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 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.

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    Episode 34: If I Believed in Myself

    19 December 2022  |  Season 2  |  30 mins 30 secs

    Exploring what my language life would look like if I approached it from a place of self-belief. How would I respond when I make mistakes? How would I approach something completely new, whether it be a new language, a new grammar topic, or meeting a new person who speaks my new languages? What feelings might come up when facing something very difficult in my language world, if I had self-belief? How would I feel when I receive criticism? And most importantly how can I bring more self-belief into my life?

  • Episode 33: Curiosity, Inclusion, and Representation in Language Learning Spaces - Interview with Elle Charisse of Speaking Tongues Podcast

    12 December 2022  |  Season 2  |  1 hr 3 mins

    A chat with Elle Charisse, the host of Speaking Tongues Podcast, where language and culture are celebrated through storytelling. Elle shares a bit about how she grew an interest in languages growing up in New York City and how curiosity in languages and culture led to the creation of her podcast, where she converses with multilinguals from all over the world. Elle and I touch on a range of deep, thought-provoking topics seldom discussed in the largest of language learning spaces, from representative language in course material to the issue of homogenous speaker panels at language conferences to the need for inclusion of all multilinguals from all walks of life. This is a conversation you don't want to miss!