Talk your way into another language
Need to learn another language for a job abroad? Textbooks and tutors may be the worst approach
GO INTO a bar, sit down, relax, have a large drink, try to pick someone up or have an argument, or combine the two. It may look to others as though you are wasting your time. It may even feel that way to you. But so long as you are doing this in a foreign country, where you speak the language badly or not at all, you are probably acquiring a new language better than you ever could by formal study with a teacher and a textbook.
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