Love, Joy, and Languages

Episode Archive

Episode Archive

67 episodes of Love, Joy, and Languages since the first episode, which aired on 25 February 2022.

  • Episode 50: Listening, Speaking, and Overstimulation

    14 August 2023  |  Season 3  |  14 mins 56 secs

    Sharing some thoughts on one obstacle to filling my day with listening and speaking time -- overstimulation. As a mom of two young kids and the wife of an extrovert who loves noise around him all the time, my mental and emotional energy often get zapped quickly in a day because of all the noise and touch and lights and mess around me. It really affects the choices I make in a day, including what I listen to or how much I speak, which affects my language time.

  • Episode 49: Good Advice Gone Wrong: Move to a Country of Your TL

    7 August 2023  |  Season 3  |  25 mins 10 secs

    This is the third episode of "Good Advice Gone Wrong," a segment in which I highlight some good language learning advice that can also go wrong. There are countless methods for learning a language, and I believe all of them are good, but they aren't all good for everyone. Instead of just giving language learning advice, this recurring segment focuses on reasons specific pieces of language advice may not work for everyone. I also brainstorm some ideas for how we can mold the advice and shape it into something that does work for us, hoping to inspire you to discover your own creative, personalized language journey.

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    Episode 48: Heritage Language Preservation - Interview with Dr. Veronica Benavides

    31 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  48 mins 23 secs

    Interview with Dr. Veronica Benavides, founder and CEO of The Language Preservation Project and host of Talking to Grandma Podcast. Veronica is a heritage Spanish speaker who was raised in the U.S. speaking almost exclusively English. She shares her journey to finding passion and connection in her heritage language, as well as how she is now raising her children in Spanish as part of a multilingual/multicultural family. This is an episode you truly won't want to miss!

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    Episode 47: 20-Minute Language Time Placeholder

    24 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  24 mins 26 secs

    Need some accountability in your study time? That's what today is all about. This is an episode dedicated to encouraging you to spend some time in your languages while also giving you that time.

  • Episode 46: Back to the Beginning

    17 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  25 mins 43 secs

    After two and a half years of learning German, I decided to start over. I went back to the beginning of my resources, and I'm going through them all a second time. Listen in to hear why I decided to start over. what it means for my time spent with German, and what I'm gaining from this project.

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    Episode 45: Give an Immediate Boost to Your Conversation Practice

    10 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  11 mins 55 secs

    Sharing my list of words and phrases that I often say in English during other-language conversation lessons. Making this list was an excellent reminder to me to stay in the language of the conversation, immediately boosting my fluidity and contact with the language.

  • Episode 44: Language & Cultural Identity - Interview with Urmi Hossain

    3 July 2023  |  Season 3  |  48 mins 53 secs

    Sharing an interview with Urmi Hossain, a polyglot, author, YouTuber, and a woman empowering and inspiring others. Urmi shares her history of language learning, which began in childhood as she grew up in Italy with Bengali heritage.

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    Episode 43: Language Learning Jealousy

    26 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  25 mins 42 secs

    Jealousy. It sucks. In this episode, I give a bit of the darker parts of my youth as an extremely jealous person and explore how that has affected me as a language learner, even though I healed my toxic jealousy long before beginning languages. I talk about comparison as a gateway to jealousy, but it's important to note that comparisons are part of human nature, so I think it's valuable to reframe them instead of beating ourselves up over making them.

  • Episode 42: 3 Quick Tips For Getting Unstuck In Your Languages

    19 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  11 mins 47 secs

    Sharing my top tips for what to do when you feel stuck in your languages. It's totally normal to reach a point where you don't know where to go next or what to do, and you feel like your learning is getting stagnant. There are so many creative ways to overcome this, so I want to share my favorites in today's episode.

  • Episode 41: The Value of Not Finishing

    12 June 2023  |  Season 3  |  34 mins 2 secs

    I'm back with Season 3 of Love, Joy, and Languages! Starting off this season with a deep discussion about finishing resources. Or, more specifically, about focusing on finishing rather than on content and progression. I talk about my history of feeling a need to finish every single resource I started, how that led to avoidance and stress, and what I did to change my mentality.

  • Episode 40: Celebrating Your Wins!

    13 February 2023  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 30 secs

    Sharing language learning wins submitted by listeners across the globe. Understanding and enjoying content in new languages, making friends through language exchanges, successful conversation practice, speaking progress, starting a new language, returning to a beloved language...it's all here, and I'm celebrating every success story!

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    Episode 39: A Joyful Chat with a Special Guest Co-Host

    6 February 2023  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 2 mins

    Talking about all sorts of exciting and joyful things about language learning with one of my favorite language learners, teachers, and human beings.

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    Episode 38: Non-Level Victories in Language Learning

    30 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  20 mins 26 secs

    Discussing all the victories I see in my language journey that have nothing to do with reaching a level. Moving up a language level is often our overarching objective, but sometimes reaching a new level is so far away that it's difficult to recognize our progress. And progress, by the way, doesn't only show up in results. There are so many things we do (or don't do) with respect to our languages that indicate progress but that have less to do with our abilities and more to do with the actions we take or our mentality regarding our languages.

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    Episode 37: Celebrating My 3-Year Soberversary (And What That Even Has To Do With Languages)

    23 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  28 mins 2 secs

    Discussing my journey to and through sobriety and how it ties into my language learning journey. There’s a very clear mental connection between my journey to sobriety and my journey to sustainable, holistic, and joyful language learning. For me, in my personal story, the connection between these two paths is very strong because they overlap by several years and definitely affected each other, so it just made sense to do an episode that talks about this intersection of my life.

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    Episode 36: Listener Q&A: Textbook vs. Real Life Learning

    16 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  25 mins 2 secs

    Answering a listener question about learning languages from textbooks versus real life experiences living in a country where the language is spoken. Sharing several things I enjoy about both learning styles because they're both very different, but they're both valid. There are definitely benefits to each language learning style, and I want to highlight several of those in this episode.

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    Episode 35: Happy New Year! A Year with No Language Goals

    9 January 2023  |  Season 2  |  30 mins 41 secs

    Recounting my (failed) history of setting language goals, discovering the reasons why various goal-setting methods haven't worked for me, and what I do in order to keep making language progress without having any solid goals to motivate me.