VNtomboy

I've never heard of active listening. Is it just repeating phrases over and over or is there more to it?

Hourly. Seriously, I speak English as much as I can, watch English movies exclusively, only listen to English music and read English books. It's the only reason why I've kept most of my fluency so far

I do, yep, but maybe that's because I spent a good 4 years in Australia so I made friends from there. Nowadays, with Internet and things, it's very easy to befriend people halfway across the world as well.

You should check out freaknomics podcast. It's really great and informative.

TV shows, movies and music are your best bet. Our brain tends to remember the stuff we LIKE better.

That would definitely be interesting if it were true. You have to remember that scientists can be biased in these experiments because they WANT it to be true. I'm not saying that they falsified data, since I do think all animals have an unique way of communicating so it's entirely possible that they developed a language with proper structure and grammar, but let's not be too quick to jump on board the bandwagon

I'm the complete opposite, haha. I tend to lose things, so I like having all my books in one place, plus for me, it's nice to have the ability to take your books with you everywhere, so you won't be sitting alone at a cafe or someplace WISHING you'd brought a novel to read

It really, really is. The thing is, some people are reluctant to try children's books because they think that they're above that level or simple because they're so stuck on the fact that it's children's books and they're adults so they shouldn't have to read such things. It honestly baffles me how some people can think that way, but each to their own I guess

I second this. Our brain really responds well to music, that's why people are often able to sing in completely foreign languages without knowing what the lyrics mean at all. The one thing I'd suggest though, is to listen to a LOT of music, because otherwise you'd just be learning the same vocab day in day out, lol

It's so weird, because here in Vietnam, people also consider light skin as attractive, which I don't see at all. It just means that you spend a lot of time indoor or places without sun. Maybe it's influenced by when the French/Americans tried to invade us. I don't really see how having white skin could be more attractive than tanned skin, but what do I know, lol

I'm surprised they haven't gotten Japanese yet, given that there's a ton of demand, especially in Asia from what I've seen. I think they'll release it soon though :grin:

About your pronunciation point. I don't think you should try and *learn* how to pronounce words. I don't know any native speaker (of any language) who understands the phonetics written in the dictionary. Nowadays, it's much easier to pick up pronunciation through listening to other people talk, and if you keep at it, you'll start to get a sense of how words are supposed to be spoken. One tip I'd highly recommend beginners of any language to do is read CHILDREN'S books. They're always grammatically correct (compared to textbooks which are sometimes hit or miss), they have plenty of pictures and are super easy to read and digest. It helped me a lot when I started out learning English and French

To be fair, you can say that about a lot of electives. Even if the OP's daughter takes music, she could meet someone influential in that world and end up having a career through that. Yes, you picked up a lot in your Spanish class, but I'm willing to bet that you enjoyed going to that class as well. Learning a language is not easy, and you need personal motivation in order to become good (just like anything else really)

I find that in podcasts, people often speak very clearly so as to get their point across. In TV shows and movies, they might talk faster because obviously you can see the action on-screen. The other option is to listen to news channels on the radio but you might not always be able to tune in at a particular time for those shows, compared to podcasts which you just download once and can listen anytime

I've made a couple of French friends online over the years, but we aren't close, no. I think that has more to do with us not having much in common rather than the language barrier though.

That's why America is called a "melting pot" of cultures rather than having everyone be sort of the same-ish like you'd maybe see in Scandinavian countries for example. It's easy for people, especially the younger generation, to want to become Westernized because it's the cool thing now.

I don't think paperbacks are going away anytime soon. There are lots of others like yourself, who love to own physical copies of books for the sentimental value if nothing else. For me, I do most of my reading in bed, with the lights out, so you can imagine how it'd be easier for me to read ebooks.

I think if your daughter is interested in music then you should let her pursue it. Who knows, she could be the next Mozart or something. On the other hand, if you really wanted her to learn a foreign language, there are online courses, duolingo, etc that you could encourage her to try. Learning a new language is not easy, and it'll be practically useless unless she has motivation to do so

It definitely helps. I've been back from Australia for 7 years and my English is still pretty fluent. For that, I really have to thank all the American and British TV shows I watch, music I listen to, and the fact that I exclusively go onto English websites for entertainment. I also speak English every day at school for pretty much every subject. Even with all that, I sometimes feel my vocab and accent slipping away, so you have to be prepared for that to happen.

With language learning, immersion and using the language is SO important. I know too many people who have spent years learning English and probably have great knowledge of grammar, but they're just too shy to speak it! If you want to learn vocabulary, I highly recommend anki. It's a great flashcard app that helped me learn like 300-400 new words in a month for my SAT exam. For listening, news channels are a great source of vocabulary with not much slang and a correct accent.

It's always "If I were". This is a conditional sentence and when I learnt these in school, my teacher really hammered it home that it's never "If I was". However, this ONLY applies to conditional sentences. Otherwise, it's "I was..." and not "I were..."

Hey, what you can do is go to your nearest British Council (pretty much every country in the world has one) and ask them. For me personally, just watch British TV and movies, you'll learn their accents and dialects. Read British books like Harry Potter. To be honest the differences between British and American English aren't that huge aside from the accents, so you'll be okay if you just learn one or the other

Try duolingo...it's free, so that alone makes it better than the ridiculously overpriced RS

Hey, this sounds super fun. One question though...how are you going to make sure that there are no spammers though?

Very interesting looking app you got there. Are you planning it to be free or charging it?