Didi

(With the Lincdire project, we are discussing about the best way to learn a new language and we are interviewing people to have different points of view.)

Didi has been studying English for 13 years now. She studies Spanish, French and English and the one in which she is more fluent, is English. She does enjoy studying it, because it is a language that has always fascinated her. When you study more than one language, sometimes you get confused, but she said that it is not that hard to learn more than one language at a time, provided that you stay focused.

To improve her pronunciation, she watches a lot of films in their original language, English of course, and also YouTube videos and listens to American pop and rap music, sometimes she also starts speaking English with her mom, she's really fluent in English, and they have fun toghether. When she listens to English songs, usually she can understand them, but sometimes they are really difficult to understand so she has to look up the lyrics, but she said that it is fine because it is a good way to get to learn new words. Besides when she watches films in their original languages, she always sets the subtitles in the original language. To improve her English, she has never used any app, she only uses only YouTube and watches videos of American YouTubers.

During her adolescence she had the occasion to meet several singers she loves so much, she remembers talking to Shawn Mendes, he is from Canada, she was shy at first but then everything came along, she told him how much she appreciated him and his music and he thanked her and asked her some stuff.

She also thinks that having a good English teacher is the key, a teacher that involves you and that let you speak a lot, so that you can improve and enlarge your vocabulary.

In her opinion, the most challenging skills to develop are vocabulary and pronunciation and that speaking and listening for sure, are the most important skills for a conversation.

She thinks that sometimes even English people do not follow all the grammatical rules and she had a little bit of difficulties in understanding the accent of a man from Glasgow. It was very hard to understand everything, because it was a very strict English, but she has never had any difficulties in understanding a non-native speaker, because in her opinion, their accent is usually easier and sweeter.

She also recommends travelling because she believes that it really helps you to improve the language and she does not think that is very important to know about the culture of a country in order to improve the language.

In fact, she does not really love the French culture but she totally loves French as a language.

She recommends always trying your best to improve, watching films, TV series in their original language, maybe with subtitles, listening to music and looking up the lyrics and that little things like these really help you.

She also totally believes that doing experiences abroad is the best way to improve your level, that is because you must speak that language otherwise other people won't understand what you say.