Tag Archives: education

April 22, 2013 · 11:25 pm

Time to Complain

I am not one who likes to be negative.  When I write I like to put my time in to helping point people in the right direction according to my opinions.  I don’t write negative reviews of products and I don’t make controversial posts to generate a lot of comments.  That’s just not how I roll.

Despite all that, there are just some things that irritate me to no extreme!  And I have chosen to remain silent, because of my desire to stay positive.  Then I realized, it’s not the sources that makes me annoyed, it’s the people who keep going back to these sources.  So I have chosen to go on this rant, not to put anyone person our thought down, but to point out where I think you shouldn’t go.  I wont name any names in this, just concepts I am not a fan of.

Do your homework!

There are those who like to make fantastical claims and of superfast learning.  They go on these missions to learn a language super fast and if you follow their blog or buy their product, then you will figure out these same tricks.   Continue reading →

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December 9, 2012 · 5:19 pm

What happened?

Image form wikimedia

This has been a crazy week!  I have less than a month to get as good at Spanish as I can get, and yet this week went by with hardly any Spanish being learned.  It started great and then next thing I know, I am looking at a week of very little Spanish.  No progress was made and it’s possible I went a little backwards?

How could I let this happen?  To be honest, at first I didn’t know.  Sure, I have been busy, but that has never been an excuse to not do at least something to move my progress forward.  It’s been bothering me all weekend.  And then suddenly, I realized what happened.  I broke one of my oldest rules!

What rule did I break?

The rule was find an opportunity to learn in everything I do!   Continue reading →

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November 15, 2012 · 10:50 pm

Where else to read

Aquellos libros

I am going to let you all in on a little secret.  I am not a professional linguist!  I know you are all surprised to hear that, but it’s true.  In fact, I don’t use ANY of my languages (besides English, of course) professionally nor have I EVER taken a class  in any language.  Everything I know and recommend comes from what I have learned as I have stumbled through the various ways to learn.

I don’t think I am always right, or at least that what I like and do is right for everyone.  There are a lot of view points on how to learn a language as an adult, and you know what?  They are all probably right.  I have heard an interesting quote once that intelligence is the ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time with out going crazy.  I probably miss quoted it, but you get the point.  It’s important to learn and understand different view points so that you can be a more rounded individual.

Which Blogs I Read

That’s why I like to read the blog post from other successful language learners who may “seem” to be different. Continue reading →

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August 10, 2012 · 8:15 am

Finding a use for Evernote

 

Evernote

Evernote (Photo credit: /Sizemore/)

 

Today is a bit about language learning, but not really.  Hey, I can have other useful things to say other than language learning advice (I’m serious!).   Anyway, for a while now, I have heard about this cool thing called Evernote.  It’s a free program, that lets you make notes and clip things from the internet and have it save in a central location.  Then you can get access to that information through anything that has access to the internet.

 

It seemed like a good idea, in fact it seemed like a great idea.  My one problem was that I don’t take notes.  Ask my wife how many times I have gone to the store and gotten half the things wrong, assuming I even get the item at all.  It’s not that I can’t or shouldn’t make lists/reminders/notes to myself, or even that I don’t like to.   I just don’t do it.  I know it’s not a good excuse, but its mine.

 

How I found a use for Evernote

 

Even though I am doing a countdown to my new language and letting people vote for, or this month against, the various languages on my list, I have already chosen the language.  Which means I am using these next few months to collect as much materials as I can find to help me learn them.

 

The hard part about it is that I am not trying to learn the language right now.  When I find things, I want to be able to organize them easily, but not have to worry about losing it later.  (I am a bit absent-minded sometimes.)

 

This is where Evernote comes in.  Any resource or webpage, even YouTube videos, I can add and organize them now.  Then on January 1st, I will be ready to hit the ground running.   This has simplified what I do to get ready for my next project.

 

I know there is much more uses than this, so for your benefit here is a link to a blog on evernote to show you much more uses than this.  How do you use evernote?  Please share!  I could use all the help I can get.

 

 

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July 6, 2012 · 9:02 am

Mailing it in

Sometimes you have to just “mail it in.”

When I started blogging it was originally to help me speak Spanish better.  The world became my responsibility partner and my coach.  After awhile I realized that some found it helpful to read about a boring full-time working language learning Dad and what he was doing to learn and improve the languages he knows.  It because more about giving back than about getting help.

Not that I don’t think I still need help, but I feel there really is a lack of help for those who aren’t 20 something expatriates, migrating from hostel to hostel, teaching English to supplement what they don’t earn on their blogs.  Not that these are not fun or inspiring, but for a married father of 4 children I would be happy to make it out of the state of Utah once in a while. (To prove my point, my youngest son came downstairs with a soiled diaper while writing that last line.  You can’t tell me that those situations don’t make it difficult to learn another language!)

I feel very motivated to learn and improve my Spanish and Thai.  I want to prove that it can be done!  I want to show people how I’m doing it so that it might help them.  In my very rare free time, I am trying to write a course to help others learn Thai and I am doing it for free.

So what happened this week?

This week was Independence day  Continue reading →

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June 23, 2012 · 1:29 am

Don’t learn a language, live it!

My kids living life

When was the last time you heard a word in your native language you didn’t know before?  What did you do?  Did you write it down, create a flash card, or something else like that.  When you heard an expression, slang, or other colloquialism in your native language how did you start using it?  I think the answer is pretty obvious.  Your native language is just a part of you and so when you learn new things you just assimilate them!  (No mentioning of the borg you trekkies!)

The point of this blog is not to tear down the use of flash cards or other such things to help you learn.  What the point of this post is to emphasis the importance of making the language a part of you.  I am going to admit, the idea for this post didn’t come from me.  It came from the recent post over at thepolyglotdream.com.  Susanna Zarysky recently guest posted a post about the secret to learning a foriegn language

What is the secret?

According to Susanna, Continue reading →

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April 15, 2012 · 12:11 am

My System….so far…..(Part 2)

Here is part 2 of how I organize my studying, or my system for lack of better words. In the last post, I explained why I divide my time between Input and Output. One thing I failed to mention was why I spend a week on input and the next on output. What I have found by experience is that using smaller time frame, such as a day, meant that you would cut the learning short just as you start getting on a role. Longer periods of time also make it so you get bored with learning just one part of the language. One week I have found was enough to keep you interested, yet not cut of your learning too early.

Step one is to gather as many resources, paid or free, into a big giant pile. These could be courses you found/purchased. Tutoring session or language exchanges. Talking to the wall, which is one of my favorites, or translating TV are examples of activities you can do to increase your language ability. If it is used to help you learn, then put it in the pile.

Once you have your pile you need to first divide them into input and output based activities/course. There is not a course out there that will say it is input or output based. You have to decide for yourself. Maybe go through the first lesson or two to figure this out. Here is my simple test. If the activity has you listen mostly, this includes those that show you how to speak and then have you repeat after them, than it is an input based course. If they course emphasises speaking, especially if it has you speak the word’s phrases first and then shows a correct version after, than it is an output based course.

Is that it?

Not quite, there is still a few more steps. Continue reading →

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January 14, 2012 · 9:00 am

Proyecto nuevo

Here is my Spanish Friday post for this week.  Enjoy.

Tengo un proyecto nuevo. No quiero hablar mucho de eso, pero puedo decir qué es sobre una idioma que no es español. Por supuesto voy a seguir a aprender español. Me encanta español tanto que no puedo parar aprenderla. Sin embargo, Este proyecto me emociona. Espero que puedo decir más muy pronto.

(I have a new project. I’m not going to talk much about it, but I can say that it is on a language other than Spanish. Of course I will continue to learn Spanish. I love Spanish so much that I won’t be able to stop learning it. However, this project excites me. I hope I can say more soon.)

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