In this week’s mindset podcast we welcome John Fotheringham to talk about habit forming, how to set goals for success and one aspect of language learning that rarely gets discussed.
John is a passionate language learner and is running Langauge Mastery—a language learning blog and podcast dedicated to helping language learners. The focus of his website is 80% on language learning and 20% on Mandarin and Japanese.
On top of his experience in language learning, more recently, John has been developing his knowledge on nutrition. I asked John on to the podcast to talk about the topic of nutrition because it is an important aspect of performance. If you aren’t sleeping right or your aren’t eating right, you aren’t setting yourself up for success in language learning.
These mindset podcasts are about exploring topics outside of Spanish vocabulary or grammar. They are useful because because ultimately they will help you achieve your goals with learning Spanish more effectively.
In this first part of the interview we talk about:
- Nutrition and how you can improve your diet to improve your memory and ability focus and form successful habits.
- John’s first experience language learning in Brazil as a 12 years old.
- His experiences in France in his senior year of high school
- How is true love of language learning began with Japanese in college.
- Some of John’s struggles with the language gap in Japan.
- We cover some of John’s observations of the cultural experience in Japan.
- How you should think about priorities instead of maximising and managing your time.
- How to set yourself up for success by setting tiny, achievable goals.
- How to break up tasks to the minimum for focus.
- What it is like to work as a translator.
- John then explains how working as a translator and transferring those skills to having conversations doesn’t work as well as you might expect.
What did you learn from the first part of the interview with John Fotheringham in this mindset episode?
Podcast: Play in new window
Nutrition is key to a person’s wellbeing: you are what you eat. I couldn’t agree more with you guys. You are also what you think, so your thoughts are important too. But how are you going to think right if you are feeling tired and lethargic? Besides being interested in teaching Spanish I am also very interested in nutrition because I have seen a health decline in people in Spain in general since we are not eating the Mediterranean diet anymore in this side of the ocean-most people are too stressed and busy, and they don’t realize that their diet is the basis of their wellbeing. That is just my opinion althought I was very sad when I read in one study that Spain is the second European country in the number of obesed children after England!
Amazing interview, Andrew!!!! Keep up the great work you do!
Thanks Meritxell, it is an interesting topic and it was fascinating to talk with John. Being a good student and getting good at learning requires a couple of fundamental prerequisites such as sleep, water, food and exercise. These topics are incredibly important and I’m glad they resonated with you.
Awesome Thank you both
Thanks Frances! 😊