Hello everybody Today I want to talk about an idea for learning I call "Relaxing Challenges" Remember when you were a child and you liked to play? Sometimes you dared yourself to try things: climb a tree, make a snowman, build a sandcastle, catch a ball. Each of these sort of things were a physical challenge. Some other things were mental challenges: playing chess, making a jigsaw, drawing and painting. Learning a language is a big challenge. It is a huge undertaking; building up vocabulary, pronunciation, writing a text, reading a book, listening to speech and also speaking ourselves are all different challenges with language learning. When I refer to a "relaxing challenge" I don't mean having a rest. I mean setting ourselves a small challenge with a relaxed mind, but with an energetic and enthusiastic intention. For a language learning "relaxing challenge", we can think of something to do with the language we are learning that challenges us for a short while, but doesn't tire us out completely. Some examples: Reading a passage quickly to see how many words we know Speaking a text to see how well we can pronounce it Seeing if we can learn 5 new words a day Try singing a song in the language Try phoning or e-mailing someone and speak about a subject you are not very familiar with Listen to a foreign radio station to see how many words you can understand Ask a friend for their opinion on how they think you speak All these ideas and many more are a way of us using the language or practicing and pushing our knowledge and skill further....but without worrying. Like we did when we were a child. We didn't climb a tree to worry about falling We didn't build a sandcastle to worry about the sea washing it away We didn't worry about dropping a ball sometimes We can put this sort of attitude also to language study. I do not mean act like a child, I mean be "childlike" in our way of challenging ourselves to do something which excites us about language and relax after, safe in the knowledge that even if we did not do things so well, at least we had a try and enjoyed the challenge Be good be happy Bye for now