Alan Palmer's Language Chat Podcasts

Hello everybody Today I want to talk about an idea for learning I call "Relaxing Challenges" Remember when you were a child and you liked to play? Sometimes you dared yourself to try things: climb a tree, make a snowman, build a sandcastle, catch a ball. Each of these sort of things were a physical challenge. Some other things were mental challenges: playing chess, making a jigsaw, drawing and painting. Learning a language is a big challenge. It is a huge undertaking; building up vocabulary, pronunciation, writing a text, reading a book, listening to speech and also speaking ourselves are all different challenges with language learning. When I refer to a "relaxing challenge" I don't mean having a rest. I mean setting ourselves a small challenge with a relaxed mind, but with an energetic and enthusiastic intention. For a language learning "relaxing challenge", we can think of something to do with the language we are learning that challenges us for a short while, but doesn't tire us out completely. Some e