Welcome to this new interview series that I’m calling “interesting people I met in Berlin”. Let me explain.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing interviews I did with the cool people I met at the Language Influencer Summit in Berlin in March. If you’re reading this in future, the event took place in 2019!
So far, I’ve picked out 4 people that I felt you deserved to hear from. They either have some kind of connection to the listening side of language learning. Or they’ve spent time living abroad.
In this video, I chat with Dr Gareth Popkins about his experiences living abroad and learning languages both at home and overseas.
Gareth has not only learned a bunch of different languages, he’s also lived in a few different countries. Plus he’s British which I feel earns him double polyglot points. It’s not easy learning languages when you live in a mostly monolingual country.
As an expat, I love hearing other people’s experiences of living abroad. And how it boosted (or not) their language learning. Gareth has some good stories to share on that point. And some tips for getting the most out of your time spent living abroad if that’s your case.
We discuss whether or not there’s a Dr Popkins method, the role of priorities and trade offs in language learning and how listening fits in to Gareth’s language learning toolkit.
Watch the video:
Links and Resources We Mentioned
We mentioned a few different tools and resources in this video. As promised, here are the links to them:
Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/
Couchsurfing: https://www.couchsurfing.com/
CEFR: https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/level-descriptions
Polyglot Conference: http://polyglotconference.com/
If you want to hear more from Gareth then go check out his website and blog: https://howtogetfluent.com
He’s also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ8SFNfeOKCtrME6CgU2r5A
Check out the other interviews in this series:
- Peter from Rhinospike
- Idahosa Ness from Mimic Method
- Martin from Rock ‘n’ Roll English
Subscribe To My Newsletter To Get Your Free Guide
Want to use your favourite movie or TV show to understand native English speakers when they talk fast? Download your free guide, Understand Movies in English.
