7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 35
Hi everybody,
I hope your week was marvelous!
I had an awful start of the week that got me to spend the rest of it focusing on improving my health and sleep. And it worked! I felt energized the second half of the week and am absolutely psyched about September starting. Who knew I'd love the start of a new school year after finishing school?!
Alright, let's dive right in!
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.
One video: Learning a Language isn't like Learning Anything Else — By Days of French 'n' Swedish
This video (and the two others in this series he made) was amazing. Lamont explains why input-based learning works so well. It was one of the best videos I've ever seen on the topic.
One article I read: You Are Not Lazy, You Are Distracted: How to Feed Your Focus — By Thomas Oppong
This article isn't just about languages but it surely applies to learning languages too. Thomas talks about Deep Work and how to reduce distractions. As Thomas reminds us, deep work is a habit. You won't master it in a day but be patient and you'll make it.
One article I wrote: Why You Shouldn’t Only Rely on Technology to Learn a Language
I'm thankful to technology for making learning languages so much easier. But I also find unfortunate how much we rely on it. Relying mostly on technology to learn is a simple-to-fall-into pitfall. In this piece, I talked about the advantages of turning to analog.
One podcast episode: 035 Three benefits of repetitive listening― By SpongeMind Podcast
This amazing episode went into detail about why repetitive listening works so well and how to do it. I've been doing it a lot nowadays by listening to Korean audiobooks on repeat, and I've learned a lot this way!
One tool to try: Forest (available on iPhone and Android)
For some reason, this app never really clicked with me, but I've seen countless language learners use it to stay consistent. Basically, every focused session you make plants a digital tree in the app. Staying consistent allows the forest to grow. It's like Pomodoro with an added bonus. I prefer using Tide and Clockify but you might prefer this one!
One quote to ponder: “Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.” ― Mark Amidon
One biweekly challenge: Find 35 sentences per week in videos
I love that languages can be learned passively by watching videos. It's important, however, not to always be passive. This challenge is about finding at least 35 sentences per week you'd like to remember later (5 per day or more in fewer days). You can then write them down by hand to remember them better and add them in Anki or your favorite SRS. Bonus points if you even add the audio clip of the sentence!
Last challenge sum-up: Practice one skill a day
Looking back, it feels like I didn't think this one through. Forcing to switch things up every day actually made me procrastinate most days. In the end, I stuck to mostly passive study of Korean and Chinese. I hope it went better for you! I'm psyched about the new biweekly challenge we're about to start though!
Let me know how it went for you by sending me a mail at barra.mathias@gmail.com!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
PS: The majority of you chose to keep the same format for this newsletter so we'll stick to it for now but don't hesitate to keep answering the survey or to send me a message if you have any questions!
For more of my articles, you can find them here.