7 Bullet Points About Languages - Week 45
Hey everybody,
I hope your week was marvelous!
Updates
Mine clearly was since Sunday was my birthday! 🎉 I just got a Kindle PaperWhite so I could get some more foreign language reading on the go with an on-the-spot dictionary. I spent my entire Sunday evening setting it up and playing with the settings like a kid.
My birthday also brought some dark news to me though. At 31 now, the visa I planned to apply to get to Taiwan is off the plate, and so goes the rest of my plan there. I saw it coming though so I’m now weighing the different options I’ve thought off. Maybe going to another country (and adding a new language?) Who knows, but it’s exciting either way!
As for my language study this week, I studied a bit every day but mostly on the go as I saw people throughout the week for my birthday. I also played Genshin Impact in Chinese spending 95% of the time looking up words to make sure I learn as much as possible.
Alrighty then. Let's dive in!
7 Bullet Points
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: How U.S. Military Linguists Learn Languages Fast — Olly Richards
I’ve known abut the FSI for over a decade and even tried using their textbooks but it felt so dry I gave up. This being said, there’s no looking down on their —way over the top— method. It works and it’d be a dream to try a real FSI program one day (were it possible)! In this video, Olly gave a lot more detail than I ever found about it. Extremely insightful.
One article I read: The Multi-Front Attack for Conquering a New Language
I fell upon this article by accident and got hooked. I love the metaphor of seeing learning a new language as a war—What’s up between me and war this week? 😂— and attacking it in many different ways. If you want to change the way you perceive learning a language, you should definitely read this. And if you learn Japanese, Korean, or Chinese, all the more so, since it’s filled with resources!
One article I wrote: Take These Breaks to Become a Better Language Learner
As most of you know, I had to take a real break a few weeks ago in order to come back to learning full of motivation and energy. I actually wrote this piece in the middle of that break (and edited to fit how I felt taking it). That break felt amazing but that’s not the only kind of break! You can also take what I called “false breaks!”
One podcast episode: #074 | Stephen Krashen on the Comprehensible Input Method - Language Hacking Podcast
What a rare treat! Stephen Krashen, the “father” of the comprehensible input method was interviewed by Benny Lewis! I felt that Stephen sometimes rambled, but the content itself was pure gold. There are many interesting bits but if you’re short on time, listen to the sum-up at the end at least!
One tool to try: GLOSS (Website)
Hey, might as well dive full on in military-related topics, right? This is the link to the resource mentioned in Olly’s video. I hadn’t used it in years and completely forgot about it but it’s such a great resource! Filled with audio and written content, it’s definitely worth a try.
One quote to ponder: “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” ― Aristotle
Current biweekly challenge: Read a short story (or more!)
As I said above, I got a Kindle so I’m psyched to get some more reading practice now. Whether you have an e-reader or not, let’s try to read at least one short story in the next two weeks. Depending on your level and the length of it, have fun spicing things up with exercises (like summarizing it orally or in written format, copying some passages, or even reading more than one)! I don’t know which one I’ll read yet but I guess that leaves a surprise for next week!
Sum-up of the 1st week of the challenge: Get feedback on 15 sentences
In the end I’m still looking for a good free replacement to HiNative’s one-sentence feedback system so I chose to write some more on Journaly and make the best of it! I wrote 2 more short posts and analyzed the feedback so I’d remember it best. I even wrote by hand a few corrected sentences to cement them further
Let me know how it went for you by replying to this mail or commenting!
As always, thanks for reading!
Mathias Barra
For more of my articles, you can find them here.