Culips Everyday English Podcast
Simplified Speech #243 – How we learn our second languages
05 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What personal experiences do Andrew and Indiana share about language learning?
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Simplified Speech, the QLIPP series, which features clear, natural, and easy-to-understand conversations between native speakers. And joining me today to talk about language learning is my co-host, Indiana. Hey there, Indiana. How's it going?
I am good, Andrew. It's quite late my time here. I've had a long day, but I'm excited to talk about one of my favorite topics, language learning, with you, somebody I know also really appreciates this topic. So I can't wait to get started.
Yeah, it's going to be a fun one. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about. And for listeners out there who don't know, of course, we are English teachers, Indiana, but we are also passionate language learners. So just like you guys, you guys are learning English. Indiana and I are learning our own different second languages.
And we're going to talk about what we do to study and to improve our language skills in this episode together. And maybe you guys can learn something, maybe a new way to approach learning English. Or maybe you can share your English learning tips with Indiana and with me on our Discord community as well. And we can sort of exchange knowledge with each other.
And yeah, hopefully at the end of the day, we can all take home something that we can apply to our own language learning situation so that we can improve our skills faster and better than ever.
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Chapter 2: What languages have Andrew and Indiana studied, and why?
Now, Indiana, speaking of improving your skills faster and better than ever, guys, we have a helpful study guide and an interactive transcript available for this episode. In the study guide, you will find detailed vocabulary explanations and examples. There's example conversations that you can study with. There are speaking practice questions, writing practice questions, and even a quiz.
And if you would like to get that interactive transcript and study guide, you have to become a QLips member. But don't worry, you can sign up and become a QLips member for an affordable price on our website, which is QLips.com, or you can just follow the link in the description for this episode.
And when you are a QLips member, you'll also get access to lots of other benefits and bonuses that we have designed to help you improve your English fluency. Maybe the best one is our weekly speaking classes. We hold three speaking classes each and every week for members. One of them is taught by me. One of them is taught by Indiana.
And one of them is taught by our other awesome English teacher here at QLips, Alina. And yeah, it's a great way to connect with other QLips listeners who are highly motivated English learners just like you and to practice your speaking skills. Visit the website qlibs.com and sign up and become a member today. And of course, a huge thank you to all of the members out there for your support.
Guys, we really, really do appreciate you. Okay. And with that announcement out of the way, Indiana, let's get into our main topic for today, which is studying second languages and how we approach studying second languages. And I think listeners will be pretty familiar with my second language situation as a Korean learner.
I've talked about it many times on QLips before, but I don't think we've talked about your situation too much. So let's start with you. And could you give us just a brief background and explainer about your experience learning different languages?
Absolutely. So if we're going all the way back to school, most Americans have to take French or Spanish during middle school or high school. And I took Spanish during that time. And I think I've lost most of it now. But I really loved learning it in school. I would soak up the words like a sponge. I was so into it. I really loved Spanish.
And at that time, I also got really interested in Japanese. Not even really for any good reason, but I just like fell in love with the way the language sounded. And I was so fascinated by the kanji, the Chinese characters and that whole writing system. So I got really into Japanese and I ended up studying it at university. My undergraduate degree is in Japanese studies and women's studies.
You may recall from previous conversations, I studied abroad there during my time at university for four months in Osaka. Yeah, so I've been studying Japanese for a very long time. My speaking is not as good as it used to be when I was in the country. But yeah, I use it a lot in my work. And in addition to Japanese, recently in the past couple years, I've been trying to learn some German.
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Chapter 3: What study methods do they recommend for language learners?
So although it does seem very tempting to start a new language, I have to keep my focus on Korean. So that's very good, Indiana. You study Japanese and study German. How do you go about studying your languages? Maybe you could tell us what your routine looks like, maybe about how much time you spend studying or learning the languages, what you do, what your techniques are.
I imagine there probably aren't too many native Japanese and native German speakers in your area. I don't know. So how do you how do you practice the languages and improve them?
That's right. And that's one of the reasons that the lack of native speakers or fluent speakers, advanced speakers in my area, that's one of the reasons that my speaking skills are probably the worst compared to all of the other skills we usually talk about with language, right? Reading, listening, writing, these kinds of things.
But yeah, so I do try to get some speaking time in if I can, like hire a private tutor on something like italki. There's also other services online. But something that I can do, because I'm not like a super social person, and it takes a lot of energy, honestly, to do the talking part. Like that's essential. That's something you absolutely must do for language learning online.
But it takes a lot of energy. I have to be turned like on to do it. It takes a lot of brain computational power. So like, you know, I have that designated time, maybe like once a week or something like that.
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Chapter 4: How important is daily practice in language learning?
But day to day, I try to study a little bit every day when I can. And something I wanted to talk about today was I love to use Anki flashcards. So that's A-N-K-I. And this is an application that's free on desktop and Android might be paid for iPhone. But it's a really, really cool app that you can use to review flashcards, you can make your own decks or download other people's decks.
And you can customize them with lots of example sentences or add audio files and image files. Something that sets this flashcard application apart from other ones is that it's a SRS system, which stands for spaced repetition system. So this basically means that when you review words and you see a word, oh, I know that word right away. No problem.
You mark it as easy so that it doesn't come up again for like a week or a month. You don't have to review it because that's a waste of time. You know this word. But if you mark a word as okay or hard or didn't get it right, it uses those categories to decide how frequently this should be showing up in your review session. So you have to keep encountering the difficult words.
which is really helpful and maybe a little bit better than regular analog flashcards. Like if you made them by hand, I guess you could put them in different piles, but that's just a really great feature for every day. You know, you do 15, 20 minutes of flashcards. I love to do that. And it's a, it's a really great habit building and I find it effective for sure for learning vocabulary.
Do you use Anki Andrew?
Yeah, I have been an on and off user of Anki throughout my language learning journey. I used it for a long time at the beginner stages. And I think it's really, really great when you're learning a lot of the high frequency vocabulary that those are the words that you will see often again and again. It's just really helpful as a beginner. And Indiana, like you said, you can download decks.
So what a deck is, it's just like a package of flashcards that some other person has spent time making and you can just download it. So you don't have to spend time creating your own flashcards in Anki. It can be really helpful for saving time at the beginning stages. You can just download like a pack of the top 1000 most frequent German words or something, right? And study with that.
So I definitely did that a lot when I started learning Korean and I did it for years and years. And I think it was super, super helpful for helping me build the foundation of Korean vocabulary. Probably like until I got to learning 5,000 or 6,000 words, I used it a lot. And then I took a break because I was like, you know what? I think I know enough words now to just start learning from context.
Once you can understand like, I don't know, 80 or 90% of a TV show or of a novel or something, then it's easier to understand words in context. So I did that for a couple of years where I just sort of put Anki on the back burner. And instead, I started spending more time just consuming Korean content and
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Chapter 5: What are some unusual tips for practicing speaking without embarrassment?
And so, yeah, that's how I use Anki now. Those rare words that are harder for me to remember.
I think you make a good point with it that it can be so helpful at those beginner stages where you just need to learn those most frequent few thousand words and just get them in there. There's so much to learn. It's a mountain of words and it's really helpful to have those flashcard decks. And then maybe you get that upper intermediate plateau. A plateau is when you're not making any progress
really or it doesn't feel like you're making progress like when you're a beginner in a language everything is new and you're you're just taking it in and you learn at such a rapid pace but at a certain point it's it's kind of flat the progress flattens out like if you imagine a graph and it doesn't feel like you're learning that much new stuff or that you're progressing and
But once you get past that plateau, and yeah, you're in that situation where you're such an advanced learner that yeah, you just need these niche words that only come up once in a while. Such a great way to expose yourself to them because they're only going to come up, you know, once a month, once a year in your actual life.
Yeah, really good suggestions, I think, for our listeners, you know, depending on what level you're at. But even at that intermediate stage, Anki is helpful, but maybe it doesn't need to be such a priority, you know, focusing so much on vocab acquisition at that intermediate stage. Yeah.
And guys, one thing that I will say about Anki is be careful. Don't be like me because I fell into the Anki trap for a little while where I was spending more time making flashcards and studying flashcards than I was just spending time with the language. So I went through this time where I, you know, maybe I'd have an hour or two hours each day to study and spend time with Korean.
I don't even really like using that word study because it's not like I was actively studying with a textbook or grammar book or anything like that. I was just spending time with the language, but I was spending time more with Anki than with the language. So I spent too much time making flashcards and just studying the flashcards.
Really, it would have been more beneficial for me if I just spent time listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, watching TV shows, and doing more organic listening. So I think Anki is an awesome tool, but just be careful that you're spending most of your time listening to English, reading English, watching English content, Speaking in English, doing these things I think is better.
Anki should be like 10% or 15% of your time with the language. Don't make it like 50% like I was doing. Please learn from my mistakes. It's a great tool, of course, but you don't want to make it your entire study routine.
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Chapter 6: How do Andrew and Indiana use flashcards in their language learning?
Do I really do that? I don't know. And yeah, actually, I think I do say it often. So It's one of those things, but I think it's cool and it's fun that we all have different quirks and different ways of speaking. It's just good to be aware that maybe if you're just learning from one person, it's not a good idea. You want to be exposed to a lot of different speakers and a lot of different...
examples of the language so that you can notice when those expressions are non-standard. And that's my takeaway. I was like, oh, maybe I'm only speaking with my wife too much. Maybe I need to speak with some other people so that I can hear their quirks and their ways of speaking as well. So I've got to do that more going forward. That's my next step with the language. Good goal. Yes. Cool.
Indiana, we should probably cut things off here. We're going a little bit long. I love this topic. I'm very passionate about this topic. And I know our listeners are as well. Guys, if you have any tips or tricks to share with us about how you study English, about how you improve your fluency in English, then please share them with me and share them with Indiana over on our Discord community.
And you can share them with... All QLips listeners as well. It's a great place to connect and to improve our English together. You can do that for free. Just click the link that's in the description for this episode. I believe we have about 8,500 people on our Discord server these days.
There's an awesome community of serious, highly motivated English listeners, and we're helping each other grow and get better on our server every day. Check that out and share your tips and tricks with us. And Indiana, maybe we'll have to revisit this topic again in the near future. And we can share some more info with everybody.
Because like I said, it is one of my passions, and I think yours as well. So that's really cool.
For sure. Yeah, I love to talk about the nitty gritty of learning languages. It's so super interesting.
Yeah, well, speaking of that, Indiana, I think we should wrap up here. I'm going to go spend some time listening to Korean because I've spent a lot of time speaking in English here now. So I got to get going in my second language. But guys, we'll leave it here for today. Thank you so much for listening and good job on getting some long English immersion in with Indiana and with me today.
Please take care, everyone, and we'll talk to you in the next episode. Until then, bye-bye.
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