentence structure or communication because, no matter how hard they try, they just can’t seem to get their Chinese tones right.

French

5 Best Tips for Practicing Proper Intonation to Learn French Fast

What’s not to adore about the French and their language? Isn’t being able to read La Fontaine in French one of the bigger pleasures in life? In between the simple, but melodic baguette and the beautiful, yet morbid l’appel du vide, French is easily the most colorful

Spanish

How to Speak Spanish: The Ultimate Guide to Spanish Pronunciation

Speaking a language in the real world is like serving a tennis ball over the net. Sometimes the ball doesn't make it over the other side. For the first two years of my Spanish learning journey, I had already become a vocabulary and vocabulary whiz. But did I stand a

Spanish

How to Pronounce Jesus, Jose, and Juan in Spanish

I'll never forget it. One day after returning home from my Spanish class in high school, my mother was on the phone, talking to her colleague. "Hey GEE-sus! Remember to fax me the accounting documents by tomorrow", I really need it. Cringe. (Hint: It's not pronounced like that.

Why habits are ??

There are four stages to learning anything. First, there's unconscious incompetence. In this stage, we're unaware or don't know that we don't know something. For example, I wasn't aware that I wasn't speaking a language properly. Eventually, I realized that I wasn't competent, which leads to the second stage, or

Growth and Stagnation

As humans, we tend to view ourselves as having fixed value, which is both a detriment to our progress and the #1 reason why we fail, especially when pursuing intensive learning experiences. We only have this fixed mindset when we do not actively set the intention for embracing failure in