YOU NEED TO LOVE WHAT YOU'RE LEARNING

Hello everybody. I hope you had a wonderful summer. Welcome back!

On the 11th through the 14th of July we reviewed some of the key paradigms behind the Ziggurat programme. On July 20th we received a very nice e-mail from one of our Daily Vitamin users, Maria N., which I'd like to include as today's Daily Vitamin.

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Thank you very much for your advice and for trying so hard to encourage your students, us, to keep pushing, but I think that to really follow your instructions during the summer break you need to "love" what you’re learning. I honestly believe that many people try to learn English, or another language, because they need it at work, but not because they like the idea, and it is always a hard task to carry out, and even more in the summer.

For me it is very easy because I love languages and especially English, and my sons have inherited this love for languages, so we decided to watch TV in English a long time ago and we still continue doing so every day. It is unbelievable to see how much my sons have improved their English since then. My English used to be better than theirs, but I can't say that any more. 

Internet has also helped a lot. We now have friends everywhere and our contact language is English obviously. We read the Daily Vitamin everyday, or twice or three times a week, and we often discuss "vitamins" over dinner in the evening, like a kind of game. Listening to them, not only reading them, has also been an important improvement. We like to read a lot, but do the same with books as we do with TV, we only read English books. 

Sorry for being so long but what I mean is that it is absolutely necessary to make English part of your life if you want to maintain what you’ve learned, but this is only possible if it makes you happy. If it is an obligation, no matter how hard we try to convince people, it will always be a "seasonal" matter, unfortunately.

Have a nice Summer! Maria

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I couldn't have said it better. The trick to learning English is finding things that you like (in English). Learning English shouldn't be a torture, it should be fun.

Have a great day!