Language Learning

10 Tips for Learning Vocabulary

Posted on




















letter blocks
Photo by Pixabay on






Homework: Friend or Foe?

Posted on

Say the word homework to most people and they normally screw up their face into the same kind of expression. The same expression they have if you say “tax return” or “train strike” or in my case, “sugar-free”. Yuck! It’s the same when you type the word into Google and click on images. Up come a range of pictures, mostly of kids, with mountains of books and their little heads in their hands in utter despair. The only person looking happy is an owl with a hat on. And while I love Hedwig, we all know that owls are the ultimate nerds of the forest.

design desk display eyewear
Photo by on

So, the question is, when it comes to learning a language, or anything else for that matter, is homework useful? Can anything that makes me feel so “oh go away” really be good for me? Well anyone involved in education or who has kids in school will know the debate on this is huge. A lot of research has been done into homework and the negative effect it can have. A lot of children are overloaded with work leading to anxiety and to them getting less involved in extra-curricular activities. Not good at all.

However, I’m not being graded and I’m not trying to get into university.  I don’t have parents breathing down my neck. I’m not learning multiple subjects. So, this post is more aimed at the adult learner like me. Someone who takes a regular language class and would like to see progress. As a teacher and a learner, I honestly think homework can be a good thing, and this is why:

Most of us need a push

Let’s be honest, very few of us have endless amounts of motivation. Whether it’s the gym or work or learning Japanese, motivation fluctuates. Over the years I have found that most of my clients respond well to being given homework. They often admit that given the choice of self-determined homework (choosing an activity to do themselves) and being given something specific by me, they are much more likely to complete it if it is “prescribed”. I know that feeling too. The slight shame when you have to tell your teacher that you haven’t done it. That can sometimes be enough to push people. It’s like having a buddy who you go to the gym with. You don’t want to let them down.


learning outside

Research into the way we learn has shown that learning information in different environments helps us retain information. We often associate information with a situation or place. For example, maybe you run into someone from work in the supermarket. You don’t know them that well but you know their name. But now you’re in a totally different environment and that person is out of context and you forget their name or maybe even where you know them from. According to Benedict Carey, author of “How we Learn”, research shows that “the more environments in which we rehearse, the sharper and more lasting the memory of that material becomes.” Doing homework takes you away from your language class situation. You could be at home, on the bus or sitting in a cafe. Every time you are being exposed to different outside influences and as a result your memory of that material becomes strengthened.

It needs to be relevant and manageable

Of course, not all homework is made the same. As a teacher it is important to set homework that is relevant and that the learner will be able to complete. There’s nothing worse than being given homework you simply don’t understand. Or even more frustrating, spending your precious time learning random vocabulary you will NEVER need. Following coursebooks can often cause this problem. You might think that in the early chapters of a beginners Japanese textbook we would be learning basic skills such as buying things or ordering food. I, on the other hand, found myself learning the special word for the little office at the train station in Japan that deals with lost and found items on the shinkansen (yes only the bullet trains, not the regional trains) so I could call and tell them I had lost my sweater on the train and that sweater had a picture of a horse on it! Because these things happen on a daily basis and my wardrobe is full of equestrian prints. I’ll say it again. Make. It. Relevant.


To me, this is the most important factor. When it comes to learning, accountability is essential. Any serious (rather than, I can make you fluent through hypnosis in 24 hours) kind of teacher will tell you, the moment you take responsibility for your learning is the moment you really start to see improvement. A teacher is there to inform, guide and coach but they can’t do the work for you. Nobody can give you a language, you have to take it.

beach ocean sand sea
Photo by Pixabay on

Some of the most effective homework I have done for my Japanese learning was creating my own sentences. Looking at vocabulary and grammar structures we had covered and then making up my own sentences. Thinking of scenarios I might find myself in when in Tokyo and writing out dialogues. More white wine and karaoke, less horse sweaters! Of course, this takes real motivation and it won’t happen every week but combined with exercises given by your teacher or from a textbook, it can massively improve your skills.

So, what are your thoughts? Homework good, yes or no?

Feel free to add any comments below. And as always you can sign up to receive my posts straight to your email in the box on the right.



Posted on

10 minutes

Apparently you can do pretty much anything in 10 minutes a day: get six-pack abs, declutter your home, meditate and reduce stress, cook a Jamie Oliver dinner and of course, learn a language. So why the obsession with 10 minutes? Why not 7 and a half minutes or 13 minutes? Well, first of all, people tend to hate uneven amounts of time (Does anyone set their alarm clock for 7:03? No way, it’s gotta be 7:05 right?!) And of course, the idea is that no matter how busy you are, everyone should be able to put aside 10 minutes at some point in their day to work on something specific. 10 minutes sounds less scary than a quarter of an hour but a bit more meaty than 8 minutes. So, considering there are 1440 minutes in a day which means we all have 144 slots of 10 minutes available to us, how come we are not all walking around with six packs, in perfectly decluttered homes, serving up Jamie Oliver dinners and speaking about 10 languages perfectly? Why do we still find it hard to follow the “10 minute a day” rule?

Well, I decided to put the theory to the test and aimed to do 10 minutes of a) exercise b) playing guitar and c) learning Japanese, every single day for 6 weeks. And this is what I found out:

The Positives

  • I nearly always did more than 10 minutes. Once I actually got started on my yoga mat or with my Japanese textbook or my guitar, I found I was motivated to continue. It felt easy to do more than 10 minutes. But knowing that I only had to do 10 if that was all I wanted to do or had time for, really took the pressure off.
  • It really is amazing what you can achieve in 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes of yoga made me feel better. More refreshed and relaxed. You can easily learn a new chord on the guitar in 10 minutes. And 10 minutes of vocabulary learning is so easy to fit in.
  • You start to build good habits. Doing something on a daily basis makes things become more routine and habit-like.
  • You break things down into manageable steps. Learning a chord on the guitar, rather than struggling your way through a whole song is much less intimidating. Spending 10 minutes learning a couple of new Japanese phrases or memorizing 5 Kanji is simply more fun than opening up a textbook and slogging through a whole chapter.
  • If you miss a day, it’s not the end of the world. If you had only planned one really long session a week and you missed that, it would be much worse. Combined with the fact that you probably did more than 10 minutes on some days (see positive point 1) you know you are still ok. And of course, you could always do a little bit more tomorrow!

The  Negatives

  • Despite those 144 time slots available, there are still days when you just don’t manage it or let’s be honest, you just don’t feel like it. Knowing you HAVE to devote 10 minutes of your day to something does create a certain amount of pressure. There was only one week out of 6 where I actually did all 3 activities for 10 minutes every day.
  • It can get a bit boring. Sometimes you get a bit stuck for ideas of what to do each day so you do the same as you did yesterday. Good for repetition of something but can quickly be the road to snoozeville. Which brings me nicely to my next point.


  • When learning a language every day, beware of something called False Fluency. Research shows that if we learn the same thing every day, the brain starts to get lazy. So, for example, if you try to learn the same 10 words every day, by day 3 or 4, your brain no longer needs to try as hard to recall the words i.e. it thinks yeah, yeah, I know that. Studies show that interval learning i.e. intermittment learning is more effective for long-term memory. So, if you do decide to learn a language every day, make sure you are mixing it up i.e. one day vocabulary, the next day a bit of grammar, next day phrases and then back to the vocabulary again.

Despite the negatives, I did feel happy with my progress after 6 weeks. So, if you are planning something similar here are my ideas for making it a success:

My top tips

  • Have your materials/equipment ready. Often we put things off because it seems like a hassle to just get started. But if your guitar is stood in the living room, the yoga mat is right there ready to be rolled out (the dog actually helps me do that!) or you have all your language stuff in one box so you can just pick it up and begin, it makes things a lot easier.
  • Use 10 minutes that would normally be wasted. By this I mean, if possible use up “dead time”. It takes 10 minutes for a pan of spaghetti to cook. My guitar is right there next to the kitchen so it was easy to just pick it up and strum away until the pasta was done. Multi-tasking at its best. My other favourite “dead” time to use is commuting time. Great for using language apps or listening to a podcast. Again, just make sure your materials are at hand so it is as convenient as possible.
  • Mix things up. If I get bored with something, YouTube is the first place I go. There are gazillions of useful short videos which can teach you how to do pretty much anything. Languages, 10-minute yoga routines, guitar lessons and it’s all for free!
  • Don’t overload. As you’ve probably already realised, I wasn’t just committing to 10 minutes a day, I was actually committing to 30 (exercise, guitar AND Japanese). Some days it worked but others it really was just too much. I found I had weeks where 2 things went really well but the other got totally neglected. Again, I think that’s natural but it does make you feel a bit guilty. Keep things realistic.
  • Accept there will be days when you won’t manage it or you are just not in the mood to put those unflattering yoga pants on. Accept it, focus on tomorrow (and buy new yoga pants!)


do more

  • If you are having a good day, go with the flow and do more than 10 minutes if the mood takes you.
  • Track your progress. Nerdy I know but ticking things off a list, whether it’s an app or in my case a whiteboard that I put up in the office (which my husband writes silly comments on!) is strangely satisfying. I like this so much I sometimes even write things on the board AFTER I’ve done them, just so I can ceremoniously tick them off. Yes really.

So on the whole, there are lots of benefits of taking small slots of time and trying to make use of them. I would definitely recommend giving it a go and seeing how it works for you. Let me know if you give it a try or maybe share your own personal “learning tips” in the comments below. I’m off now to do a bit of Portuguese ready for my holiday next week. Estou ansioso! (Ha! Learned that in my 10 minute podcast last night!!)


Forget Shame

Posted on

When my clients ask my advice on how to improve their English, one of my top tips is always: Forget shame. If you feel ashamed and embarrassed every time you slip up, you will never improve. To become better at anything, we have to try, we have to take risks and when it all goes wrong, we have to get up, smile, carry on and most importantly, try again. I hate to use the word “ass” two weeks in a row in my post (sorry mother!) but this time it really is unavoidable. When you speak a foreign language, there will always be times when you make mistakes and fall on your ass (there it is again). Some mistakes are more dramatic than others, but they are going to happen, whether you like it or not. So what to do? Take a tip from some Olympians.


Did anyone catch any of the ice-skating during the recent Winter Olympics in PyeongChang? I’m not into winter sports but I always like to watch a bit of figure skating. That combination of sparkly, sequinned outfits and amazing athletic talent and skill. However, there’s always that moment in every performance where you kind of hold your breath. When the skater is getting ready to do a jump and everyone is wondering if they will land it. Sometimes they do but sometimes they don’t. Even the top skaters in the world are not perfect every single day. But in order to gain points and get a medal they have to take risks. And what’s really striking about these skaters, is that when they fall and it all goes wrong, they pick themselves up and carry on. Hold the tears in, put on a brave face and try to make up for the fall with the rest of their performance. Imagine being the best in the world but still going out there knowing that you might fall in front of millions of people? Wow. They really don’t let shame get in their way.  As the American Mirai Nagasu recently said (just before becoming the third woman ever to land the elusive triple axel at the Olympics) “I’m definitely going for it. No guts, no glory. If I fall, I’ll take the fall and just keep going.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to compare having a conversation in Italian with the talent and commitment of being an Olympic figure skater. But there is a lot we can learn from them. Don’t let those falls and mistakes put you off. Learn from them, smile  and just keep going. And it least be grateful you don’t have to display your grammatic ability in front of millions of people in a sequinned outfit!

What are your top tips for learning and speaking a foreign language? Feel free to comment below. As always you can follow my blog by adding your email address to the box on the right.

3 Common False Friends

Posted on

Learning a language can be a bumpy ride. You’re cruising along, doing pretty well and feeling rather proud of yourself when yet again, something comes along to trip you up. One of these fun things is something called a false friend. Now, I don’t mean someone who goes shopping with you and tells you that you look great in that bright pink dress and you should definitely buy it, when in fact you look hideous and are at risk of frightening little children on the street. But it’s not that different. In language terms, a false friend is a word that you think is your friend (because it seems easy to remember as it looks/sounds almost the same as the word in your native language) but in fact has a completely different meaning. In other words, it’s going to trip you up and watch you fall on your language-learning ass. Let me give you some examples:


1. irritiert (German) versus irritated (English)
If you are irritated in English, it means you are annoyed. Someone on the underground is talking on their phone at the top of their voice. Worse, someone is sitting opposite you, chomping loudly on a strange German sandwich creation of raw pork mince and raw onions (welcome to the wonderful world of Mettwurst) and failing to close their mouth while they do so. Your blood pressure is slightly up. As a friend of mine always says, you’re feeling a bit “Grrrrrrrr”. That’s the English version of irritated. However, when I first came to Frankfurt, a German friend of mine often said “Ich bin irritiert”. I often wondered what her problem was. Why is she so irritated all the time? She’s smiling and doesn’t seem annoyed; what’s that all about? Only later did I discover that “Ich bin irritiert” translates into English as “I’m confused/I don’t understand”. Aha! That explains a lot. Vice versa, a client of mine once showed me some emails he had been writing in English to a guy in the London office. On more than one occasion he had written: “I’m irritated by your presentation”, meaning of course he was confused/there was something he didn‘t understand. London was not impressed.

2. Rezept (German) versus Recipe (English)
This one comes up a lot. Especially when you live in a country where people are obsessed with their health, have an Apotheke (pharmacy) on every corner, enjoy describing their illnesses to you in excruciating detail and apparently make more visits (up to 14 a year!) to their doctor than any other country in Europe. In German, Rezept has a couple of meanings. It is not only used as recipe for cooking, baking etc. but also as the word for prescription, as in the holy piece of paper you get from your doctor to go to the nearest Apotheke (never more than about 100 metres away) and get your medication.


For me, this came up again a few months ago. Although I remember doing lots of painful role-play conversations while struggling my way through my Deutsch Heute textbook at school, I don’t remember any of the roleplays evere covering “Mother falls on tram and breaks her wrist”. Long story short, mother fell over, broke her wrist, tram transport in Frankfurt came to a halt, ambulance came, so did the police (who tried to fine me 500 euro for not having my passport with me!) went to the ER, she had an operation and my husband had an extra unexpected week of his in-laws. Sorry Deutsch Heute but “I’d like a Bratwurst please” just doesn’t cut it in those situations. Anyway, when she was finally being discharged from the hospital, the surgeon (who actually spoke excellent English) still fell for the false friend and told her he would give her a “recipe for the painkillers”. Mother was confused (irritiert) and probably also a bit irritated (genervt) and replied, “What? I have to make them myself??!” Brilliant.

3. sensible (German and English) versus sensitive (English)
This one not only comes up in German, but also in Spanish and French. All these languages use the word sensible as we in English would use the word sensitive/delicate:

“Sie ist sehr sensible.” “She’s very sensitive.”
(likely to start crying)
“Es ist ein sensibles Thema.” “It’s a sensitive issue.”
(A delicate issue that needs to be handled with care.)
Sensible in English on the other hand means reasonable/practical.
“She’s a sensible child.”
(you can trust her to make the right/reasonable decisions)
“Sie ist ein vernünftiges Kind.”

high heels

My parents have spent their life telling me to wear “sensible shoes”. If you’re not sure what that means, forget crazy Jimmy Choo (instruments of torture) high heels and picture some comfortable Birkenstocks or some hiking boots. Sensible shoes. My dad even took this advice to such an extreme that on the morning of my wedding, he arrived at my room to pick me up with a Tesco shopping bag in hand, insisting I needed to wear “sensible shoes” (i.e. my sweaty running shoes rather than my pretty strappy high-heeled sandals) with my wedding dress to avoid tripping on the cobbled streets on my way to the castle. “Sensible shoes Rebecca!“ Sweet of him to worry about me but was never going to happen!

Unfortunately, the list of false friends goes on and on. For more help with German/English false friends, I find this list pretty helpful. What about false friends in other languages? Are there any you always mix up? Feel free to share your stories below and remember you can subscribe to my blog by adding your email address to the box on the right.


5 Reasons Why Learning a Language is Like Going to the Gym

Posted on Updated on


I hate to admit it, but like lots of other hopeful people, I went back to the gym in January. A free month-pass to a fancy, luxurious gym helped me along my way. But while I was there today, burning some butt on the cross trainer and admiring the beautiful people (who can actually afford to be members) in their lovely lululemon yoga outfits, sipping their green smoothies, it struck me again how similar fitness and language learning are (green smoothies and yoga posing aside):

1. You can’t outsource it
Let’s start with the bad news. Nobody can do it for you. Unlike green smoothies and nice outfits, you can’t buy fitness. Even if you pay for a trainer, you still have to do the work. In the same way, you can’t buy yourself a language. No matter what some smart marketing people like to tell you; “Get fit in 10 days!” “Speak fluent Japanese in 30 days!”. And even if that were possible, what happens after? Can I train really hard for 10 days and then be fit for the rest of my life? One month of intensive Japanese and I’m fluent forever? Of course not. Like fitness levels, language ability declines as soon as you stop using it. It’s best to accept from the start that it really is a never-ending project.

2. There will be ups and downs
You know those weeks. The weeks where you had the best intentions but it just didn’t work out. You feel ill so you can’t go for a run. You are too tired to learn any vocabulary. No time for the gym. No time for your language class. The key thing here is to accept you had a bad week, don’t weigh yourself down with guilt and get back on track. Going back to the gym when you’ve been a way for a while can be pretty brutal. The same as turning up for a class and knowing you’ve missed a couple of weeks of new grammar and vocabulary. It’s downright uncomfortable. But all is not lost. Try to focus on the small wins as you get back into it, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the big ultimate goal. In the end, starting again rather than just giving up altogether is the key to long-term success.

3. It’s good for your health
So here comes the good news. The benefits of physical exercise are well-known but did you know that learning a language is also good for your health? More and more studies are proving that learning a foreign language improves your memory, increases your multi-tasking abilities and can even delay the onset of dementia. Recent studies have shown that bilingual people who develop dementia do so up to 5 years later than monolingual people.

4. You never completely forget
So even if you’ve had a long break from the gym or a language, there’s an amazing thing called muscle memory which means you never really start from zero. It’s a complex topic but scientific evidence suggests that your body and brain still retain parts of what you trained in the past. How many times have I met clients who tell me they remember “nothing at all” of the English they learnt years ago. In my experience, never true. There’s always something still there to build on.

5. It gives you a high
Aaaaaaah, the feel-good factor. The thing we are all praying for when we are struggling away on the treadmill and feeling crappy. It does exist, I promise. You just have to wait a bit longer for it to show up than you might like. According to studies, people experience this “kick” after exercising for a certain length of time (it can differ from person to person) and pushing themselves. In the same way, it might take a while to experience the “feel-good factor” from your language learning. However, when you start to improve and finally get rewarded, levels of dopamine (another feel-good chemical) in the brain increase. The reward could be, for example, getting something right in class, finally figuring out how the hell to form the past perfect continuous tense, or best of all, having your first proper impromptu conversation with a native speaker and that person complimenting your skills.  Sounds nerdy I know, but the feel- good factor really does kick in and it’s hugely motivating.

So, try to keep these things in mind on your language learning journey. I’m off to drink a green smoothie, buy myself a fancy gym outfit (if I can’t afford the gym I can at least have the accessories!) and get my Japanese grammar book out.  Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts on this or subscribe to my blog. Just add your email address to the box on the right.

What is “fluent” English?

Posted on



1. “Fluent” does not equal “perfect”.

2. What is the employer really expecting?

3. Get yourself an interview and then let them decide.


