James Hutchinson

13 years ago I lived in Spain for my exchange year abroad.

I couldn't speak any Spanish when I arrived and my main focus was to learn it as quickly as possible to be able to make friends and integrate over there.

I remember there was one occasion when I sat round the table with international friends that I made when I was there, of which a few of them were Spanish.

We were pre-drinking, ready to go out, and I had a bottle of vodka in front of me.

I wanted to offer some of my vodka to the Spanish person next to me but I wasn't sure exactly what to say? I was pretty sure that my grammar wasn't going to be good, so there's a high chance that I would say something but then I would get a blank look from them.

I said something that would have been a bit like this if it was in English:

"If this want, you, just ask"

I pointed to the bottle of vodka while making contact with the native Spanish speaker (basically to make it crystal clear, even if I messed up my speaking, what I was offering).

They reacted positively and they understood what I meant. They said, "No, but thank you," but my friends around me looked at me a bit surprised because they didn't know I could say anything in Spanish at that point.

To be completely honest I didn't think it would work or be understandable at all but I thought it was worth a try and I'd had a few drinks already (so it was a little bit more relaxed and open to trying).

The thing I learnt from that moment was that if I had avoided saying anything because I knew I would get it wrong.

I wouldn't have said anything and I wouldn't have had that practise and got that positive feedback that I can, in fact, communicate in Spanish despite not being perfect.

Over the past 13 years since then, I've understood far more about the psychology of language learning and I've since learnt Italian as well.

One of the biggest problems or struggles that many language learners have when speaking a different language is freezing up when they try and speak with natives.

They put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect and their brain stops them from saying anything.

Anyway that said, I've made a free email course that goes into more detail about how to stop freezing up when speaking with natives, with each one taking about a minute to read. You get one email sent directly to your inbox every day over the next 5 days.

Here's the link: conversations.jameshutchinsonlanguages.com/

2 days ago |[YT] | 1

James Hutchinson

I recently had an interview with Jeremiah about how to best watch movies and TV shows to learn a language.

We talk about:

- Should you use subtitles at all or is it cheating?
- What level should you be at to even watch TV content in the first place?
- How to handle situations where you don't know every word

The full video: https://youtu.be/TB2HcP4ksBs

4 days ago |[YT] | 3

James Hutchinson

I had another chat with Hasan from 'Arabic All the Time' about input vs output when it comes to language learning.

We both have different views on this, in terms of when you should start speaking another language compared to how much input (content) you have been absorbing.

Here's the full conversation:

https://youtu.be/RtrqRMiS14o

1 week ago |[YT] | 2

James Hutchinson

If you understand, but can't confidently speak your target language, I've made a free 2 minute quiz that gives you tailored advice to get you talking.

speakwithvoco.com/freeze-quiz/?ref=quiz-yt-communi….

Cheers,
James.

1 week ago (edited) |[YT] | 2

James Hutchinson

Sometimes if you freeze up when speaking with natives, it can be a lot to do with your environment and the situation itself rather than your actual language skills.

In this video I dive deeper and talk about what you can do to make your words flow more easily when speaking with natives: https://youtu.be/VnADSqMFq_M

2 weeks ago |[YT] | 2

James Hutchinson

Sometimes your mind goes blank and you can't get the words out when you want to speak with a native speaker in your target language.

This is often because you have a filter in your mind where you tell yourself that you have to speak perfectly or nothing will come out.

This means that if you want to say something but there's a word that you don't know. Your mind will freeze and it won't let you say anything at all.

The solution is to lower your threshold and say things in a simpler way using smaller words. If you don't know a certain word in particular, use other words to get around it to get your point across.

That way even if you know that you're not going to be perfect at saying the thing you want to say, your brain will at least let you say something. That will help the conversation keep going and after a few seconds more words will come to the front of your mind.

For more help with this, I've made a free email course on 'How to stop freezing up when speaking with natives': conversations.jameshutchinsonlanguages.com/.

Cheers,

James.

2 weeks ago |[YT] | 2

James Hutchinson

In 2013 I did my Erasmus year in Spain and this is where my language journey started.

Since then over the past 13 years, I've been obsessed with the psychology of how we learn languages.

The biggest struggle that I hear people talk about having access to practise with natives and actually getting good at the speaking and listening that you have to do to keep the conversation going.

Basically you can learn as much grammar and vocabulary as you want to but that doesn't help you in real life when you're face-to-face with a native speaker and your mind goes blank.

It's literally down to practise and exposure but it's hard to get that if you're not living in the country where your target language is spoken.

And even when you are living in the country where it's spoken, you feel nervous when speaking with natives.

If you had one bad experience where you felt like an idiot in front of a native speaker, that's going to put you off from trying again.

More recently I've been building a platform that lets people practise spoken conversations with an AI persona that doesn't judge them and corrects mistakes after the conversation.

It lets people get the spoken practise they need.

I've thought about every feature of this platform leaning into my 13 years of language learning experience and also my background as a product manager, where I decide what features to include and why.

Anyway if you're interested, every new user gets three practise sessions for free, to give it a go and see what it's like. After that it's £20 per month for unlimited conversation practise.

There are no contracts and it's rolling month-to-month so if in one month you don't need it, you can pause it or cancel it.

Here's the link: www.speakwithvoco.com/?ref=yt-community

Cheers,

James.

2 weeks ago |[YT] | 1

James Hutchinson

Often when we freeze up when trying to reply to natives, it's because we filter ourselves too much.

We don't say anything unless we think its perfect. So nothing comes out.

We don't want to embarrass ourselves in front of a native speaker by saying a weird accent or getting the wrong word to mean something completely different.

To get round this, be ok with saying things in a really basic way. Use simple words.

Eg if I want to say "I want to drive to the park tomorrow in my car", I could literally say "me, drive, tomorrow, park, car" while using hand gestures to help give context.

Also, you'll already be in a conversation so the native speaker knows the subject, which makes it easier to guess what you want to say.

You'd be amazed at how badly you can speak, but still be understood.

The goal here isn't to be perfect at this point, it's to help you overcome the struggle of freezing up when speaking with natives.

It's to keep the conversation flowing, so that you can practice more, get better, repeat etc. You'll get more confident, better at getting your point across which then leads to fluency.

For more tips like this, I made a free email course which goes into far more detail. Condensed into one email per day that takes a minute to read per email: conversations.jameshutchinsonlanguages.com/.

Cheers,
James.

3 weeks ago |[YT] | 1

James Hutchinson

Having conversations with native speakers can be difficult to arrange if you don't live where your target language is spoken.

It can also be nerve-wracking to practice speaking with natives, especially if you're not used to talking in your target language.

I found this problem as a native English speaker, with learning Spanish and Italian.

However, I've built a platform that allows you to get real speaking practice, but you're talking with an AI persona that learns about you over time and helps you feel more relaxed in conversations.

Here's the link to give it a try: www.speakwithvoco.com/?ref=yt-community

3 weeks ago |[YT] | 1

James Hutchinson

I recently had a chat with Hasan who is a strong believer that you can learn a language entirely from watching TV content that's at a comprehensible input level.

He's the founder of Arabic All The Time, which helps people learn Arabic from videos that he's created using the comprehensible input method.

In this video we talk about the psychology behind language learning, especially when it comes to maintaining motivation and setting up routines for the long term, and how watching TV plays a massive role in language learning for any language (not just Arabic).

Anyway, here's a link to the full video: https://youtu.be/lohvd9xdxSY.

3 weeks ago |[YT] | 5