StoryLearning Podcast

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/reading-guide 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/read_in_15  How do you read  in a foreign language if you cannot read the alphabet or the script yet?  How can you read if you can't actually read, if you see what I mean? If you've spent more than 10 seconds in my world, you...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/free.fluency 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/15_min_read  I'm lazy, I'm bored,  I'm not motivated, studying is so hard, I don't have an hour a day to study. These are all things that I, at various points in my life, have told myself about language learning. And as...

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/read_guide 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/read_app A listener wrote to me frustrated that, although he’s at B2 level, he keeps using the same vocabulary over and over again when he speaks. This is a common problem - even in our native language, we understand twice as many words...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/goals_2026 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/reading_app I released a video  on how I would learn Spanish again in 2026 if I was going to start over.  When I first learned it, I was immersed - I was living in London and had Spanish friends. Someone left a comment saying - people with lives don&...

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Lamont’s 8 Best Language Learning Tips: https://l.storylearning.com/lamont_tips 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL.app.2026 In this episode, I’m delighted to be joined for a second time by Lamont McLeod from the Days and Words YouTube channel. We talk about getting over hurdles in language learning, our appreciation of language as an a...

👉 Take your FREE Level Test: https://l.storylearning.com/language_test 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL.app How fluent do you have to be in a second language before moving on to a third language? How do you know when is the right time? Do you risk forgetting the language you are currently learning or not? This is the most common question I've ever recei...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency.resources 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL-app Struggling to understand TV in your new language? Today’s questioner, Lisa, has the same problem. She speaks French and Italian at a decent level but still finds TV tricky. She told me that sometimes she just wants to colla...

👉Grab your FREE Guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/reading_guide 👉 Sign up now for the StoryLearning App: https://l.storylearning.com/SL_app I’ve had a lot of questions come in  about different ways to learn vocabulary from reading and the best books to use if you want to read to learn a language.  I do quite a lot of episodes on reading and this is going to be a rap...

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Xiaoma’s 7 Best Tips for Learning Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/xiaoma Today's guest, Xiaoma NYC, a.k.a Arieh Smith, probably needs no introduction. He first came on the podcast in 2020, so it's high time we caught up with him. He's been busy since then, managing to learn 70 languages. So how did he do it? Links mentioned in this episode: Arieh’s Yo...

👉 Grab your FREE Speaking Guide: https://l.storylearning.com/speaking_guide  Today's question is about speaking and how to go from knowing a lot of stuff in a language to actually speaking the language fluently.  As I always say, if you want to speak fluently, so if you want to be able to interact in the real world confidently and fluently like a native speaker, you've got to be speaking...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/goals As a beginner language learner, you feel progress happening very quickly. Everything you learn is useful and practical. But once you've learned the basics, it’s normal to get stuck. In fact, it's so normal that it has a name: the intermediate plateau. Every learner reaches it, generally around the one to two year ma...

👉 Grab your FREE guide, How to Read in Any Language: https://l.storylearning.com/6_steps_read  I don’t know if you've noticed, but language learning advice is often geared towards extroverts - put yourself out there, just speak, don't be shy. That makes perfect sense if you're that way inclined. But if you're at all like me and you identify as an introvert, or at least have very s...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Difficulty Guide: https://l.storylearning.com/difficulty_guide  Today we have a question about choosing your next language. And it comes from someone who's already a polyglot, who speaks four languages and is a bit confused over what their fifth language should be. An interesting problem. 👉 Got a question you want Olly to answer on the podcast? Submit it here: https://s...

👉 Get Your Free Guide, Dr Popkins' 8 Best Tips to Learn a Language and Keep Going https://l.storylearning.com/dr-popkins-tips   In this episode, I'm very happy to welcome Gareth Popkins, longtime friend and language compadre, to the StoryLearning podcast. Gareth got the language bug in his early twenties and took his French further, learned Welsh and then worked on German and Russian. He’...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency-resources Understanding native speakers on the streets is one of the most difficult, challenging and disconcerting elements of language learning. But when you learn to deal with fast speech, it is the most exhilarating, wonderful, rewarding feeling you can possibly imagine. And this is the question we're...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/free-fluency Today I’m answering a question from a frustrated Japanese learner with a 650-day streak on Duolingo. Their question:  What do I do? Do I keep on, do I switch to a different language?  Do you have any advice for a frustrated language learner? I really like this question. I've got so much to say about...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency_goals In this episode I’m going to be talking about this old chestnut: learning two languages at the same time. I’ve got two questions on this that have come from a recent video. Long-term listeners will be very familiar with my take on learning two languages at the same time. But my questions today are about a rather spe...

👉 Grab your FREE guide, Dave Pinto's 7 Best Tips to Sound Like a Local: https://l.storylearning.com/sound-local I am absolutely delighted to welcome to the StoryLearning podcast, my longtime friend, partner in crime and fellow language enthusiast, Dave Pinto. Professionally Dave focuses on language teaching, but many language teachers that I've met over the years in different countries ne...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/fluency In this episode, I’m tackling a really difficult question that I feel a lot of sympathy for: how you can learn a language when you have no motivation? I taught English for five years in Asia and the Middle East. I met a lot of students who had to learn English because they needed it for their job. They had no...

👉Join the app waiting list: https://l.storylearning.com/app_wait_list In this episode, I’m doing something a little bit different. I'm going to take you behind the scenes of the new StoryLearning app that I've been building. It's a work in progress, but I thought you might like a sneak peek. I'm pretty excited about it. In fact, I haven't been as excited about something since...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner https://l.storylearning.com/goal_plan How do you bridge the gap between being a complete beginner and not being able to read anything and then doing what I did a few years ago, which is to learn Italian from scratch in 90 days through reading? That's what I'm going to cover in this episode. Mentioned in this episode: Olly Italian project playlist: https://ww...

👉 Grab your FREE Guide, Luca's 12 Rules for Learning Any Language Faster in 2026: https://l.storylearning.com/Luca_tips  I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Luca Lampariello who has been teaching languages online longer than I have. He was one of my very first references when I first started creating content online. He’s been on the podcast a number of times over the years and here is ag...

👉 Grab your FREE Binge-Worthy Resources for Fluency: https://l.storylearning.com/TV_movies  I've had a lot of comments come in all asking the same thing: when you watch TV or movies, should you use subtitles or not? Subtitle on or subtitles off? Subtitles in which language? Which subtitle-audio combination is best? I have a rather controversial take on this, which is that I generally don'...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/language_plan Why do we fail at language learning? It's not that we find it difficult, it's that staying consistent is difficult. We set ourselves this target of studying for an hour a day and invariably life gets in the way. And before you know it, three months have gone past and we've done nothing. This is the uncomfortable tru...

👉 Grab your FREE Language Goal Planner: https://l.storylearning.com/plan_study What's the best way to learn a language as a complete beginner? The whole premise of my method, StoryLearning, is that you learn a language through reading. People understand the concept. But then they say - I'm a complete beginner, how on earth do I start to read? I don't know any words!  So how do you get...