Brazilian mobile library

Improving my Portuguese, one (lost) calorie at a time

We've probably heard of people improving their conversation skills in a language over a meal. I'm reversing the trend. Portuguese vocabulary goes up and the inches melt away. (Let me be ambitious and count in...
"New Life" Russian translation of Orhan Pamuk's "Yeni Hayat"

Mixed accent and voices in my head

At the risk of sounding like I am crazy, I hear multilingual voices in my head. To learn native pronunciation, I first hear a native speaking in my head.   When we see things in our heads,...

Music = learning languages and staying in school

Another TV interview about the awesome power of music! Songs, TV and other media help us learn foreign languages. Hip-hop music can keep at-risk kids in school and out of trouble. Susanna Zaraysky and Anthony Pineda...
learn Portuguese

Learn Portuguese: The joy of just “being” in Portuguese and not speaking

(Photo is of Lisbon, Portugal.) Feeling like I am in Portugal without leaving the United States I ventured into the Little Portugal area of San Jose, California, where the local immigrant population from the Azores islands...
CBN Radio

Music therapy effects the brain

Here’s a great show in Portuguese about the healing effects of music. Musicoterapia e a energia que vem dos sons (Music therapy and the energy that comes from sounds) from Caminhos Alternativos from the Brazilian...
learning a foreign language

Three polyglots meet in Poland

Do polyglots just talk about language learning? If we did, we'd probably bore each other very quickly! I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Simcott and Luca Lampariello in Poznań, Poland earlier this month. We share...
Georgetown University

How memory helps you learn language

However, when we are learning our second language, we rely more on declarative memory to learn grammar rules and structure rather than only by procedural memory. (In my words, we are like parrots than copy when we hear native speakers say.) This doesn’t mean that we can learn a language well without learning grammar and structure, but it shows that listening and repeating serve a real purpose in how we can learn the syntax and structure of a language. Listening to and repeating song lyrics CAN help us learn grammar!
Language Learning Articles

You are not your language. Linguistic snobbery blocks language learning

f you fashion yourself Ernest Hemingway or Jorge Luis Borges’ incarnate and therefore exempt from learning an “inferior” tongue, let’s do a reality check. Where’s your Nobel Prize for Literature? Where are the bookshelves of tomes in your name worthy of mention?

Susanna quoted in San Jose Mercury News

                        While on the set for the Comunidad del Valle show at NBC in San Jose, California, I gave a short interview about Language is Music and how to use music and media to learn...

Beyond Gangnam Style: Learning Korean via Korean Music

An Introduction to Korean Indie Music for Korean Language Learners Guest post by Sam Gendreau It’s been 5 years since I started looking for some of the best possible—preferably noncommercial—Korean bands out there, and today is...
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