StoryLearning Podcast
Got a burning language learning question? I’m Olly Richards and I've learned 8 languages through stories. Every Wednesday, I answer your questions and chat to world-class language experts. Whether you're learning Spanish, German, Japanese, or something else, tune in for insider tips and practical strategies to get fluent fast. Each week you get: - Answers to your biggest language learning challenges - Story-based techniques to accelerate your progress - Tried and tested tips from my 25+ years of experience No flashcards or memorisation. Just story-based learning that actually works.
Episodes
👉 Grab your FREE Guide, How to Speak in ANY Language: https://l.storylearning.com/speak
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/read-in-15
In this episode, I'm going to go rapid fire through questions on speaking your new language, because a lot of people are asking me about freezing up, people switching to English or being shy and anxious.
These are real problems. What's interesting is that most of the...
👉 Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/reading-guide
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/read_in_15
How do you read in a foreign language if you cannot read the alphabet or the script yet? How can you read if you can't actually read, if you see what I mean?
If you've spent more than 10 seconds in my world, you will have heard me drone on and on and on abo...
👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/free.fluency
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/15_min_read
I'm lazy, I'm bored, I'm not motivated, studying is so hard, I don't have an hour a day to study. These are all things that I, at various points in my life, have told myself about language learning.
And as a result, I end up not doing any study. And it's a r...
👉 Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/read_guide
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/read_app
A listener wrote to me frustrated that, although he’s at B2 level, he keeps using the same vocabulary over and over again when he speaks. This is a common problem - even in our native language, we understand twice as many words as we actually use. Extraordin...
👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/goals_2026
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/reading_app
I released a video on how I would learn Spanish again in 2026 if I was going to start over. When I first learned it, I was immersed - I was living in London and had Spanish friends. Someone left a comment saying - people with lives don't have two years to immerse themselve...
👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Lamont’s 8 Best Language Learning Tips: https://l.storylearning.com/lamont_tips
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL.app.2026
In this episode, I’m delighted to be joined for a second time by Lamont McLeod from the Days and Words YouTube channel.
We talk about getting over hurdles in language learning, our appreciation of language as an art-form, the Australian M...
👉 Take your FREE Level Test: https://l.storylearning.com/language_test
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL.app
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency.resources
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL-app
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...
👉Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/reading_guide
👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL_app
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 ...
👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Xiaoma’s 7 Best Tips for Learning Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/xiaoma
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Speaking Guide: https://l.storylearning.com/speaking_guide
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/goals
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...
👉 Grab your FREE guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/6_steps_read
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Language Difficulty Guide: https://l.storylearning.com/difficulty_guide
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.
👉 Got a question you want Olly to answer on the podcast? Submit it here: https://storylearning.com/ask_Olly_your_quest...
👉 Get Your Free Guide, Dr Popkins' 8 Best Tips to Learn a Language and Keep Going https://l.storylearning.com/dr-popkins-tips
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency-resources
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/free-fluency
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency_goals
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...
👉 Grab your FREE guide, Dave Pinto's 7 Best Tips to Sound Like a Local: https://l.storylearning.com/sound-local
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...
👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency
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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