7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 11
Hi everybody,
I hope your study of your language(s?) is still going strong!
Each week, I share 7 things that could be useful to your learning odyssey. I hope they can help you improve your journey, tickle your curiosity, and inspire you to keep exploring.
Let's dive right in!
One video: How to stop translating in your head — By Alex Rawlings
In this very down-to-earth video, Alex gives three tips on how to stop translating. I especially liked the one about finding images online and trying to describe them directly in the target language, as a way to stop going through your native language. I'll probably give it a go in the next few weeks to see how it goes.
One article I read: 6 easy ways to roll your ‘R’ - By Benny Lewis
On the surface, this article won't be useful for everybody as it's about learning to pronounce well the Spanish "R" and not other types of "R"s. Yet, I found all the tips extremely on point and think it's a good challenge for anybody who isn't a native Spanish speaker. Even if you're not learning Spanish, learning so quickly to make that "R" will probably raise your confidence in becoming able to pronounce well whatever other language you're learning.
One article I wrote: Stop Before You Study Too Much to Learn Better in the Long Run
Most people who start learning a language try to learn as much as possible as often as possible. I did that a lot as well in the past. Yet, it turns out that's not the best way to study. To be more precise, that's the wrong way to go at it. In this article, I explained why and how to do instead.
One podcast episode: Language Hacking Podcast Episode 029 | Judith Meyer on Opening Up Opportunity with Languages
In this interesting episode with Judith Meyer, they talk about how learning languages has opened so many opportunities in her life. The tip she gave that really stuck with me, however, was on avoiding learning anything you're not going to use in the next few months. I often give the advice of learning useful vocabulary but I've also often learned vocabulary I hoped would be useful to me later. This works well at higher levels but, at the start at least, her rule is much better.
One tool to try: Intelligent Speaker (available on Chrome, Firefox, and Opera)
This text-to-speech extension that works on all browsers provides an amazing voice in any language. Or at least the 6 I know and tried. It's simple to use so I love it as a way to practice reading faster by following along with the audio. The only two caveats are that you can only use it for one hour per month and that it doesn't highlight the words being spoken. Still, a great tool I'd recommend using in small increments throughout the month.
One quote: "The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is choice." — Brian Herbert
One challenge for the week ahead: Practice focusing on one person
This week, let's do a small challenge to improve our handling of the language. We're going to practice following one person's monologue while setting some background noise to disrupt our concentration. For instance, you could open 2 or 3 YouTube videos, in different languages, of a newscaster presenting. Lower the sound to let them all blend in a ruckus but still be loud enough to hear them. Then find a video or audio more or less at your level (You could take an "Easy Language" video for example) and reduce the sound level a bit less. With all this sound, try to focus and understand as much as you can.
The goal here is to imitate a situation you could have while traveling in the country or speaking in the loud street to a native speaker of the language. It'll be my first time trying it as well so I'm kinda nervous how I'll do!
Last week's challenge was to find an audio file and transcribe it. I chose to transcribe a short guided sleep meditation in Korean so I could do it with ease in the future and, I have to admit, I struggled a lot. I hadn't done this exercise in a while and it took me many hours to transcribe it all. I also haven't been able to verify I got it all right so I'll add this to the list for this week. I also gave up on doing it for German this week but I'll give it a go in the next few months.
Let me know how it went for you by sending me a mail at barra.mathias(at)gmail.com !
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.