The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2021 - 30

RR

pronounce a language, the

Pragmatics/Culture
Italki
www.italki.com

best thing you can do is

This is a platform to

train your muscles to move

match language students

naturally in a new way, in

with virtual teachers.

much the same way you

It also streamlines

conglomeration of several
muscles, as is your throat.
Therefore, to properly

would train to play a sport.
And to do that, I really
like Glossika.
Glossika is a browserbased app that curates lists
of hundreds of sentences
to maximize various
grammatical structures and
pronunciation patterns. You
listen to those sentences
and repeat so you can
let your muscle memory
take over when you speak.
Warning: this is really

payment, scheduling, and
accountability because

*	 For Chinese: Hanyu
Shuiping Kaoshi (Chinese
Proficiency Test, or HSK)
*	 For German: Zertifikat
Deutsch (ZD)
*	 For Korean: Test of
Proficiency in Korean
(TOPIK)
*	 For Spanish: The Diplomas

students and teachers review

de Español como Lengua

each other's work after every

Extranjera (Spanish

lesson. Over the past five

Diploma, or DELE)

years, I've taken hundreds of
lessons on italki and found
effective tool for learning or

Motivation and
Inspiration

maintaining a language. I take

The most important part

three to five lessons per week,

of learning or maintaining

depending on my language

a language is motivation.

goals at that moment.

Motivation can be tricky to

it to be the single most

tedious. But it's also really
effective in improving both
your pronunciation and
ability to quickly recall
grammatical structures.

Grammar and Syntax
Duolingo
www.duolingo.com
Duolingo can actually be
very effective for learning
the grammar of European
languages. This is because
the focus of Duolingo really
is on grammar, and the
gamification of the app
makes grammar much more
fun than usual. Currently,
I'm trying to reactivate my
dead Russian abilities, so

It takes work to stay ahead of the latest slang,
terminology, styles, and contexts that will
affect the accuracy of your translation work.
Studying for
Proficiency Tests
Another great way to keep
your grammar up to date is to
study for proficiency tests. I
don't necessarily recommend
this method for learning to
speak a language, but signing
up for a test is a great way to
stay accountable to your goal
of increasing your knowledge

I've been using Duolingo for

of grammar. Here are some

the grammar.

tests that are available for a
variety of languages.

Lingodeer
www.lingodeer.com
If you're learning Asian
languages, Lingodeer is

*	 For English: Test of
English as a Foreign
Language (TOEFL)
*	 For French: Diplôme

a similar but much more

d'études en langue française

effective alternative

(Diploma of French-

to Duolingo.

Language Studies, or DELF)

30

The ATA Chronicle | March/April 2021

maintain, especially if you're
busy with translation work.
Making incremental advances
in your language abilities
is never going to be more
important than the day's
urgent tasks, right? So, how
do we make it a priority? If
you aren't motivated, then
none of the tools or strategies
I've listed here will make any
difference in your languagelearning journey. For me,
one of the most effective
ways to stay inspired is to
connect with communities of
language learners.
There are lots of language
learners and polyglots on
YouTube, Instagram, and
Twitter who post about their
own habits and struggles.
Watching them succeed is

hugely inspiring to me. How
do you find them? Look for
hashtags such as #polyglots
or #languagelearning, or
a hashtag relevant to the
language you want to learn.
Follow the hashtags so that
this media will end up in
your social media feed.
If you would like to follow
me, I post often about my
adventures in language
learning. Give me a follow
and let me know about your
challenges! I love to help my
colleagues on their languagelearning journeys. Two of the
places you can find me are my
blog (misslinguistic.com) and
on Twitter (mslinguistic).
Happy learning!

Sara Maria
Hasbun is
the founder
and managing
director of
Meridian Linguistics, an
agency providing specialized
language services to
technology companies. An
avid language learner, she
also blogs about her linguistic
adventures at https://
misslinguistic.com. saramaria@
meridianlinguistics.com
Remember, if you have any
ideas and/or suggestions
regarding helpful resources
or tools you would like to
see featured, please e-mail
Jost Zetzsche at jzetzsche@
internationalwriters.com.

www.atanet.org
http://www.italki.com http://www.misslinguistic.com http://www.duolingo.com https://www.misslinguistic.com https://www.misslinguistic.com http://www.lingodeer.com http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2021

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