a. Herramientas de marketing relacional: programas de fidelización

a whole blog about them. My lofty language goals reflect that ambition. I mostly want to learn European languages;

the few non-European languages I plan to tackle are mainly Hindi and Japanese. I hope that these languages offer me new and more difficult challenges when I am ready to start them. Hindi and Japanese are the two non European languages that I want at high levels for--enough to be able to speak about politics and culture, and to be able to read novels. I also have a desire to learn at least one African language (probably Swahili), but I don’t plan to start that for awhile. Arabic is a language I would most want to use to listen to and read about current events, so I’d be happy to just practice input when I’m ready to start there.

Navajo is a language I will be content to only play with; I’d be happy to spend just a year on it to get to a low

intermediate to intermediate level.

I think my future, along with my wife’s, will be in Europe; a Europe that is becoming more and more unified (but, lucky for me, unified in everything except language!). I plan of course to be at a high level with the major European languages: French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Home base will probably be Poland, so a near native level of

Polish will be essential, and because it was the Polish language that made me so interested in the world of polyglottery, I’ve also become a bit of an aspiring Slavist.

That means I plan to gain high levels in two other Slavic languages: Russian and Czech. With a decent level of knowledge in those three Slavic languages it will allow me to play with some other Slavic languages I do not plan to study intensely.

Last, but not least, are two small languages that stay in the back of my mind as languages I would love to have. One is Catalan, which shouldn’t be too hard with a good base in the major romance languages. The second is

Hungarian, which—I don’t why—just has such a mystique to it. How could I not let it draw me in?

I know ‘lofty’ may be an understatement for my goals (14 languages were mentioned above!), but sometimes the road traveled is as good a reason to go as the destination.

My abstract focus will be on my attitude and motivation.

My worry-free demeanor will be my sword—who cares about my rate of progress, so long as there is progress? I recognize I have a long ways to go, but I look forward to seeing all the beautiful scenery on the way to wherever it is that my languages take me.

I am very happy to have gotten this submission from Vera.

If you have any interest in learning German, visit her at:

http://lingqvera.posterous.com, and at her YouTube

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=LingQVera.

If you are interested in learning about an efficient way to learn any language, read on...

Who am I?

Hi, I'm Vera. I'm from Germany, and German is my native language. I'm not a polyglot, but I'm a learner of English and French. At first I was reluctant to participate in this project, but a friend asked me to reconsider. Also, there was a thread about this project in the forum of

www.LingQ.com. The fact that Claude, who became a friend on YouTube, had extended the deadline finally persuaded me to take part. So, I decided to give this project a chance, and here is my submission. I'll tell you my story of language-learning. I don't know if it is

interesting—that. I'll let reader decide.

Why English?

In January, 2008 my boyfriend told me that he wanted to learn English. We were planning a holiday in the United States of America for the Summer of 2010. Because of this, my boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to learn some English. He had never really learned English in school, because it wasn't offered there. English wasn't usually offered at this time in many German schools.

Some years ago, he had taken a basic course in English

at a school that's similar to an “Open University,”

something that is very common in Germany. So, having some basic knowledge of the language, he decided to seriously start learning English. When he checked the times of the English courses that were offered at the Open University, however, he found that they didn't fit his time schedule.

I thought his learning English was a good idea, and it couldn’t hurt for me to brush up my English too. Thirty years ago I had studied English for eight years in school, but I never had the chance to use it, aside from two

holidays. I have to admit that I disliked language-learning in school. I did what I was supposed to do, but I was never happy with the results. I was able to express very basic things; I was able to read technical instructions about computers and software, but I couldn't follow an English TV or radio program, or read more complex writings. I never really enjoyed language-learning at this time. It was not a problem with the teacher—I actually had a very nice teacher. It's just that I wasn't interested. I think one of the problems was that my exposure to the language was just not enough. We had the books, the teacher and the

language lab as resources, but I hated the language lab because of the terrible quality of the tapes. We spent our time learning grammar, vocabulary, reading uninteresting things, and doing exercises.

How to start?

At the end of January, 2008 I read a note about our

British/German-Friendship association in the newspaper.

They wanted to establish an English conversation group.

So we decided to give this group a chance. Unfortunately, the group met only every second week, and the leader of the group organized it in a way that reminded me of my school days, and no wonder—he was a teacher!

I decided to buy a book that came with CDs in order to study on my own. At this time, the Hueber Verlag (a

German publisher) had a special offer. There was a book offered with 3 CDs for only 12 Euros (about 16 US

Dollars). I thought that this was a good offer, and I was willing to spend the money. I bought the book and put the CD's's on my MP3 player. I listened to the MP3's and read the text of the dialogues in the book. There was a

translation of the dialogues, a list with important words, short explanations of grammar, some small exercises (but not too much), and some cultural notes. I enjoyed these CDs because the dialogues seemed to be authentic and natural. They had different voices from different countries, and I never got bored with this enjoyable learning material.

I know that I learned a lot with this book.

The authors recommend listening to the dialogue once or twice, without reading the transcript in advance. That's what I always did. I then listened to the dialogue and I read it at the same time. Then I listened again for a few more times. I did some of the exercises, but not all of them. I liked the cultural notes that gave me background

information about Britain. When I felt bored, I stopped doing the exercises and I continued listening to the

dialogues. It was easy going because most of this was a

repetition of what I had been learning at school.

First goal: Better listening abilities

When I came to the end of the book, I thought about how to continue. I knew at this time, that I liked listening a lot, and that I preferred to have a script of the audio because of my poor listening abilities. The script often helped me to get the meaning. I thought there must be some something like that on the internet and started to search for material.

There are some podcast lists available on the Internet, and I found some podcasts. One of the first podcasts I enjoyed was the ESLPod. It is spoken very clearly and slowly, but not as other podcasts, such as "The Spotlight Podcast".

The script is only available for paying members, but I could understand most of the podcast without a script. It was ideal for developing my listening abilities.

In the beginning, I tried to find podcasts with free

transcripts. I checked a lot of podcasts, but most of them did not provide a transcript. Then I found the EnglishLingQ podcasts. The script was available for free, and all I had to do was to sign up for a free membership. Honestly, I

dislike signing up for websites, but I was very keen to get podcasts with transcripts. So I signed up in May 2008, and Wow—there was so much content coming with audio and text. What a huge surprise for me! I was very excited—I cannot describe how I felt. Maybe the way the gold diggers did in the good old days when they found gold in

California? I was fascinated by the number and variety of content in the LingQ English library.

My surprise was much bigger when I figured out how LingQ works. The integration of numerous dictionaries, and the possibility of saving words and phrases of text in a personal database that you can use for your flash carding are very helpful. What's even better is that you can import each text you want to study on your own! In new texts, all unknown and unlearned words are highlighted, and it is unbelievably helpful to see this in one view. I got addicted to LingQ and to language learning. It has become part of my life.

Second and main goal: Fluency

I began to think about my goals in language learning. My main goal was to be able to converse in English, to reach fluency. I did a lot of training for my listening ability when I listened to podcasts, but eventually there was a need to speak. You need passive vocabulary for listening and reading, but you need an active vocabulary for speaking.

Passive vocabulary includes all of the words that you know. Active vocabulary includes all words that you can use actively, while speaking and writing. The passive vocabulary is bigger than the active vocabulary, and it is much bigger even in your native language.

After talking to myself for some time in order to train my brain to find the words that fit a given situation, and

practising shadowing (speaking at nearly the same time as the speaker of podcast) in order to acquire the ability to pronounce the foreign language, I decided that it was now time to speak, in order to learn how to speak. At this time, I

was a free member of LingQ for two months. I then decided to upgrade to a basic account. The basic

membership allows you to save more words and phrases and, most importantly for me, it comes with a discount for buying points that I would need in order to sign up for a conversation with a tutor. I bought my first points and signed up for a conversation.

I can hear you asking, “why don't you use a free language exchange?” I never thought about free language

exchange. I was keen to get a detailed report about the conversations, and in my opinion it is very convenient to look up the availability of the English tutors and decide instantly when I could sign up to get started. It did not require having a lot of correspondence with a language exchange partner, and I liked this business model. I pay for something, and I know exactly what I'm getting. I also like the fact that there is no further commitment. I like not having to think about how to pay back what someone has done for me, and always thinking about what I could do for them.

Helping with German

At this moment Steve Kaufmann, the founder of LingQ and a polyglot who speaks more than 10 languages, has asked me if I could tutor German at LingQ. LingQ has helped me a lot, and I was glad that I could now help members from all over the world to learn German. Now, I earn points for tutoring German and I can use these points either for my own studies, or I can get cash for them. Guess what I do! I

think you guessed right: I always use my points for

learning languages. I'm now at the point where it costs me no money because of the points I accumulate through my own learning sessions.

At the same time, I started creating material for LingQ's German library. I wrote and recorded articles, and I

transcribed German podcasts (if the podcaster gives me permission) to be used on LingQ. The main problem is that it is difficult to find enough German podcasts that include a transcript along with the podcast (an exception being the

"Deutsche Welle" podcasts). I strongly believe that LingQ and Deutsche Welle have the greatest collection of

German audios that are accompanied by transcripts on the internet.

Third goal: Less mistakes

After a few months using LingQ I realized that I was

speaking much better than before. I made some mistakes, but I was able to express most of my ideas. I reached near fluency. I reached my goal in being able to converse. Next, I changed my goal slightly: I wanted to be able to speak more correctly. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to speak flawlessly. But I saw some potential for improvement.

There was no pressure behind this—I just started enjoying writing in English. I write things, and then I then submit my writings to a tutor. The detailed report that I get back helps me to correct my weaknesses. This helps me a lot to

improve my grammar. I know I'm still not perfect, but I get more and more used to the language. I'm now more aware

of the structure. When I'm now reading texts on LingQ, I concentrate more on those structures and phrases that show me how the language works. What I do very seldom, however, is to read explanations in a grammar book. I like to pick up the grammar and structure from examples.

Fourth goal: Enjoy reading

Reading an English book was never fun for me. It was a duty. I had to do it for school or for my job. I wanted to figure out if it would be possible to enjoy an English book, and that's why I decided begin reading English books some time ago. One of my English tutors recommended

"Chick-lit" to me, because these kinds of books are about daily life and are written in daily conversational English.

I didn't want to read graded readers. I went to a book store and read the first page of a few books. After some

minutes, I decided to take a funny criminal story written in daily English. The story was not too challenging, and the language seemed very authentic to me.

It was a good choice! I had a lot of fun reading the book.

Now I'm reading the third book of this series and can read English at a good speed. I don't read English as fast as German, but I'm more than satisfied with my progress.

What I'm not doing is looking up unknown words. As long as I can follow the story, there is no need to know each word. It is much more important for me to feel the "flow,"

and to enjoy the book. When I read a book, I don't want to be like a bookkeeper.

The state of affairs

At the moment, I'm at the level of a high-intermediate or low-advanced learner. My knowledge of English was proved on our holiday in the United States, as I had no problem in dealing with any situation. I was able to

converse, complain about things, or ask questions about the environment or anything else. I'm still making errors, and my pronunciation has a German touch, but I'm

understandable and can make my point. That's all that I really wanted to accomplish. I never thought about

reaching perfection. I'm very satisfied with the result of my efforts.