Love, Joy, and Languages

A podcast to boost your LOVE of languages and bring out the JOY in learning them

About the show

Love, Joy, and Languages is a podcast where you can learn about language learning; supporting your children in their language journeys; and overcoming the many challenges faced by adult language learners, parents raising multilingual children, and expat language learners. I sit at the intersection of these three worlds, and I want to share my own journey navigating this crossroads while inviting you to discover your own, unique language learning journey.

  • Music used as intro & outro in this Podcast is "Home" by artist Nick Gallant, licensed from TuneCore

Love, Joy, and Languages on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 64: What I Love About Language Dabbling

    1 April 2024  |  Season 4  |  11 mins 31 secs

    Are you a language dabbler? Do you enjoy playing around with new languages in a fun and non-committal way? Language dabbling isn't for everyone, but I really enjoy it. I also find several benefits to dabbling that actually help me keep my main languages going, and that's what I'm sharing today.

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    Episode 63: Trust (but Verify) Your Language Knowledge

    25 March 2024  |  Season 4  |  11 mins 14 secs

    Do you find that you doubt yourself way more than you believe in yourself when it comes to your language knowledge and skills? I certainly do, and it isn't always warranted. No matter your level, I think we can all find a balance in our language lives where we can trust what we know and also take time to verify when we come across something in the language that doesn't seem right.

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    Episode 62: What's Your Excuse?

    18 March 2024  |  Season 4  |  17 mins 23 secs

    We all have excuses for why we don't study our languages daily, pick up a language app in every spare moment, or even why we take extended breaks. And guess what? Our excuses are valid. They are! You don't have to feel guilty for something being "just an excuse." You do want it bad enough. You are serious about your languages. Life just happens, and that's okay. Keep going when you're ready, and you'll find it much more enjoyable without the unnecessary guilt and shame of "just an excuse."

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    Episode 61: Welcome Back to Season 4!

    11 March 2024  |  Season 4  |  22 mins 30 secs

    Just getting my season momentum going, sharing what you can expect in season 4 and also what I've been up to with my languages

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    Episode 60: Celebrating Your Wins!

    30 October 2023  |  Season 3  |  20 mins 24 secs

    Sharing language learning wins submitted by listeners across the globe. Mastering tricky pronunciation, working up to intermediate, completing a ton of lessons, and facing a new (and difficult!) language...it's all here, and I'm celebrating every success story!

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    Episode 59: A Joyful Chat with a Special Guest Co-Host

    23 October 2023  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 1 min

    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 58: Sometimes We Need to Get Better First

    16 October 2023  |  Season 3  |  15 mins 49 secs

    Sometimes language learning and language resources are too difficult, but they won't be that way forever. We just have to keep working, keep practicing, keep accessing the language, and get better first. Then, once we're ready, we jump back to that difficult language thing and see how much progress we've made.

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    Episode 57: Multitasking or Monotasking?

    9 October 2023  |  Season 3  |  29 mins 39 secs

    Talking about the ways in which I multitask that affect my language time and progress & sharing ways I'm learning to monotask in order to reduce the chaotic feelings of my language life and be more present when I work with a language.

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    Episode 56: Learning Languages w/Card Games - Interview w/Tiara Youngblood of Speak in Spades

    2 October 2023  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 6 mins

    Chatting this week with Tiara Youngblood of Speak in Spades. She's a language lover, teacher, and passionate card and board gamer. Taira shares her love of games since childhood and how they created a foundation for curiosity and knowledge throughout her life, which easily led to discovering languages. Tiara brings her love of card games into her classrooms and shares so much about how games can help language learners around the globe.

  • Episode 55: What Really Matters?

    25 September 2023  |  Season 3  |  11 mins 17 secs

    Talking about how this one question, "What really matters?" helps me re-evaluate, reprioritize, and readjust my expectations of what gets done, especially in busy times. With so many languages I want to learn and so many language activities I want to do each day, it's easy to slip into all-or-nothing and other destructive patterns or negative thoughts. "What really matters?" is a question that has recently become my antidote to that negativity and gets me on a better path.

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    Episode 54: How Language Learning Is Making Me A Better Parent

    18 September 2023  |  Season 3  |  32 mins 35 secs

    Talking about how wisdom I've gained through language learning is helping to make me a better parent. Language learning was the first area of my life where I learned how to respond instead of react, be flexible in how I approach the challenges, adapt my tools and methods as my languages advance, and figure out a healthy way to deal with mistakes. Each of these things, and so many more, are skills I've been able to directly apply to my parenting life.

  • Episode 53: A Note on Building Habits & Routines

    11 September 2023  |  Season 3  |  20 mins 33 secs

    Talking about the difference between habits and routines, why this may matter to you, and how I started working to change my mindset away from the all-or-nothingness that was running my habit-building mentality and shifted to a bit-by-bit routine-making plan

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    Episode 52: Learning, Improving, and Teaching...Deutsch mit Kris

    4 September 2023  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 4 mins

    A chat with the lovely Kris from Deutsch mit Kris. In this interview, Kris shares her story of how she got into the German language as a high school student from the Southern United States, the struggles she had as an advanced academic learner of the language still unable to speak it, and what she's done to not only overcome huge hurdles but also create a course to help others do the same.

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    Episode 51: Set Yourself Up For Seeing Your Progress

    28 August 2023  |  Season 3  |  21 mins 1 sec

    Sharing some tips for how to create benchmarks along your language journey to guarantee that your future self will see, recognize, and believe that you're making progress.

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    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.