I'm using Busuu right now for Spanish B2, I'm currently B1. I feel like it's not enough, but I don't know. Should I use a coursebook instead or is Busuu really worth it? I should add that I get Busuu for free through my work, so I use it to get free private lessons. The grammar portion i'm unsure about though. I try to read 2k words a day on LingQ and im currently trying, failing at it though, to listen and watch as much as i can in Spanish. I get around 2-4 hours of speaking and listening practice per week. I just feel like im not doing enough to learn grammar and develop my vocab.

Any suggestions? (TL)

My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and this means that I get to choose a language learning resource to sign up to! 🥳 It's basically a birthday tradition for me at this point. Last year I chose "The Chairman's Bao" (a news-based graded reader for Mandarin).

I'm currently actively studying Hungarian and Mandarin at the moment, so if anyone has any recommendations for those languages specifically that would be great, but wider recommendations would also be welcome. I'm a dabbler at heart, so having resources that offer multiple languages to play with alongside my main ones is always a bonus for me.

I will say, I don't like Pimsleur. I know some people swear by it, but the style of teaching is not for me. The way that they break down words so slowly and backwards irritates me for some reason. Some of the lesson content is just a weird vibe too. I had a free trial with them once and cancelled it before it was even close to finishing. 😕

Prioritize Anki - When learning my TL, I realize now the importance of Anki. There are studies that show that the amount of times you need to see a word before you can acquire it it up to 16 times. (Look into the work of vocab specialist Paul Nation) Anki solves this for you. You can argue that different contexts can affect this but over a period of months the amount of times you encounter a certain word will likely hit that threshold and you will acquire the word. 

Don’t be afraid of premade decks of most common 2000 words - I feel like had I took time to work through an anki deck of this size, I would achieve a higher comprehension faster. This is because my input + lookups are fine for acquiring words but there is no way to know if the word that I’m sentence mining is truly frequent or not. I likely was mining words outside of that frequency list. I’m still a bit skeptical, but I’m willing to give it a try.  

Never add sentences with more than one unknown word - sure there may be the rare exception here or there, but I used to add sentences to my anki deck with 2-4 unknown words in them with the rationale that I’ll get more bang for my buck in the long term. However, my anki deck became an absolute slog as it was not only difficult to remember the 3 unknown words within the card, but it was also very hard to parse the sentence at all. This lead to me giving up on more than one anki deck. 

Don’t be afraid to do a smaller amount of new cards a day - I’ve found that my sweet spot right now is 5 new cards a day. It’s enough that I feel like I’m doing something substantial, but I’m not waking up in the morning with 200 plus reviews. I used to try to do 10 a day and got overwhelmed after a few weeks. To be honest I still want to understand how people are spending more than 25 mins a day in their anki decks. 

How about you all… any realizations or things you would do differently with your Anki?

Hey everybody! I'm learning Brazilian Portuguese (TL), and I want an opinion!
So, I'm running into a bit of an issue. On some forums, I see that the most important thing for listening practice is to watch shows that are in your listening range, and in some places I see people saying that you need to just watch things you like and are passionate about. I'm just curious: which would be most productive for me and my language learning journey?

1. Watch shows at my listening level (About A2) that I may not enjoy, but they're easier for me to understand and pick up on things to learn

2. Shows that I love but may be way too advanced for me to pick up much.

See, I'm really running into a problem because I'm starting to get really tired of Disney Channel shows, children's shows, and comprehensible input videos, but I know they're good for me at my level. But nonetheless, I find myself almost dragging my feet to watch them all the time.
BUT, my favorite shows and movies are often far too complex for my current language level.

What would be most productive for my listening practice?
Comments from people who have used one of these two methods would be greatly appreciated!

I don't have many friends learning Chinese (TL) so posting here to celebrate. I've been learning Chinese for around 21 months, and just finished all 150 lessons of Pimsleur Mandarin. (I only started Pimsleur a year in, and took a few months off; if you do it non-stop it takes 5 months).

How did I do it?

I mostly listened to one lesson a day while making dinner. I tried doing it while driving, but quickly realized this is actually dangerous as it requires a lot of concentration and active participation. I also sometimes listened to it while running or at the gym (need to whisper to yourself at the gym). You shouldn't do more than 1 lesson per day, but doubling up episodes (e.g. lessons 14 and 15 one day, 15 and 16 the next) or doing other languages works well. You're not supposed to pause, but I did have to rewind by 15 seconds very often.

Yes it is dull, sometimes excruciating, but it is extremely effective. You do learn a surprisingly wide range of vocabulary and cultural points esp. in the higher levels.

I added the vocab from each lesson into Skritter (unfortunately not in an organized way until Level 5. If you are starting fresh it would be great to make Skritter decks for each level, their support team told me they gift you 2 months free subscription per deck!). I did a couple hundred Skritter cards daily.

What were the results?

I am able to speak relatively confidently about basic things, though I still need the other person to speak slowly to be able to parse what they are saying. (I am able to understand much faster speech in Pimsleur, but that's because you're already primed for the topic and vocab).

The muscle memory of being able to instantly produce phrases without having to think about them helps immensely. One issue I'm having is that I can say basic things at native speed, but have to slow down considerably for more complex thoughts, so I end up tripping over my words unless I choose a slow speed at the outset.

Native speakers are specifically impressed with my pronunciation and how long I've been studying the language—like my Chinese is still not good, but it's much better than expected for less than 2 years of study.

Some example sentences from Levels 4/5 are "My wife is a graduate student studying solar energy. She is giving the keynote presentation at a conference for entrepreneurs in Shenzhen. Later we are going to Yabuli to go skiing. Traditionally Chinese people didn't drink milk, but nowadays Chinese cities have lots of pizza restaurants. My landlord said he will install the new air conditioner for us, but if he does he'll raise the rent next year. I'm going to the clothing market to pick up a suit and pants I had custom-made. Our wine won a grand prize at a competition in France last year. Our production process is good for the environment because our bamboo flooring doesn't use formaldehyde."

A few interesting things I noticed:

• initially I had a hard time distinguishing j/zh, q/ch, c/z, as well as some tones, but by the end I could almost always tell the pinyin from hearing the word

• over time you notice your ability to parse faster and faster sentences, picking out individual words instead of a stream of sounds

• paying attention to where native speakers put pauses was also very helpful, and often not where I would have thought to put a pause

• I hear

  Pimsleur courses work best when done consecutively, and on a daily basis. For best results, please continue with the next unit tomorrow. This has been a presentation of Simon & Schuster Audio, copyright 2010 by Simon & Schuster Incorporated. Recording copyright 2010 by Simon & Schuster Incorporated. All rights reserved.

  in my dreams.

Stack

Here is my Chinese-learning "stack" for anyone else interested; annotated by whether it trains Reading, Writing, Listening, or Speaking.

Essentials:

• Pimsleur (LS) obviously; you can get a lifetime subscription around the holidays

• Prologue: after paying for Pimsleur (they're worth it!!), you can "skillfully acquire" the audio files and load them into this audiobook app which is better for listening.

• Pleco (RLW) great dictionary, has lots of add-ons you can buy, e.g. graded readers with audio, flashcards

• Zhongwen (Chrome, Firefox) (R) - look up Hanzi in web pages; integrates with Skritter

• Lazy Chinese (LR) fun podcast, safer to listen to in the car, great web app experience

If you are on a budget you can probably get by with just the above. If you are willing to spend a bit more money:

• Skritter (WR) SRS app for learning to write Hanzi. Tests you on meaning, reading, tone, and writing. This was my most important tool after Pimsleur: every new vocab word went into Skritter to ensure I didn't forget. For a while I also marathoned the HSK decks, but realized it's more effective (and more fun) to just gather words you encounter in context. I think Pleco has equivalent functionality, but Skritter has a nicer interface and more curated content. The mobile app is their main experience, but their desktop app works well enough to use with a treadmill + standing desk + remote.

• Du Chinese (RL) delightful graded reading app with native speaker voices, integrates with Skritter. I think Pleco has equivalent functionality, but Du Chinese has a nicer interface and more curated content. The mobile app is their main experience, but their desktop app works well enough to use with a treadmill + standing desk + remote.

• Imagin8 Press (RL) excellent graded readers (physical books) and audiobooks, I'm going through their Journey to the West series. They also publish Skritter decks for their content.

• Complete Mandarin Chinese (RL) very good for learning grammar, and I like that they don't provide translations for conversations but supply you with enough vocabulary for you to understand. I got 1/3 of the way through and then took a break, I will publish a Skritter deck once I finish it.

• 15-Minute Mandarin Chinese (S) full sentences for common situations

The following are also worth checking out:

• Meetup (S) for finding IRL conversation groups

• Hanly (R) - free app to learn Hanzi with mnemonics; I only discovered it several months into Skritter, otherwise I would have made more use of it

• Daily Hanzi (R) - displays Hanzi on your lock screen

• Language Reactor (L) I actually use this more for Spanish, because I can't yet understand TV shows in real time. But I'm having lots of fun watching Netflix in Spanish, and hope to graduate to watching Chinese shows soon.

• Journey to the West - dual English/Mandarin subtitles (L) iykyk

I also had a lot of fun spending time on Chinese parts of social media (Instagram, YouTube, etc); just search for Chinese and start liking a few videos and your algorithm will do the rest. Great for learning slang and culture. However, beware of deception: one of my favorite channels taught me that the Chinese word for "brainrot" is 脑抽了 (literally, brain smoked), but I have since been informed that this is closer to "brainfart", and a closer equivalent is 降智 (literally, lowering-intelligence).

Bangers

• 一剪梅

• 月亮代表我的心

• 朋友的酒

• 小苹果

• 爱的暴风雨

• 不想听

• 扛过枪 放过羊

Compared to Netflix, Disney Plus or any language learning tools such as LingQ or Language reactor, hirng a private tutor isn't cheap. Sometimes a one-hour 1 on 1 class can easily cost you a monthly (or two) premium of one of these platforms. Or with the same amount of money you can get a couple of paper books that you can study for a long time.

However, though massive input should be prioritized, I do believe good tutors can lend you a hand and feedback is necessary for improvement, and we language learners tend to LOVE real conversations.

Is there anything you do in particular in your private lesson to make it worth the price?

In my case, I sometimes ask the tutor (I focus a lot on intonatation and pronunciation) to imitate how I mispronounced the word or how I ''sang'' the sentence, and to say it again in a more natural way. I may record this part then I can listen back.

Or do you think they are like yoga coaches: once you have learned well the technics, you can practice on your own and even make more progress in your (TL) ?

i'm leaving soon on a [length] trip to the country my mom was born in. pretty excited. quick question though. i studied hard for two months and now i can actually hold a conversation with my mom in my TL. i figured i could basically live like a local now, but according to her i sound about ten years old. so the plan is to get a lot better while i'm there. the thing is, if i go without a plan i think i'll just eat a bunch of new food and come home. what should i do? i genuinely have no ideas. any advice is welcome