Tag Archives: Learning

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 →

Leave a Comment

Filed under Thai

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

April 9, 2013 · 9:08 pm

Where have you been?

WOW where did the last 4 months go?  I know it’s been a long time since I even tried to post something on here.  It really is amazing how easy it is for us to drop something, even if we enjoy it.  There are many reasons  excuses for why I haven’t written, but they can all be summed up into one word: Motivation.

I love many things in my life.  I love my wife and kids.  I love my Savior   I love helping others and I love learning new things.  I often have told people that if I could be paid to learn, I would take that job without question.

I also learned, that I like to write.  I like blogging.  I like putting digital pen to digital paper and posting my incoherent thoughts for all to see.  Yeah I know I don’t have this huge following.  I just enjoy writing.  If someone reads it and enjoys it then all the better, but I write for me.

If you like it so much, why did you lose motivation?

I lost emotion, because I stopped writing and learning for the enjoyment of it.  I wasn’t trying to be the next big language blogger, but I also wasn’t writing for my benefit.  It became work, a job, a chore.  With thing picking up at my paying job, it got harder and harder to WANT to write.

One day, it just happened.  I sat down to write and nothing would come out.  I have never wanted to write something that wasn’t real.  I have mailed in a couple of posts here and there, but there were still from me and my motivation to learn and help others learn.  This was different.  I couldn’t get a single feeling or thought out.  So I didn’t.  Next thing you know it been 4 months.

So what have you been up to?

I have focused a lot at work and been doing some minimal Language learning.  I will be honest.  I haven’t learned any Samoan in the last 4 months.  I went back to Spanish.  It was easier and felt more natural.  Samoan made me make new routines and I just didn’t have the heart do it the last 4 months.  Of course I have been with my kids and my family.

So what does the future hold for this blogger?  I don’t know but I will guarantee you,  what ever happens will be because I enjoy it! And I hope you do too.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Thai

Tagged as , ,

January 20, 2013 · 9:03 pm

Under Achieve to Succeed

Doing less can give you more

It’s been a crazy week and a half.  I have been getting ready for a very important event at work and a lot of time and energy has been devoted to it.  This has meant that only the most important things in my life have been worked on and everything else has been left.  No, I haven’t updated my status here at the blog, but I have been learning Samoan.  Despite my really busy schedule and preoccupied mind, I learned and perfected my abilities to speak and understand Samoan.

How might you ask I was able to accomplish this?  I under achieved.

How Can One Under Achieve to Succeed?

I know you might be asking yourself some thing like, “How can one succeed if you do less than all you have? ” or “I thought I was supposed to give 110 percent?”   Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under How to learn

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 5, 2013 · 3:44 pm

First week of Samoan

It was the first week of Samoan.  I liked it.  I’m obviously still in my honeymoon phase, but I am so happy to learn this.  There are so many things about Samoan that are so different from any other language I have tried yet and if you combine that with the fact that my resources are SO much more limited this time, one might think that I would have gotten frustrated rather quickly.

In fact I have learned a lot about Samoan and language learning in general that I though I would like to share with you here:

Old and limited resources are not a problem

The older resources, that are not designed around a language learner Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Samoan

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 1, 2013 · 12:01 am

Language for 2013 is……SAMOAN

Samoan Beach Fale - Samoa

Samoan Beach Fale – Samoa (Photo credit: whl.travel)

Yes it’s official, I am learning Samoan in 2013.  It was a hard decision to make, but ultimately I want my kids to have an understanding of who they are and where they come from.  Since they are one-quarter Samoan, I want them to grow up appreciating what that means.  This reason was the ultimate reason why I chose Samoan over all the other languages.  It has the least practical use for me and the least amount of resources, but it had the highest motivation for me to learn it.

Speaking of resources, I have collected several resources over the last few months using Evernote and I have already started to a Samoan resource page of the ones I have had a chance to review.  Samoan does not have a large amount of free resources online like Spanish.  A good and bad point is that Samoan does not have a plethora of courses, free or paid, like Spanish does.  This means I am not having to filter through a lot of courses, but it also means I have less to choose from.

All of the resources I will be using will primarily come from 3 course manuals I have got my hands on: The book Gangana Samoa, The Peace Corp’s manual for learning Samoan, and the one I am most excited about is the Samoan for Mormon Missionaries.  The Gangana Samoan book needs to be purchased, but the other 2 are available on my Samoan resource page.

Other Changes

I am planning on making some changes, going forward, to how I blog. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Samoan, Thai

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 28, 2012 · 1:19 am

Priorities

Hello out there.  Long time no post, right?  Yeah I know it’s been a while, but it’s that time of year.  Time to think about God and time to think about family.  To be honest, I’ve thought about writing something, but nothing has come to my mind.  I’ve been distracted and I am not ashamed to say that I am ok with it, because that distraction was my wife and my kids.  I’ve spent the last few days watching Christmases past and making Christmas memories with them.  I am so very happy to be married to my beautiful Kiwi wife who has given me 4 wonderful kids (5 if you count our still-born son).

Priorities in life are important

To be honest, that is what this blog is all about. Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under How to learn, Motivation

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 18, 2012 · 9:11 pm

What a week it has been!!!

Ups and downs of Language learning

Crazy, crazy, busy week.  I’ve been doing projects at work and almost all my time has been devoted to them.  I love the projects, but it has meant a lot of things have been put to lower levels, including this blog.  I’ve missed it a lot.  There is so much good that comes out of this blog. I truly do hope that I can help others learn languages.  I don’t try to give false expectations on what it does and doesn’t take as a language learner, but I hope to give small advice and encouragement.

All that said, this blog helps me more than I think I help others.  It helps me organize my thoughts, set a game plan and be accountable for what I say I am going to do.  I’m not always successful, but I hope this blog helps keep me going even when things get the hardest.

Since it has been almost a week since I have been able to be on to write, I thought I would give a little summary of the ups and downs of my week.  Despite not being able to write, I have had many an opportunity to feel good and bad.  So here they are.

The Ups

Despite my business, I have kept a solid learning routine. Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under How to learn, Progress

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

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 →

1 Comment

Filed under How to learn

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 4, 2012 · 7:46 pm

Tis the Season to be Sick

I've been sick for a couple of weeks now. I we...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s that time of year again.  Time for the spreading of Peace, Joy, and Sickness.  When you have a family of 6 people, then you have 6 different ways for disease to come in and spread among the family.  It’s almost inevitable.  The question isn’t if I will get sick, it’s when.

That is exactly what happened this weekend and is still going on now.  Almost everyone in my family was sick for at least one day this weekend.  Most of us are still a little sick, though the end is near.  Sickness has an interesting way to mess up both your routine and your plans.  I did learn a few things this weekend that helped me stay motivated and learn some more Spanish.

Learn “sick” vocab

Look up and use the words that describe your symptoms. Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under How to learn

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 26, 2012 · 8:35 pm

How to use Rossetta Stone

Rosetta Stone (company)

Anyone who wants to learn a language will probably have heard of Rosetta Stone.  Rosetta stone is one of the most well-known language learning programs, mostly due to all its radio/TV advertising.  It’s funny, when you Google Rosetta Stone, you will probably find more negative reviews than positive.  I think almost every blog about language learning has a ‘Rosetta Stone Sucks’ post in its archive.  I’ve always found that strange.

While I do understand the desire to guide people in the right direction, the almost pure hatred for this product is amazing.  Some will give the impression that the program is absolutely useless and is a complete waste of time.  First of all, no matter who much a program is marketed, if the program is completely useless then people will stop buying it and it will stop being made.  Secondly, there is no such thing as a silver bullet and to expect any language course/software program to get you from nothing to everything is false expectations.

Do I think Rosetta Stone is the perfect software program?  No I don’t.  But if you bought it or some how got a copy of it from somewhere (I’m not going to ask how) then what good does it do to write a post about why it’s useless.  I would rather tell you how to maximize the good parts so that it is useful to you.

How to use Rosetta Stone

*I have only used version 3, but from what I can tell the differences between the Version 3 and the latest are not that drastic that you can’t apply what I recommend here.

Even though it is sold as a program Continue reading →

Leave a Comment

Filed under How to learn, Learn Spanish, Thai

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,