The live method by Essay Universe

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Author: Ott Ojamets Distributor: © Embassy of Education

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Publisher: Creative Intelligence Group OÜ 2016 Printhouse: Trükkal OÜ All rights reserved. “The LIVE-method” is a part of the LIVE Language Learning system. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or from the publisher.

ISBN 978-9949-33-376-9

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TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

6 7 9 13

PREPARATION FOR LIFTOFF

15 16 19 21 24 26 28

FIRST CHAPTER - WORDS

30 35 35 38 43 44 47

SECOND CHAPTER - LISTENING/PRONUNCIATION

48 53 55 58 61 74 76

WHY A NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING METHOD? HOW CAN LANGUAGE LEARNING BE NATURAL? WHY TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS DON`T WORK?

CONSCIOUS LEARNING VS. UNCONSCIOUS LEARNING WHY DO PERSONAL INTERESTS MATTER? WHAT KIND OF LEARNER AM I? SOME EXAMPLES OF ENGAGING MY LEARNING STYLE CHOOSING A LANGUAGE KEYS FOR A SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT! HOW TO MEMORIZE WORDS? HOW TO USE MEMORIZATION TOOLS? MNEMONIC TECHNIQUES HOW TO PRONOUNCE WORDS CORRECTLY? HOW MANY WORDS SHOULD I LEARN? KEY IDEAS FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER

HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS? LET`S SET SOME GROUND RULES HOW TO FIND THE PERFECT KEYWORD? FINDING THE PERFECT LISTENING MATERIAL SOME ADDITIONAL OPTIONS FOR DAILY LISTENING KEY IDEAS FROM THE SECOND CHAPTER

THIRD CHAPTER - TEXTS AND IMITATING

78 81 87 89 93 99 103 106

FOURTH CHAPTER - SUMMARY

108 113 114 119

IMITATING THE LANGUAGE USING INTEREST RELATED ARTICLES HOW TO MEMORIZE SENTENCES EFFICIENTLY? HOW TO DEAL WITH GRAMMAR? MOST COMMON VERBS A SIMPLE ROADMAP FOR LEARNING THE MOST COMMON VERBS DECLENSION TABLES KEY IDEAS FROM THE THIRD CHAPTER GUIDELINES FOR DAILY LANGUAGE LEARNING LIVE-GUIDELINES FOR BEGINNERS LIVE-GUIDELINES FOR INTERMEDIATES

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INTRODUCTION

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First of all - welcome! You are reading the LIVE-method. It´s an innovative language learning solution that gives you everything - every tool and all the knowledge that you need to learn basically any language out there. There are more than 25 languages in our language selection at the moment and we are adding new languages constantly. The LIVE-method is a combination of an e-book and a webenvironment. The e-book is like a guide that will direct you to the goal of efficient language learning and it will teach you to use all these learning tools and materials that you will find in our web-environment. It´s important that you understand the foundation and the main ideas of this innovative learning system before you start using it, and therefore we will first explain you where this methodology comes from and what its foundation is. All this to make sure that we are on the same page before you start with specific learning steps. WHY A NEW LANGUAGE LEARNING METHOD? Often when learning we mimic the actions of others, and we presume that it’s the best way. But that is not always the case. This same principle also applies to learning languages. If you want to learn languages fast and efficiently then you actually have to do things very differently and the following book will be your guide in this journey. I’ll describe in a few words how this methodology was conceived and the main reasons for publishing this book in the first place. 10 years ago I went to university to learn French and Spanish. Before that I had also studied several languages, but never acquired the level that I was hoping

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for. At university the learning process was also pretty slow, and because of that my motivation dropped to zero – I had the feeling that I was no good at memorizing words, understanding French dialogue (which to my ears sounded like Chinese for a really long time) and languages altogether were something really hard, not playful, interesting and natural, as they actually should be. I remember studying Spanish in a group with 15-20 students and consequently I only got a really basic level after learning the language for 2 years and I was never really into it. Despite the fact that I wanted to speak in Spanish, for some reason the learning experience in the classroom didn´t engage me – so I felt down and lost hope of speaking fluent Spanish some day. I´m sure that you have felt the same at some point in your life and you can really relate. A few years later - after researching about innovative language learning, to be better at languages myself - I understood that the feeling of having low motivation for doing the homework and feeling down in general was the direct result of how I was taught – the learning methodology and its foundation was basically built on the wrong values and beliefs, which don´t work with human beings in general. And when I say that they don´t work in human beings, then I mean it literally. The traditional language learning methods don´t take into account how our minds, bodies and psychology work to acquire a language in the first place. I understood that the way that we learn languages at school and in language schools everywhere – from the US to Japan – is fundamentally wrong and has to be changed to get good results that everybody is looking for. 8

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This was a revelation for me and after having this epiphany I started researching everything there is to know about efficient and innovational language learning. I wanted to understand how we as human beings acquire languages in the most efficient and natural way. This process took about 5 years, during which time I tested everything myself, trying to learn different languages individually. And with every experiment and every new idea I came closer to the understanding that the key idea here is NATURAL LANGUAGE LEARNING. After much research and preparation I published the LIVEmethod as a book for the first time 5 years ago and today an international language learning company is based on the foundations of this same book and web-environment that I once created. Today more than 25,000 people allover Europe use the LIVE-method actively on a daily basis and this number is growing fast. This book is the latest version of the LIVE-method, which has been polished and updated to give you the best results in learning any language you need. HOW CAN LANGUAGE LEARNING BE NATURAL? For example, how did you learn your mother tongue? Did your mother come to you, as a baby, and start repeating the conjugational patterns for verbs that you really need to know? I presume that the answer is no. This question even seems a little silly to you - doesn´t it? But isn´t this the way we acquire languages at school? We take a holistic system, hack it into pieces and try to learn it. This is basically the system that traditional language learning uses, isn´t it? 9

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Now, if you think about your learning manuals at schools then there are subjects that are formed into little exercises to make learning as easy as possible for you. Rather than being individually tailored, they have been designed for the mysical “average learner” that actually doesn´t exist. This is a big problem and we will adress it later on. Let´s come back to the example of your mother and verb conjugation tables. This silly example carries us forward to the right path and to the right questions. If my mother didn´t teach me how to use the grammar of the language and she actually didn´t teach me words or verbs then how is it possible that I could use the language at a very early age? Let´s go even further. How is it possible that many have learned to understand and to speak several languages just by watching cartoons from the television as a child? I´m sure that you know many people like that. I´m one as well. I watched German cartoons as a child and later on I realized – as a teenager – that I could actually understand German very well. Looking back, I understood the language without consciously realizing I did so, because it was so natural for me. Isn´t it weird? I´m sure that you or someone among your friends or family has had the same experience. It´s very typical. But how is it possible to learn a language like that? Without learning any sentences or words separately? And to speak a language absolutely well. Doesn´t it sound profoundly divorced from the way we learn languages at school using learning manuals and dictionaries? But why is there such a difference in these approaches and what is the reason behind that? 10

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Finding the answer to these questions is actually the key to understanding efficient language learning and I can promise you that if you use the following learning methodology exactly as it´s described then you will excel at languages as well. It just requires a different perspective. We need to change everything you have known and experienced about language learning and give you a concrete structure and tools that you can use on a daily basis. This is exactly what the LIVE-method is all about! BUT WHAT ABOUT OTHER LEARNING SOLUTIONS? Now – if you´re reading this and you´ve come into contact with different language learning solutions online that give you the opportunity to click and write (and sometimes even repeat) words and sentences, then you may be thinking: “All these online solutions like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo and etc are actually quite good and I´ve heard that they´ve helped many people”. And you´re absolutely right – they have helped people to acquire languages, but the question here remains “How efficient is it really?” What you will see throughout this book is that no computer program can ever connect perfectly with an individual person, because all computer programs are created for the “average” learner. But this learner doesn´t exist. You may think that it does but it doesn´t. There is too much scientific proof otherwise. And if something is created for everybody, then it´s actually created for noone. This is an important idea that you really need to become accustomed to, because it´s one of the foundational ideas of the LIVE-method. This is something that you will see very clearly in this book as well – if particular learning activities work well for one person, then they may be highly inefficient for another. Therefore in traditional language learning the results are

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random and can not be controlled.

This is the main reason for why the LIVE-methodology is based on the individual choices you make, once you are aware of the manner in which you learn the most efficiently. Therefore itÂ´s important that you get to know yourself, before you take the plunge into learning a new language. The main idea of the LIVE-methodology is not to provide you with a pre-prepared online learning environment, but instead to give you all the knowledge that you need to find and use all the best innovational tools that you will need to excel in language learning. And the second main idea is to give you all this, no strings attached, totally for free. Everything that you need to learn a language very efficiently is available on the internet and after reading this book you will never need to buy a learning manual or pay for a subscription to a learning program ever again, because you will see that everything that you need is available for free if you have the knowledge of what tools to use and the way to achieve the best results. And we will give you this knowledge in a very simple and powerful package. Only then is it possible to really engage your individuality, because you will harness your inner powers as a learner and as a human being!

I have been an expert in innovating language learning for a long time and I can assure you that if you take in account your personal interests, individual strengths and the whole learning system is optimized for your individuality (your goals and needs), then you can start speaking almost any language in a mere 4-5 months without the need to go to any language schools or take any language classes. And

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this book and our web-environment is all that you need for that. If you´re the kind of person who needs support then I can tell you that we also provide learning solutions that include a personal language tutor and our experience shows that people who come to us to start learning a language from zero - using the possibility to have a personal tutor in our successful LIVE-learning - will start speaking the language well in an average of 3-4 months. Again, it means that individually it´s possible to get to a good level in 4-5 months and with our special tutored LIVE Learning system in 3-4 months. That´s really quick if you compare it to other language learning solutions and we are very proud of this fact. WHY TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS DON`T WORK? The ugly truth is that about 90% of the activities that we do in language classes have a very-very low efficiency and it´s basically wasting our time. There are many reasons for that and we will analyze them thoughout the book. It´s basically simple science. Therefore, if you have had bad language learning results in the past then it has one and only one reason: your individual interests, strengths and goals were not taken into account and the learning system didn´t support your individuality. The same applies for everybody else with no exceptions. And our goal is to give you every bit of knowledge and every single tool that you need to start learning the right way.

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To help you start the learning process, we have based the whole LIVE-method on principal ideas that we call KEY IDEAS. In the end of every chapter there is a list of those key ideas that you can use to start learning the right away. There is also a special chapter at the end of the book where we bring all the KEY IDEAS together so that you can easily have an overview of all that you have accomplished. The following language learning approach is presumably very new to you and therefore we want to make the transition as comfortable as possible. The next chapter “Preparing for liftoff” has exactly this purpose – to go through some preparational steps that would give you a better understanding of the methodology, before you start using it on a daily basis to learn whatever language you need. We will look into what are some of the hidden secrets in innovative language learning and we will get you ready for a totally new language learning experience. So step onto the runway and let´s get ready for liftoff!

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PREPARATION FOR LIFTOFF

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CONSCIOUS LEARNING VS. UNCONSCIOUS LEARNING

To achieve great results in language learning you have to know how to start your inner processes - in your memory and in your body - to acquire information fast and then your body and mind will do the rest. Language learning is something so natural – it´s something that we have all done in at least once in our lifetime. Therefore the answer to finding the secret to language learning is already there inside all of us. We just have to understand how to unlock it! Our bodies are immensely powerful – every second there are billions and billions of processes going on in our cells and in our brains and it´s something that we can´t understand by reasoning. But consciously, how many things can you think about at any given time? Maybe a few - not more. The same idea applies to language learning as well and to understand it better we have to make an important distinction between conscious and unconscious learning.

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WHAT IS CONSCIOUS LEARNING? It´s something that we do by reasoning. A good example of conscious learning is the object of the traditional learning system. For example in the language class the teacher takes the foreign language, divides it into small bits and then tries to offer it to you in the hopes that it will be easier for you to understand. Usually it´s already prepared for the teachers by the people who create the learning manuals. They divide the language into simplified exercises and simplified parts. It´s basically removing things from out of their context in order to make them easier to digest. We have all experienced this thousands of times. WHAT IS UNCONSCIOUS LEARNING? It´s something that we all do automatically, when our mind and body feel that the new knowledge is important to us and engages us in a special way. Therefore our mind captures the new knowledge automatically and with great success. To simplify this difficult notion: it´s something that we do naturally when we are genuinely interested in the subject that we are learning and if we – our body and mind – feel that the language environment surrounding us is as genuine as possible. Why is this important you might ask? The answer is simple. Conscious learning is very slow and unconscious learning is very fast. 17

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Unconscious learning harnesses the powers of our mind and body much more than conscious learning, which is like using the tip of the iceberg of our capabilities as human beings. If we come back to the example of how I and many others have learned a language just by watching television, then this is actually one of the best examples of unconscious learning. But what is so special about this situation? Why was I as a child so engaged in watching these foreign language cartoons? The answer is simple. Because I had great interest in these cartoons. And being interested always tops everything else. Actually, being interested in the task at hand is the key idea for success that we will use in the LIVE-method as well. So - we have arrived at a very important conclusion. Personal interests are one of the key ingredient in activating your innate capabilities for language learning. Secondly, the language environment that we create in our everyday lives has to be as genuine as possible, because only then can we harness the powers that we posess.

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WHY DO PERSONAL INTERESTS MATTER? What are your biggest interests? Mine are innovational language learning, basketball (NBA), business management and recording music. That´s basically it. But why is it even important to know that and how could I use my interests to learn a language better? To answer this question, we have to start with some scientific background. There has been a large number of studies that show how using our personal interests as human beings is the most efficient way to memorize and acquire new information. A conclusion of these studies is the following: If we look at different international studies made in school systems all over the globe then we can see that usually 80% of our competence in the classroom – in actually whatever subject, not only in languages – comes from about 20% of learning materials. 20% of usual learning materials = 80% results 80% of usual learning materials = 20% results So, basically only 20% of the learning materials are usually remotely beneficial to us and the other 80% is highly inefficient. This same rule applies to all learning manuals, CD-s or anything else that you have used for language learning. But what is this 20% and why is it more efficient than the other learning materials? The answer is very simple – this 20% is directly or remotely connected to our personal interests as human beings.

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Now if we would change the way we learn and if we would ONLY use the kind of learning materials that are directly connected to our personal interests, then we can make the learning process 4-5 times faster. So, just by using the materials that are directly linked to my biggest interests, I can accelerate the learning rate by a measure of 4-5. It sounds amazing, but it´s just a simple scientific truth. Now, if we compare this idea to the way that we learn languages today at school and with private tutors, then think about how many of your learning materials have been directly connected to your personal interests. I presume that the answer is “not many”. The reason for that is simple. When someone has put together a learning manual or prepared a lesson plan, then they have never based it on your individual interests. It´s something that our educational system doesn´t do. There are several reasons for this: 1) Usually languages are learned in groups and therefore it seems to be impossible to take into account the personal interests of all the participants. 2) The teachers just don´t know how to engage personal interests as powerful learning tools Let´s continue, but keep the above in mind.

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WHAT KIND OF LEARNER AM I? Before learning anything it’s important to know what kind of learner you are. Everyone is unique and so is the way their memory works. We memorize things differently. It´s quite logical that we all have certain individual strengths and weaknesses and it is a normal part of being a human being. But when we are learning something, then usually these strengths are not taken into account and we engage our strengths and weaknesses in an inconsistent way. It´s the same as when you fill your glass with water but you don´t pour it directly into the glass but you use a sprinkler and try to fill the glass with it from a distance. It will eventually be full of water, but it isn´t really the best way to fill a glass of water, is it? This is exactly what happens in traditional language learning. But when we find out what is the most efficient way to channel new information to you personally, then we can use this knowledge with great success. The first step of getting to know yourself as a learner is to go through special learning style tests that would give you a good overview of your strengths and weaknesses as a learner. We advise you to do it right away. FOR THAT: STEP 1:

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STEP 2: Select “SIGN IN” from the main menu and enter the LIVE© web-environment 21

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STEP 3: Click on the button “TESTS”. There you will find all the necessary information about learning style tests and how to implement their results. There are several learning style tests in our webenvironment but the main one is the VAK-test that will let you know if you are a Visual, Auditive or Kinesthetic learner. When you go through the VAK-test and get the results then read them through thoroughly and print them out as well, because you will need to come back to the results during the learning process to make sure that you are doing everything according to your personal learning style. It´s also important to understand that we all have those three learning styles present at all times – just in different amounts. For example we know that about 65-70% of people have a visual dominance in their learning style, about 18-20% have an auditive dominance and 10-12% have a kinesthetic dominance. So, the strongest of those three is the dominant in our learning style. The large majority have a visual dominance. That is because we live in a world that communicates with us mainly via the Visual channels. If you have discovered the dominant aspect of your learning style then it´s important to also know your subdominant – the second strongest learning style present in your personality.

Studies show that the most common subdominant for a visual learner is kinesthetic. Therefore the most common learning style is Visual-kinesthetic.

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It´s now time for you to complete the learning style tests yourself. If you would like to read the whole book first and then come back to the tests, then you can do that. But it would actually be better if you would go through the tests at the moment, because then you will already have a good overview of yourself as a learner before reading the recommendations in this book.

Keep in mind that you have to support both your DOMINANT and SUBDOMINANT learning style while neglecting totally the style that has the minority in your personality.

HOW CAN I USE THIS KNOWLEDGE? Now when you have gone through the learning style tests and printed out the results, then it´s important to keep those results at hand because you will need them during the learning process. The most common mistake that people make is that they read the test results and conclude “Okay, I´m a visual learner, therefore I have to watch stuff”, which is a total simplification and actually doesn´t help you in any way as a visual learner. The real important stuff is in the test results themselves - the specific recommendations given in the test results. Usually these test results have 10-15 simple recommendations for what you should do to engage your learning style in the best possible way. And implementing these recommendations makes a big difference. Studies

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show that with every implemented test recommendation you can raise the efficiency of your language learning by about 20%. Therefore if you actively implement 5 recommendations from the test results, then this by itself will raise your learning efficiency by 100%. And this is something that we see in our practice on a daily basis as well – engaging your personal learning style really makes a big difference! SOME EXAMPLES OF ENGAGING MY LEARNING STYLE

A. If you´re a Visual learner then one of the recommendations in the test results is to be alone in the room when you´re learning something, because even if somebody is with you in a room just watching TV, then your results in memorizing something will drop about 20%. B. If you´re an Auditive learner and you´re learning 10 new words then doing this in silence is 20% less efficient than reading the words out loud - and even listening and repeating with the aid of a pronunciation tool - because you absorb new information aurally. C. If you´re a Visual learner then always use headphones when you´re listening to your daily listening material, because it helps you cut away the outside world and it increases the efficiency of memorizing new information.

D. If you´re a Kinesthetic learner then you have to have an enjoyable experience such as a good taste or you have to engage in a physical activity after every 15 minutes of learning, because if that doesn´t happen then your memory will receive new information very poorly from that point on. Therefore, after every 15 minutes of listening or learning you have to eat something that has a pleasurable taste, do some physical exercise or feel positive emotions,

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because all these things revitalize your memory.

Remember that the most common learning style is Visualkinesthetic – therefore if you´re a visual learner then it´s highly likely that this is important for you as well E. If you´re a Visual learner then you can´t use any learning materials that only have an auditive context and no images/video at all, because it´s highly inefficient for a Visual mind. If we take into account that the majority of people are Visual dominant then all the listening exercises that they have done at school have therefore been highly inefficient. Remember this! F. If you´re a Kinesthetic learner then the best way to do daily listening is to integrate it into your daily schedule as you are moving from one place to another, because at those times your memory is the most active. If you would like to integrate watching a video into your daily schedule, but you can´t drive a car while you´re watching a video - obviously then we advise you as a visual learner to watch the video 1-2 times with the image and then just listen to its audio, because you already have the images present in your mind! These were just some little examples of how to take the recommendations for your learning style on board. We will give you more useful advice throughout this book. But now let´s continue.

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CHOOSING A LANGUAGE The LIVE-methodology gives you the freedom to learn whatever language you wish, while still using the same system for any language you can think of. Having said that, it´s better to make an educated choice for your first language. This is what we recommend when it comes to making the choice: For starters, choose a language that is necessary for your everyday life, or that you feel being able to converse in it would improve your life in some way. This is because we are subconsciously less invested in the learning process when we know deep-down that the language in question “is not needed”; otherwise it is even more of an uphill journey than it needs to be. Which language would make your life significantly better today if you spoke it better? Which language would provide you with a more comfortable standard of living, greater contentment, or other benefits? These are the main guidelines in deciding what language to learn. Of course it´s also easier to start with a language that is not significantly different from your mother tongue. For example, at least the script (writing system) should be the same; this is because starting with a totally new learning methodology and at the same time having the challenge of learning a new script (Cyrillic or Chinese characters for example) may be a tall order for many people. It´s possible, of course, but we advise you to get some practice under your belt with something easier. We recommend that you employ the LIVE-methodology 26

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for every language learning journey you embark on. It may sound like a stereotype, but the more you train your brain with languages, the easier it is to acquire them. Now itÂ´s time for you to choose a language; we wish you a wonderful learning experience!

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KEYS FOR A SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT! A. As you read the book do the activities as they come up. For example, when we speak about the most common words, look them up in our web-environment. That way we can be sure that your reading experience will be hands on! B. Go to the LIVE web-environment at www.livelanguagelearning. eu and select “SIGN IN” from the main menu. Then register yourself as a user and sign in to get all the good stuff! Also memorize your user name and password, because you will be using the site a lot!

C. When you encounter the pointing finger it means that you have come upon a very useful bit of advice. Read the advice from the perspective of your personal learning style.

D. The key sign marks the place at the end of each chapter where all the key points are brought together and summarised.

E. When you see the question mark you have come to a frequently asked question, which we have been asked during our years working on innovative language learning and helping people achieve great results. Should you have a question that you can´t find the answer to in the book feel free to write to us at info@livelanguagelearning.eu

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Now weÂ´re all set for you to start with the LIVEmethod and we wish you a great language learning experience!

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FIRST CHAPTER WORDS

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Now that you’ve chosen the language you want to learn, let’s move on to the first part of the methodology, the most important aspect of a language: words. Like everyone else who has gone through the education system, you have without a doubt had experience learning vocabulary. At school we have to learn thousands of words in different languages, but in a real life conversation we’re not usually able to use them. Why is this? The answer lies in the fact that we memorize these words for just a second and then we move on to learn some other words. The whole problem can be summarised as follows: a) we usually study the completely wrong words, without considering what would be useful and what would not. b) we use fundamentally wrong methods to memorize these words. On second thoughts, we usually don´t employ any methods at all, and this is where the problems begin. What would be the solution, therefore? The answer is actually quite simple – firstly, you have to understand that in everyday conversations we use a very small part of the whole vocabulary of a language. So, if you learn the most commonly used words in a given language and if you repeat these over and over again, then it is possible to understand a language really quickly. It’s true! Now imagine a situation where you start to learn a totally new language from zero. You will learn the 300 most common words in the language and know them by heart. And now you take a newspaper article about a subject that you are personally interested in and you try to understand it. Research says that in a situation like this you will

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understand about 50-60% of this article from the overall context. This is wonderful, isn´t it? And at the same time quite logical as well. But what happens when we learn more words from the list of most commonly used words? If we look at the research then it tells us the following: the 75 most commonly used words make up 40% of occurrences in real life situations the 200 most commonly used words make up 50% of occurrences in real life situations the 524 most commonly used words make up 60% of occurrences in real life situations the 1257 most commonly used words make up 70% of occurrences in real life situations the 2925 most commonly used words make up 80% of occurrences in real life situations So, you can see that if you hit the 3000-word mark, then you are indeed very close to being absolutely fluent in the language in almost ANY situation that you may find yourself in. That means that if you compare this with a usual dictionary, which contains some 40 thousand words, then you can see that the large majority of the words in dictionaries are absent from everyday language situations. And going even further – if you just know the small part of the language that is used the most, then you can handle whatever life-situation that may occur in the foreign language!

When you´re starting from scratch with a language, the 3000-word limit is a tall order and we need to simplify the learning experience a whole lot. Therefore – as you see from the stats above – if you know just the 200 most commonly used words you can handle 50% of real-life occurrences in the foreign language. That’s a great start!

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On the other hand, if you already have in place a small foundation in the foreign language in question and you would like to make big strides in the language, then we advise you to take a larger list of words, for example the 1000 most commonly used words. Make sure to check the list and find out which ones you already know and which ones you don´t. If you already have a nice foundation in place in your language but you want to really build upon it fast, then take an even larger part of the most common words list and see which are new.

It´s important to stress that you should never study separate words that are outside the 3000word list, because they are very seldom used in real-life situations. And when you choose the first list of words to learn, then always start from the words that are higher on the list, because that means that they are also much more frequently used in real-life situations.

Now let´s take a look at the list of most commonly used words in your chosen language: STEP 1: Go to the LIVE web-environment. Open www. livelanguagelearning.eu – select “SIGN IN” from the main menu and sign in. STEP 2: Choose the language that you want to learn (you can always change it later on if you want to learn another language)

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If your desired language is not on our system yet, then please let us know about it at info@ livelanguagelearning.eu, and we will do our best to make it a part of our web-environment as quickly as possible! STEP 3: After you have made the language selection, a page will open and hover on the image “Most common words” and click on the “View More” button to find the list of most commonly used words in your language.

How are these words lists created? Basically a large amount of everyday texts (like newspaper articles and everything else) are put into a computer program that calculates which words are used more than the others. It´s quite a simple but powerful process! STEP 4: Scroll down the word list and discover which ones are new acquaintances, and which ones are already old friends. Now you know which words to learn, we turn our attention to what is the best way to learn them.

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HOW TO MEMORIZE WORDS? There are several ways to learn words efficiently. In our LIVE-methodology we use two powerful approaches ‒ memorization tools and mnemonic techniques ‒ together to get the best possible results. HOW TO USE MEMORIZATION TOOLS? A memorization tool is a special type of software that helps you memorize the words that you yourself choose to learn. These are powerful programs that our learners use to learn tens of new words every day and you can do it as well. And you can download and use them for free. The main idea of a memorizing program is to let you focus on the words that you need (to learn/use) and it will emphasize the words that you have a hard time memorizing, so that you would be as efficient as possible. Thus, a memorizing program basically works in an optimized manner, aligning with your personal pace and your personal needs. They are especially powerful therefore, because they take into account the way you learn best. There are a number of memorization tools out there that you can download and install onto your computer or smartphone. So, let´s find one right now that you could start using on a daily basis: STEP 1: Sign in to the LIVE web-environment by clicking “SIGN IN” from the main menu of www.livelanguagelearning. eu STEP 2: Choose the language that you are interested in. 35

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STEP 3: Hover over the image “YOUR MNEMO TOOLS” and click on “View More” to find several of them for Windows and Mac operating systems. STEP 4: Choose the one that you prefer and install it onto your computer or tablet. STEP 5: Start creating a new list of words to memorize. Take the words that you don´t know (one after another) from the list of most commonly used words and submit them to the memorizing program. STEP 6: Always add a new word into the program with the translation and always save your word list after you have finished adding new words into it. What is the best tool for translating words? Usually the word lists already include a translation, and you don´t need to worry about manually translating the words. But if you do need to translate, then we advise you to use online dictionaries, such as www.sensagent.com. You can find many different online dictionaries when you Google “Italian to English dictionary”, for example. You should avoid paper dictionaries at any cost, because studies show that they have a negative effect on a learner’s psychology, as they make the learner feel stupid. The reason is the ridiculous number of words in the dictionary and the subconscious feeling that this creates in a learner as regards their level. 36

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STEP 7: Use the program 10-15 minutes a day. How it works is that it displays words and it asks you what they mean. It´s a very straightforward approach and you will get used to it in no time. You can of course choose the study tempo yourself, but we advise you to insert at least 7-10 new words into the memorization tool every day. This will take about 5 minutes. Spend another 10-15 minutes using the program. Making a consistent effort such as this is a big part in being successful in your language learning.

Keep in mind to always add new words to the same word list – don´t create a new one. The main idea behind the memorization tool is that it will understand which words you know already and which ones you don´t and it will use a special optimized approach to help you move forward really quickly!

We advise that you start with your own word list also right away! Before long you’ll have made a great list for yourself. But now let´s move forward to the second powerful approach to memorizing words ‒ mnemonic techniques.

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MNEMONIC TECHNIQUES Here is another great way, in addition to using memorization tools, to really cement the new words in your memory. It´s mnemonic techniques. The name of this technique leaves the impression that it´s something difficult, but it´s actually quite easy to do. The main idea of a mnemonic technique is to make a meaningful connection between a new bit of information – that you wish to memorize – and already existing information in your memory structure. So, for example, if you wish to memorize a word, you don´t simply try to push it into your memory, rather you make a meaningful connection between this word and something that you already know. Let´s make an example. Let´s imagine that you would like to memorize the Icelandic word ÉG (‘me’ or ‘I’ in English). The best way to do so would be to connect it to something that you already know and that exists in your memory structure. So, are there any words that you already know and that are maybe somehow similar to the word ÉG? Maybe “EGG”? Putting the two words side-by-side, it’s quite clear that there is a similarity between them. ÉG EGG

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Now, just thinking about the fact that the word ‘I’ or ‘ME’ in Icelandic is visually similar to ‘EGG’ is usually sufficient to create such a mnemonic connection, which we need to memorize a word. However, to really make sure that the mnemonic effect happens, we have to take some additional steps in our thought process. There are three steps that we usually have to take to achieve a successful mnemonic effect: STEP 1: Find a similar word that you already know and compare it in your mind with the new word that you want to learn (such as the example of ÉG and EGG) Keep in mind that the previously learnt word that you use to memorize a new word has to be similar in a written form, not in pronunciation. And it has to have an identical beginning; at least one syllable has to be the exact same, because your memory will link these words together by their similarities. STEP 2: Think of an image where these two things are present (for example ‘I´m holding an ostrich egg’) This image has to involve the meanings of both words. Your memory has to be able to connect these words; therefore you need to help it by creating an image in your head where the two meanings are bound together. 39

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STEP 3: Use your emotions! Make sure that the image that you imagine would be as funny or as weird as possible, because we tend to memorize things better when they are out of the ordinary. Funny images are especially good for memorizing. HOW DOES IT WORK? When you think about your own experience learning words, how have you memorized them? Usually we “learn” words without a meaningful technique, just as we all did in school, for example. The problem with that is that when you just learn something and try to memorize it without a meaningful technique, you actually don´t save the knowledge into your memory at all, because you don´t give your mind the command to save it. In order to memorize something like a single word, you need to anchor it into your memory. We use the term ‘anchoring’ because it describes exactly the process that happens in the memory structure when you employ the mnemonic effect. The more connections you create between the new knowledge and the knowledge that you already have in your memory, the more anchors it will create. The more anchors a ship has in the middle of an ocean, the better it stays in place. Simple!

So, every time you want to achieve a successful mnemonic effect, make sure that you employ all three elements at once. Also try to have as much fun with this technique as you can. The more you do it the more natural it becomes.

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Remember that the best mnemonics are the ones that make you laugh! Here are some examples of efficient mnemonics: FIRST EXAMPLE Say you want to learn the French word for ‘poster’, ‘l’affiche’. You think about this word, ‘l’affiche’, and at the same time imagine a man putting up a poster with a fish on it. And really, ‘l’affiche’ sounds similar to the word ‘fish’. If you have memorized an image like this then you can recall it afterwards with ease. So, a man who puts up a poster with a fish on it. Of course: ‘L’affiche’. SECOND EXAMPLE Let’s say you want to learn the Spanish word ‘parar’, meaning ‘to stop moving’, ‘to block’, ‘to bring to a halt’. ‘Parar’ sounds a lot like ‘a parachute’ to me. At least the first syllable, which has to be the same in a mnemonic technique! So I imagine a scene where I’m standing (a parachute on my back) ready to jump from a plane. Out the door of the plane I go and after gliding in the air for a few minutes I land in a tree. I’m stuck there and can’t move. Of course! “PARAR”. “To stop moving”.

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THIRD EXAMPLE Some time ago one of my friends and I were driving in Germany and she saw the word ‘Wurf’ written on a lorry. She asked me what the word meant. I told her that it meant ‘a throw, a shot’ and asked her to use a mnemonic technique to memorize it. She thought for a while and the only similar word that came to her mind was ‘Smurf’. Then I asked her to imagine an image in which the two words were present. We joked that there should be an event in the Olympic Games where they throw smurfs instead of discuses. So, ‘Smurf-Wurf’. To this day she still remembers that word.

Many languages are connected through loan words. When you learn words think whether any of them resembles a word in your language or in some other language you know. If so, then try to memorize them exploiting this fact. In every language there are many foreign words – if you train yourself to recognize them and connect them in your memory with the words you already know, you’ll be able to learn words faster!

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HOW TO PRONOUNCE WORDS CORRECTLY? To be sure that you pronounce the words you learn correctly from day one, you need to use a pronunciation program that can imitate a native speaker in an authentic fashion. Basically you copy a word into the program, click “pronounce” and imitate out loud, repeating often. Later on we will use these programs to produce whole sentences; therefore, using these programs will be a big part of your everyday LIVE-Learning. We advise you to keep one of the pronunciation programs open at all times while you are learning with the LIVEsystem. Let´s now find a pronunciation program: STEP 1: Sign in to the LIVE web-environment by selecting “SIGN IN” from the main menu of www.livelanguagelearning. eu STEP 2: Choose the language that you are interested in. STEP 3: Hover onto the image “IMITATE THE LANGUAGE” and click on “View More” to find several good pronunciation programs that you can use from now on. STEP 4: Take a word from your list of most common words and try to imitate it with the the pronunciation program. As you just saw, it´s really simple to imitate the language in its most natural form. This is a big part of the LIVEmethodology. 43

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HOW MANY WORDS SHOULD I LEARN? Keep in mind that being almost fluent in a language means scientifically that you know the 3000 most commonly used words. But that doesn´t mean that you have to know all these 3000 words to speak well. If you read the beginning of this chapter again you will see that the difference between being 70% competent and 80% competent in a language is very small in real-life experience. To be exact: the 1257 most commonly used words make up 70% of occurrences in real life situations the 2925 most commonly used words make up 80% of occurrences in real life situations So you see that there is only a 10% difference between these two when we look at real-life experience. But there is a massive difference in how long it would take to learn 1200 or 3000 words. We have been working in innovative language learning for a long time and our daily experience with real language learners bears the above out. I´ve also had the same experience with Spanish and German myself. I felt that I really started to speak these languages well when I already had these 1200 words in my competence. Therefore, setting yourself the goal of acquiring the 1200 most commonly used words is a very smart idea, especially if you´re a beginner in a language.

Now, we have shown that learning 1200 words will give you the freedom to express yourself really well. But it doesn´t mean that that´s the first time when you will feel that you understand and speak the language. Not at all.

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Remember that... the 200 most commonly used words make up 50% of occurrences in real life situations the 524 most commonly used words make up 60% of occurrences in real life situations Therefore, if we look at the science then we can conclude that if you already have about 300 words in the foundation of competence in your language, then it´s something that you can already work with pretty well.

Why do I state the figure of 300 words? Because it´s something that our daily practice has taught us. People who have already memorized the 300 most commonly used words show massive development in comprehension and production. Therefore, it´s in a way like a threshold to pass, so that great results would start to come! We all have different lives and different goals. Let´s give you therefore some guidelines that you could use in your daily life to excel in learning the most commonly used words. SCENARIO 1: If you´re a beginner set as your goal the top 300 most commonly used words. Use the memorizing program on a daily basis for 15-20 minutes to learn at least 5-7 new words every day, until you have memorized them all. Of course, if you have more time to invest, then learn 7-10 words a day. 45

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SCENARIO 2: If you already know the top 300 most commonly used words set as your goal the 1200 most commonly used words. Learn at least 5-7 words a day, but if you want to make really quick development learn 10-12 new words a day. If you learn 12 words a day – always adding words to the same list and using the memorization tool every day for approximately 20 minutes – then it´s possible to get to the 1200-word mark in a quick 100 days. That´s something that we see with our learners all the time! SCENARIO 3: If you already know the top 1200 commonly used words, and you wish to enhance your skills even further, then we advise you not to take the total 3000 most commonly used words and learn all the words that you don´t know yet. Instead focus on imitating interest-related texts as it´s described in the Third Chapter. The reason is simple: words memorize better through a meaningful context - and it´s highly advised to those who already have the 1200-word foundation in place.

It´s important to understand that learning words other than those on the most commonly used words list is not an efficient use of your time, as those words do not occur with a great deal of frequency. For example – while the 200 most commonly used words make up 50% of an everyday text, the word at 3500th position occurs in 0.01% of instances, and therefore we can conclude that it would be unnecessary to know word at number 3500! We advise you to never go past the words on the list of 3000 most commonly used words and study only the words on this list and not anything else! It´s even better if you stop at 1200 words!

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KEY IDEAS FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER Find the list of the most commonly used words in your chosen language from the LIVE webenvironment: www.livelanguagelearning.eu Choose a section of the word list that you would like to start learning and print it out. If youÂ´re a total beginner then start with the top 300 words. If you already know the first 300, then start with the top 1200 words. Do everything according to your current language level. Underline the words that are new to you. Start using a memorizing program that you found from the LIVE web-environment and start to insert the new words into the program. A sensible rate is 7-10 words per day. Do that every day for at least 15-20 minutes and add words to the same existing word list. Listen to the pronunciation of every word with translate.google.com and write it in the memorization program with your own words, so that you could reproduce the correct pronunciation again later on. If you already know all the 1200 most commonly used words then donÂ´t learn any separate words at all and instead work with texts as described in the Third Chapter. 47

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SECOND CHAPTER LISTENING/PRONUNCIATION

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Now let´s move on to the second element in the LIVEmethodology, which is creating yourself a language environment through daily listening. Our practice shows that using this learning element consistently – on a daily basis – is the most important foundation for achieving great results. Therefore we advise you to use this element exactly as described in the following chapter. IS THERE A RIGHT AND WRONG WAY TO LISTEN TO A LANGUAGE? But before finding your first listening material, let´s discuss the importance of daily listening. And let´s start with a question. Do you know someone who as a child watched television in a foreign language and started to understand and speak the language without any pre-existing knowledge and without studying it at school? I´m sure that you have a friend or relative who has learned a language exactly like that. I experienced the same thing with German as a child. When I was little I watched German cartoons on a daily basis and in high-school I “discovered” that I could understand German. Before that point I hadn’t even realised that I understood it, because I had never given it a moment’s thought. It was simply a natural part of my daily life as a child – to understand the cartoons that I was watching when I turned on the TV. But let´s take a look at how I started to understand a language by just watching cartoons and listening to it. How is that even possible? Doesn´t it sound irrational that you

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show a child cartoons with some reasonable consistency – without them having any pre-existing knowledge of the words and grammar of the language – and they start to understand the language. How does that even happen? If you were to ask a friend who has learned a language like that, then they would tell you that it is something that happened automatically without them even thinking about it, that it wasn´t something that he or she was consciously thinking about. The friend just wanted to understand the cartoons, but little by little they understood more and more, until the cartoons made sense. Your friend might even tell you that they don´t remember even watching the cartoons without understanding them. This is because the way he or she acquired the language was natural. This rarely happens to people following only traditional language learning systems. Traditional language learning would even tell you that it´s not possible. At the same time, the people who have learned languages in this natural manner will tell you that they don´t know the names of the declensions or conjugations, but they still correctly employ the grammar of the given language, because their understanding of the grammar has developed automatically within their language function, without them needing to make a conscious effort to learn all the little details of that same grammar.

Now, when you think about how you learned a language at school then there had to be preparations made before you could start listening to something. The teachers told you to learn a certain amount of vocabulary and then you were ready to start listening to an audio text where two people where speaking about something and you had to consciously make an effort to understand what was being

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talked about. Nothing about this situation was natural.

In all likelihood the whole experience was mind-numbingly boring and thoroughly unenjoyable. But as a child, not once did anyone tell me to watch those cartoons in German. I myself wanted to do it, no matter what. So what is the difference between these two situations when it comes to learning efficiency? Why was my mind totally open in one situation as a child, without anyone needing to push me to learn, but totally closed in the other? The first major difference brings us back to a subject we covered in the introduction: YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS. When your interests as a learner are taken in account and put at the center of the learning process, then your mind opens up and takes in everything that you have to learn almost automatically. But if you are placed in an environment or context that is not directly concerned with your personal interests then your mind will shut all the channels through which information travels the most efficiently and the learning process becomes slow, unmotivating and unenjoyable. ItÂ´s as simple as that. But letÂ´s ask ourselves again, how is it possible that someone learns thousands of words in a language by just watching television? Without ever writing them on a piece of paper or without investing time in learning these words one at a time? The answer here leads us to our second powerful keyword: CONTEXT. 51

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It´s the visual context of watching a cartoon that will generate meaning automatically in your memory and this will develop a language in a gradual and consistent way. The same thing happens when you move to a foreign country. Your mind and your body understand that in order to cope well, and be happy, in this new environment, it needs to acquire the skills to do so. Therefore, it will start acquiring the language in a very concentrated way, which you would never be able to simulate consciously using memory tricks or the like. It just doesn´t work that way. Therefore, the only way to start acquiring a language at a quick pace is to make your body and mind believe that you need this language in order to improve your life and that on a daily basis you inhabit an environment where competence in this language is really important in order to be successful. There is no other way. Of course, all of us cannot live in Paris when we´re learning French, but here is the trick, you can make your body believe that it is in the target-language environment by simply listening to the language on a daily basis in a very special way. We discuss exactly this point in this chapter. Therefore, follow our guidelines exactly as they are described below and you too will be able to create a situation where you simulate the target-language environment in your everyday life. Now that we have touched on all the important keywords that we have to take into account in our daily listening, let´s run through them once again:

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A. ENGAGE YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS B. BE MINDFUL OF THE CONTEXT C. CREATE A GENUINE LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS? If we look at what happens in a situation like this – when automatic and efficient learning occurs – we will understand that the notion of learning itself can never be at the forefront of the whole process. Instead, the notion of learning has to be as hidden as much as possible, because when you “learn something consciously” then you are the least efficient at doing it. Basically, if your mind feels that you´re “learning something” consciously, then it is less efficient than just “listening about things that I like”. Think about your life and you will see that we are right. Another thing that is a catalyst in this situation is the most important keyword “NEED”. As a child I never wanted to understand these cartoons. Rather I NEEDED to, because they were interesting and I felt the natural urge to get behind the meaning. So, if we use these two powerful notions – INNER NEED + INTEREST – then our system will start to acquire a language automatically if we place ourselves in a language environment that is directly linked to our deepest interests as a human being. Exactly! 53

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This is a powerful idea that, if used the right way, will help you start speaking a language faster than you ever thought possible. And at the same time itÂ´s something that is never taken into account in language learning manuals or by language schools, as we mentioned in the introduction. But now that you know this powerful idea, keep in mind that all of your learning materials have to be directly linked to your inner most powerful interests and to language learning needs that come from real life. And nothing else. Ever. Now we have a good foundation in place and we can move forward to set some ground rules for finding your first listening material.

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LET`S SET SOME GROUND RULES Let us be very clear right from the start – the main objective of this learning element is to start listening to the language from day one and to let your ears and your memory get accustomed to the language. Therefore, the objective is not to achieve direct language competence, but rather to create a language environment that will help you acquire direct competence with the aid of the other learning elements in the LIVE-system. This learning element uses the powers of your mind to start forming the language using subconscious learning, which we discussed in the beginning of this book. We will use the power of your personal interests and put them together with your individual learning style and we will let the language come to you in its genuine form, as a whole.

We encourage you to follow the advice below exactly as it´s described, because it works wonders only this exact way and no other. Therefore, if we tell you to listen to the same podcast every day for 15-20 minutes for 7 days in a row then do exactly that and don´t change the podcast before that. If we tell you to find a podcast that is directly connected to your biggest personal interests, then don´t settle for materials that just seem to be okay and “also quite interesting”. Everything in this book is here for a reason and we advise you to follow it meticulously.

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First of all, let´s lay out some ground rules that will help us find the most efficient possible listening material. The listening material that we will find for you has to be: A. Directly connected to your personal interests We already discussed above the importance of having learning materials that are directly in line your personal interests. So, think of a topic that would make great listening materials for you. It has to be of great interest to you personally and you have to have knowledge about the real-life context connected to the subject of the listening material. This is so that it attracts your attention as much as possible on many different levels. Therefore, keep in mind that: 1. It has to be directly connected to your biggest interests. 2. You have to have contextual knowledge about the learning material that you are using. In other words, you have to have pre-existing knowledge of the subject of the listening text. B. Real-life related

There are a number of great studies that show how inefficient fabricated listening exercises that you usually find on a language learning CD are. And it´s quite logical as well – they usually don´t have real-life context and they are very seldom linked to your personal interests. Therefore, always use learning materials that have a reallife cultural context about them. For example, radio shows,

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television shows, international news, etc.

C. Max. 15-20 minutes long We emphasize the length of the listening material because your memory can only manage so much of information in a short period of time. Therefore, be thoughtful when you start listening on a daily basis – the text has to be 15-20 minutes in length, and no longer. Therefore, if you come across an audio text that would be perfect, but which is 45 minutes long, just listen to a part of it. If you´re a beginner in the language it´s very important that you understand precisely the context of the material that you are listening to. As a beginner, your video cannot be just based on your interests. Therefore, keep in mind that you have to know what is discussed in the text before you listen. To be certain, always translate the description of your listening material with translate.google.com

If you´re an intermediate learner who already understands a good deal of the language, your listening material has to be directly linked to your biggest interests, but you don´t have to have pre-existing knowledge about the discussion contain therein. We advise therefore that you find listening materials that would provide you with new and interesting information. For example, if you´re a company manager and you´re interested in strategies to motivate your staff, then listen to a discussion on that. 57

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HOW TO FIND THE PERFECT KEYWORD? Before moving forward to helping you discover your first listening material, let´s find some really good keywords that you will need in this process. Finding great keywords is an important part of focusing the process so you concern yourself with only those learning materials that will help you succeed. You´ve read many times already that the daily listening material has to be directly linked to your biggest interests. While you may be trying to think about what your interests are, our experience has told us that many people do not have a very concrete interest, such as politics, NBA, kite surfing, language learning, wine, etc. And if they have, then they do not know a lot about it, because they don´t educate themselves about this subject on a daily basis. But in the LIVE-methodology it´s important that you know a lot about the subject that is discussed in your learning materials. There are many reasons for that, but the main reason is that new knowledge “attaches” to your memory best when it comes in an interest-related package and when it can create as many “anchors” as possible. You should remember that we mentioned those “anchors” when we talked about mnemonic techniques. And the more the information in your listening exercise can make connections, anchors, in your memory structure, the better. SO, THERE ARE TWO OPTIONS:

OPTION 1: IF you have an interest or a profession that you really like and that you know a lot about, then use it as the subject of your learning materials.

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In this case your best keywords for finding listening materials would be something like that: Bill Gates, motivational speaker, The Oscars, Julia Roberts, Steve Jobs, Vladimir Putin, Kobe Bryant, NBA, Ken Robinson, innovative education, Angela Merkel, refugee crisis, Tony Hawke, Denver Broncos, Yoga theory, tricks for raising children, Miles Davis, etc. These are some examples of the keywords that I have used to find great videos/podcasts myself. You can see that many of the keywords that I brought up as an example are actually names of very specific people. The fact that some of these names may be new for you shows that they are great as keywords – because they are specific enough to a certain individual. Names are great keywords, because usually we are more up-todate with a particular person than with particular subjects. For example, as a politics fan, you may know what Angela Merkel or Barack Obama did last week, rather than knowing about the ins and outs of the political situation in the Middle East. Of course, it depends on the person, but that´s what we see in our daily practice. And of course, choose the best keywords based on your individuality. When you´re searching for videos for example, then it´s great to add the keyword “interview” or “documentary” as well, because it will help you find better and more focused videos. For example “Steve Jobs interview” or “Bill Gates documentary”.

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Even if you want to use the foreign language in your everyday life as an accountant or an auditor, then keep in mind that your daily listening has to be on the subject that you are personally interested in, not professionally. If these two match, then it´s a wonderful thing, and you´re a lucky person, but for many people this is not the case. To take a personal example, if I wanted to start learning Italian to move our head-office to Rome, then I would not use listening materials on the subject “Italian business environment”, despite that seeming like a very logical thing to do. No, I would listen to discussions about NBA basketball in Italian, about the players, about the games, and all related issues. And in 4 months, having used all the elements in the LIVE-methodology, I would be having successful business meetings in Italian. It´s important to understand that INTEREST is something that translates the information into the language of your mind, so that it would pick it up quicker! OPTION 2: IF you´re a beginner and you don´t have a specific interest or it´s too general, then use listening materials about subjects that you know a lot about already – usually the answer in this kind of situations is international news. That´s because international news is usually the same in all countries and you should know about world affairs because you´ve read or heard about them in your mother tongue. Therefore, if you follow international events use keywords that refer to what’s current. 60

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FINDING THE PERFECT LISTENING MATERIAL Now that we know what to look for, let´s find your first listening text. For that we have two different possibilities and which of the following possibilities you choose is dependent on the result of your learning style tests that we talked about in the beginning of this book. Therefore, if you still haven´t completed your learning style tests we strongly advise you to go back to take them right now. If you already know your learning style you can continue. IF YOU´RE A VISUAL LEARNER It´s vital that your daily listening be a video, because you need to see the visual context of all your listening materials. Therefore, any listening exercises where you don´t see the visual context have very low efficiency for your memory and you need to always keep that in mind. The best environments for finding quality video content that is real-life related are Youtube.com and Ted.com, with which you are surely already accustomed to. If not then check them out right now as well. And remember that you need your keyword(s) now as well, so if you haven´t thought about them yet, then start with choosing the keywords that are connected with your personal interests.

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The formula for finding a video is very simple: STEP 1: Open Youtube.com and into the search box write: KEYWORD (in the foreign language) + NAME OF THE LANGUAGE (in the foreign language) For example “NBA basket + Français” to find Frenchlanguage videos that are about NBA basketball. Or “Dirk Nowitzki NBA + Deutsch” to find German-language videos about the basketball player Dirk Nowitzki. For example an interview that I could use for my daily listening.

As you saw with these examples, the keyword has to be as specific as possible to make sure that you will find learning materials that are directly linked to your biggest interests. Therefore – what would your keyword be? When you´re interested in music, then use a specific band name or a musician name. If you´re interested in politics, then use a name of a politician or a movement. If you´re interested in business, then use a company name or a name of a person that inspires you in the business world. For example Elon Musk!

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STEP 2: If you´re a beginner use the help of Google translator to translate the video’s description to ensure that a video is indeed a good choice for you and really a topic that you have knowledge about. The translation will not be word perfect, but that’s fine, as you only need the gist anyway. If for some reason you can´t find great videos from YouTube, then go back to basics and open Google and insert your keyword there. Keep in mind to always insert the keyword in the foreign language + the word “video” + the name of the language in the foreign language as well. You can find the translations easily with translate. google.com Now the most important thing to keep in mind is that you have to watch this video every day for at least 5-7 days in a row, without changing it. We will repeat this point many times throughout this book, because it´s absolutely vital that you give your memory time to get used to the nuances of a certain video, before moving on to another one. There are many scientific reasons for that and we advise you to trust us with this one! Therefore, always make use of a listening text for a whole week, regardless of whether you´re a total beginner or you´re already at an advanced level in the language. If you have now found a good video as your first listening material, you have several options of how to start working with it on a daily basis: 63

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OPTION 1: Find 15 minutes every evening to take a nice cup of coffee or tea and watch the video. Or take 15 minutes during your lunch and watch the video from your tablet or from your smartphone with headphones.

We emphasize the fact that you have to use headphones, because background noise is something that reduces learning efficiency in visual learners. Therefore, if you are watching the video, always use headphones. OPTION 2: If your sub-dominant learning style is kinesthetic, which is true for the majority of visual learners, it´s important to integrate the daily listening into these moments in your daily schedule when you´re on the move. Therefore, we advise you to watch the video as a part of your day, when you´re in the queue of the grocery shop, when you´re waiting for your child at the kindergarten gate, when you have 5 minutes before the start of your business meeting, when you´re out jogging or walking your dog! I obviously can´t watch the video while I´m jogging, so what should I do?

In this case we advise you to watch the video for 1-2 times with the image and then keep on listening to the same video without watching the image, but only listening to the audio. That way you are still supporting your learning style, because you already know the visual context of the video.

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If you need to convert a YouTube video to an audio file, you can do so by simply going to the website www.youtube-mp3.org and copying the link of the YouTube video into the program and clicking “Convert video”. It´s that simple! IF YOU’RE AUDITIVE OR KINESTHETIC You will need a listening text that you can integrate into your daily schedule and the best option for that is to use podcasts in the foreign language. You have two options to find great podcasts for daily listening: OPTION 1: You can go back to the basics and insert the keyword into the Google search box. Keep in mind that you have to insert the following words, which all have to be in the foreign language that you are learning: KEYWORD + PODCAST + LANGUAGE Always use translate.google.com to translate keywords. PODCAST has the same meaning in (almost) every language on the planet – therefore you don´t have to translate it. For example: PAU GASOL + PODCAST + ESPAÑOL Our example concerns basketball – to find a podcast about NBA basketball in Spanish. We´re sure that the keyword “Pau Gasol” was new and unknown to you. This shows that MY keyword is specific enough to find a podcast that is related to MY specific interest. It´s a famous Spanish basketball player. 65

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We advise you to use keywords that are very specific and related to your biggest interests. Names are always great keywords because then you can be sure that you know about a certain context. For example instead of writing “skateboarding” you could write “Tony Hawk” or instead of Formula 1 you could write the name of a specific driver like Fernando Alonso. These examples are about sports but you get the idea. If you have now inserted a good keyword together with the other attributes into Google search and clicked “Search”, then you will see many different options that you can choose from. If you´re a beginner in the language then you won´t understand the context of the search results. Therefore just open the links one by one and put the description of the podcasts into translate.google.com and make sure if the podcasts is on a subject that you...

- Are interested in - Are familiar with

If you have found a good podcast then there is always a “play” button and a download button available on the page. The latter is usually a sign of an arrow pointing down. We´re confident that you will find it easily.

If you are unsure of how to download a certain podcast, then just right-click on the arrowshaped download button and click “save link as...”. You can always stream it directly from your phone or computer as well!

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If you find yourself in a situation where you can´t find a download link for your podcast or you would like to have any other type of advice feel free to write to our support team at info@ livelanguagelearning.eu and we will gladly be of assistance! OPTION 2: Another option is to use Radio archives to find great podcasts. This process is also really easy and here is the roadmap for doing it: STEP 1: Sign in to the LIVE web-environment at www. livelanguagelearning.eu STEP 2: Choose the language that you wish to learn. STEP 3: Hover over the headphones image in the webenvironment and open the daily listening section by clicking “View More”. STEP 4: You will see guidelines for finding Radio archives in your desired language. Choose one link and click “View More” again. STEP 5: In every Radio Archive there is a search box that is usually located in the right top corner. If you have found the search box then plug in the keyword that is related to your personal interests. Make sure to write the keyword in the foreign language and use translate.google.com to get the translation. STEP 6: Once you have clicked “Search” you will see many different results that are all related to your chosen keyword. Make sure which one of these podcasts would be the best by using translate.google.com to understand the

podcast description.

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Make sure that the podcast would really interest you directly and would not just be â&#x20AC;&#x153;okayâ&#x20AC;?. There is a big difference in learning efficiency when you make an educated choice. For that reason take a cup of coffee, enjoy the process and take time to search for a really good one. It typically takes about 15 minutes at first. A good thing is that the searching process itself is already a very valuable learning experience.

STEP 7: If you have now found a great podcast that is directly linked to your interests then download the file into your computer or stream it directly from your computer or phone.

Listen to your audio material for some 15-20 minutes per day. This means that if your audio file is 5 minutes in length listen to it 3-4 times. Vice versa, if your file is 40 minutes in length, simply listen to a part of it. Remember to listen to the same file for between 5-7 days before swapping it out for fresh material.

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Many of our learners put their podcasts on CD-s and listen to them in their car while driving. Many learners put the podcasts onto their smartphones and use headphones to listen to the podcasts during their daily activities. There are many options. The most important thing is that the listening activity becomes as natural a part of your day as possible.

Keep in mind that if youÂ´re a kinesthetic learner itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s likely that your sub-dominant learning style is visual. Therefore you have to use videos for daily listening, as described in the beginning of this chapter. It is only if youÂ´re a solely kinesthetic learner or a kinesthetic-auditive learner that you have to use podcasts, with audio only, as your daily listening text. For that reason be absolutely certain as to your learning style before you start searching for listening material and do several tests in our web-environment to be absolutely sure!

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IMPORTANT GUIDELINES FOR DAILY LISTENING If you have now found a great podcast episode remember to listen to that one episode – regardless of your current language level – every day for at least 15-20 minutes for 5-7 days in a row. Don´t change your listening text during this time. If you have more time to invest into your daily listening, then just listen to the same podcast more. The findings of research backs up the above advice. We therefore advise you to trust us and you will also see great results. ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS Keep in mind that even if you are a total beginner in the language then you have to start listening to real-life videos/podcasts that are linked to your personal interests and not fabricated listening exercises as you would find on traditional language learning CDs or in language learning manuals. The people who create those materials base their knowledge on traditional language learning and they don´t know what they are doing. The human brain and the human memory is not created in a way that could communicate with such fabricated exercises. Our memory needs context that is meaningful on a personal level directly for us!

So it may seem to you that “starting with the more simple stuff” is a reasonable choice, but it isn´t. Trust us on this

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one. Also, when somebody tells you that using “simple texts” like fairy-tales is a wise choice for starting with a language, then they really don´t know what they are talking about. Fairy-tales have the least mutual context with real life and our memories can´t and will not relate to them in an efficient way. Keep that in mind! Being a beginner it can be somewhat of a strange experience to start listening to a real-life video/podcast because you likely won´t understand a word. But remember what we wrote about conscious and unconscious learning in the introduction. It´s absolutely vital that you start listening just the way we describe it. Keep in mind that “understanding” is not the main point of the daily listening when you´re a beginner. Its main objective is to create a target-language environment in which you can immerse yourself. ADVICE FOR INTERMEDIATES If you´re already at a passive intermediate level in the language – you understand the language to a certain extent, but you cannot express yourself as you would like – then it will be quite easy for you to understand the daily podcast; it would seem logical then that the best course of action would be to start a new listening text. Don´t! It´s very important that you listen to the daily video/ podcast the same way as we described – using one podcast episode for the whole week, listening to it every day. Only this way will you get over your speaking block – which is in the large part psychological in nature. This idea is a really simple one. You have a speaking block

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because you have led your memory and mind to believe that you are at a lower level than you actually are. You have basically hard-wired yourself throughout your life to believe that it´s difficult to express yourself because expressing yourself means making mistakes and mistakes are bad. It´s a really simple process that has been running thousands of times in school – where grading based on the mistakes made is something foundational – and language schools that base their methodologies on outdated ideas. So what is the solution? It´s quite simple. We need to re-wire your system to believe that you´re really good in the language. Your mind and your memory need to FEEL it. And the solution is to listen to the same material every single day for a whole week – to get all of the nuances from a specific video or podcast. Now let´s imagine that you listened to a different video or podcast every day after just listening to every one of them once. What happens at the subconscious level? It´s simple. You would hard-wire your system with the following ideas: A. language is something hard because the words in it change all the time B. I understand the context but it’s actually too much for me to express and to feel confident about

Now when we´ve discussed what happens in your memory and in your mind while listening one way versus the other, you can clearly see for yourself that it´s absolutely vital

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– to overcome a passive language level – to listen exactly the way we recommend above.

As you´re doing your daily listening don´t be scared to start imitating the language on the go as well, with the audio playing! Remember that in our methodology it´s important that you listen to the one single listening text every day for at least 5-7 days. That means that you will become very accustomed to all the nuances in this material and as soon as you start to understand parts of the audio or even whole sentences we encourage you to click the “pause” button and to imitate the sentence yourself as well. This recommendation follows from a powerful idea that we will talk about in the next chapter ‒ “imitating the real-life language in its natural form” as much as possible.

Our experience shows that rewiring a person’s system takes about a month and a half – This is because the psychological effects of grading in the school system and fear of making mistakes are deeply rooted in the majority of people. But if you listen to videos/podcasts (according to your learning style) every day for a month and a half you will surpass your passive level and you will find yourself expressing yourself in the given language without the usual feeling of having a blockage. It´s just about rewiring your system, nothing more! 73

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SOME ADDITIONAL OPTIONS FOR DAILY LISTENING Here are some additional recommendations that you can implement if you feel that you want to invest more time into your language studies. It doesn´t mean that you can swap the daily video or podcast episode for any of the following elements; you still have to keep that video or podcast episode nicely integrated into your daily activities. But if you wish to do more then below are some recommendations: A. If you´re an auditive or a kinesthetic learner then listening to music in the foreign language is a great additional activity that can help you create a target-language environment in your daily life. For that we advise you to Google “Most popular Spanish musicians” for example and you will find a list of great musicians. Our practice shows that surrounding yourself with the culture of the language will actually increase your chances of success, because it strengthens the illusion of being in the target-language environment for our mind and our memory.

When you´re listening to a song then there is an innate mnemonic technique working in your favour. That´s because notes and melodies have mnemonic attributes as well. For example, try to learn 10 science terms just by memorizing them and then make a song out of them, and you will see that the latter approach will help you memorize these terms much more successfully. That´s because notes and melodies generate automatic connections in our memory and the best part is that it happens automatically! You just have to listen to music you like in the foreign language and then sit back and enjoy the experience!

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B. If you´re into literature then we advise you to use audiobooks for daily listening. Keep in mind that using audiobooks is a good option only if you are already at an intermediate level or higher in the language – with the sole goal of activating your passive language. To find great audiobooks Google the term “audiobooks” in the foreign language and add the keyword “PODCAST”. For example “audiolibros podcast” for Spanish, or “livres audio podcast” for French! It is definitely not recommended for beginners and anyone with less than an intermediate level in the language to use audiobooks. C. Our practice shows that many people out there don´t have a specific interest, a knowledge of which they can exploit in their language studies. When you use an interest as a theme for your daily listening then you have to genuinely know about everything about it. For example, if you´re a basketball fan and you follow the NBA on a daily basis – and I do so – then you can exploit this knowledge for your benefit. Your daily listening can be about NBA because you know everything about it ‒ news, teams, players. But if you don´t have such an interest then it´s best to use international news. The reason is simple: usually international daily news are the same across languages. Therefore, you already have a contextual knowledge about the news and it will work the same way as with using interest-based materials. Remember that for your memory it´s important that you have pre-existing knowledge about a subject when you use learning materials in which that interest is discussed. This is necessary because it will increase your understanding of the text and will let you achieve much better results! 75

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KEY IDEAS FROM THE SECOND CHAPTER Find yourself your first listening material – keep in mind that it has to be on a subject that you are deeply interested in. The key is to come up with a great keyword to use for searching. Keep in mind that the more specific the keyword is the better. For example, use specific names (peoples, companies, political parties, etc.) Choose the best way of finding your daily listening exercise according to your learning style. If you´re a visual learner then choose a video from Youtube.com. If you´re an auditive or kinesthetic learner choose a podcast episode. Follow the guidelines provided above! Start listening on a daily basis and keep in mind the recommendations in your learning style test results. Just read them every once in a while to be sure that you´re really supporting your memory in acquiring the language. Listen to the chosen listening exercise once a day for at least 15-20 minutes, 5-7 days in a row. Even if you´re at a really good level in the language already and you just wish to express yourself better. It doesn´t matter. Do it exactly as described and you will see great results fast!

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KEY IDEAS FROM THE SECOND CHAPTER If you´ve listened to a video or a podcast episode for 5-7 days then just choose a new one that is also aligned to your personal interests and start the cycle again. Always keep in mind that daily listening has the objective of creating a targetlanguage environment in your everyday life and you don´t need to understand everything – just let the language come to you. As you start understanding the language more and more with every listening material, try to pause the audio every once in a while and imitate the sentences expressed by the speakers. This kind of imitation is very powerful and do it as soon as you understand parts of the audio well. Try to be as consistent as possible in your daily listening. If you listen to your video just for 2-3 days a week, then your mind will not be tricked and it will understand that you´re not really in the target-language environment. Therefore, if you want to get good results then listen to the audio at least 5 times a week, because then it will have its real effect.

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THIRD CHAPTER TEXTS AND IMITATING

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We have arrived to the third element of the LIVE-system, which is expressing the language in a smart way to really start speaking it from day one using texts that are directly related to your personal interests. First let´s take a look at what we already have talked about. - First of all you have completed the learning style tests that you have found in the LIVE© web-environment and you have printed out the results to take them into account to guide your decision-making process - Secondly, you have the list of most commonly used words and you have started to learn the words that are new for you in this list using a memorization program that you have installed on your computer. - Thirdly you have found your first listening material and you will listen to it every day for 5-7 days in a row. This is where we stand at the moment. Now let´s get into expressing the language! As we´ve mentioned many times already throughout this book, imitating the language is the most natural and most powerful way to start expressing it. It´s the way we acquire our mother tongue as well, isn´t it? Your parents say something that is real-life related and that has useful context for you, and you start to understand it pretty quickly. For example “Do you want to eat?” is a really beneficial sentence and it makes sense to understand it. But at the same time you probably agree that if your father expressed the sentence “I have to take my car to the carwash” then it didn´t grab your attention as much

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because being a baby you probably didn´t care about cars and whether they were clean or not. So, basically this is something that your brain chooses itself – what to understand and what not to understand. It´s a cute and lovely understanding that we choose ourselves what we acquire and what we do not. Usually it´s not like that at all. The environment and the needs determine what we acquire and memorize, not the other way. You probably agree that when you were a baby you didn´t make a conscious choice to memorize something. It just happened, didn´t it? This is again linked to the idea that unconscious learning, which we talked about in the introduction, is immensely more powerful than conscious learning. The idea of this chapter is to give you all the tools and all the knowledge to activate your acquisition of the language in the most efficient way – so that you would feel that you are expressing yourself in the language from day one, creating a language environment in your everyday life.

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IMITATING

THE LANGUAGE USING RELATED ARTICLES

INTEREST

As already described in the previous chapters, it´s vital that all your learning materials be on subjects that you are deeply interested in. The same applies to using texts to start expressing yourself in the language. Before looking into how to use interest related texts on a daily basis, let´s find the first text that you could start to use as reading and writing material. STEP 1: Sign in to the LIVE© web-environment, choose your desired language and click on “View More” in the YOUR DAILY TEXTS section. STEP 2: Choose one of the options provided to find a great source of articles in your desired language. For that click one of the links provided. STEP 3: If you now have the website open then find the search engine text box that is usually located in the right corner of the screen. STEP 4: Use translate.google.com to translate your interest-related keyword(s) into your chosen language and copy one of the keywords in the search box. Keep in mind that the keyword has to be very specific, so that it would really give you the results that you are interested in and that you know a lot about. Therefore, always keep these two notions in mind: interest + pre-existing knowledge. 81

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STEP 5: Now you have narrowed it down and you have a list of possible articles that you can use as your first text to start expressing yourself. To make the best selection, open these articles one by one and copy a part of them to translate.google.com to make sure that they are really directly related to your personal interests. Usually the images next to the articles will provide you with a good understanding of what they speak about. Also all those little keywords in the title can be of assistance to find a good article. Names, dates and etc. STEP 6: If you have now found a good article, then open a Word document and copy a part of the article into the document. Keep in mind that is should be about half an A4 page in length. You can just choose a part of the article if the original is longer. STEP 7: Now take the same text that you copied into the Word file and put it into translate.google.com to translate it into your mother tongue or in another language that you speak well. When I usually do it, then I translate the text into another language that IÂ´m learning or speak well. But itÂ´s easiest to translate into your mother tongue of course. It isnÂ´t a problem that the translation will be a little bit inaccurate, just do it. Now that you have the translation part done as well, then copy the translation also to the Word file. 82

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STEP 8: Now you have a Word document with a part of the article and with the same part translated.

The main idea of using Google Translate is so that you can refrain from translating words and sentences as much as possible. Studies show that translating – using dictionaries – has negative effects to us psychologically while learning a language and translating in general decreases the pace of learning substantially. Therefore we need to stop ourselves as much as possible from translating texts. We need to feel that we understand the text “automatically” as much as possible. And it´s possible BECAUSE it is on a subject that we know a lot about and we have a translation of the text as well – even if it´s not perfect.

STEP 9: In traditional language learning the next step would be to translate all the words that you don´t know and then move forward to learning these words. Please refrain from doing this. Instead we need to start IMITATING this text right away on a daily basis. To do that it´s best if you print out the file (with the article and the automatic translation on it). STEP 10: Now open translate.google.com, take the printed page and write the first sentence into the translation box with your own hands. It´s important because you need to start imitating the correct language with your own hands from day one as well. 83

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While writing the sentence, check from time to time the translation that you have on the page and on the translator’s other window (that will show you the automatic translation as well). But what if I don´t understand the sentence in its entirety right away? Don´t worry if you don´t understand everything right away – it isn´t necessary to understand everything right away. Meaning is something that comes to you best by imitating and by understanding the context. It comes during the process of imitating, as a gradual result. The understanding that you have to know everything before you imitate something comes from outdated approaches. It´s important to keep that in mind; only then will you give the right signals to your memory to start acquiring a language in a natural way. STEP 11: Now if you have written the first sentence into the translation box, click on the “pronounce” button that is shaped like a speaker.

The speaker button will appear in Google Translator as soon as you type something into the text box. You can not miss it. It´s right below the text box itself.

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When you click the speaker button you will hear the correct pronunciation of the sentence. Imitate the pronunciation and say the sentence out loud together with the program. You will also realize that it’s probably too difficult to repeat the whole sentence at once – especially if you´re a beginner in the language. Therefore, write three to four words and imitate those. Repeat them out loud several times. Then add another two words from the sentence and imitate the whole thing again. Continue like this until you have the whole sentence together.

Remember to always keep your eyes on the translation as well, so that you would “automatically” understand what you are repeating. Just to repeat this important idea once again: we need to evade old-school translating as much as possible, because it is very negative on many different levels of language learning. And translating the way we just presented can help you evade the old way of translating words individually (with a dictionary). That´s great!

Imitation is immensely powerful – therefore do it as much as possible. Our experience shows that you will get great results fast if you imitate for at least 15-20 minutes a day. 85

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STEP 12: You have now imitated the sentences several times ‒ starting with 2-3 words and building up to whole sentences. In this process you have clicked the “speaker button” many times. And of course you have imitated the words many times after the program yourself as well. STEP 13: As the next step underline the verb(s) in the sentence and find out what is its dictionary form. You can just Google the verb as it sits in the text with the keyword “verb”. If you see that it’s an important verb that you would want to use in your daily life as well, then add it to your memorizing program. Otherwise just make a mental note of what the verb means. STEP 14: If you have now repeated the sentence many times and you are still not certain about what some words in the sentence mean, then NOW you can use translate. google.com or www.sensagent.com to translate it. Our practice shows that IF your text is on a subject that you really like AND that you have a lot of knowledge about it, THEN you will have very few of those words that you have to translate separately, BECAUSE the CONTEXT will allow you to understand everything you need.

As with daily listening, the main idea is that you need to use this same article for the whole week, 15-20 minutes a day, especially when you´re a beginner. If you´re already at a more intermediate level it´s totally okay if you imitate the text for 3-4 days. But not less. It´s again important because you need to give your memory time to get all the nuances and only repeating the same material does that!

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HOW TO MEMORIZE SENTENCES EFFICIENTLY? Now it´s important to understand how to really memorize these sentences that you have imitated with the pronunciation tool on a daily basis. Of course if you have repeated them with the aid of the pronunciation tool for several days, then our practice shows that your mind will effortlessly memorize them, like a poem or like lyrics of a song. But let´s look at another way how to get these sentences, and the words contained within, into your longterm memory. You probably remember that we spoke about memorization programs in the first chapter, which concerned itself with learning words. The same program will become really useful for learning sentences as well. Therefore, we advise you to do the following: STEP 1: Look at your chosen article and choose the sentences that contain words and expressions that seem to be useful for your everyday life. Try to think about your own objectives and which expressions and words you would need to use in your everyday life. The choice is of course dependant on the individual; choose the sentences that seem useful for you and that contain the most words that are used in an everyday speech and everyday situations! You will find these sentences easily – just ask yourself what words you need to express yourself in your everyday life? Think about your mother tongue – what kind of words and expressions do you find useful?

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STEP 2: Underline these sentences one by one. If you feel that choosing certain sentences by their usefulness would be difficult for you, then just choose the ones that you like best. STEP 3: Open your memorization tool and insert these sentences into your list as well with their translations, to accompany the words that you already have there. STEP 4: Every time you work with the memorization program, you will now also have sentences coming up and it will be a great way to memorize expressions and whole sentences that you can use in your real life later on. Now you have a good overview of how to use interest related articles on a daily basis. Remember that it has to be a constant effort; therefore, choose an article, imitate it for a week â&#x20AC;&#x2019; take time for it â&#x20AC;&#x2019; until you have really mastered all the sentences, and then choose another article for the following week. Every once in a while come back to the previous articles as well, just to read them out loud and just to go their pronunciation all over again. This kind of repetition is an important part of building a steady foundation in a given language. Therefore always use an article for the whole week, and when you finish with an article at the end of the week, then also take some time to go over the previous article(s). But now letÂ´s move on to grammar. 88

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HOW TO DEAL WITH GRAMMAR? As you saw in the introduction already, it´s always better to start expressing yourself in the language and only after that deal with any grammar issues. We have all had quite the opposite experience at school – before we start to express the language, we are lead to believe that we have to know the system, the grammar, of the language to even be capable of producing something worthwhile. In other words – before we are worthy and capable of producing something so natural as a language, we have to have a set of rules to do so. When you think about how you learned your mother tongue, I´m sure that you´ll see a fundamental problem with this thought process. Yes, it would seem reasonable that before starting to speak, you would need a firm foundation on which to stand. That´s what we have experienced at school and it really seems like the logical progression. But science doesn´t bear this out. As we have pointed out many times throughout this book already, science shows that if you learn something (like a grammar rule) without a meaningful context – without a sentence that you heard on the streets in Malaga or a sentence you imitated from your interest based text – then it will not be memorized efficiently. Only after your memory has received a life-related context or an interests related idea, will it be able to acquire the grammar as well. 89

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Therefore, the first rule of grammar for your language learning journey is the following: All grammar explanations have to be related to specific questions that you yourself have during your imitation of the language! What do I mean? Keep in mind that when you learn something that is not directly linked to your present interest or a direct question that you have at this very moment, then your memorization of this fact is very low – about 4-5%. For example in the classroom – if the teacher is explaining something that you didn´t ask about (which is usually the case) then just because of the fact that you don´t have an inner openness to knowing about it, the chance of you memorizing it is minimal. Now let´s imagine that you have a specific question about grammar and you get an answer to this question, then about 80% of it will be memorized because you had interest in it. And you had a specific question. Quite logical, isn´t it? I´ll give you an example. Let´s say that the Spanish text that you are using to imitate the language with the pronunciation tool contains a Spanish sentence “Quiero ir a la playa con mi novia”. It means “I want to go to the beach with my girlfriend”.

When you imitate this sentence – as described above in this chapter – then you will get a pretty quick understanding of all the words, because you have the translation before

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your eyes and if you need then you can check some words separately with Google Translate as well (though usually it´s not necessary and you will understand everything well just by using the automatic translation that we talked about). Now if you feel that you have a question – for example “OK, “quiero” means “I want”, but what is the root form of this verb and how do I say “We want” and other forms of this verb?” Then this is a direct question and the solution is extremely easy. STEP 1: Open Google and type QUIERO + VERB + ESPAÑOL to the search box. Click “search”. Of course keep in mind that the keyword for the language has to be the language that you´re learning and it has to be translated. Like “Español” for example.

STEP 2: You will see many links with the verb “QUERER” and its conjugations (about how to use it). Click on the first link and you will see all the tenses of the verb QUERER. STEP 3: If you want then print this sheet out, so that you could have an overview of an important verb as “TO LIKE”. We advise you to always address grammar on a case-bycase basis. That is, if you have a specific question always search an answer to that specific question, and only that question. Do not be tempted to broaden it in any way. For example, if you find out that QUERER in the present tense is “Yo quiero, tu quieres….” then don´t start researching the patterns of other verbs.

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Just always keep your focus on expressing yourself and imitating the language from your chosen interest-based article. Otherwise used, research shows that a detailed study of grammar can close up your ability to acquire new knowledge, because you are hard-wired to believe that grammar is something difficult. Therefore, the only way to solve this situation successfully is to SIMPLIFY and move from one question to another. You can simplify the grammar system of a language by focusing only on the things at hand, without broadening the field of interest. This will assure that you will not be overwhelmed by the grammar, which otherwise has the potential to dampen your confidence the second you start diving into it. Therefore, a smart learner always knows how to find answers to specific questions they have while expressing themselves in the given language. But there are also some other very cool tricks that you as a learner can use to build yourself a strong grammatical foundation And for that letÂ´s move on to the powerful idea of the most common verbs.

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MOST COMMON VERBS In addition to learning the most common words of a language, as we addressed in the first chapter, it´s important to start building a foundation of the most commonly used verbs as well. Verbs are the foundation of a sentence. Without them you would be lost, because they create meaning and they are a big part of a language. But I´m also sure that you remember that learning all these verbs in school was pretty tiring for you and on top of everything every verb has its own conjugation patterns (changing with tense, person and mood). Just to remind you what tenses look like and how confusing they are, follow these steps: STEP 1: Google “French conjugation” or “German conjugation” and choose the first link that comes up. You can also do it in the language that you are learning. STEP 2: Now you will see a page that gives you an overview of how to conjugate verbs in a certain language. Choose one verb that you see on this page and click on it. STEP 3: Now you will see all the different forms of this specific verb and it´s very confusing, isn´t it? Let´s now come back to our LIVE-methodology and let´s find out how would it be possible to hack this verb system without going crazy in the process. 93

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SO how can I learn the different forms of the verbs, but at the same time simplify the process? There are great solutions to these problems and they are an important part of our LIVE-methodology. First you need to understand that knowing about 50 of the most commonly used verbs is already enough to start expressing a language with ease. And it´s quite logical as well. As with most commonly used words, there are only a number of verbs that we use on a daily basis to fully express ourselves. And our experience shows that 50 of the most common verbs will already give you the feeling that you express yourself with confidence. To find the most common verbs of your language follow these steps: STEP 1: Open Google and write for example “Most common verbs in Italian” and click “search”. STEP 2: Now you will see many links with the most common verbs of your chosen language. Open one of the first links. Now you will see the list of the verbs. It´s almost always possible to click on the verbs and see all the tense forms. This is great! STEP 3: To start building a strong foundation in your language we advise you to print out the first 5-10 pages of verbs and start learning them.

Therefore, if you´re a beginner it´s very important to learn the most commonly used verbs simultaneously with the

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most commonly used words. And you should set as your goal the 50 most commonly used verbs. If you´re at an intermediate level, then look at the list of most commonly used verbs and make sure that you know all of them. If some of them are new to you, then make sure that you add them to your memorizing program and memorize them together with the most commonly used words.

Another way to find the most commonly used verbs of your language is to sign in into the LIVE web-environment, click on the “Most common words” section and voilà!

Okay, so now you know which verbs you should learn. The next thing to do is go to the most commonly used verbs page, either via our web-environment at www. livelanguagelearning.eu or by finding it yourself, and click on one of the verbs. You will see that it also has all its tense forms and everything else on this page and it may be a little confusing, if you´re not used to conjugation tables. But let´s simplify it all a little. When you look at the conjugation tables then always keep in mind that the six forms given for one grammatical tense are the following: me, you, he/she, we, you (in plural), and they 95

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For example if I take the Spanish verb QUERER (to love, to like) then I can see that the present tense looks like this: Yo quiero - I like Tu quieres - You like El/Ella quiere - He/She likes Nosotros queremos - We like Vosotros queréis - You like Ellos/Ellas quieren - They like It´s an important and most used tense of a language ‒ the present. And it would be important to know every present from of the verb QUERER, because it is indeed also in the list of the 50 most commonly used verbs in Spanish. So it makes sense. Therefore, as the next step I would take the present tense of this verb, open my memorization program, and add all of its six forms onto a memorizing card, so that I could come back to it later on, when I´m working with the program to memorize words. Which other tenses, apart from the present, should I learn so that it would make sense? Should I learn all of them? Or just some of them? To answer that question, we actually need to look at science again, which shows us very clearly that only some of these tenses on the verb conjugation tables are used consistently on a daily basis, while some of them are virtually useless.

To go even further, our longtime studies show that you actually only need a very small selection of all the possible tenses to feel that you can really express yourself in the language well.

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THE LIVE VERB SYSTEM When you´re starting with a new language then conjugating verbs can be gruelling, because there are so many different tenses and forms and it´s quite impossible to memorize them all straight away. And you don´t have to, because there´s a better solution. We call it the LIVE verb system. The main idea is to simplify the verb system according to what is actually used in everyday life. That means that we need to discard everything that isn´t absolutely necessary. You probably know this feeling of being uncertain about what tenses and forms to use to express yourself correctly. For your language learning experience to be successful, we need to avoid this inner insecurity and come up with a solution that would help you do that. So – how do we simplify a verb system? What your teachers and your learning manuals didn´t tell you in schools and language schools is that the majority of the tenses of a verb are seldom used and they only give a certain nuance to a thought that you want to express. So, what is absolutely essential to know about verb tenses so that you would be able to express yourself without any problems on a daily basis? The answer is that you only need three tenses and nothing more. Studies show that these three most

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commonly used tenses give you the most freedom and the most confidence in expressing yourself in a language. Usually these three tenses are: PRESENT PAST PERFECT FUTURE SIMPLE (or FUTURE)

To know which tenses are the most commonly used in the language you are learning, Google “most common tenses in Italian” and you will find out. If you need advice for finding the most common tenses of your language, then write to info@livelanguagelearning.eu and our team will be glad to be of assistance. This approach may seem a little weird to you at first, but when you start thinking about your daily life and about the language that you use as a part of your everyday activities, then you will see that this powerful idea is absolutely true. We don´t need all these verb tenses, especially as a beginner. You will feel wonderful using the language with only these three tenses, without the hassle of being hesitant about whether you are expressing yourself correctly or not. Therefore, only learn the most commonly used verbs in the three most common tenses and don´t try to learn any other tense forms. Ever. Everything else that you need will come later on, when you already speak the language well. 98

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A SIMPLE ROADMAP FOR LEARNING THE MOST COMMON VERBS STEP 1: Take 1-2 new verbs every day from the most commonly used verbs list and add them to your memorization program. You can print them out onto paper as well, if you feel that itÂ´s something that would be beneficial. And you can put them together in a folder, just to have them around. STEP 2: Insert the tense patterns into the memorization program separately in three tenses. One memorizing card for the present, one for the past and one for the future. STEP 3: Use the memorizing program on a daily basis, for at least 15-20 minutes a day. Now you have three types of information in your memorization program, most commonly used words, sentences from your text and most commonly used verbs. This kind of mixture is perfect for memorization, because it all has a great deal of context for you already and it will be memorized better as a whole. STEP 4: Also insert the same most commonly used verbs into your memorizing program in their negative forms. You will start to create a very solid verb system for yourself if you know both the affirmative and negative of the most common verbs. Negation is usually very simple in all the languages - usually you have to add one or two words, depending on the language.

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To find out how to use negation in your language, Google “Using negation in French” or “Negation in Icelandic” and you will get a good overview. Make sure that you feel confident using both affirmative and negative forms in the three most used tenses. For that, again, insert them both to the memorization program and practice them often. STEP 5: If you like to learn on the go, then write the verb forms of 1-2 verbs (positive and negative) into your notebook or plug them into your smartphone and study them during your daily activities (while in a supermarket queue or waiting for your child at the kindergarten gate). STEP 6: Try to be consistent in adding words to the memorization program, at least 5-7 new words and 1-2 new verbs on a daily basis.

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AN IMPORTANT REMINDER The above information about the three most commonly used tense forms and most commonly used verbs are mainly meant for beginners or pre-intermediate level learners, i.e. for those who still have to build up their grammar and verb foundation and who don´t have the most commonly used verbs in their competence yet. If you´re already an intermediate learner at a passive language level trying to get to an active level, we advise you NOT TO focus on checking verbs or grammar at all. Though you may have an urge to do so, it´s well researched that focusing on expressing yourself and imitating the language and not focusing on grammar questions AT ALL will get you to the active language level much faster. The reason is simple: you already have a grammar foundation in place, even if it seems to you that it´s insufficient. The feeling of having insufficient grammar knowledge often comes from psychological fears and they are usually unfounded. So, just take a look at the list of the 50 most commonly used verbs and if you feel confident with them and you know them all, then it´s already sufficient! As an intermediate learner you have to totally focus on reading the articles out loud on a daily basis, focusing as little as possible to grammar. This is because at your level we see from studies that you will get to active language production quicker if you just focus solely on expressing yourself in the language. 101

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That means that you will let the language come to you in its natural form, by imitating and expressing yourself in it. ItÂ´s a wonderful process that will happen in your memory if you just take the time to produce the language the way we described at the beginning of this chapter.

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DECLENSION TABLES Even though I’ll explain to you how to find and print out the DECLENSION TABLES of a language (because everyone is different and maybe you need to have these kind of tables around just in case), I encourage you not to use them. I myself prefer not to use them at all because I want the learning process to be as natural as possible – I want to learn all the “rules” of language naturally from videos/ podcasts and newspaper articles. It might be a big leap for you compared to the school system but I know from my own experience that grammar comes more quickly when it’s learned only inside the context, the natural way. It means that you will let the context create the meaning. Read the next part where I describe how to understand declension and how to find (if necessary) the declension tables of a language. And then decide whether you need them or not. Let’s presume that you don’t know what declension or noun case are: Declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number (at least singular and plural), case (nominative, genitive, dative, etc.), and gender. In English there is no declension, instead the language uses additional words to give additional meaning. In Estonian (my native language) grammatical case plays a big part in the language. So let’s see an example with the word “car” (“auto” in Estonian). “Into the car” in Estonian is “autosse”, it uses a different ending of the word to give

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the meaning that someone or something is going “into the car”. Thus: (a/the) car – into a/the car auto – autosse You can see that in Estonian there is still only one word (no words are added), but the ending of the word is different – that’s declension. With French it’s the same as with English – there is no significant declension. “Into the car” is “dans la voiture”. So, “dans” means “in(to)” and “la voiture” means “the car”. I hope that’s clear. In some languages declension plays a big part, in others it doesn’t. The ones that don’t have declension are easier to learn. For example, in Finnish there are 15 noun cases which make this language a difficult one to learn. In Estonian there are 14 noun cases and that’s the reason why many foreigners never learn the language properly. But there are many languages that don’t have declension, instead they use prepositions (i.e. additional words): French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, amongst many others. How can you be certain that your language doesn’t have declensions and cases? It’s really simple. Just check the Wikipedia page of the language that you are learning – if there is no “declension” or “noun cases” mentioned then you’re good to go. There are also many great forums out there where people discuss this kind of questions all the time. 104

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If you would like to find the declension tables in your language, then just Google “Declensions in Finnish” or “Noun cases in Icelandic” and you will have many useful links that will give you the answers that you are looking for. But again, keep in mind that focusing on additional grammar – outside of verbs ‒ without context is highly inefficient and therefore we advise you to focus solely on expressing and imitating the language via articles, podcasts and videos. This is a much more efficient way to acquire something like noun declinations, because you will do it in a natural way. But if you are more of a traditional learner and you feel that you would need this kind of information as well right from the beginning, then print out the different noun cases of the language with examples, so that you could keep those declension tables on hand (or slightly further away) during the learning process. If you need advice finding the declension tables of your language, then write to info@livelanguagelearning.eu and our team will be glad to be of assistance. We have now covered everything related to texts and grammar, so that you would be ready to start using interestrelated texts efficiently in your everyday learning. Let´s now summarise the key points of the chapter!

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KEY IDEAS FROM THE THIRD CHAPTER Find yourself your first article, following the guidelines in the beginning of the chapterâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; keep in mind that it has to be on a subject that you are deeply interested in. The key is to come up with a great keyword to use in the search engines. Keep in mind that the more specific the keyword is, the better. For example, use specific names (people, companies, political parties, etc.) To make sure that the article is very closely related to your interests and that you know a lot about its subject, translate the text of the article with translate.google.com to have a good overview. Take a part of the article and copy it to a Word file. It has to be about half an A4 sheet. Take the translation, from Google Translate, and put it in the same Word file as well. Now you have a word file with an interest related article and its translation. Print it. Now open translate.google.com and type the first sentence word by word into the text box. DonÂ´t copy it from the computer, type it with your own hands.

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KEY IDEAS FROM THE THIRD CHAPTER Click on the speaker button that appears under the text box, to hear the correct pronunciation of your sentence. And imitate it out loud. Do it many times, at least 7-10 times for each sentence. Always underline the verbs in the sentences. If you see that the verb is an important one, which you would like to use in your daily life as well (and you already do in your mother tongue), then check what its dictionary form is and add all of its six forms in three most common tenses into your memorizing program. This applies also to words. If you see words that would be useful for you add them to the program as well and start learning them on a daily basis. Take time and work with this same print-out for a week. Every day read the text out loud for at least 15-20 minutes and gradually move forward until you have mastered all of its sentences with the correct pronunciation If you have any grammar questions, then always address them case-by-case, as we have discussed in this chapter. Once you have worked on the one print-out for a whole week, choose another one and from time to time come back to the previous text to repeat it with confidence. 107

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FOURTH CHAPTER SUMMARY LET´S BRING IT ALL TOGETHER

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INTEGRATE ALL THE LIVE-ELEMENTS INTO YOUR DAILY SCHEDULE Now you know what to do and how to do it, so that you can excel in your language learning journey. But you also have to know what moments of your daily schedule would be the most efficient for implementing the LIVE-elements. So, let´s take a look at how to do that. Before we can give you specific guidelines on how to act on a daily basis, you need to understand how and why we acquire knowledge and in which circumstances our minds are closed to new information. Our bodies have developed a strong unwillingness to acquire information due to the school system. Our minds understood quite well in school that when some new information was given to us, then we had to memorize it. And it usually did become memorized after some study – think about all those facts and all those things that you knew about history and everything else when you were in high-school for example. But later on when you became more focused on family life and work, those facts weren’t memorized as well as they once were. And usually people complain that they are getting older and they aren’t as sharp anymore. This is not actually the truth, as science has shown us that the difference in brain plasticity between a high-school girl and an elderly lady is really small. This means that memorizing something should be equally efficient for both of them. So what is different? Why don´t many adults memorize

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information as well as they used to as children and teens? The answer is really simple – your memory has developed a system where things that are related to your interests and your goals are memorized well, while the things that are outside of your interests and goals are not memorized at all. It´s again the same idea about the need to have your learning materials on a subject that you´re interested in. It´s very logical, isn´t it? It´s quite obvious that if you´re leading a company as a manager and doing your everyday job, then you´re not usually interested in the information that somebody tells you about their lives and things that they are doing. It´s just common sense – as the saying goes, “our heads are not trash cans”. Therefore, your memory makes a choice – “I will only remember the information that is useful for me”. And “I will only acquire information that will benefit me”. Simple! The same idea applies also to how we acquire new information and which channels do employ to do so. Therefore, if you go to a language school and you sit there in a classroom with 8-10 people, using learning manuals and having a proper classroom experience, then an automatic process is triggered in your mind that hinders your efficiency in learning the language. Why? Because your memory has learned that these kinds of situations are highly inefficient and are not related to your interests. This simple description explains well how the environment affects the way we memorize information.

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Therefore, every time when you put yourself in a situation that resembles “learning”, then your memory will be less

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efficient, because it will try to block out unnecessary information. Because it is used to the fact that unnecessary information usually comes in big loads while learning something. This is an important rule for achieving success in language learning – the less your mind realises that you are learning, the more efficient you are. So what is the solution? It´s quite simple. All learning situations have to be as much as possible a part of your daily life. They have to resemble your daily life and they can´t resemble “learning”. I´ll give you some examples: A. When you´re listening to your podcast episode/video from your smartphone while having lunch, for example, then it resembles the usual situation when you are skimming your Facebook profile and watching interesting videos. It´s not different from your real life and your memory is open to new information because of that. B. When you´re sitting at home on your sofa and you have your computer on your lap and you have the headphones on, and you are using some LIVE-elements, then your memory is open, because it´s a usual situation from your life as well. You have your own coffee mug with you, you are in an environment that you know, etc. These are just some examples, but you get the point.

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Therefore, itÂ´s important to use the LIVE-elements as much as possible as a natural part of your everyday life, using the same tools (smartphone, computer, etc.) that you are used to use on a daily basis, because then your memory is more open to the information that you will acquire. And the difference between great results and average results in language learning depends greatly on that. Now letÂ´s move forward to start with your language learning experience.

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GUIDELINES FOR DAILY LANGUAGE LEARNING Now you have a good overview of the LIVE-methodology and of all of its elements to create yourself a successful language learning experience. To make sure that you do just that we will take the main ideas of this book and bring them together again, to form exact guidelines that you can follow on a daily basis. To make sure that you are doing the right things when using the LIVE-methodology, we provide you here with two different guidelines – one for beginners and one for intermediate learners who have already a foundation in the language in place and just want to activate it. Our years of experience show that these are the two main learner groups that get a lot of help from our learning approach: A. BEGINNERS. Starting from zero with a new language or having just minimal competence in the language. B. INTERMEDIATES. Having a passive intermediate language level – it means that you can usually understand the language pretty well, but you need to activate your language to really start speaking it, because for some reason you feel that you can´t express yourself and words just don´t come out of your mouth. You probably found yourself in one of these descriptions. So now let´s move forward to give you specific guidelines of how to really start excelling in your daily language learning:

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LIVE-GUIDELINES FOR BEGINNERS For successful language learning do the following: A. Finish the two learning style tests that we talked about in the Introduction and print out the results. Now keep these results close to you, because you need to take them into account when you start implementing the LIVE-elements on a daily basis. Remember that every recommendation in the test results makes a big difference â&#x20AC;&#x201C; therefore try to take them into account as much as possible. For example â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if youÂ´re a visual-kinesthetic learner then always eat a piece of chocolate when doing the daily listening. It will make the process more efficient. B. Follow the guidelines in Chapter One and start learning the most commonly used words and the most commonly used verbs in the language. A good rhythm for doing that is 5-10 most commonly used words and 2-3 most commonly used verbs per day. Get used to using the memorization program as well, because it will be your best friend in the learning process. It will take a little time to get used to it in the beginning, so start to make it a habit to work with this program for about 15-20 minutes per day to get great results.

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If possible then print out the page of the most commonly used verb and highlight the three tenses that are useful for you. And keep in mind that learn only these three most

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common tenses from every verb and nothing more – it will help you move forward faster. C. Follow the guidelines in Chapter Two and start with daily listening also from day one. Keep in mind that you have to be deeply interested in the subject that you are listening about and also you have to know exactly what you are listening to. For that follow meticulously the guidelines given in the second chapter. Also keep in mind that if you´re at a beginner’s level then it´s obvious that you won´t understand a lot from your first listening materials – don´t let yourself be hindered by this fact. For you as a beginner it´s not important to understand the daily listening texts – their main objective is to help create a target-language environment in your daily life and we addressed this in great detail in the second chapter. Therefore, keep listening as described in the second chapter, even if you don´t understand a word! Also keep in mind that daily listening has to be continuous – to make your body feel that you´re in the language environment, you need to listen every day for at least 1520 minutes. Otherwise it will realised that you are playing with it and the necessary changes will not happen. At the same time keep in mind that you need to listen to the one chosen listening material for 5-7 days in a row, without changing it. There are many reasons for that and we addressed them in the second chapter. Therefore – listen to the one listening material for 5-7 days and then choose a new one. Always make sure that it´s on a subject that you are deeply passionate about and that you know what it speaks about. To ensure this, copy

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the description of the podcast episode/video into Google Translate. D. Follow the guidelines in Chapter Three and start to produce the language from day one. Choose an interest-related article and start using it as it is described in the third chapter. It´s especially important that you would repeat the sentences in the articles out loud, using one of the pronunciation tools recommended: either Oddcast or Google Translator. If you feel that your pronunciation is not as good as that of the program, then just don´t think about it and keep repeating – correct pronunciation is the result of much effort and it will take time. If you´re a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner, then it´s important that you manually type the sentences into the pronunciation program. Do not simply copy and paste them!. Produce the language for at least 10-15 minutes per day as constantly as possible – try not to skip many days, because your memory needs to get constant input to start developing a good language structure. Keep in mind that for great and fast results you need to implement all the three LIVE-elements simultaneously, because they all have a very specific role in the whole learning system. Therefore, if you drop one of the LIVEelements, and don´t do it at all, then your results will be average. Always implement all the LIVE-elements consistently and you will get great results. 116

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SOME ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BEGINNERS Depending on how much time you have to invest into language learning, you can also start with one or two LIVEelements and then later on add the third one. Ideally it´s important to use all three LIVE-elements simultaneously because they all have very specific roles in developing a language, but if you don´t have much time then we advise you to start with the Chapters One and Two – with the most commonly used words and daily listening – and then after some weeks add the Chapter Three and start imitating the language and working with texts. But keep in mind that it´s very important to start with the listening part from day one, because it´s the main LIVEelement that prepares your memory to start receiving information in a more efficient way, simulating a targetlanguage environment in your daily life. So, ideally you will start and continuously work with: A. Most commonly used words and verbs (10-15 minutes per day) B. Daily interest-related listening (15-20 minutes per day) C. Daily interest-related texts and imitating (15-20 minutes per day) Our practice shows that implementing these LIVE-elements will take about 50-60 minutes per day, but keep in mind that the daily listening part has to be, as much as possible,

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integrated into your daily schedule. Therefore, we advise you to listen to it while driving, while having lunch (and watching a video from your smartphone), or while youÂ´re jogging or walking your dog. This way you can already do an important learning element during your day and not invest special time for it outside your activities. There are many possibilities and you have to find the best solution by looking at your own daily schedule. The most important thing is that your body feels that youÂ´re learning as a part of your daily schedule and not separately like in the classroom â&#x20AC;&#x201C; then it will think that you really need the language.

If you need advice to assist you in using the LIVE-elements as a part of your daily schedule, then write to info@ livelanguagelearning.eu and our team will be glad to be of assistance.

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LIVE-GUIDELINES FOR INTERMEDIATES For successful language learning do the following: A. Finish the two learning style tests that we talked about in the Introduction and print the results. Now keep these results close to you, because you need to take the results into account when you start implementing the LIVE-elements on a daily basis. Remember that every recommendation in the test results makes a big difference – therefore try to take them on board as much as possible. For example – if you´re a visual-kinesthetic learner then always eat a piece of chocolate when doing the daily listening. It will make the process more efficient. B. Follow the guidelines in Chapter One and start learning new words from the most commonly used words list. As the first step, look at the list of the 1200 most commonly used words and make sure that you learn all the words that are still new to you. Having all of the 1200 most commonly used words in your competence is a great step in giving you confidence while speaking. Therefore, follow the guidelines given in Chapter One and download + install the memorization program and start learning new words daily. A good rate would be to learn 5-7 new words a day. 119

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Our experience and many studies show that 1200 of the most commonly used words are already enough to feel confident in everyday situations. Therefore, we advise you to only move forward with the daily listening and with the daily imitating of texts, if you have acquired the top 1200 words. BUT KEEP IN MIND that if you don´t have so much time and you have to choose which learning elements you use on a daily basis, then after making sure that you know all the top 1200 words, focus ONLY on daily listening and daily imitating as described in the Second and in the Third Chapter! Also make sure that you already know all the 50 most commonly used verbs of the language in the three most common tenses. If you don´t then add them to your memorizing program as well. Take 15 minutes a day to work with the program and memorize new words. The most important thing is that the whole learning experience is enjoyable. Take that into account at all times when planning your learning activities. C. Follow the guidelines in Chapter Two and start with daily listening from day one.

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Keep in mind that you have to be deeply interested in the subject that you are listening about and it´s also a great idea if the listening material gives you useful information that you can practically use in your everyday life. It can be useful for you spiritually or materially, but it has to be useful – then the listening task will yield better results.

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For example if you´re a blogger, then listen about how to increase traffic to your blog, or anything else that you are interested in. The main objective of daily listening is to help create a target-language environment in your daily life and we addressed this in great detail in the Chapter Two. Therefore, if you feel that you already understood the whole text after 2-3 times of listening, just keep listening to the same thing for 5-7 days in a row regardless. It´s important that you don´t change the podcast episode/video even if you understand it well. Also keep in mind that the daily listening has to be continuous – to make your body feel that you´re actually in the target-language environment, you need to listen every day for at least 15-20 minutes. Try to integrate the daily listening into your daily schedule ‒ when you´re driving, walking with your dog, jogging, etc. After listening to the same listening text for 5-7 days choose a new one. Always make sure that it´s on a subject that you are deeply passionate about. D. Follow the guidelines in Chapter Three and start to produce the language from day one. For that, choose an interest-related article and start using it as it is described in the Chapter Three. It´s especially important that you would repeat the sentences in the articles with loud voice, using one of the pronunciation tools recommended: either Oddcast or

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Google translator.

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If you´re a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner, then it´s important that you type the sentences into the pronunciation program yourself, to get the necessary practice. Avoid copy and pasting! Produce the language for at least 10-15 minutes per day as constantly as possible – try not to skip many days, because your memory needs to get constant input to start developing a good language structure. And keep repeating the same system ‒ all LIVE-elements ‒ over and over again.

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SOME

ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS INTERMEDIATE LEVEL LEARNERS

FOR

To efficiently overcome your fear of speaking and to activate your language, you need to start off with the daily listening and with daily production from day one. These are the two most important LIVE-elements for you. Our experience shows that if you actively use these two LIVE-elements then you will achieve an active language level in a month and a half to 2 months. If you feel that you have more time to invest, then also focus on learning the missing words from the list of the top 1200 most commonly used words. So, you will start and continuously work with: A. The top 1200 most commonly used words until you have mastered them, learning 5-7 words a day (10-15 minutes per day) B. Daily interest-related listening (20 minutes per day) C. Daily interest-related texts and production (15-20 minutes per day) Our practice shows that implementing these LIVE-elements will take about 50 minutes per day, but keep in mind that the daily listening part has to be, as much as is possible, integrated into your daily schedule. Therefore we advise you to listen to it while driving, while having lunch (and watching a video from your smartphone), 123

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or while youÂ´re jogging or walking your dog.

There are many possibilities and you have to find the best solution by looking at your own daily schedule. The most important thing is that your body feels that youÂ´re learning is a part of your daily schedule and not separately like in the classroom â&#x20AC;&#x201C; then it will think that you really need the language. Therefore, try to do these LIVE-elements as much as possible as a natural part of your daily schedule. If you need advice to assist you in using the LIVE-elements as a part of your daily schedule, then write to info@ livelanguagelearning.eu and our team will be glad to be of assistance.

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Now you know everything there is to know about the LIVEmethodology. I hope that with the help of this book you found a totally new approach to start moving towards your goals in language learning. I can guarantee you, that if you use all the LIVE-elements on a daily basis as we described them, you will start speaking a totally new language well in about 4-5 months. If you want to just activate your language and overcome your fear of speaking, then this will take a mere 1,5 or 2 months to do so. The most important thing - when using the LIVE-method - is to keep believing in yourself and to keep following the guidelines that we provided. Therefore always take into account your learning style while doing all the learning activities and always be conistent in your efforts, because then you will achieve the results that you have always dreamt about but never believed to achieve. I have experienced that myself. I remember telling myself 10 years ago that I will speak 6 languages, that I will speak French like they do in the movies and I will speak Spanish like the people on the streets of Malaga. But I didnÂ´t know how. Everybody told me that it takes a lot of time. But it doesnÂ´t if you do the right things. And this book here has helped thousands of people do the right things and achieve the level that they want. You can do it as well! Author, Ott Ojamets

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