StoryLearning Podcast

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How fluent do you have to be in a second language before moving on to a third language? How do you know when is the right time? Do you risk forgetting the language you are currently learning or not?

This is the most common question I've ever received on the podcast - Can I learn two lang...

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Struggling to understand TV in your new language? Today’s questioner, Lisa, has the same problem. She speaks French and Italian at a decent level but still finds TV tricky. She told me that sometimes she just wants to collapse in front of the telly.

And t...

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I’ve had a lot of questions come in  about different ways to learn vocabulary from reading and the best books to use if you want to read to learn a language.

 I do quite a lot of episodes on reading and this is going to be a rapid fire one. I'm going to very ...

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Today's guest, Xiaoma NYC, a.k.a Arieh Smith, probably needs no introduction. He first came on the podcast in 2020, so it's high time we caught up with him. He's been busy since then, managing to learn 70 languages. So how did he do it?

Links mentioned in this episode:

Arieh’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.c...

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Today's question is about speaking and how to go from knowing a lot of stuff in a language to actually speaking the language fluently.

 As I always say, if you want to speak fluently, so if you want to be able to interact in the real world confidently and fluently like a native speaker, you've got to be speaking a lot.

Let’s look at some ways to do t...

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As a beginner language learner, you feel progress happening very quickly. Everything you learn is useful and practical.

But once you've learned the basics, it’s normal to get stuck. In fact, it's so normal that it has a name: the intermediate plateau. Every learner reaches it, generally around the one to two year mark.

So, how do you get over it?  When y...

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I don’t know if you've noticed, but language learning advice is often geared towards extroverts - put yourself out there, just speak, don't be shy.

That makes perfect sense if you're that way inclined. But if you're at all like me and you identify as an introvert, or at least have very strong introverted tendencies, that kind of adv...

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Today we have a question about choosing your next language. And it comes from someone who's already a polyglot, who speaks four languages and is a bit confused over what their fifth language should be. An interesting problem.

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In this episode, I'm very happy to welcome Gareth Popkins, longtime friend and language compadre, to the StoryLearning podcast. Gareth got the language bug in his early twenties and took his French further, learned Welsh and then worked on German and Russian. He’s had a rather chequered trajectory, sta...

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Understanding native speakers on the streets is one of the most difficult, challenging and disconcerting elements of language learning. But when you learn to deal with fast speech, it is the most exhilarating, wonderful, rewarding feeling you can possibly imagine. And this is the question we're gonna get into today on the StoryLearnin...

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Today I’m answering a question from a frustrated Japanese learner with a 650-day streak on Duolingo. Their question:  What do I do? Do I keep on, do I switch to a different language?  Do you have any advice for a frustrated language learner? I really like this question. I've got so much to say about it so I'm looking forward to answe...

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In this episode I’m going to be talking about this old chestnut: learning two languages at the same time. I’ve got two questions on this that have come from a recent video. Long-term listeners will be very familiar with my take on learning two languages at the same time. But my questions today are about a rather specific scenario, learning...

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I am absolutely delighted to welcome to the StoryLearning podcast, my longtime friend, partner in crime and fellow language enthusiast, Dave Pinto. Professionally Dave focuses on language teaching, but many language teachers that I've met over the years in different countries never really get to grips with language learni...

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In this episode, I’m tackling a really difficult question that I feel a lot of sympathy for: how you can learn a language when you have no motivation? I taught English for five years in Asia and the Middle East. I met a lot of students who had to learn English because they needed it for their job. They had no desire to learn, but they had...

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In this episode, I’m doing something a little bit different. I'm going to take you behind the scenes of the new StoryLearning app that I've been building. It's a work in progress, but I thought you might like a sneak peek. I'm pretty excited about it. In fact, I haven't been as excited about something since I wrote my first book of short stories over 10 yea...

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How do you bridge the gap between being a complete beginner and not being able to read anything and then doing what I did a few years ago, which is to learn Italian from scratch in 90 days through reading? That's what I'm going to cover in this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

Olly Italian project playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9F81zlDaaE&...

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Luca's 12 Rules for Learning Any Language Faster in 2026: https://l.storylearning.com/Luca_tips

 I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Luca Lampariello who has been teaching languages online longer than I have. He was one of my very first references when I first started creating content online. He’s been on the podcast a number of times over the years and here is again to talk about how he’s l...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/TV_movies 

I've had a lot of comments come in all asking the same thing: when you watch TV or movies, should you use subtitles or not? Subtitle on or subtitles off? Subtitles in which language? Which subtitle-audio combination is best? I have a rather controversial take on this, which is that I generally don't recommend TV or movies for language learni...

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Why do we fail at language learning? It's not that we find it difficult, it's that staying consistent is difficult. We set ourselves this target of studying for an hour a day and invariably life gets in the way. And before you know it, three months have gone past and we've done nothing. This is the uncomfortable truth about language learning works - w...