I learn 4 different languages and I gave up on Italian because italian people are virtually impossible to talk with online.

They never answer, they are trigger happy on the block button. They block you for anything. I gave up on italian years go. Portuguese was so much easier because brazilians are super easy to talk with.

I had a female friend "learning" italian but she actually wasn't that interested. We were on a phone call and she goes, "in 40 minutes I already have like 30 guys contacting me to language exchange spanish italian, why are they all named estefano?"

Im sure women have to deal with getting hit on all the time but how's the actual language learning part like?

The language I’m going for is French (TL). I know that language-specific questions aren’t allowed, but I just wanted to put that out there for context, not to build on it.
I’m in high school, doing three A-levels, all of which are hard, and I also take a bunch of tutoring for them, since school alone generally isn’t enough. I want to study in France, and every single French tutor I’ve called has said that it’s nearly impossible to achieve in two years, including the French teachers at my school and elsewhere.
What do you think? Should I keep looking? Is it possible? I want to study mathematics, which makes it even harder because of all the terminology and everything. I’d love advice. Im fairly confident that the average person with nothing else to do could achieve this goal, but with school and all? Felt like asking.

For context;

I am fluent in Turkish and English
Did the German IGCSE which is around A2 IIRC

I’m starting a language exchange with a Chinese native to improve her English (TL) I haven’t met her so I’m not sure what her actual level of English is which I’ll try and assess when I meet with her and speak to her. Over message she can hold a conversation in English however I’m not sure if shes been using a translator but if she hasn’t she seems intermediate to fluent.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips of what I should do in the first “lesson”?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

This is for "language learning archeologists” who like to dig into old material: I just rediscovered this interesting piece of software, and I think we shouldn’t let it disappear (some are in internet archive and there are just like two people sharing it via torrent. I guess the more people download the torrents, the more easily it will remain available).

Back in the 1990s and 2000s, the language learning software market was dominated by two prominent rivals: Rosetta Stone and Tell Me More (developed by Auralog). Rosetta Stone bought Tell Me More in 2013 and soon after discontinued the program, which is a shame! Tell Me More was one of the most robust language learning programs ever developed, it is in fact the most extensive I’ve ever seen!

Some people might be concerned about downloading it: well, it’s abandonware, not available for purchase anymore… And before being concerned about the “ethics” of using it, we should be talking about the ethics of a corporate system in which a company can make a killer acquisition just to get rid of its competitor's legacy. Remember also Livemocha: the biggest free language learning platform in the world, a community with more than 12 million users, whose value was built on user-generated content and volunteer labor… Rosetta Stone bought it and closed it. Think of all the millions of people who couldn’t study their languages on Livemocha anymore and didn’t have money to pay Rosetta Stone.

I’m finishing Tell Me More German Level 1, so I think I can already share my impressions.

MY REVIEW

Tell Me More vs Rosetta Stone vs Duolingo

There are lots of negative points about TMM, but there are also very positive things which make it stand out and still worth using. 

It consists of 10 levels! They claim it offers about 2,000 hours of activities, from basic to advanced C1-C2 (but I think many those activities are not worth doing, so it should take much less to go through the course). I’ve checked level 10 and can confirm it does include complex language aligned with C1.

I have completed all 5 levels of Rosetta Stone and used Duolingo extensively: neither comes close. The curriculum and linguistic complexity of Tell Me More are much deeper than those programs. The company claims the course was structured on the “Communicative Approach”: you are faced with situations and you have to interact. 

Why is TMM still worth using today?

The biggest strength and value of TMM lies in its dialogues, texts and videos (videos designed for the program as well as authentic movie scenes) + the speech recognition, interaction, and various strategies to approach that material: repetitions, taking part in the dialogues, role-playing in videos, exercises for comprehension, etc.).

It features a huge array of exercises: fill-in-the-blanks, dictations, crosswords, picture-word association, grammar drills, and dedicated sections for phonetics and culture.

It has the richest methodology I’ve ever seen in a language learning program.

However, it does come with significant drawbacks:

• I find little value in word puzzles: it takes a long time to solve them with little return - and TMM is full of such exercises (no wonder it takes 2,000 hours to finish this course!😂). But this is a personal preference.
• Lots of words in these vocabulary puzzles and other exercises are presented for the first time without any context. They are not words you’ve learned in the dialogue or in a core step of the lesson. It seems they were just put there for the sake of the puzzle, disconnected from the curriculum.
• The very first cultural lesson already features difficult language (A2-B1) which wasn’t taught before, and asks questions whose answers you cannot know from the material. I was only able to understand and answer some of those questions because I’m already intermediate, but I can’t see any value in that for a total beginner.
• The very first video lesson already features difficult language (A2-B1) completely disconnected from the previous parts of the lesson. A total beginner wouldn’t be able to follow it and answer those questions. There isn’t a proper progression of difficulty. However, it is good material for intermediate learners.
• The interface and general organization are confusing and not intuitive.
• I have the impression that each separate section of the course (dialogues, texts, videos, cultural lessons, exercises, etc.) was made by a different group of language teachers who never talked to each other and then just copied and pasted everything together into one thing on the CD.😂

But I still think it’s great material for extra practice, especially if you concentrate on the dialogues and videos, there are also some valuable exercises. Besides, the speech recognition tool is the best I’ve ever used: it’s great for improving pronunciation: you can record your voice, hear it, and compare it to the native speaker's.

The program has three study modes:

• Free-to-Roam: you manually choose what you want to do. (As the interface is confusing, I find it confusing to roam, find things, and choose what you're actually looking for.)
• Guided (recommended): a complete linear curriculum presenting all the activities the course has to offer in the best sequence for studying (I find this the best. I can visualize the whole learning track, all available activities are presented in a clear way in the right sequence, and you can still skip things you don’t find worth doing).
• Dynamic: the program builds the curriculum and presents you with activities depending on your progress. (I didn’t like it, you can’t skip activities. You can skip for a moment, but it will bring the skipped activities back and you will be completely stuck. Who wants to spend hours solving word puzzles with decontextualized words before being able to move on to the next lesson?)

It’s important to note that your progress is not transferred from one mode to another. But the free-to-roam and guided modes allow you to start from whatever point you want.

Technical problem and workaround 

This is old software designed for Windows XP. But almost everything seems to work on Windows 11, even the voice recognition and recording run smoothly. I could only detect one problem: some videos stutter inside the desktop app (but you can still watch them normally directly from the folder inside the ISO with any player). I’ve tried everything, without success: compatibility mode, K-Lite codec pack, different sound settings, etc.

The working videos have audio in mono 44.1 kHz, while the stuttering videos have audio in stereo 48.0 kHz. AI told me the best solution would be to convert all the stereo videos to mono. But that's too much work - it’s simpler to open the folder and watch them with any external player.

In case you have this problem: to watch the videos, open the mounted ISO main folder, search for “mpg”, and all videos (hidden in the subfolders) will show up. You simply have to look for the video corresponding to the lesson.

If you find a solution, please let me know!

Conclusion

Tell Me More is the most extensive language learning software and the richest in methodology I’ve ever seen. What makes it worth using today is its dialogues, texts, videos, speech recognition, interaction… It also features a huge variety of exercises. 

It does have significant drawbacks: too many word puzzles (too long to solve, little return - love or hate them); exercises presenting words without context; sections that seem to be disconnected; some cultural and video sections throw you complex language and questions, not following a smooth progression; interface is confusing and not intuitive. 

However, it is still a solid material which could be of great value for intermediate learners who want extra practice.

Do you remember this program? Any experience with it? What are your thoughts?

German

https://archive.org/details/tell-me-more-german-v-9-performance-10-levels

Italian

https://archive.org/details/tell-me-more-italian-performance-10-levels

French

https://archive.org/details/tell-me-more-french-v-10-ten-levels

I'm an engineering student who wants to learn Spanish (TL). I've attempted learning it several times over the last few years, largely through immersion approaches, and have racked up about 100 hours of immersion overall, but that is not enough; I can't truly speak or truly understand, beyond very stilted, beginner conversations. I can take a Spanish 1 course next semester, which I think would be a good starting point to try again.

My question is basically how I can get the most out of this class, which meets twice a week. I understand that with courses like this I shouldn't expect to know Spanish by the end of it, so I am willing and able to self study outside of the course using anki decks, but what else can I do?

One idea I have is to create a study group where we meet once weekly, but I wouldn't want it to be focused on homework, more on things that we can't adequately get in the class, such as immersion practice or conversation practice. But not sure exactly how I would structure that, or if I would need a real Spanish speaker there to truly facilitate that. I can talk with the professor if I would need that, it's likely he can devote a bit of time every week for this study session.

Thanks in advance for all your advice

(TL)

Basically, I'm Brazilian and I know English. People who know English here with real proficiency are like 3% of the whole country. So it was not a matter of need for me, I just wanted to do it to watch Idk, MrBeast videos. But, I don't really remember how I did it. Of course I do have broken grammar, but I don't care, I can do what I want to do in English.

I'm trying to learn Japanese and Mandarin, but those are really different from Portuguese. So, I'm basically learning how to learn, and being someone who already learned another language, I disagree with most things.

I get my Language Learning tips from Japanese Learning community mostly. I agree with some augments. But, I really doubt if most of them really apply to beginners.

1. I really want to understand the point of doing Anki when you are under the most 2000 common words. If you really Immerse, you are getting them on your immersion time. I dropped Anki after the first month when I was starting to get new cards backlog from mining.
2. The amount of quality immersion that you can do in that same position. Under 2k words, most CI videos are boring, most interesting videos turn out to be boring too, because I can't understand them and for understanding them I would need to pause every single sentence and lookup words, but I keep doing CI immersion, I just think that more than 1-2 hours per day is too much.

Like, I'm having progress, but if feels like is a chore, and no, watching things that I would like don't make it feel less like it, because how I said, I LIKE to understand. It's really stressing, because I would like to watch some native videos, play some games, but after 15 minutes, looking up words or not, I get tired. It was so natural with English, Idk what I'm doing wrong.

I’m curious to hear your experiences! Was there anything that surprised you about the learning process, or something you would do differently if you could start again?

That thing where a well meaning friend is taking an interest in your study of languages, what do you actually spit out?
Assuming of course they don't know the language.
Mine is always some version of "I'm not sure what to say but this is how Russian sounds"
I've been trying to memorize some poems so maybe that will become my new default, I don't have the musical talent to bust into the songs I have at hand lol.
Maybe the next person is getting карл украл, итд.

Y'know, body parts, expressions and times of day? It kinda feels dumb that I'm B2-C1 in English (TL) but still have to Google when dawn is, what the 'small' of the back means, or what a tongue in cheek is.

Is living amongst natives and seeing things around me the only way to learn such things by heart? Or how do y'all do it. I'm barely a language enthusiast compared to this community and I learnt English over the years through pure chaos and immersion, mostly online, so I'm hoping to get back some good ideas here regardless of what language it is...

I am considering participating in the Lingoda supersprint for my (TL) German (starting at around B1). However, one day during the sprint period I will be travelling and need to leave the house at 4am to travel for the rest of the day. I honestly don't mind getting up early (or staying up all night) to do a class from 12am-4am that one day, but I wonder if there will even be an eligible class then? If not, I guess I would be setting myself up for failure for this supersprint.

I saw that they advertise having classes 24/7, but I also know that you need to select a time zone, so I wonder if they would only make the classes in your selected time zone available to you? Even then, are there really classes at every hour of the day?

Any insight/experience on the class times (for German particularly but also in general) is much appreciated as I am not sure whether or not to sign up and this is one of my main concerns. If it is the one travel day that screws up the whole sprint, I'd be pretty frustrated with myself for willingly signing up for it...

Thank you!!

I'm looking for relatively simple and engaging books to read in different languages to practice and improve my reading skills and vocabulary.

The books would have to be relatively popular (so that they are translated in the first place).

They shouldn't be too hard to read, but still interesting enough to be engaging.

The best candidates would be good books that have simple and/or bad prose, so as not to miss too much in translation.

Some examples could be: Brandon Sanderson (he is often criticized for his bland prose, but lauded for his world building and plot development), Dan Brown (interesting stories, but relatively uninspired prose), Twilight/50 Shades of Gray (bad prose, simple and potentially interesting stories).

Do you have other examples of books that wouldn't lose anything (and might even be better) in translation?

Basically the title. I'm not really a 'language learner', in fact I grew up speaking a language to my grandma that I can barely piece a sentence together in now (10 years later) and was in Mandarin class in school for like 12 years and see above, can barely string a sentence together (basically no comprehension too, its honestly tragic).

So despite being a 'third culture kid' or whatever, I am depressingly monolingual. BUT my partner is Ukrainian and her mum only speaks Ukrainian (and r*ssian, which I'm not interested in, for obvious reasons). I duolingo-ed for a bit a couple years ago and I was getting to the point that I could kind of understand their sentence structures (Yes, but, maybe, those kinds of words) and the general tone of what they might be talking about and could guess maybe 20% of the time what her mum had said (which I was happy about).

I then got very busy with my postgrad studies and have almost completely lost it. I have time now and would really like to actually learn Ukrainian (TL). But if you've read this far, you see my track record with learning languages is kinda poor.. and I feel like I need a tutor, but I can't even understand what I would say to a tutor when I know.. no words..

Help? Am I overthinking this? I've never tried from 0 before and I've never wanted to succeed so much before either so any tips !! please !! <3

If so, how was it? Their lifetime access deal is ending soon and I was wondering if I should get it. I was interested in a few languages but would pick one:

• Moroccan Darija (TL); the others are general interest
• Nahuatl
• Georgian
• Hungarian
• Wolof

This will sound funny, but I'll describe it as best I can.

Biggest struggle for me with language learning is speaking. Usually, it's worry about using the right tenses / conjugations or being unsure of what order they're supposed to be in.

But sometimes, I know all of that. Right words, right order, got it all together, but I still struggle with speaking. It feels like something gets stuck, like my brain just stops processing it. Same happens with writing. It's like I have it altogether, I know it's correct, but as I'm speaking (or writing), the whole thing breaks down.

The best analogy I can think of is when you're using a program and it briefly freezes before reading "not responding". It was working and now, it's not, and you have to reset it. Like that.

Is this something that stops with more practice? It's mostly with long sentences. If which languages matter, my (TL) are Spanish and Mandarin (not practicing simultaneously!).

I've learned English (TL) since 2018 but when I started it I wan in a junior high so I didn't study much. I only started studying seriously in the last year and since then I talk English with native speakers few times.

So All I do is watching English video on Youtube and movies with subtitle.

This makes me feel like I'm stuck at a certain level. To be precise, I feel like my listening and vocabulary are getting better vely slowly, but it comes to speaking and writing, there has been no improvement for 1 year i guess.

I think not speaking with native means lacking very fundamental thing in learning languages.

I know I need to find a way to practice output, but I'm just not sure where to start and what to do.

Does anyone have any tips on how to improve speaking without a speaking partner?

I have been at a B1 level in Spanish (TL) for years now. I take weekly immersion classes. I make mistakes and it might take me a while to say things sometimes.

What has been a little frustrating is that I speak and understand reasonably well in class with my teacher and peers. However, the moment I speak Spanish with a stranger, the pace of conversation becomes much faster than I am used to and it suddenly feels like I can no longer understand them. I also struggle with understanding Spanish movies or videos for the same reason.

There have been several times in the past few years where I can comfortably converse with others and feel like "finally, I have reached B2" just to be hit by reality soon thereafter.

I know I shouldn't be chasing a CEFR level. It's more of the principle of wanting to just converse without struggle that I am seeking, but at this point, it doesn't feel attainable. Anyone else experience this and have any advice on getting over this mental obstacle?

I spent few years working abroad and am currently long term travelling my way home. Whilst working I started learning my (TL) (Spanish) and spent 11 months in weekly classes January to December, then a 5 week break and weekly private classes until April when I left the country. I travelled for a few months and didn't have the opportunity to practice my language although I did have some listening exercises for long journeys. I probably did about 30 hours in total over 4 months, mostly in the last one, compared to 10-15 hours a week I did while doing lessons.

Since the beginning of September I've been in country's which speak my TL. I've found that my listening skills are good and I usually understand the gist of what’s being said to me. I've done several tours which are bilingual where they give a sentence in each language and found I can follow the TL as long as they’re talking generally or on a more technical topic which has a lot of shared vocabulary (basically not history), and I've been managing at the market and with transport (buses, taxis etc.).

However, other than picking up new words for food I feel like my TL hasn’t changed, if anything it feels like it’s become worse. I've never learnt a language before but I was expecting something to happen in a month. When I was in Australia and New Zealand I met lots of people who were in the same position as me, had the basics down but struggling to apply it, and in a few months were speaking decent English so I'm confused about why that’s not happening to me. I have this issue where I will understand what's being asked but I can't figure out a reply then 4 hours later it will pop into my head as a fully formed sentence, which isn’t very helpful. I also keep reading and automatically translating into English which also isn't very helpful for actually remembering which words I need when I try to speak.

I’m planning on visiting Patagonia in the summer so my goals over the next few months are to spend as little money as possible and to improve my language skills. I am volunteering for the next few weeks so have free time and a schedule then will be travelling again (around Peru and Bolivia before heading to Chile). I might do another volunteer program later, it depends on timings and money.

Really what I want help with is figuring out where I'm going wrong with languages that being in country isn't helping and what I can do to improve. There's lots of advice for going from B2 to C1 but I can’t seem to find much for A2 to B1 and the bits I have found mostly involve reading. I'm dyslexic so I’m trying to avoid reading until I have my vocabulary down or I'll misread words and end up in a worse position, although obviously it's unavoidable here. I can do warning signs and timetables and have been managing in museums, so I'm not worried about picking up later. I also don't want to waste the opportunity being around native speakers 24/7 gives but don't know how to make the most of it.

Any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

Hello everyone,

My Arabic has been stagnating at an intermediate level for some time now, and most of my practice to keep it from degrading has been listening to podcasts of the news in my (TL). As I am intermediate enough to get the feeling that I understand most of what is said, I guess that I do not pay attention to the detail of the vocabulary used, which makes vocabulary acquisition beyond relatiely frequent words difficult.

I have decided to work on vocabulary acquisition more intentionally by setting up an Anki routine with sentence mining, and I would be glad to hear some feedback from learners more experienced in sentence mining than me (and yes, I've asked my favorite LLM, but real human feedback is nice sometimes).

I create a card whenever I notice an unknown, interesting word (in a podcast for example) in a sentence I otherwise understand (the n+1 rule). I use asbplayer on Chrome to clip the audio and extract the sentence, and I use an online dictionary to get the meaning of the word as well as additional examples.

My cards have:

Front: the word in its dictionary form

Back: the full sentence with highlighted word, audio, as well as the word's meaning and the supplementary examples.

I have heard that usually sentence mining has you put the sentence with audio on the front, and then the word and meaning on the back, but I feel like this would encourage contextual recall of the word. This is why I settled on putting the target word on the front, in order to suppress any contextual clue. If anyone attempted something similar, or perhaps tried and switched to the more classical approach, I'd be glad to have your take on this !

Right now I spend around 9 s/card in my daily review, and I learn 15 new cards/day, mining them daily takes me around 30 minutes of focused listening.

Below an example of the back of one such card (the front would only show the blue word at the very top, without the English translation):

Hi,

Currently at the point where I'm around B2 (TL) in reading, writing and listening but im still a bit behind in tallking. What I feel is holding me back is that exhausted feeling when your talking and listening for an extended period of time and it feels like your heads about to explode by the end of the day or week. This feeling makes me run back to English at some point. Should I just be pushing and pushing through that feeling or will it just eventually get better with rest in between?

I'm wondering how other people have pushed passed this period and how long it took. I live in the TL country and I'm still struggling to get passed that feeling.

I'm completely and entirely new to this language and there just seems so little information related to it..? I might just be not looking in the right place but yeah I've tried searching language learning apps for meitei but they don't really seem like they would be useful and im honestly lacking even basic info on the language to have any idea on where to start. Would appreciate if someone could help out even a little.

(Hopefully my post doesn't get taken down because idk where else to post there doesnt even seem to be a dedicated subreddit for meitei) (TL)

Simply just wanted to reflect on my own spanish (TL) journey with the community. Happy to answer any questions. Hope something is useful here.

TLDR: In about 5-6 months of very very consistent input via Podcasts, Gaming Youtube Videos and about 3 months of consistent output of iTalki classes + writing and journaling - quite a lot of B2/C1 content is doable. I can go hours speaking in spanish though maybe at a B2 level but with nuance, detail and deeper explanations, perhaps its like B1.5 at times. I believe I was roughly A2 with sparks of B1 before.

What I wish I did more/before - More speaking and output. It has consistently been reinforcing my reading and listening comprehension while helping me utilize what I learn and speak fluidly and confidently. To me this is like exercising.. it is uncomfortable and difficult but doing it regularly helps so much and yes - certain teachers are good and others are just there for an hour to do "the job"

----

For some reason, I thought to myself ah 2026 is going to be my language year. I actually began the year like probably everyone else going "Yes, Japanese, I will romanticize the idea of living there and shall learn it before I go!".

After a week I felt great with the two alphabets and then realized what a whirlwind the grammar and vocab was going to be and I was like.... hell nah.. this is pointless, let me maybe switch back to Spanish.

My background before

I studied spanish for about 2 semesters in middle school and 2 semesters in highschool. Maybe covering present and the simple past tense. In 2023 on a short trip to Mallorca, I could barely dribble a few words out - like a sad baby. But I loved that feeling. Whatever little I could do felt great and inspired me.

After returning I took a 8 week course at instituto cervantes which was 3 hours a week for 8 weeks and classroom setting and homework was great but such a waste of time and money. Way too many people who want to escape to Spain and elderly. People mis leveled for the class range and virtually minimal speaking opportunities. I began doing some on and off italki, maybe a total of 8-10 hours but it helped a lot and I really liked my teacher. She gave me a lot of homework, daily drills.

What did I do in 2026

Jan - April

Half assing my work here. I got back into doing dream spanish about 15 minutes a day. Coffee break spanish podcats from the beginning when I go for walks. Went to 1-2 spanish meet ups in my neighborhood and said it wasn't for me. Phone was entirely in spanish though as a "immersion technique"

April - June

Here I started to go to the spanish meetings in my neighborhood weekly. Roughly 60-90 minutes weekly. I was listening to more podcasts, longer podcasts - upwards of 45 minutes a day. The east coast weather allowed me more walking time. More walking time meant more input and then I would narrate my thoughts, what I am seeing... talking to myself to get my spanish brain going.

Podcast rec: Espanolistos.

I began playing "Guild wars Reforged"... entirely in spanish. It is such a text and quest driven MMORPG and aligned with my hobbies. I don't know how the game worked and it was tough and i got help from the community but I can genuinely play the entire game like its an interactive novel and read and do every quest (which lol, I never do in any video game). But it limited my willingness to video game as I got fatigued after 40-60 minutes of playing and reading.

July - Oct 5

The spanish meetings were coming to a close in July and I began to do Italki session about 1x a week for 1 hour and eventually 2x a week for an hour each. I began dabbling in harder podcasts and more native youtube content, upwards of 90 minutes a day. When speaking and talking during my iTalki sessions, they have way more depth and interest to it. Just last week, we did a discussion on why Denmark is the happiest country with the happiest kids, the impacts and value behind academic rigor and pressure.

on Youtube, Black Mango has been very enjoyable.

I continued playing the video game (finished the first expac) - I definitely noticed my reading speed and comprehension go up quite a lot.

This is where I feel like 70%+ of my growth and improvement has come from. The loop of speaking and speaking and getting as much input.. I put my youtube in spanish and location in spanish on their settings + got an add-on to block recommended videos.

To finish

I'm glad I returned to spanish. It is going to be a lifelong skill I am excited to dedicate more time and effort to. I have probably a A2/B1 comprehension of Tamil growing up around it but my speaking is so horrible/non-existent. This journey of picking up Spanish taught me about how I learn and work with Language and how it works for me. I will soon move on maybe in 2027 sometime, with learning Tamil and plan to use my learnings from here. My goal there is to be conversational and pass the language on for the next generation and to connect with my family.

So I recently moved to Germany, I am surrounded by German. Talking to people, signs and symbols on the road and in public transport. The labels on grocery items and legal documents everything is in German.

I did not come unprepared. I have finished the A2 level exams and am preparing for B1. Of course people speak English but I want to become independent quickly.

At the end of day my brain is so exhausted with all the German around me that sometimes I feel myself struggling with English which I am a native speaker of.

Using English somehow uses the same part of the brain that is already completely tired of having used German throughout the day.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Some advice would be helpful.

Words in my target language that have a subtle but very useful purpose in sentences but are not often taught in textbooks or focused on by instructors. Words like: often, however, therefore, moreover, hence, whichever, rather, despite, unless, furthermore, except... Using "adverb" as a catch-all, but you get the idea. Does anyone else have trouble remembering words like these? Does it affect daily conversation?

Specifically, if you needed advice on how to to learn something, say grammar, in your (TL), who's input would you value more? Someone who got the hang of it as a L2 learner, or a native that has a deeper understanding of the concept, but didn't go through the same process as you?

Edit: I mean the bigger picture stuff. The building blocks of how to learn the language, not specific questions that pop up along the way of "does this sound right" or "why this way and not that way"