Successfully Learning Dutch

By Cornelius Baanders

A book by a Dutch emigrant, who moved to England at the age of 18 and because of that understands how to teach Dutch to a native English speaker. The methods in this book were used by the author himself and helped him to teach his English girlfriend fluent Dutch in less than a year; this would normally take several years to accomplish. This is a book for beginners as well as advanced students of all ages with tips and tricks that can save you a lot of work and are essential for successful language learning!

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: Jan 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9783961428601

Book preview

I M P R I N T

Successfully Learning Dutch

by Cornelius Baanders

© 2017 Cornelius Baanders

All rights reserved.

Author: Cornelius Baanders

Contact: [e-mail]

ISBN: 978-3-96142-860-1

Verlag GD Publishing Ltd. & Co KG, Berlin

E-Book Distribution: XinXii

www.xinxii.com

This ebook, including all its parts, is protected by copyright and must not be copied, reselled or shared without the permission of the author.

Successfully

Learning

Dutch

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Mindset

Chapter 2: Motivation

Chapter 3: Study the way you want

Chapter 4: Michel Thomas

Chapter 5: Dutch ≈ English

Chapter 6: The Top 100

Epilogue

Chapter 1: Mindset

Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.

- Earl Nightingale

It may be strange to start this book discussing the subject of mindset. However, the mindset is crucial, not only when it comes to learning new languages, but for life in general. As a Dutch national who lived in England for many years, I can tell you from my own experience, that it is far easier to learn English as a Dutch national than to learn Dutch as an English speaking person. Dutch can be ridiculously long, unnecessarily complicated and basically has way too many options for saying simple sentences. All of these things don’t mean that you shouldn’t learn Dutch, though. There are plenty of reasons to learn Dutch:

So what I’m trying to say here is that the mindset has to be the right one when it comes to learning the language, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to even learn a single sentence. So, how do you get the ‘right’ mindset? Can you change your own mindset, if you don’t want to learn Dutch, but you may have to? The first question will be answered in a moment, and the answer to the second question is yes, but it can be tricky. It does depend on personality, age, and - you guessed it - the mindset. You ideally have to have the right mindset to start with, otherwise you may never be truly fluent in Dutch. What exactly do I mean when I say ‘mindset’? I mean the inner factors, that can influence you. Inner factors are goals, that have nothing to do with education. For example, you might have set yourself the goal to move to The Netherlands, or you really want to know the words to a certain song, book, film etc, because it is not available in English. External factors are school, potential apprenticeship or job, in which you might have to be able to speak Dutch, as well as parents, who might want you to be able to speak Dutch for whatever reason. If you are naturally motivated to learn Dutch, you can skip this whole chapter, but you should definitely read on if you lack the right mindset, or if you have just noticed that you are not sure. To get into the right mindset, you should first understand why you have the wrong mindset in the first place, or why the person who you are trying to teach Dutch has the wrong mindset or attitude. When babies learn their mother tongue, the reason for learning is the desire to communicate. You might think that parents spend