New Podcast! The Full Online Learning Guide with Breanne Dyck

Welcome to episode 10, a little milestone for the Creative Language Learning Podcast! Thank you guys so much for tuning in, sharing the podcast and responding to it so often.

Do you have any dream guests you'd like to hear from? Special topics, questions or discussions? Leave them in the comments below.

This time, I am talking to an expert in the area of course design and online education. Breanne Dyck knows how to make people learn, she's got lots of information about neuroscience and learnt quite a few languages herself.

“It’s not abstract motivation that keeps us going. It’s all about checking in along the way.”

In this Interview you'll be finding out about

• Why languages are the daddy of self-teaching
• The big mistake all self-learners tend to make
• Where the MOOC concept comes from
• What you should consider before you start even looking for an online course
• The difference between a MOOC, an online course and Duolingo

• How to avoid wasting money on unsuitable courses

• What motivation is really about

Click here to Listen on Stitcher and Here to Listen in itunes

Article of the Week

What is a foreign language worth?

Tips of the Week

Out of the following fabulous three tips, Breanne chose number 1 as her Tip of the Week! Keep immersing yourself in the target language through Facebook and practice switching from and to the target language without translating everything in your head.

1) Language Immersion by Facebook on Language Surfer

2) Beat the Leaderboard on Memrise like Leszek Trybala

3) Translate to Beat the Plateau, a tip from Dr Rebecca Braun at the Guardian Live Q&A

Tips and Links from this Podcast

Breanne is holding three major webinars, the Elevate series from 3-6 December 2014. If you're curious about making your own online course, this is THE place to be.

Google, in case you have not heard of it

Rozuku, an easy course creation website

Udemy, an online course marketplace with reviews and thousands of courses

French Grammar for Beginners, my awesome online French course for grammar reference and simple explanations

Lynda.com, online course marketplace

Breanne Dyck's Blog at MNIB, about the science of learning and teaching online

Reddit, where you can find communities about anything and any language

Fun and Motivation: Meet Mickey Mangan, host of the Lernen to Talk show

This week, I'm very pleased to share the story and successes of Mickey Mangan.

Mickey is best known on the internet as the host of the Lernen to Talk show. He has done all of us language learners a big favour by charting his progress as a native English speaker learning German during a year of living in Germany and taking his language skills from very basic to very comfortable.

If you have never seen or heard of the LTTS, I recommend you watch Mickey's own short introduction to the show.

I had the pleasure of speaking to him last week, highlights of which will be available to watch on Wednesday. (Note this interview is written as paraphrases, not word for word transcripts of Mickey's answers.)

Hey Mickey, thanks for chatting to me! I am definitely a fan of LTTS and I get a lot out of the episodes both as a teacher and as an expat getting to see her home country in real life snapshots. You mention right at the start that your goal is to show others how much improvement attacking a language like a fun, passionate project can bring. Are you a linguist by trade?

No, I actually went to university and took Mechanical Engineering. My first foreign language was Spanish, and I would say that yes, I liked it at school but after all those hours leading me to high school graduation I still didn't feel as though I could actually speak any of it. Think about it - that's approximately 1000 hours spent on a language and the result didn't feel like anything resembling fluency. I was left with a sense of wasted time.

“I made the most of every day and I had such fun using the language in real life.”

When I went on to university, the desire to make all those hours count stuck with me, and so I enrolled on a Study Abroad semester in Chile. That was my first experience of living in a country and going from these low-level speaking skills to full confidence (what many people would consider fluent). I made the most of every day and I had such fun using the language in real life.

Did you take Spanish in the partner university in Chile?

I took Engineering modules, but the experience of my own subject paled in comparison to the energy and stimulation I felt from focusing on understanding it all in Spanish. I found myself doing better at my own subject because it was taught in another language. That extra challenge just kick-started my interest.

On my return from Chile, I was filled such excitement and appreciation for taking the learning experience into real life that I just wanted to go abroad again and learn another language.

Was that the motivation behind LTTS as well?

Yes and no. My semester in Chile gave me a clear appreciation of how much and how fast progress in language learning can be made. But the real idea for LTTS came at summer camp!

I had a job as a counsellor at Concordia LV, a camp which provides this immersive foreign language experience for children. When I was there, I could see that those students who really signed on to making the most out of camp were the ones that improved the most. I wanted to show them what can be achieved in language learning by talking to people, and eventually the idea of the videos was born.

Fast forward to your trip to Germany. How and why Germany?

The programme was CBYX. It had a lot of attractive aspects for me in particular, being an engineer interested in sustainable energy sources for example.

“The point of the Lernen to Talk show is having fun and instilling motivation.”

And in the LTTS videos, you have managed to document a full year of language improvements. Did you ever feel that you might not achieve your goal?

Actually, I must say I knew with 100% certainty that I would be fluent in German within a year. In fact, as I was filming the LTTS I always had the final time lapse in mind - I couldn't wait to cut the videos together and just show all this progress. I felt that having this as a project and attacking it with a sense of fun really kept my motivation going. The point of LTTS is having fun and instilling motivation.

And from the comments that you receive on your videos, I can tell that it has worked!

Finally, I noticed how confident you are right from the start. How aware were you of your own progress?

I didn't feel it very strongly in the first two months, but after those two I moved to a different place and suddenly made contact with so many new people who all met me for the first time. They were so impressed with how much German I had learnt in just two months that it really boosted my confidence. Progress can be so microscopically incremental for a language learner that I would really say the best way to stay encouraged is to change your environment completely. Find a new person to practice with or join a new group, so that you can get the positive feedback.

“Progress can be so incremental for a language learner that the best way to stay encouraged is to change your environment completely.”

— (my favourite thing Mickey said)

So, now that your CBYX year has come to an end, would you say you're "done", a finished product now fluent in German?

Well. I would confidently write "fluent" next to my German and Spanish on my CV - but fluent is a meaningless word by most measures - but really I wouldn't say I'm fluent until I can fully enjoy a novel in the language.  With progress comes more interest and motivation, so now I want to discover Goethe.