Monthly Archives: February 2017

Valentine’s Day has just passed us, the flowers have withered, the chocolates have miraculously disappeared and all that is left are the cards that will soon be covered with dust. Maybe you belong to those people considering something more meaningful to foster your relationship than presenting red roses? You could, for example, resolve to learn your sweetheart’s native language – despite the fact that your partner is fluent in English and like the song suggests ‘communication is the problem to the answer’. Sometimes communication with the partner’s family can be the primary reason acknowledges our student Ken: ‘I have been a German language student at Language Hub for over a year. I've always wanted to learn German after my first visit to the country in 2000. Now, my wife and I regularly travel to Germany to visit her family. The Language Hub offers an immersive learning experience for students to practice communicating completely in the language they study. The classes are fun and interactive. Studying at the Language Hub has tremendously improved my German language skills and has made communicating with my German family much easier.’ Other times a little misunderstanding in the presence of your dearest is motivation enough as Matt admits: ‘I decided to learn German after many years ago being in Munich and arguing with a guy over whether I had small (Kleine) or no (Keine) Cigarettes much to my girlfriend-at-the-times’ amusement. Learning a language is a really positive thing and I would recommend it to anyone!’ It must be stated here that relationships do not always work out the way we planned, but our students have always assured us that they never regretted their decision to learn the new language and [...]

What happens when you learn a new language? Your brain is analyzing, processing all the new information coming in - new vocabulary & sounds, picture-word associations, sentence structures and so on right? But remembering this new and complex information becomes the next most challenging and vital part in language learning. “I learnt it but I’ve forgotten” “I don’t remember” “Wait, wait, hang on, I know this word, hmmm…gosh, I can’t remember” “It’s too hard to remember, maybe language learning isn’t for me” “I don’t have a good memory” If you feel this way, feel frustrated or disappointed. Please don’t! “Forgetting new words” is a completely natural process. Your brain not only analyzes and processes what you learn but “selectively” stores and discards data. Even this selection will fade over time with more information constantly coming in. That’s why some of us would wake up one day and say “I don’t remember a word of what I learnt - Zilch , Nada.” How can we change this and be more efficient in language learning? Simple. First tell the brain who is the boss and help it to remember the information that we “select” as “the most important”. It doesn’t stop at that. Next is “Constant Repetition” – the golden key to developing any skill. Just as how you would workout every day to tone up your muscles, spending time repeatedly reviewing even 5-10 minutes every day will tone your memory significantly improving your capacity to remember the language you are learning. For the constant repetition, for your learning process to evade monotony, you must be in love with the language, be passionate. Language is all about forming links. You form this amazing link with another person [...]