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languagestudymaterials · 3 years ago

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[just saw post on pockets of fluency] I'm curious to hear your advice when it comes to comprehension as opposed to production. I like reading, but novel authors use so many flowery words that I find myself needing to look up often to just understand what's going on. However, I hate the idea of interrupting myself to add words to Anki that I might never use (I'm kinda a perfectionist myself though—it's a struggle). I've heard of people just writing down new words, but what's your philosophy?

LONG ANSWER!!!

(Have you heard of this website? https://www.vocabtest.com/ I recommend Level D and E for better novel (or any other “advanced” piece of writing) comprehension.)

Read about pockets of fluency here

Hey! Thanks for the ask!

Reading novels in your second or third language might be challenging. A long time ago, I decided that I wanted to study English with the LOTR books. I got a copy and started reading. One page of the book contained approximately 12 words that I couldn’t understand. 5 pages? Around 60 new words. The reading process got easier around volume 2, but the beginning was tough. I took notes, marked all the words in the book, and then transferred them into my little hand-made dictionary, checked the pronunciation for each… It took me about a year to read volume 1 and half of volume 2 (it was like 10 years ago)

Conclusion?

I marked around a thousand of words…. I remembered just one! “Oddities.” It was on page 6 at the top. I don’t know why I remembered this one, but yeah, I will forever associate “oddities” with LOTR. After that, I decided to grade my reading materials and looked for books that were on my level. Upon completing levels D & E of Vocabulary Workshop, my reading pace and comprehension sped up tremendously. The first book I picked up just to see if I would be able to read it without any help of a dictionary was “Lost Boy” by Christina Henry. It took me four days to finish the story. The story is amazing and lots of words from both of these levels could be found inside.

So, what’s my advice, then?

Don’t take notes and don’t write down new words.

I’ve noticed that people memorize vocab more effectively when they connect words with certain events, emotions, or people. Reading is a passive activity that isn’t shared with other people unless you want to discuss the book. You might feel some emotions, of course, while reading a book, but you’re still a passive bystander who observes everything. You’re more likely to memorize words from a random Tumblr post because you choose the content that you’re interested in, and later you discuss it with other people.

That random post doesn’t disappear from your life as soon as you log out of Tumblr. You keep recalling the post, for example, you use it as an example in your conversations, or you comment on it in your own post. You, in a way, practice vocabulary from that post and add something of your own to it.

Words from the books, unfortunately, disappear once the story is over. The influx of vocabulary that books offer is just a bit too overwhelming, and you need to make a choice,

Am I reading for pleasure? or Am I learning new words this time?

I strongly recommend asking yourself these two simple questions. Telling yourself what exactly you want, helps determine your goals, working pace & style, and it also helps your brain focus on the essentials. If you want both, your brain is more like, “Should I enjoy this passage or memorize it?”

Also, that flowery language you talk about is mostly found in books. Everyday conversations are rather simple and short. So, do you need to know all those words? Probably not.

I read solely for pleasure, and I look up words only when I REALLY don’t understand a sentence. Like REALLY, REALLY, other than that, I just ignore new words and move on. It’s so much easier, and each year I consume over 30 books written in English.

So yeah, to sum up:

It takes time to get used to the fact that you don’t need to know every single word in a book.

You either read for pleasure or for vocabulary.

Flowery language is there for you to help you feel emotions, boost your imagination, etc. In real life, people prefer to be concise and to the point.

Levels D & E may really help you with your reading skills.

And yeah…. "words you might never use" then why bother?

I hope it helps!

Disclaimer*

All the ideas come from my own experience, my students’ experience, and my teaching practice. They aren’t universal truths whatsoever.

#Ask #books #reading #vocabulary #english words #english vocabulary #learning vocabulry #teaching

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nordic-language-love · 3 years ago

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Language Learning Log 2021 - Week 39 (27.09 - 03.10)

Norwegian

Worked with vocabulary

Listened to 1x Ekko podcast (57m)

2x Norwegian lessons (1h 45m)

Wrote 2x journal entries

Watched 1x Debatten episode

Watched 2x Norsklærer Karense videos

Read 2x articles

Read 1x Kakerlakkene chapter

I watched Debatten for the first time in a few years. Last time I watched it I found it quite difficult to follow along with, but I was really pleased that I could understand pretty much everything this time. I think it’s a good program to watch to help me prepare for the Bergenstest, as I need to practise listening to interviews and get up to speed with current affairs, and now that I understand 99% of it, it can actually be quite interesting. Of course, it depends on the topic... it’s difficult to be interested in, say, energy prices in Norway, but there are definitely topics I can get into (malnutrition in the elderly, sex work, the environment, vaccine skepticism, abortion etc). That being said, I need to practise listening to discussions about any and all topics anyway, not just the ones I’m interested in.

I had a lesson with a new tutor (again lol) on Friday and he said I had a better Oslo dialect than him. Obviously he meant it as a compliment, but I’m still not entirely sure how to interpret 😅 I know it’s good to be understood, and I know I said I’m not going to learn a dialect unless/until I actual move somewhere, but I still think it’s much cooler to be able to speak a dialect. Maybe I’ll try to pick up stavangersk again, just for a little variety. This week I’m taking a little break from my main tutors and I’m going to catch up with my first tutor and have another lesson with this new tutor too. But then I’ll probably go back to normal.

I’m making a real effort to work on my vocabulary, even if I only glance at my spreadsheet once a day for five minutes. But I’m also trying to actively add words to it from what I read/hear. It’s a little overwhelming, and I don’t expect to learn every single word I note down, but if I write down 500 words and only learn 50% of them, that’s still 250 new words, right?

Also, Mummidalen stops being available on NRK at the end of this month :o so I’m gonna have to binge-watch season 2. There are 13 episodes and I have 4 weeks, so that’s 3-4 episodes a week. Totally feasible to squeeze in an episode here and there between teaching lol. Maybe it’s not the best Bergenstest prep material, but it sure is good for my soul.

Some goals for this week:

Write an interview report

Watch 3x Mummidalen episodes

Add at least 50 new words/phrases to my vocab spreadsheet (current totals: 79 words, 12 phrases)

Read 1x Kakerlakkene chapter

Watch 1x Debatten episode

#progress report #langblr #norwegian langblr #learning norwegian #learning languages #language blog

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moonchildsaurora · 5 years ago

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The social butterfly of a Tech Genius

»»—— Crew Member #6 of Space Pirates ATEEZ ——««

all aboard The Perihelion, welcome to the co-pilot’s log system! here you’ll be able to access the crew’s profiles should you wish to read about their journeys: (no nsfw content)

[CAPTAIN] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

an underestimated intellect with huge love for the cyber world and technology

you hear him before you see him in a crowd

a Drex’un who was born and lived his life in the technology-thriving city of Vollurn up until he was invited to join Hongjoong and Seonghwa on their journey

[database file: Drex’uns are often described as demon-borne even though not all bloodlines are derived from infernal ancestry. Purely for the fact that prominent horns protude from their heads, a prehensile tail that’s used for grabbing things and will coil around their legs when upset/nervous, sharp canines and eye colours that cover the entire sclera. Depending on bloodline, some Drex’uns have elemental abilities]

Mingi isn’t sure about his bloodline as he never knew his parents, though his intelligence goes far beyond that of an average being’s. Not only does he process knowledge extremely fast, his memory is remarkable; able to recall even the tiniest details and his ability to analyse/break codes allows him to have free reign in the cyber networks

his teal-coloured horns and tail have onyx gradient tips, adorned with a few gold jewellery (his actual ears are also pierced with hoops) to complement his molten gold eyes

making heads turn, be it for his energetic presence or fashionable attire; “just because I grew up on the streets doesn’t mean I have no pride for my looks”

learnt to be resourceful and street-smart at a young age, knows all the short cuts and side alleys of the city like the back of his hand (he’s had a lot of time to wander around). Also found out that he had a knack for by-passing security systems whenever he needed shelter for the night

frequents the ‘Merripalace Arcade’ where it’s both an underground hangout for tech whizzes and the cyber battlegrounds for competitive players. The first visit gave him a taste of a different kind of freedom and an introduction to the world of hacking. It’s probably one of the few places he’s felt a part of a community; no judgement of your species nor your background but rather your digital reputation is more valued and the sort of technological talents you bring to the network

if there’s one thing Mingi is a natural at it’s socialising, he could walk into a club alone and come back out later with a new social circle if he so wishes

“ok who DON’T you know here?”

“just look at that face, how can you say no to him?” – Mingi is walking proof that Drex’uns can pull off the puppy-dog face and get away with it

he was gifted a second-hand mirage drive by Einux, a Nagzoid [database file: a reptilian humanoid being with serpent ancestry so they tend to have more snake-like features] who became a shot-term mentor figure after Mingi unintentionally helped crack a system code for a database Einux was commissioned to work on (because Mingi thought that guy was just really bad at math on first glance)

[database file: a mirage drive is pretty much a miniature tablet with a hologram touch-screen and every tech whizz would protect theirs with their lives; especially when were layers of secret activities and programs stored into it]

“you remembered to wipe clean the data trail and replace the originals with the dud files right?”

“yeah of course...does planting a virus in the system that will cause ‘Time Warp’ to play every time they try to click open a file counts?”

“Mingi, I…….”

Einux introduced Mingi to his network of contacts and helped set him up with his first commission, safe to say Mingi was at a loss for words when he got his first pay up front (and that was just the deposit)

by the time Yunho had come across Mingi at the Tech Institute, he had been in the cyber scene for 4+ years already and never once had to deal with someone catching him in the act

Mingi.exe has stopped working

he’s met a couple of Sheirzois before but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t lowkey checking out the blue-haired giant whilst panicking on the inside, he’d argue there’s always time to appreciate beauty

two options popped into his mind then and there; either he bribed his way out (as his mentor taught him) or he attempted to maybe throw some punches and then make a getaway

(expectation) looks like he’s intimidating & can fight vs. (reality) he’d probably cry if he hit someone & is just a soft boy all-round

extra trivia: ironically for an infernal being, Mingi doesn’t deal well with anything supernatural/ghosts-related. Once Woo and Yeosang pranked him, Yunho helped a little but he doesn’t need to know, and convinced him that the basement storage hanger was haunted after totems started appearing in odd places along with ominous noises. Mingi was so ready to abandon ship before Hongjoong did damage control & Jongho promised he’d fight all the ghosts for him

was already metaphorically weeping at the thought of having to empty his money pouch but turned out that Otis (his multi-coding bot) had somehow manage to win the Sheirzoi over along with an invite to drinks

“I’ve got many questions for you regarding your efficiently adorable bot”

“…and I to you as well, BUT first do you have a name? And secondly have you been to ‘Le Apollon’? Coz if not they make some really mean Northern Drops there!”

Yunho turned out to be one of the most chilled individual Mingi has met and he didn’t mind the other’s enthusiastic discussions about all technological inventions, and was even just as enthusiastic to share with Yunho about his own passion for cyber tech

one too many drinks later Mingi was accidentally spilling secrets he definitely wasn’t meant to and even ended up dancing on the table at some point, all while Yunho hyped his new friend up on the side

was forever grateful that Yunho never ratted him out to the authorities and consider him shook for the 2nd time in that day when he was offered a roof over his head, a more permanent one too

“do you want to be the big spoon, or is it my turn? We can rotate!”

thus the bromance of all bromances was born

living with Yunho not only meant Mingi would wake up to good vibes, but more than often would wake up to either the screeching of the smoke alarm or “HOLY SMOKES WHERE ARE THE WATER PODS? DID WE RUN OUT OF THEM? AGAIN?!”

putting out accidental fires became second nature to Mingi, initially he’d aggressively fret over Yunho but now he’s come to accept such is the life of a chaotic bright inventor and this is fine

in fact when Hongjoong and Seonghwa came across their humble abode (thanks to Yunho’s cleaning bot) it was an iconic first meeting over smoke. Yunho did most of the talking when Hongjoong pitched his desire to recruit a crew for space voyage, Mingi too busy sitting there staring at the two new-comers with shooting stars in his eyes and hearing about the prospects of an adventure. Within that day the crew had gain 2 more members, because Mingi and Yunho are a combo package deal

“oh has the system be glitching? If you don’t mind, would you like me to have a look at it?”

Hongjoong did a happy dance on the spot knowing that not only did he now have a talented inventor on his ship but also a gifted tech genius, he put Mingi in charge of managing the mainframe systems along with intel collecting this decision that Hongjoong would later semi-regret because (at times) the word “self-control” doesn’t seem to exist in Mingi’s vocab

Seonghwa adopted him and Yunho pretty easily and space mum’s cooking is Mingi’s fave, occasionally using his puppy-dog face he’s perfected over the years to his advantage in gaining extra midnight snacks (being everyone’s baby, no one’s really immune to this)

“Hwa you’re supposed to be the one disciplining the kids!”

Mingi and Yunho were known to be the chaotic fun duo, but with Wooyoung is just chaotic – not to mention he got his Yunhogizer confiscated by Hongjoong for almost a week after, “I thought we were all comparing assets, Wooyoung sent his to the group chat so I figured this was some kind of crew bonding”

also was one half of the reason that the ‘whatever happens at the Tav/clubs, stays at the Tav/clubs’ rule got implemented and one-night sexytimes were banned aboard The Perihelion after Jongho witnessed a random still semi-nude humanoid trying to sneak out of Mingi’s room without being noticed (Hwa went on parent-mode and panicked yell whilst covering Jongho’s eyes)

Jongho avoided Mingi (out of sheer embarrassment) for a few days and that was pretty devastating, considering how close the two became in their friendship that Mingi was one of the very few people in the crew whom Jongho was openly clingy with at times

no one can argue about Mingi’s loyalty to his crew/new family, and under his care-free flamboyant exterior he’s a genuine listener and will not hesitate to offer his shoulder for his family to lean on whenever they need it

recently he’s created new software to enhance Seonghwa’s cybernetic lenses (as a birthday gift) that’d allow him to see clearly miles ahead, in the dark and lock-on tracking function. What Mingi failed to let Hwa know was that he still hasn’t disconnected the sync link to his mirage drive and therefore if, for example, an image was sent through it’d appear in the other user’s field of vision

“wait for it, wait”

“what exactly are we waiting for Mingi? And why are you giggling over a screaming pink…starfish?” (that’s Patrick Star by the way)

seconds later there was a clamouring from the bathroom, the solid sound of someone falling before, “MINGI!”

“that my good lads, is what we were wa-oh whoops gotta go!”

(moodboard made with love, by @s1ardusk ♡)

#ateez headcanons #atzinc #atinyforatiny #aurorateeznet #ateez scenarios #pirate ateez #pirate ateez au #ateez au #ateez imagines #ateez drabbles #ateez blurbs #song mingi #ateez mingi #ateez writing #ateez fic #Perihelion Crew #pyx writes

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shibashouse · 5 years ago

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Self-study of English (2) ーHow the Internet Has Changed Learning Styles

* writing in red: learning tools or styles which emerged in the Internet era

Before the Internet prevailed, self-study of foreign languages was monotonous sometimes and often took discipline. I still remember I was given lots of penmanship assignments, such as writing every new word 10 times each in my notebook, which I thought time-wasting sometimes.

When my eldest daughter entered junior high school, there was at least one computer at average families in Japan. My husband and I used an e-learning app for TOEIC Test on our (old Windows XP) PC from 2003 to 2006. Preparing for the TOEIC test with a computer was extreme fun compared with my Eiken preparation in the 20th century: the computer app responded to me right after I answered the questions, which was as if I were playing a computer game.

Faster Internet Has Made the World Smaller

In 2007, I upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista and gave my old one to my eldest daughter. I kept on learning English using a computer; I started reading out my blog entries in English, recording my reading and attached the audio clips when posting them. At that time, there were just a few online English schools for practicing conversation, and I failed to activate Skype in my Windows Vista laptop. Learning English for me then was solving vocab drills on the Internet, zapping International radio shows ( actually, I subscribed to BBC radio, which cost 1450 yen per month ), and occasionally writing blog entries in English. Until 2008, I was an introverted housewife being devoted to learning English in front of my PC. I preferred learning English alone with my PC to hanging out with PTA staff members at my children’s elementary school; it was all because of saving money.

Since 2009, I went to work again. At first, I worked for a company cafeteria, which is about 10 minutes from home by bike. Unfortunately, I left there just for 5 months; I was too poor at cooking. Next year, I started teaching English at a franchised cram school. About half of the students there were 9th graders (the 3rd year in junior high school ), so teachers needed to handle them really carefully, especially one month before their first high school entrance exams. Personally, the times teaching English and preparing lessons at the cram school were my treasure, because I could study English deeply and check how precisely I understand grammar and word usage at the same time.

In the days I worked as a cram school teacher, my son studied at a cram school to prepare for his high school entrance exams. I attended parents' day meetings there and listened to the school owner’s lectures a couple of times. Luckily I hadn’t preached by the school owner about my son’s studying attitude, but he didn’t agree with my English-learning style making the most of the Internet; he wanted me to study traditionally, using printed materials.

In my 2nd year as a cram school teacher, I got my first smartphone, which was Android 2.1. I have bought less printed drill books since I got a smartphone; I prefer digital ones, especially English vocab books. Digital drill books (actually apps) have audio clips recorded by professional narrators, which are really effective for practicing pronunciation. Moreover, they told me whether my answers were right or wrong by the sound, took my study log and sometimes praised me with cute gimmicks.

I had to leave the cram school in March 2012 because of the management tactics change, in other words, the board preferred younger teachers. (I learned that later by the cram school’s website) Moreover, my mother wanted me not to work as a cram school teacher anymore, so I needed to look for a daytime job to relieve her. I promised to work during the day, but I had to wait for more than a year to teach English again. I went to a few factories as a temporary worker on weekdays and proctored the TOEIC test several times a year on Sunday then.

Eligible Skills for English Teachers in the Internet Era

In June 2013, I found my teaching license would expire in March 2014 unless I attended the intensive training to renew it. Signing up for the teaching license renewal training doesn’t take much time for teachers as long as they’re at work, but I needed one more step to apply for the training. I wrote the registration form for a temporary or part-time teacher bank and submitted it to the education ministry, and waited for the grant. I joined the 5-day intensive training in Hitachi City in August 2013, and two weeks after the training, I got an offer as a substitute teacher for 7 months at the longest. My workplace then was a public high school in the countryside, and just a few students liked English. Colleagues in the English department advised me to entertain students during lessons rather than teach the language, which was really helpful during my lessons and gave me a new perspective.

“Enjoy reading high school English textbooks as materials for myself, and entertain students with trivia about English words, phrases, or topics presented in the textbooks”

I memorized the word “hibernate” in a textbook for 11th graders (2nd year in high school), and the most difficult word for me in the textbooks I had taught with was “ventriloquism”, which I still need to google.

I taught English totally for 1 year and 7 months there and truly enjoyed giving lessons and learning English for myself at the same time, but I had been worrying about one thing: my TOEIC test score has not so much improved. I often heard a rumor that those who teach English should hold the 1st grade on the Eiken test or AT LEAST 900 on the TOEIC test (holding both is preferable), and I had neither of them. Ironically, company workers who hold both Eiken 1st grade and the full mark ( 990) on TOEIC test without the national teaching license are more welcomed as (private) English teachers or coaches than (licensed) schoolteachers without Eiken 1st grade or higher TOEIC test scores, because Japanese has been taught English as an entrance exam subject, which means English skills are gauged by test scores. Since I failed Eiken 1st grade twice so far and have never reached 900 on the TOEIC written test, I thought I was not eligible for teaching English in early 2015. Actually, I got only 815 in January 2015 and had come to want to see another world.

I think it’s natural that higher test score holders are respected more than schoolteachers who haven’t taken the Eiken test and TOEIC test since test scores are objective to everyone. Nowadays is not only the Internet era but also the AI era, young English learners can practice English 100 times more efficiently than in the pre-Internet era thanks to the Internet and digital gadgets. That means some highly advanced students can be over their English teachers in test scores, in other words, English teachers at schools with average test scores might be discounted easily even though they are nationally licensed.

I Stopped Teaching English to Enjoy Using It

In March 2015, I accepted a transfer to teach computing instead of English. Being a computer teacher, I don’t have to worry about rumors or criticisms of my English test scores anymore. I simply enjoy learning English, that means at the same time I’ve become a lazy learner compared to the past :) Zapping articles about the newest smartphones or computer software is really fun, although the words there are not listed in vocab books. Reading breaking news in English is also useful for me to enhance critical thinking since news articles reported in Japanese often seem biased or partly exaggerated to conceal the truth.

#esl #selfstudy

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dokomoly · 6 years ago

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Hey guys ! It’s been a while since I’ve done a proper post sorry, I’ve just started university ! I’m really enjoying it so far, I’ve just finished my second week. I’m majoring in Business and Japanese, and it’s been really fun to study again in a classroom tbh !

What I wanted to start doing was to make study tips masterposts of all the things that have personally helped me ! Today I wanted to focus on apps, and I want to try and make a few other lists in the next few days ^-^ This isn’t a list of every single useful app, just the ones that I personally use and love.

Part One: Apps

(Note: I use an iPhone and iPad, so all of the following apps are ones that are available on the Apple Store, I’m not too sure about Google Play or others sorry ! )

- Forest - Stay focused, AUD $2.99 , USD $1.99

My first recommendation for apps of course is the Forest - Stay focused app! This is a paid app so not everyone is able to get this, but if you can afford it I really recommend it ! You set times to grow trees, and if you achieve this goal without closing the app, then you get coins, which you can use to buy different trees in game or even to donate trees in real life (which is an awesome cause)! I find it personally helps me as if you close the app then your tree will die and I really don’t want that happening so I’m motivated to keep the app open and to keep studying, and I really want to be able to buy more trees in game as they’re all so cute (which is one of my main motivators ngl !! ) You’re also able to label the amount of time that you spent on a thing and can use this to track how much time you’ve spent on one subject / activity !

- MinimaList, FREE

My second recommendation is a reminders app called MinimaList ! It’s really cute and I only just recently discovered it. You swipe down to make reminders, swipe when you’ve finished them and it’s a really nifty and minimalist take on reminder apps ! I only do four subjects at the moment, so for me it’s really helpful not having to go through heaps of different categories for each subject just to mark off one or two things and I find it really seamless ! This app is free too which I think makes it even better.

- Scannable, FREE

This has been so useful for scanning my work that needs to be handwritten but also submitted online, and especially for when I have required reading from a textbook, I’m able to go borrow it from the library for a few hours and scan the pages that I need and airdrop it from my phone to my iPad in a pdf form, and then I’m able to annotate it from there.

- Notability, AUD $14.99 , USD $9.99

I use this app to write all of my uni notes and oh my god it has made my life so much easier. I have an iPad Pro, and I’m able to type notes before class, quickly handwrite during lectures (and then convert this to text later if I need!), as well as having a split screen of my lecture notes that I can highlight and annotate then also half a screen of notes I’ve written before to help consolidate my knowledge. This app is a bit costly, but I’ve found it to be so helpful.

- Microsoft Office - Remember to check to see if your education institution offers it for free ! If not, the Google options are a good alternative.

This says as goes, if you can get Word and Excel for free, then I’d recommend them but the google alternatives work just as well. I love being able to log into google at school, work on a document, then go home onto a different computer and access the same work, as well as the autosave feature, This I suppose is standard but I still recommend it! I use Word to type up Uni Assignments when my Wifi isn’t working too well, and when I know I’m just using one device to type it up.

-Waterlogged, FREE

Drinking water is so important to your health and to keep you in top shape for studying, and this app can help you remember to drink water if you’re in an intense study session and forgetting to drink water, or if you’re like me and just simply forget to drink water. You can set up your goal for the day and you can enter custom amounts for how much you’ve drunk, which is helpful not being restricted to a small amount. It’s really nice being able to look back and see that you’re actually drinking enough water and I find having a visual representation there in front of me helps me ^-^

The following will be more language specific (especially to Japanese), as that’s what I major in. If I find any other good apps for different subjects (I will be on the lookout for some business ones too), I’ll make another list ^-^

- Japanese, FREE

This is a free dictionary that I’ve found so useful. For each Kanji there is also stroke order animations shown, example sentences for words, and examples of common Kanji compounds. You’re able to make different lists, and then test yourself on these words, as well as study the lists provided (the JLPT vocab lists are also included which is super helpful!) If you also seen an unknown kanji (which can be a pain to look up if you don’t know how to pronounce them or their meaning), there is a feature to draw kanji which then converts them into text which is so helpful. I’ve used this for the last four years and it helped me a lot when travelling in Japan, doing homework as well as when I’m watching a video and not too sure of the meaning of a word I’ve just heard.

- Duolingo, FREE

Now I’m sure that you’ve heard about how great Duolingo is, and the thing that I enjoyed the most about it is that you’re able to join a club and practise writing and communicating as well as asking for advice with other people also learning your target language. There’s personalised lessons available, and it’s great for beginners in any language. It’s also nice practise to go back to the beginning again, as there were some words that I had learnt when I was starting Japanese that I didn’t remember now, and it’s nice to be able to consolidate your language skills.

- Memrise, FREE

This is similar to Duolingo, and I personally only started using it because my high school teachers uploaded vocabulary lists to it and we had to use it, but I fell in love with how nice the app is. You can learn as many different courses as you want and you can set goals of how many points you want to earn each day. Another thing I really liked is how you can download the app and immediately go into harder courses of your target language, rather than just having to go through all the basics again. There’s also videos in some of the courses with native speakers which really helps with listening skills.

There are a lot of apps out there that are so helpful and here is some of the ones that I use the most! If you have any queries feel free to message me about any of these apps! Hope they’re able to help ^-^

#this is my first time doing a masterlist so i hope it was okay and that its helpful !!#please message me if you have used any of these apps and found them to be helpful !#or even if you have any other app recs id love that so much !!#long post #studyblr #mine #japanese studyblr #apps masterpost

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that-ace-tho · 6 years ago

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my experience in the American education system

Kindergarten: okay.

First grade: I know what I did was wrong; during a spelling test, the word was "one" and this guy in class said, "how do you spell one?" and i don't know why, but I said, "one, o-n-e." I know that it wasn't okay to do that, but the teacher got really mad and cancelled the spelling test, and said everyone can have playtime, except me, and she pointed at me, singled me out, in front of everyone.

Second grade: we had to use those little 3 sided pencil grips to teach us how to "properly" hold a pencil, and when we stopped using them to see how we did, apparently my grip was below par, so the teacher actually forced my hand into the position and put a rubber band around my fingers to keep them in place.

This teacher was known for her cruelty, because when someone couldn't find something in those little desks with the opening slot in front of where your abdomen is when you sit in the chair, she'd take the desk and dump all it's contents all over the floor, in front of everyone, and force the kid to find whatever they needed, while the rest of us watched.

We had to keep a daily reading log, and my parents wanted to get me on a routine, so they had me read at the same time every day. When I turned in my log, the teacher accused me of forging the time I read. I was about 8 years old.

Third grade: the teacher was known as a cool, fun, charismatic man, and I was excited that he would be my teacher. But of course, I was singled out when he was teaching something and I was playing with my lip, since I could never sit still. So this guy says, loud and clear, "Ann, stop playing with your lip." I don't understand why it bothered him so much that he needed to point it out in front of everyone.

We were sitting in a circle on the carpet for story time, and I forget what happened but the teacher told us about the pulses in our wrists, in this one particular spot, although I later found 2 distinct pulses, but I digress. I couldn't find mine, but I didn't want to say anything or look dumb, and my fingers were right near it, so I pretended that I did. Of course, the teacher noticed and pointed it out, using my name, telling me to move my fingers a bit, because I wasn't on the correct spot. What's the big deal whether I'm actually on the vein itself? Is it gonna help me later on in life? Will this be the only time I'll learn about that pulse?

(Edit) in the weekly music class we had, we had these lyric sheets of songs while the teacher played the music for it, like a karaoke version, and keep in mind that they were not ordinary songs, but these weird ones that held no relevance to anything, one was about freaking cranberries, I wish I was kidding. Anyways, one day the teacher thought that I wasn't singing loudly enough, or even at all, when I actually was singing, so this guy comes up next to me and shouts the lyrics in my ear, when I had the lyric sheet in front of me. Other kids looked over, and it was humiliating.

Fourth grade: I lived in New England for elementary school, and we learned a bit about the Native Americans. We had a project where we had to use paper maché or however you spell it to construct a type of housing that the Natives had. In class, the assistant took pictures of us with our respective projects. The guy next to me leaned into the frame, and the assistant teacher didn’t say anything nor did she take a new photo.

One of my classmates started spreading rumors that I was “having sex with boys.” I told the teacher, and she called the girl who started it to her desk, and later told me that the girl apologized. That was it. My parents took it up with the principal after.

Fifth grade: relatively uneventful.

Sixth grade: the teacher gave several notebooks at the end of each row for us to pass down, and I was second to last, there was a green and a yellow notebook left. I took the green one and passed the yellow to the guy next to me. He said that he wanted the green, but I had it, so I said no. Of course the teacher came over, took the green one from me and gave me the yellow, she actually switched them, and then said, “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

Seventh grade (I moved to California during the summer between sixth and seventh grade): In my pre-algebra class, the teacher got really frustrated with our poor grades, that he purposely failed all of us to try to “motivate” us. Of course parents, including mine, called and complained and he finally changed them back. We were all doing so poorly because he was a lousy teacher, imo.

Eighth grade: nothing much.

Ninth grade: here’s a really bad story; I was in my Spanish I class, first term, and there were kids of all four grades there, some waiting until the last minute to fulfill the foreign language requirements. Our teacher spoke to us about 75% in Spanish, and we had no idea what the hell she was saying because the most we knew was hola and gracias. A lot of kids goofed off and were quite disruptive, and the teacher would just try like twice to quiet everyone down before she just added 5 pages of classwork and homework, and as an overachiever I tried to do all of it, but then she never checked it the next day. I remember after the first term she switched to Spanish III.

(this part is actually kind of funny) then in the third term, we had Spanish I again, second term of it, and the teacher we were assigned to was on maternity leave, so they had a sub, who was about 8 months pregnant, and she of course went on maternity leave about halfway through the term, so we had another sub, a guy this time. In short, we had a sub for the sub.

I didn’t learn much Spanish that year.

Tenth grade: I took honors geometry, and the teacher was sort of aloof, pessimistic, and her teaching style was use a powerpoint from some other school, do about 3 practice problems with us, and then give us some classwork to do on our own. I know it was honors, but she barely taught us, we had to self-teach the class. She was about 3 years away from retirement, and she made it clear that she did not care about us.

Eleventh grade: chemistry was essentially lists of vocab, and was pretty easy.

My U.S. history teacher was one of the most monotone people I’ve ever seen, and I swear he said, “the reality is...” at least 5x per day, I am not kidding. He made it very obvious that he didn’t care whether you paid attention, “just act like you are, don’t put your head down, just pretend.” He gave us lists of general vocab for each chapter (that we got to use on the test), and we had like 30 mins of work time at the beginning of the class, and then he’d use a powerpoint from some other school and lecture in the most bored sounding voice.

Twelfth grade: AP lit was a beast, we had this 50 question, not including the part a, part b, etc bits, 7 page long packet for Oedipus Rex, which was a very easy read, but I turned it in like 3 days late because all but maybe 4 questions asked for at least 2 or 3 pieces of textual evidence. Then we had the AP practice questions, which we never learned how to answer in the regular curriculum. I only took the first term of it, I took regular English 12 after.

Speaking of English 12, my teacher was one of the most passively bitter people I’ve ever met in my life. She always picked who our partners would be, graded very harshly - my AP Lang teacher from eleventh grade would have given me like 8/9 (on the AP grading scale) on the in-class essays that we turned in in English 12 while my teacher gave me and others an average of 6/9.

In English 12, this one girl had her phone under her desk, and was checking something, and the teacher had this super strict rule against cell phones, and called her out in front of the class and sent her to OCI (on campus intervention), and later a guy had his phone in plain view, and the teacher asked him to put it away, this happened once more and on the third occurrence she finally sent him to OCI. The girl didn’t even get a warning, while the guy had the classic 3 strikes routine.

In my American government class, I had the same teacher as I did for U.S. history in eleventh grade, and it was essentially the same thing, except one time this girl was talking kind of obviously to her friend near her desk, and the teacher legit told her to pay attention if she wants to pass, because she apparently had a “very low grade,” but the teacher said that in front of everyone.

In general, a lot of my friends were extremely stressed to the point of having daily breakdowns over the stress of applying for college, and trying to get a good score on the SAT or the ACT, and trying to keep up with clubs, sports, volunteering, and keeping straight-As in all their classes, which consisted mainly of AP and honors courses.

Most of my teachers never even actually taught, they just handed out packets and told us to finish them by x date or we’ll get a bad grade.

I know these experiences aren’t as bad as others, but I still felt that it was necessary to speak up about my shitty experience in school.

#elementary school #middle school #high school #american education system #this country is a joke #so are the schools #jfc

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moonicotine · 3 years ago

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the path

Feels like I just clicked on a fast-forward button to skipped the 2 years of my life since the last time I wrote in this blog. My English and vocabs might sounds worser than those past 2 years lol. But hey, I'm still me! It's meeee, I'm alive, still breathing thank God for that, feeling great except for the cough and flu I caught since Saturday which still makes me feel sluggishy. Other than that, I feel great to be at home. :)

Oh god, I haven't opened tumblr in yearssssss. FREAKIN years. I also forgot that this blog existed. I used to love writing so much even though there's no audience since writing exposes my thoughts and I was able to grab a hold of my own chaotic self lol. I never knew writing used to makes me so happy (well sometimes I also writes during those depressing times haha cheers). Glad that I logged in my tumblr account out of nowhere, for initially wanting to check my main aesthetic tumblr account where I posted mainly neutral coded colors of pictures. I've missed reblogging so much, it feels weird how I used to be so obsessed with tumblr, but life happens, I gets busy, and I totally left it on dust.

When I read back what I wrote in this blog, it felt surreal. Was that me? I did write those? It's crayyyzyyy. It feels like there's some other character which I didn't get to know her, but she feels somewhat familiar yet quietly strange. When I was little, I used to have so many diaries, I realized now I've been loving writing in a diaries just casually talking about how my days went, what I did at school, who my friends are, and what I feel about my crush. Gosh, school crushes are the cringy-est thing ever. Welp, let's not talk about that.

According to this blog, the last time I wrote here was on the year 2020. For the past 2 years, there wasn't much happened in my life. To be honest, my life was pretty going down south since Covid-19 happened. I didn't go out much, I stayed at home all the time with my parents. I didn't even had the courage to drive a car which lasted me for 2 years of not driving. I only started to drive again when I had to go for my internship since nobody is going to send me to the office.

Mundane. That was the perfect word to describe my life since the pandemic. When I said my life was going down south, it's not just my life, it's more like my own self. I was lost. I lost myself. It kinda feels weird to say this, but I barely remember what I did for these 2 years. Probably because everyday was the same thing all over and it keeps repeating. Online classes, chores, cats, staying at home, wearing face masks, social distancing, and the BIGGEST slap on my face is not being able to socialize.

Siggggghhhhhh......

Me being a social awkward potato is already a huge obstacle in my life and while staying at home I developed a much bigger problem which is SOCIAL ANXIETY. As an introvert, I like being at home enjoying things that I love most which is sleep and just do whatever the fuck I want but who would have imagined I had to stay at home for 2 freaking years??? There are some of my friends that invited me over to joined them, but since I stopped driving a car I was paranoid of both driving and Covid which is sucks because it left me feeling FOMO. But now that I think about it again, I made a right choice. I couldn't go out too much where the viruses are still wildly spreading since I live with my parents and they both have chronic illnesses so I couldn't be way to carefree about this deadly virus. Girl can't risks her only financial and mental support haha (jokes). Anyways, I only ended up followed where my parents go, meeting with only close family members and still being cautious with every step I go. I was very skeptical at the beginning about wearing face masks but these days there are a lot of new designs and I'm glad I've found one that I can easily breathe in. As someone who is claustrophobic about the face masks, that is also one of the reason why I always choose to stay at home feeling fomo instead of having trouble breathing for wearing face masks for hoursss outside just to hanging out with friends. Nope, definitely a no no. 2 years have passed and BOOM - social anxiety! Ya girl now gets nervous as fuck everytime she tries to socialize with people.

Since it was too awkward to even start a conversation with people, I started going on internet a lot, much more than I ever did. After my online classes finishes, I went on watching YouTube streams, Twitch, and finally found Discord. I was getting myself into streamers and Japanese VTubers which makes me self-learn Japanese language again just for the sake of understanding what my beloved Vtuber said. Fangirl me is a no joke xD

And until one day, I found Discord. At the beginning, I thought Discord is just a platform where the gamers and streamers likes to hang out virtually. It reminds me of Skype though. Skype brings me so much memories. But yeah, as I went and dig around this newly found apps, I took an interest to it and tried to enter some random servers that I could. It was out of nowhere, just a random click on a very mundane boring sluggy day, someone from one of the random server I joined messaged me privately. This person asked me to be their friend which I thought was weird since I barely even talked in the server and suddenly wanting to become friends? The person even send me a gif. of an anime with a cat waving paws which I find it cute. So I just said yes. We messaged trying to get to know each other. It was hard to messaged on real time due to the different time zones. But in the end, everything worked out. And I have a boyfriend now! <3

What a surprise, I know. Who would have thought me who had always have weird crushes on random people I saw in college and uni, ended up with a boyfriend from the internet lol. It was out of nowhere I didn't planned on having any partner in life since I was already hopeless in myself. But I guess, love will finds you and sometimes in a most unexpected ways. I wanted to share more about this love of my life, but maybe in another post. So that's how I got myself a boyfriend and we are now have been together for 1 year and 3 months. I honestly glad I found someone online, because I would have no balls trying to flirt and find someone in real life. Cuz ya girl got social anxiety... and flirting? What's that? lol

My life has been pretty much the same except now that I got a boyfriend. I usually spend my time with him, my mom and dad, and of course my beloved cats :3 Oh! I also just got new kittens. Omel gave birth to cute little babies. I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep them or not but for now I just wanna cherish the moment I'm living right now. Ever since I met my boyfriend, I find myself being so much happier ♡

I wasn't so sure about this path I'm currently on but I guess I'll just have to keep going :) There might be ups and downs and this is the path that's called life. And I'm the main character in this path in this life!

Never stop believing and never give up on yourself,

dear,

me.

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otisrook · 6 years ago

Photo

tour my phone!!! // app recommendation post!

This morning I really wanted to change my phone’s layout and I ended up with this really cute one! I’m new to the studyblr/langblr community and this is only my second post. My first one got...0 notes ;-;

For the pixel app shortcuts I’m using the 16-bit iOS theme found here. They have lots of cute themes!

Language Apps:

- ChineseWords: An app that provides randomized flashcards. Good to use idly after practicing vocab.

- Beelinguapp: I’ve heard good things about this app and like it so far! You can find books at different levels in your target language and hear them read in your TL while looking at the text in the language and your native language, or another language you know well and want to refresh. (ie: reading to learn Chinese, with reference text in Spanish to practice.)

- Rossetta Stone: I believe you have to pay to use this app. My friend gave me their login since they didn’t really like it, but I didn’t end up using it and can’t log in anyways...

- Duolingo: Want to be harassed by an owl?? Learn how to say very specific insults? This app is for you. (Good for starting out in a variety of languages, very popular and common.)

- busuu: Another good language learning app. Very structured, however, in a way that won’t suit everyone.

- HelloChinese: Very similar to duolingo, but specific to Mandarin with videos of native speakers and guided character writing exercises. Helpful and digestible.

Study Apps:

- Udemy: MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) app. I haven’t actually used udemy yet but I’ve heard good things!

- Coursera: Another MOOC site - good but you really have to be dedicated to stick with the courses.

- Hold: This app rewards you for not using your phone. You get points and can compare your score to other people in your area, and it doesn’t take to long to start reaping rewards. My friend

- Quizlet: The OG flashcard app. Not much more to it.

- Vocabulary Builder: A fun app for learning some new words and reinforcing more difficult ones you know. It has different levels and the advanced one does feature some pretty obscure words like “proselytize” and “atavism” (These are from the GRE/GMAT Advanced Lvl 3 Section). They offer three sets, GRE/GMAT, ACT/SAT, and TOEFL/IELTS, each with Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced stages.

- Today History: A great app for the spare moments. Imo also helpful insofar as it can be something cool to mention to your colleagues. I use it to refresh my history knowledge as well. Today, for example, was the opening day for Disneyland (7/17)

- Peak: Peak is one of the typical “brain-training” apps. I only downloaded it yesterday and a lot is locked off if you aren’t paying, but the games are different from the usual games used in this genre. They also give you your percentile compared to other users, for those with a competitive streak.

Wellness Apps:

- POETRY: This app gives you access to a bunch of poems you can read, sorted by Author, Genre, etc. If you have five free minutes you can read one of these instead of opening an app like Instagram that usually just makes me feel groggy.

- Audible: Audio-books, like everyone has already said, are a good way to get some new info and perspectives while going about your day.

- Kindle: E-books. I don’t remember my login...

- Day One: I use this app to journal and log my productivity, dreams, and daily going-ons. It’s also a good place to put down more philosophical speculations related to books I’m reading, and is super easy to use.

- Vima Run: A good app to check your running pace and speed. You can set it to give you an alert and time every 1/4,1, or 5 miles.

Money Apps:

- Sweatcoin: I know the Instagram promotions for this app are annoying some people, but unless you have battery issues a lot there’s no harm in installing this and slowly accumulating some of the in-app currency. Some people combine their coins to split a prize and take home some money.

- Userfeel: A site-testing/app-testing app with a corresponding site. Tests come in pretty infrequently but it’s a good thing to keep in mind absently.

- Usertesting: Another site-testing app with a corresponding site. $10 for 10 minute tests. Easy way to make an extra $30 dollars a week.

- Streetspotr: Best for people in Western Europe, you can get paid up to $12 to go to certain stores and take photos. It’s stressful to take a bunch of pictures but it’s easy money and can get you to go explore the area you live in and take a walk!

I think some of these apps are less commonly recommended and I genuinely use them and don’t just let them clutter my phone, so I really think they can be helpful for everyone!

#study #studyblr #bookblr #langblr #polyglot #mandarin #spanish #duolingo #app #aesthetic #cute #study motivation #motivation #inspo #studyspo

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batterymonster2021 · 6 years ago

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The Zipf Mystery

New Post has been published on https://hititem.kr/the-zipf-mystery-4/

The Zipf Mystery

Hi there, Vsauce. Michael right here. About 6 percentage of the whole thing you say and read and write is the "the" – is probably the most used word in the English language. About one out of each 16 phrases we encounter on a day-to-day basis is "the." the top 20 most original English words in order are "the," "of," "and," "to," "a," "in," "is," "I," "that," "it," "for," "you," "used to be," "with," "on," "as," "have," "however," "be," "they." that’s a fun fact. A section of trivialities however additionally it is extra. You see, whether or not essentially the most often used phrases are ranked throughout an whole language, or in only one booklet or article, just about at any time when a weird pattern emerges. The 2d most used phrase will show up about half of as probably as the most used. The third one 1/3 as mostly. The fourth one fourth as traditionally. The fifth one fifth as traditionally. The sixth one sixth as in general, and many others the entire means down. Severely. For some rationale, the quantity of occasions a word is used is just proportional to 1 over its rank.Word frequency and ranking on a log log graph comply with a satisfactory straight line. A energy-law. This phenomenon is known as Zipf’s legislation and it would not most effective follow to English. It additionally applies to different languages, like, good, all of them. Even historical languages we’ve not been competent to translate but. And here’s the thing. We don’t have any idea why. It is stunning that some thing as problematic as reality should be conveyed by way of anything as inventive as language in such a predictable method. How predictable? Good, watch this. Consistent with WordCount.Org, which ranks words as determined in the British countrywide Corpus, "sauce" is the 5,555th most normal English word. Now, here is a list of how regularly each phrase on Wikipedia and within the entire Gutenberg Corpus of tens of hundreds and hundreds of public domain books shows up.Essentially the most used word, ‘the,’ suggests up about 181 million instances. Realizing these two matters, we can estimate that the word "sauce" must appear about thirty thousand occasions on Wikipedia and Gutenberg combined. And it pretty much does. What gives? The sector is chaotic. Things are dispensed in myriad of methods, not simply vigour legal guidelines. And language is private, intentional, idiosyncratic. What about the world and ourselves might rationale such complicated routine and behaviors to follow this type of general rule? We literally do not know. Greater than a century of research has yet to close the case. Moreover, Zipf’s regulation doesn’t simply mysteriously describe phrase use. It is usually located in metropolis populations, sunlight flare intensities, protein sequences and immune receptors, the quantity of site visitors web sites get, earthquake magnitudes, the number of occasions academic papers are noted, last names, the firing patterns of neural networks, parts used in cookbooks, the number of cellphone calls persons obtained, the diameter of Moon craters, the quantity of persons that die in wars, the repute of opening chess strikes, even the price at which we put out of your mind.There are a lot of theories about why language is ‘zipf-y,’ however no firm conclusions and this video doesn’t incorporate a specific clarification both. Sorry, i do know that is a bummer, due to the fact that we show up to like figuring out greater than thriller. However that stated, we also ask greater than we reply. So let’s dive into Zipf’s ramifications, some associated patterns, some feasible explanations and the depth of the mystery itself. Zipf’s law was once popularized with the aid of George Zipf, a linguist at Harvard school. It is a discrete form of the continuous Pareto distribution from which we get the Pareto principle. Considering the fact that so many actual-world methods behave this manner, the Pareto precept tells us that, commonly of thumb, it is valued at assuming that 20% of the factors are dependable for 80% of the end result, like in language, where the most normally used 18 percentage of phrases account for over eighty% of phrase occurrences. In 1896, Vilfredo Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by way of simply twenty percent of the population. It is said that he later observed in his backyard 20 percentage of his pea pods contained eighty percent of the peas. He and different researchers looked at other datasets and found that this eighty-20 imbalance comes up rather a lot on this planet.The richest 20% of humans have 82.7% of the sector’s income. In the U.S., 20% of patients use eighty percent of wellbeing care assets. In 2002, Microsoft said that 80% of the blunders and crashes in windows and workplace are caused by using 20% of the bugs detected. A long-established rule of thumb in the industry world states that 20% of your consumers are responsible for eighty% of your profits and eighty percent of the complaints you obtain will come from 20% of your buyers. A guide titled "The eighty/20 precept" even says that in a home or workplace, 20% of the carpet receives 80 percent of the wear and tear.Oh, and as Woody Allen famously mentioned, "eighty percent of success is just showing up." The Pareto principle is everywhere, which is just right. Via focusing on just 20 percentage of what’s incorrect, which you can mainly anticipate to resolve eighty percentage of the problems. A type of special unrelated factors purpose this to be true from case to case, but if we will get to the backside of what reasons a few of them, maybe we’ll find that one or more of those mechanisms is liable for Zipf’s regulation in language. George Zipf himself notion languages’ intriguing rank frequency distribution was a consequence of the precept of Least Effort. The tendency for life and matters to follow the path of least resistance. Zipf believed it drove so much of human conduct and hypothesized that as language developed in our species, speakers naturally preferred drawing from as few phrases as possible to get their thoughts out there. It was once less difficult.However to be able to fully grasp what was once being mentioned, listeners desired larger vocabularies that gave more specificity, in order that they needed to do much less work. The compromise between listening and speaking, Zipf felt, led to the present state of language. Just a few phrases are used almost always and many many many phrases are used hardly ever. Latest papers have urged that having a few short, probably used, predictable phrases helps dissipate expertise load density on listeners, spacing out main vocab so that the know-how rate is more regular.This makes sense and much has been realized by using making use of the least effort principle to different behaviors, but later researchers argued that for language, the explanation used to be much more easy. Only a few years after Zipf’s seminal paper, Benoit Mandelbrot confirmed that there could also be nothing mysterious about Zipf’s regulation at all, when you consider that although you just randomly type on a keyboard you’re going to produce words disbursed consistent with Zipf’s law. It is a sexy cool point and that is why it occurs. There are exponentially more different lengthy words than quick phrases. For example, the English alphabet can be used to make 26 one letter phrases, but 26 squared 2 letter phrases. Additionally, in random typing, whenever the space bar is pressed a phrase terminates. In view that there may be continuously a unique risk that the gap bar shall be pressed, longer stretches of time before it occurs are exponentially much less probably than shorter ones.The combo of those exponentials is pretty ‘Zipf-y.’ For example, if all 26 letters and the spacebar are equally more likely to be typed, after a letter is typed and a phrase has begun, the probability that the subsequent input will be an area, as a result creating a one letter phrase, is just one in 27. And sure sufficient, in the event you randomly generate characters or rent a proverbial typing monkey, about one out of each 27 or 3.7 percent of the stuff between areas, can be single letters. Two letter words appear when after opening a phrase any personality however the space bar is hit – a 26 in 27 hazard and then the gap bar. A three-letter phrase is the chance of a letter, yet another letter after which an area. If we divide by means of the quantity of particular phrases of each and every length there will also be, we get the frequency of prevalence anticipated for any unique word given its length. For illustration, the letter V will make up about 0.142 percent of random typing. The word "Vsauce" zero.0000000993 percentage. Longer phrases are much less probably, but watch this. Let’s unfold these frequencies out in step with the ranks they’d soak up on a most on the whole used record.There are 26 possible one letter words, so each and every of the top 26 ranked phrases are anticipated to occur about this often. The subsequent 676 ranks can be taken up through two letter phrases that exhibit up about this in general. If we extend each and every frequency according to how many participants it has, we get Zipf. Subsequent researchers have distinct how altering up the initial conditions can smooth the steps out.Our mysterious distribution has been created out of nothing however the inevitabilities of math. So perhaps there is not any thriller. Maybe phrases are just the influence of people randomly segmenting the observable world and the mental world into labels and Zipf’s legislation describes what naturally occurs when you do this. Case closed. And as consistently And as at all times, thanks for… Wait a minute! Actual language may be very different from random typing. Conversation is deterministic to a unique extent. Utterances and topics arrive headquartered on what was mentioned before.And the vocabulary we have got to work with absolutely isn’t the result of in basic terms random naming. For example, the monkey typing mannequin cannot provide an explanation for why even the names of the factors, the planets and the times of the week are utilized in language according to Zipf’s legislation. Sets like these are limited by means of the natural world and they’re now not the effect of us randomly segmenting the arena into labels. Furthermore, when given a list of novel words, phrases they’ve on no account heard or used before, like when caused to write down a story about alien creatures with unusual names, humans will naturally tend to use the title of 1 alien twice as on the whole as one other, three times as regularly as one other… Zipf’s law seems to be developed into our brains. Perhaps there’s something about the way in which ideas and themes of discussion ebb and drift that contributes to Zipf’s legislation.One more means ‘Zipf-ian’ distributions occur is via approaches that change in keeping with how they’ve earlier operated. These are referred to as preferential attachment procedures. They occur when something – money, views, awareness, version, buddies, jobs, anything fairly is given out according to how so much is already possessed. To go back to the carpet example, if most folks stroll from the residing room to the kitchen across a targeted direction, furniture will be placed in other places, making that course even more wellknown. The extra views a video or photograph or put up has, the extra likely it is to get advocated routinely or make the information for having so many views, both of which offer it more views.It’s like a snowball rolling down a snowy hill. The more snow it accumulates, the bigger its floor subject turns into for gathering more and the faster it grows. There doesn’t must be a deliberate option using a preferential attachment procedure. It will probably occur naturally. Do this. Take a bunch of paper clips and take hold of any two at random. Hyperlink them together after which throw them again in the pile. Now, repeat over and over again. If you seize paper clips which can be already a part of a chain, hyperlink ’em anyway. More customarily than no longer after a even as you are going to have a distribution that appears ‘Zipf-ian.’ A small quantity of chains include a disproportionate quantity of the total paperclip rely. That is without problems due to the fact the longer a chain gets, the better proportion of the entire it involves, which gives it a greater risk of being picked up one day and accordingly made even longer.The rich get richer, the tremendous get larger, the popular get popular-er. It is just math. Might be languages’ Zipf mystery is, if now not induced by it, at the least bolstered by means of preferential attachment. Once a word is used, it’s extra probably for use again soon. Critical facets could play a role as well. Writing and conversation in general stick to a subject matter unless a imperative point is reached and the area is changed and the vocabulary shifts. Approaches like these are identified to influence in vigor legal guidelines. So, ultimately, it appears tenable that all these mechanisms could collude to make Zipf’s regulation essentially the most normal means for language to be. Possibly a few of our vocabulary and grammar was once developed randomly, in step with Mandelbrot’s thought. And the natural approach conversation and dialogue comply with preferential attachment and criticality, coupled with the precept of least effort when speakme and listening are all responsible for the connection between phrase rank and frequency.It’s a shame that the answer is not less complicated, nevertheless it’s intriguing on account that of the penalties it has on what communication is made from. Roughly talking, and that is mind blowing, just about half of any publication, conversation or article will be nothing however the same 50 to one hundred words. And nearly the opposite half can be phrases that appear in that selection most effective as soon as. That is now not so stunning when you do not forget the fact that one word accounts for six percentage of what we say.The top 25 most used phrases make up a few 1/3 of everything we are saying and the highest 100 about half of. Significantly. I imply, whether or not it is all of the phrases in "moist scorching American summer," or all the words in Plato’s "whole Works" or within the whole works of Edgar Allan Poe or the Bible itself, best about one hundred words are used for practically 1/2 of the whole lot written or mentioned. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 44% and in Tom Sawyer 49.Eight% of the designated words used appear only once within the e-book. A phrase that’s used handiest as soon as in a given determination of words is referred to as a ‘hapax legomenon.’ Hapax legomena are vitally primary to understanding languages.If a phrase has handiest been found as soon as in the entire known assortment of an historical language, it can be very intricate to determine what it approach. Now, there’s no corpus of everything ever stated or written in English, however there are very very tremendous collections and it is fun to seek out hapax legomena in them. For illustration, and this frequently will not be the case after I mention it, but the phrase "quizzaciously" is within the Oxford English Dictionary, however seems nowhere on Wikipedia or in the Gutenberg corpus or within the British countrywide Corpus or the American national Corpus, however it does show up when searched in only one outcome on Google. Fittingly, in a guide titled "ElderSpeak" that lists it as a ‘rare word.’ Quizzaciously, by the way, manner "in a mocking method," as in "The paradist rattled off quizzaciously, ‘good day, Vsauce.Michael here. But who’s Michael and how much does right here weigh?’" it can be a bit unhappy that quizzaciously has been used so infrequently. It can be a enjoyable phrase, however that is the way in which matters go in a ‘Zipf-ian’ procedure. Some things get all of the love, some get little. Most of what you expertise on a every day foundation is forgotten, forgettable. The Dictionary of vague Sorrows, as it most commonly does, has a word for this – alright – the realization of how few days are memorable. I have been alive for almost 11,000 days but i couldn’t inform you some thing about every one among them. I mean, not even shut. Most of what we do and see and feel and say and listen to and believe is forgotten at a cost really much like Zipf’s law, which is sensible. If a quantity of factors naturally selected for considering and speakme concerning the world with tools in a ‘Zipf-ian’ way, it is smart we’d remember it that way too. Some things rather well, most things hardly ever at all. Nevertheless it bums me out many times given that it signifies that a lot is forgotten, even things that on the time you idea you might by no means omit.My locker number – senior yr – its combo, the jokes I liked after I saw a comedian on stage, the names of folks I noticed everyday 10 years ago. So many memories are gone. Once I look at the entire books I’ve learn and have an understanding of that I are not able to keep in mind every detail from them, it can be just a little disappointing. I mean, why even bother if the Pareto precept dictates that my ‘Zipf-ian’ mind will consciously don’t forget generally best the titles and some basic reactions years later Ralph Waldo Emerson makes me think better. He as soon as stated, "I can’t don’t forget the books I’ve read any more than the meals i’ve eaten. Then again, they’ve made me." And as always, thanks for gazing. .

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ciathyzareposts · 6 years ago

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Missed Classic: Reality Ends – WON! and Final Rating

by Will Moczarski

Prologue: Second Session

My second session of Reality Ends was remarkably uneventful. I tried some new things with all of my items but putting in an hour got me nowhere. Another obstacle was the savegame feature. My TRS-80 emulator sometimes did not recognize my file names (or rather tape names) but didn’t tell me about it until I tried to restore my saved states. I decided to rough it in order to get the original feeling but that was really time-consuming as every wrong move (and there are many of them) led me back to the beginning. In the end, I didn’t even need my notes to get the food, feed the dog, get the umbrella, get the diamonds after using the umbrella, get the horse, jump across the ravine, get the mail, get the rope, throw the rope, climb the rope, get the plants, pay for the polish with the plants, buy guns and finally pay for them with the diamonds. In the end, I only achieved a couple new things: I was able to pick up the gold and recruit the marksmen in the town of Rayor. When I tried to attack the town of Margon now, I was still crushed. The VOCAB command soon became my best friend. I spent a lot of time dabbling with the “place” command (especially “place marksmen” which seemed like a martial thing to do) before figuring out that it’s just a synonym for “drop”. Dropping the marksmen caused them to disappear into thin air, however, although I was able to recruit them indefinitely as long as I had the gold. Using items, even for payment, doesn’t make you drop them or lose them which seems a bit counterintuitive – it makes things a lot easier, though. Oh, and I rolled the log, revealing a metal box. Its top is welded shut, though, so that just turned into another puzzle.

Without a clue what to do next I checked out my trusty 1981 Med Systems catalog once again. The description of Reality Ends came with three sort-of clues and one major disappointment: Apparently, it was marketed as a game for beginners. Also, the “clues” were not clues per se but rather bits and pieces hinting at the plot. They only confirmed my suspicions that I had to attack the city of Margon to free the Amulet of Sangi and recruit the fanatic hordes “to aid my quest”.

I hate “easy” games. They are likely to make me feel stupid.

After consulting the catalog, I made a list of unsolved puzzles and unused items. I wanted to recruit the fanatics, get the book of lore from the minotaur, drink or take the stein in the tavern, successfully attack the city of Margon and open the mysterious metal box – apart from the likely endgame of destroying the citadel at Baldir. So far, I had found no use for the bone, the cloak, the guns, the polish, and the staff. Some assumptions I made at this point later turned out to be completely wrong: For example, I thought I’d have to read the book of lore to the fanatics to win them over. Also, I thought that I’d surely have to slay the dragon somehow.

***

The Winner Takes It All?: Third Session

My subsequent third session is more successful, although in the beginning I am still stuck in the tavern. Every attempt to drink the brew results in another death. At this point, I decide to fix the savegame feature – and it works smoothly from now on. I create a ‘status quo’ savegame and this really does the trick for me as I am able to experiment more. And the dog actually turns out to be the key item.

In most adventure games there are “but I’ve already tried that” moments – we all know them and loathe them. My Reality Ends moment is when I pick up the sword once more after just having fed the dog for the umpteenth time. The reply startles me. “AS YOU APPROACH, THE DOG HOLDS OFF THE DRAGON!” The sword is mine. I could swear that this was not my first attempt at this but apparently I’m wrong. Also, it’s a nice play on Adventure’s (1978) famous Bird vs. Snake fight.

Once more, I recruit the marksmen and attack Margon – the sword must be good for something, right? I also wear the mail for good measure but still no luck on the battlefield. Moreover, I am told that gunpowder does not burn “in this world”. Hmm, but what does? This must be a clue and I don’t seem to have picked up on it last time I tried this.

I head to Mandar next, the town of fanatics. When I type “kill leader” while having the sword and the mail equipped, I am more successful: “YOU JOIN IN BATTLE! HE IS EASILY DEFEATED! THE FANATICS WILL NOW FOLLOW YOU TO THE DEATH!” Have I just killed Khal Drogo? The plot thickens. If you don’t wear the mail, and I would eventually forget to equip it on a subsequent playthrough, you die from a chestwound although the game commends you for your swordmanship – a Pyrrhic victory for morale.

When I restore another savegame, something strange happens. I get stuck in an alternate gameworld in which required items are lying around unguarded but the game appears to be unsolvable in this state because the world has no infrastructure and you cannot even see your own location on the minimap. I discover that this only happens when I forget to rewind the tape with the savegame but it’s a rather curious bug.

Now that I have the fanatics and the marksmen in my inventory (talk about limits), I attack Margon once again – but once again I fail miserably. This is when I decide to brute force it. I’ve noticed that “use polish” always triggers the same response: “YOU CAN’T DO THAT … YET”. At first I had thought that “yet” would be an indication of this not being the right time to use the polish but as time and place have been shuffled around in this strange new dissolving reality, what if it’s not the right place? The answer is elegant while my approach is boorish – because the gameworld is made up of alternate universes, time and place are indeed connected and “yet” thus hints at the right place/time combination instead of just the right time. My strategy is, and I’m ashamed to confess that, to “use polish” on each and every screen with an item or a city on it. In Tel-Aviv this gets me “jeweller’s polish instead of gunpowder”. Arrgh!!

I was never really bothered by the generous 400-move time limit but Ilmari wanted to see the “bad ending” – getting there felt like grinding and I’ll let him be the judge on whether it was worth it.

At this point I don’t know what I missed but I’ll figure it out soon enough. However, the polish is not enough to change my fortunes of war. As I’m still out of fresh ideas, I try to use some of the other items on every probable screen in case I’ve overlooked something else. And again I’m “sure” that I’ve tried wearing the cloak everywhere but when I try it again on the screen with the minotaur, I’m able to get his book of lore: “FUNNY…THE MINOTAUR DOES NOT SEEM TO SEE YOU!” Yes, game, very funny. This is it – I am devastated. I even restart the whole game to grab the cloak first thing and try it again to prove that I’m not crazy…but it turns out I must be. It had been my idea all along that the cloak would make me invisible, but somehow I must have messed this up on previous attempts.

Anyway, it’s nice to have the book of lore, although there is only one word that stands out when I read it: “CIMAL.” This must be a magic word in the tradition of Adventure which was, incredibly, only two years old by the time Reality Ends was released. I can’t use it yet, though. Or rather: here. Why do I know that there are magic words in this game? My everlasting VOCAB(FF) friend tells me so: “Oh dear! Magic words refused to print!”

Final Playthrough

As I still don’t have any success with either the stein or the city, I start a whole new playthrough. And this will be the one. Why? Because I finally abandon the notion that all items are single-use although so far it sure seemed like they were. At first I fumble around with the items I haven’t needed other than using them as payment – gold, diamonds, plants, food. Eating the plants results in a strange message: “TASTES BITTER, BUT AT LEAST IT DID NOT KILL ME.” Hmm, but what DID kill me? Right, the stein! Off to the tavern I go. Initially I’m disappointed once again because my first idea is that I will be able to poison the brew somehow by adding the plants to it and offering the stein to either the keeper or the thugs. However, some more fumbling (notice the pattern?) gets me through: I can first eat the plants, then survive drinking the brew: “YOU GET HEARTBURN BUT DO NOT DIE. THE KEEPER IS IN FEAR FOR HIS MISERABLE LIFE.” Can I kill him now? No, the thugs still rip me to pieces. But I can finally keep the bloody stein. It’s about time, too.

The new playthrough also makes it necessary that I purchase the guns once more. This time I notice that there’s a secondary parser prompt asking me if I have “any special instructions?” That does strike me as odd, and I take it to be the reason why “use polish” worked on this particular screen. Maybe there’s another special instruction that could be useful?

I’ll have to thank Ron Gilbert for this next part. Ron Gilbert, you say? But he won’t be in the adventure game business for another seven years! That is true, but as an avid player of The Secret of Monkey Island, I’ve got the idea that the stein must be used as a vessel for the acid rain (aka grog) almost right away. Now that the plants have confirmed my suspicion that items (or environments) are potentially relevant multiple times, the whole game opens up in a different way to me. When I attempt to fill the stein with acid rain, it unceremoniously kills me. I have to recover the umbrella once more – which is not as easy as it sounds because I’ve already dumped it somewhere – but then it works. The next part is in keeping with my Monkey Island train of thought: There are no prison locks in this game so it must be the box I have to pour the grog, er, acid on. On the road to my success, I still have to suffer through some parser-wrestling, though: “Pour stein” does not work and “Use stein” tells me that I can’t do that…yet. Time to check out the old beloved VOCAB section again. I’ll be damned if it doesn’t say POUR right there. Maybe my Monkey Island association has led me astray? No, it’s the damn parser, although the solution is kind of forgivable. The sequence at the tavern has taught me that I cannot drink the stein itself but rather have to address its contents: drink brew. This seems rather logical. In the same vein, “pour acid” does the trick: “THE ACID DISSOLVES THE WELDS. THERE IS SILVER INSIDE!” Nice, more treasure.

Reality begins?

Sooo…silver. Is there someone I haven’t paid yet? Only one riddle left and after that I’m probably headed for the boss already. But how can I overthrow the city? I just don’t know. At some point, I try “using” the silver in the tavern, hoping to recruit one of those thugs after all. You can not do that… yet. Wait, where did I read that before? Right, when I tried to use the polish everywhere but…Tel-Aviv! There are MORE instructions? That’s nasty!

I’d discovered multiple uses for objects but having to perform an action several times without being prompted to do so ALWAYS gets me off track in adventure games. Always! I hate it when they do that. Tel-Aviv is happy to help: “You got it. Silver bullets only.” Fortunately, Margon is conveniently close, and…the final riddle is solved. And “the best Israeli weapons” (seriously, game?!) provide me with the amulet. Finally.

Okay, now I can do what I’ve been wanting to do from the very beginning: follow the ONLY hint the in-game hint section has to offer. When you enter “HINT”, it merely tells you to “enter” the road that leads you to Baldir. Thanks for nothing, game.

The endgame is totally anti-climactic. There are only two items I haven’t found a use for: the staff and the bone. As I know a magic word now (and nothing else lets me interact with Baldir’s citadel at all), I just use it right away. “Say Cimal” does the trick, and the rest is history. Another city falls, just like that. Call me Daenerys Targaryen, will you? Although it’s a bit embarrassing that I needed a dog to fend off that dragon…

You gotta deal with reality / Almighty reality / Sing it, James Brown

By the way, Jason Dyer recently played through Reality Ends on his amazing Renga in Blue blog. You should definitely check out his playthrough of the game, like I know I will when I’m done here, as his posts are always very enlightening and I enjoy them a lot. It’s a brilliant blog altogether, so if you’re interested in adventure games and/or interactive fiction, you should definitely check it out!

Session time: 1 hour + 2 hours Total time: 3 hours 40 minutes

Final Rating

Although I did not enjoy Reality Ends as much as I enjoyed Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth, I reckon that the PISSED rating will be more lenient here. The two previous games got really low ratings that didn’t reflect my actual enjoyment. They were much more challenging, but in a good way, whereas Reality Ends turned out to be a lot shorter and ultimately less interesting.

Puzzles and Solvability – 4.

I really liked that the game used its story metaphor for one of the puzzles (“you cannot do that…yet”). Many of the other puzzles were much more conventional, but apart from the unforgivable sin of making me repeat the same action several times (special instructions for the gun dealers of Tel-Aviv) they were not particularly frustrating which is saying much considering the game was released in 1980.

Interface and Inventory – 4.

The two-word parser is rather simple but I didn’t struggle with it too much. One exception was the “pour acid” incident but actually that was a game mechanic I could have learned from an earlier example. I liked the VOCAB function a lot since it made things much easier and avoided “guess the word” games right from the start. Also, the hint at the magic words helped me enormously to understand the endgame (which was a bit on the easy side altogether). The inventory limit is generous and you get by without hoarding all the items in one place – which can’t be said about many Infocom games. For a 1980 game, all of this is remarkable – as I am rating the game as a “missed classic” and not as an entry on the regular list, it’s only a 4, though.

Story and Setting – 2.

The story is interesting but not really relevant for the game. It’s like a foreshadowing of Infocom’s Sorcerer without the jokes and that game does not exactly boast one of Infocom’s stronger plots. What I really liked about the story is that it’s not a treasure hunt. In 1980, most adventure games were simply “collect all XXX and take them to the chest located at YYY”. The plot of Reality Ends is basically the ‘Daenerys at Essos’ section of Game of Thrones, and apparently some people enjoyed that.

Sound and Graphics – 0.

One point for the mini-map? No? You’re right, I already spent that on the “Interface” section.

Environment and Atmosphere – 1.

The game is not particularly well-written which will also affect the last category but also makes it hard to fall in love with its environment. Most room (or rather: parallel universe) descriptions are very similar to one another which helps with the whole metaphorical premise of the game but still doesn’t exactly endear the player to it.

Dialog and Acting – 1.

Med Systems authors, I still don’t like being called a “dolt”. Apart from that, the game doesn’t overly rely on its prose but puts the emphasis on its puzzles which gives it a very modern feel for a 1980 adventure. On the other hand, as a work of interactive fiction it kind of falls short in this category.

That’s 4+4+2+0+1+1/.6 = 20.

The adjusted SPIED rating for IF games (no sound & graphics) would be: 24.

This feels about right compared to Deathmaze 5000 (18 points) and Labyrinth (20 points). Although they got really low ratings, I enjoyed them a lot but the PISSED rating is not exactly made for games like them. Reality Ends is more like one of the shorter games reviewed on the blog so it might be comparable to Merry Christmas from Melbourne House (12 points) or A Spell of Christmas Ice (15 EGGNOG points).

That said, TBD got the win with his guess of 22 points. Congrats, mate!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-reality-ends-won-and-final-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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nordic-language-love · 4 years ago

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Language Learning Log 2021 Week 12 (15.03 - 21.03)

Norwegian

45 minute lesson

Read 2x articles

Watched 5x Exit episodes

Watched 1x Mummidalen episode

Listened to the radio

Japanese

Duolingo: Hobby 1 + wrote down sentences

Listened to 6x Nihongo con Teppei podcasts

Kanji drills: seasons

Made a list of all the words I’ve learned so far

Norwegian

One 45-minute Norwegian lesson a week really isn’t enough! Every time I speak Norwegian I’m just like, damn I love this language, it makes me so happy, why can’t I speak it all the time? Well, due to me failing to read my calendar, I actually have two lessons this week (because 1. I decided I really like this other tutor but I’m def not gonna stop taking lessons with my main teacher anytime soon and 2. I didn’t have any therapy sessions for two weeks so I was like well I guess I have extra money so I may as well spend it on a thing that makes me happy). Looking forward to it!

I dabbled in a little Swedish on Duolingo, mostly because watching Exit made me realise how awful my Swedish comprehension is and I wanted to learn some basics to make that easier. Although really I should probably just work on my Norwegian comprehension lol. I found the whole series quite challenging without subtitles (but then, I don’t understand finance particularly well in English either lol)

Last week’s goals

Finish watching Exit season 2 [5/5] ✅

Mysteriet om Nils ch 38 exercises ❌

1x written task [0/300 words] ❌

Read a chapter of Harry Potter og Føniksordenen [0/1] ❌

This week’s goals

Mysteriet om Nils ch 38 exercises

1x written task

Read a chapter of Harry Potter og Føniksordenen

Watch 4x TV episodes or broadcasts

Japanese

I started doing the Hobby 1 skill on Duolingo and there were several words I recognised from that short story I read, which was really exciting! And I’m starting to see all those verbs I learned cropping up. It feels like all the pieces are starting to come together, like I’m actually learning a languages instead of bits and pieces of a language.

I also tried listening to Nihongo con Teppei more actively and wrote down some word and phrases from the podcast. Previously I’ve just been listening passively to get a feel for the rhythm/sound of the language, but now I’m listening to try and understand and actually learn things. Turns out I can pick out quite a few words in sentences and sometimes I can work out other words from context. It’s all very simple stuff, but it’s exciting!

I’ve been learning a lot of vocabulary lately, so this week I need to work on consolidating it. So that’s what I plan to do!

Last week’s goals

Learn seasons, times of day and adverbs of frequency ✅

Recap other vocabulary from story + make a vocab list ✅

Duolingo: start Hobby 1 skill ✅

Listening practice on at least 3 days [4/3] ✅

Kanji drills on at least 2 days [2/2] ✅

This week’s goals

Writing practice on at least 2 days

Kanji drills on at least 3 days

Duolingo: increase Hobby 1 skill to level 2

Listening practice on at least 3 days

Other

As predicted, I didn’t really hit any of my goals this week because I’ve been busy sorting out the spare room. There’s still a lot left to do, but we’re making progress!

This week I’m hoping to exercise more. At the moment I can’t exercise at home as we haven’t got the space (all the things that were in the spare bedroom are now spread throughout the house) BUT if the weather holds out (which it should do until Thursday) I’m gonna do more exercise outside. I live quite close to a lake and on Sunday I went out to exercise by it and it was awesome! So I want to do that more.

Last week’s goals

Stretch on at least 3 days [2/3] ❌

Train pole/hoop on at least 2 days [0/2] ❌

Train at home on at least 2 days [2/2] ✅

Practice with fans ❌

This week’s goals

Stretch on at least 3 days

Train pole/hoop on at least 2 days

Train at home/outside on at least 2 days

Practice with fans

#progress report #norwegian langblr #japanese langblr #langblr #language blog #learning languages

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fluentlanguage · 6 years ago

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#clearthelist February 2019: Chinese App Reviews and Teaching Welsh in Edinburgh

Welcome to the January edition of my #clearthelist goal tracking post. Clear The List is a support and accountability blog group sharing monthly language learning goals, hosted by my friends Lindsay and Shannon.

I have now been tracking my goals using Clear the List for 9 months. It’s a fun process - a little cumbersome at times to write check-in posts but always worth it for the accountability.

Ever since I created the Language Habit Toolkit I have been aware of how important it is to build a review process into your language learning routine. When you step back regularly and write down what you did, it’s easier to feel accomplished and understand that any lapses are temporary.

What Happened in January 2019?

After so much travel in December (retreat and Christmas), my intention was to have a month of routine, perhaps even a little rest. Now at the end of the month, I do feel a little more calm. But I’m also wondering where January has gone!

The month was focused on planning my year and working on the first project, which is launching a fabulous German course for beginners and “false beginners”. I worked on this course for 7 months last year and can’t wait to open it up for my 2019 German learners.

If you want a free preview, hop on here and register your email address.

On the blog, I shared the 9 Best Websites for German Beginners

This month, I also started work on Women in Language 2019 by contacting over 40 potential speakers. And ended with a trip to Edinburgh to present a lightning talk at Polyglot Pub Edinburgh. More about that in the Welsh section…

The Fluent Show

The Fluent Show was super efficient this month, I recorded 3 awesome interviews, 2 solo shows and ran a survey of over 150 listeners. Listen out for the next solo episode where I’ll share results and plans.

My favourite episode of January was Ask a Linguist, where we got to meet our linguist podcast heroes from Talk the Talk in Australia!

Language Goals and Progress

Let’s start with Mandarin Chinese for this one! Last month, I came out of the Chinese prep phase and decided that yes, I do want to learn this language a little bit.

Studying Chinese

I have been playing around with a bunch of apps. In my mind this isn't really "language learning" in my usual style yet. I feel like “proper learning” will start for real when I get a notebook, set goals and start saying things to people.

Without repetition and a notebook, I only retain 20% of what I see and practice. So I guess this is high level dabbling, and I’m not finding myself particularly rushed to move forward. I spoke no Chinese for 35 years of my life, and now I’m ok if it takes 6 months to start.

Patience is a secret language learning weapon.

Reviewing Chinese Language Learning Apps

Here are my insights on the Chinese language learning apps I've tried so far:

Memrise @memrise is fantastic for teaching the kinds of phrases you'll want to say. The videos with locals are wonderful, and this grammar screen you see here is a delight. Memrise seems to understand where I'm at as a learner. Only downside: I'm not finding it helpful for character study.

Drops @languagedrops is fantastic for learning lots of vocab, getting the hand of characters, and hearing clear pronunciation. It's got the best character/pinyin system for me. I’ve been enjoying the #90dayswithdrops challenge.

Duolingo @duolingo is good at building up each lesson, and has an interesting way of introducing new words. I'm not finding it as enjoyable as the others. The lessons feel too short. That owl is cute, though.

Lingodeer @lingodeerapp is the most comprehensive and I can see myself using this as a study guide. The stories at the end of each chapter are awesome, though I feel thrown in at the deep end with the characters now and then.

Welsh Language Goals

In Welsh, I usually set goals in 4 areas: listening, speaking, reading and writing. In January I hit a special extra milestone by teaching a few words in Welsh to others. Wow!

You can download my notes and recommendations from the talk by signing up at www.fluentlanguage.co.uk/welshtoolkit

Listening

January was listening month and I tried my best to get more practice in. I listened to Nicky and Lara on Mynd am beint gyda. LOVE the casual feel!

I also listened to the radio a few times, but it didn’t stick. My radio time is the morning, and I’m just not into Radio Cymru’s breakfast shows. If you know any better ones, give me a shout.

Finally, I did listen to the Say Something in Welsh listening practices and parallel.cymru’s spoken news.

I don’t think I’m suddenly twice as good at understanding spoken language, but this listening focus has been a great reason for me to look for new and different audio sources. I’m more surrounded by Welsh audio, and that’s automatically going to add more of it into my routine. Neis!

Reading

I had no goals, but I did read quite a bit anyway. Encouraging!

Speaking

My goal was to advertise for a new Welsh language partner locally, and I can report success! I put a post into a local residents’ group on Facebook. You know the one: “what’s that noise on Jackson street?”…but lucky for me, one out of the many people who read posts in the group referred me to Welsh speaker Jane.

Now I have someone to meet for coffee on a regular basis, and I’ve felt exhausted, excited and abuzz after speaking to her. I can make myself understood on any topic we’ve covered, and her talking speed is definitely adding to that listening practice.

In addition, I completed Say Something in Welsh Level 2, Challenge 22.

Writing

I did have a goal here, which was to write 6 pages using writing prompts. Goal achieved…but I’m not sure how enjoyable I found the topics so far. I prefer writing messages to friends in Welsh, and luckily I do this 3-4 times a week now.

Contact Goal

Every month, I log my “daily contact” with the Welsh language using the Streaks app. January was excellent with 20 days of contact. It’s a habit!

If you’re interested in a printable tracking system for your own language routine, have a look at the Language Habit Toolkit.

Goals For February 2019

Exciting times! I think it’s time to set goals in Chinese.

My Welsh level is comfortable and I’m feeling secure enough to share some attention. I will not set listening, speaking, reading and writing goals in two languages for the same month. That seems like overkill.

Chinese Language Goals

While I get used to easing off on Welsh, my February goals in Chinese are simple:

Start a Chinese study notebook so I can play with sentences and practice a few characters

Spend 3 hours studying Chinese in total

Get a textbook or two out of the library to test drive them

Welsh Language Goals

I’ve been enjoying the structure of having specific goals, and for February I’ll still pick on specific areas out of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Since I have set up a successful Welsh habit and made lots of friends who speak the language, it’s now fairly regular for me to read and write Welsh in texts and books. Yay!!

Listening is a weakness of mine. I can understand 60-100% of the spoken language now depending on dialect and speed, but I want to feel more comfortable. I’ll aim for 5 days of Welsh audio contact every week, using one of these sources probably:

Parallel.cymru Newyddion

Radio Cymru

Mynd am Beint Gyda

Spotify Welsh Music

Say Something in Welsh

Speaking is obviously a key to success at this stage. I want to chat with friends or meet my tutor at least 3 times, and I’ll work on Say Something in Welsh too.

I’d love to make a few videos in Welsh but am struggling for time this month.

Other goals:

Book a place on another Welsh residential course, this time at the higher level. What could go wrong!

Say Something in Welsh! I realised today that I’m 3 challenges away from FINISHING Level 2. I can do it!

WOW so there we have it - a big catch-up on my language learning goals and live documentation of how I’m starting to learn Chinese. It’s arguably my 9th foreign language to be studied in some level of seriousness.

What Are Your Language Goals?

It’s time for a new year - are you studying a new language?

If you have ambitions in German, don’t forget to visit www.german2019.com where my free course is launching next month.

How was your January? Leave a comment below and share how you got on.

#clearthelist #goal setting #goals #language goals #chinese #apps

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learnspanishfans · 7 years ago

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MosaLingua Review: A Faster Way to Learn a New Language?

MosaLingua is a mobile app that uses spaced repetition (SRS) to help language learners efficiently learn words and phrases in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. It’s suitable for absolute beginners and more advanced language students. For this MosaLingua review, I decided to use MosaLingua to study a language I had virtually no prior experience in: Italian. I say “virtually” because I knew a few Italian words, like Allegro! Crescendo! Fermata! Di capo al coda! I play a couple of musical instruments, so I’m used to seeing these terms on my sheet music. But that’s not too useful in the real world! I’ve wanted to study Italian for a while, so I jumped at the opportunity to study it with MosaLingua. As cool as any new app looks, it’s only good if it actually works. I wanted my review to be as in-depth as possible, so I tried out MosaLingua for 10 hours and then recorded myself speaking Italian with an advanced speaker. You can watch my video at the end of this review.

MosaLingua: More than “Just” a Flashcard App

Flashcard apps that use SRS are a really efficient way to learn difficult vocab in a new language. SRS is a proven technique, and you’ll find lots of advice here on Fi3M about how SRS works, and how to use it for language learning. In the past, I’ve used Anki as my SRS tool. If there’s one downside to using a really customisable app like Anki, it’s that you have to do all your own research and make your own flashcard decks, or else download decks from other users and hope they’re accurate - and relevant! I created an audio flashcard deck a few months ago during my Portuguese mission, but it took me two months to get around to doing it, and I only made the one deck. I found the process tedious, even though I knew it would be helpful in the end. Enter MosaLingua. I found it to have all the benefits of a general flashcard app like Anki, with a lot less work.

How to Get Started with MosaLingua

It’s easy to get up and running with MosaLingua. Just download the MosaLingua app to your iOS or Android device. I put links for the different languages at the end of this review so you can find the right one for the language you’re learning. When you first launch the app, you can take an assessment test to calculate your level in the language (or bypass this step if you’re an absolute beginner). Then, you select your reason for learning the language. Options include travel, socializing, exam prep, and more. After that, it’s time to get started learning flashcards. You can tap the ‘Learn’ tab to see which flashcards you’re about to learn. If you’ve already learned some, then the Learn tab becomes the ‘Practice’ tab (look at the bottom of these screenshots): When it comes to which flashcards to study, MosaLingua does the heavy lifting for you. It has a built-in directory of thousands of flashcards for you to choose from. Tap the ‘Explore’ tab to search for flashcards, and select ones that are relevant to you. You can browse cards by topic, level, or by typing in a keyword to find a specific card. Each flashcard contains a recording of a native speaker saying the word or phrase. You can also create your own cards, just like with generic flashcard apps. The Italian text on your homemade flashcards will be read by a computer voice. If you don’t create or search for your own flashcards to learn, MosaLingua will choose for you. It does a pretty good job of picking suitable cards, too. I LOVE this option, because if I’m too lazy to browse the directory, or am just not sure what to study next, it’s nice to let the decision be made for me. So I never have an excuse not to study with MosaLingua.

Studying Flashcards with MosaLingua

Learning New Cards

When it’s time to learn new flashcards (such as when you first launch the app, or when you’ve finished reviewing cards that you’re due to be tested on), you’ll see a ‘Learn’ tab at the bottom of the screen. MosaLingua gives you new flashcards to learn in groups of five. If you want to learn more, just tap the + sign below the list. The flashcards in the list will be ones that you’ve chosen by searching for cards in the ‘Explore’ tab. Or, if you haven’t picked any yourself, they will be chosen automatically for you by the app. There are four steps involved in learning new flashcards:

Listen and pronounce. You hear the word (or phrase) spoken by a native speaker, and repeat the sounds even though you won’t understand the meaning yet. If you want, you can tap the record button and record your voice saying the word, to compare your pronunciation to the native speaker’s.

Memorize. You see the English side of the card and try to remember the translation.

Write. You see the English side and a jumble of letters. You arrange the letters in the right order to spell the word in your target language. For longer sentences, you arrange each word rather than individual letters.

Self-evaluation. Similar to the Memorize step, but now you get to rate how well you answered. More on the ratings below.

Reviewing Previously-seen Cards

Practising flashcards you’ve already seen is just like the self-evaluation step you do when you first learn a new card: you see the English on side one, and have to guess the translation before flipping over the card. Then you rate your answer with the tap of a button:

Perfect (you recalled the word almost as if it was your native language)

Good (the word was pretty easy to remember and you’re confident you got it right)

Difficult (the word took you a bit of time to remember)

Again (you forgot the word or guessed wrong. The card will be shown to you again during this review session.)

To make the MosaLingua SRS algorithm work correctly, it’s really important to be honest in your self-evaluation. The easier a card is for you to remember, the less often you’ll see it. The maximum possible time before seeing a card again is one year. Some SRS apps can’t show you a card any less often than every three months. I like that MosaLingua is in it for the long run.

My Experience with MosaLingua: The Good

There’s a lot to love about MosaLingua. The flashcards cover tons of different scenarios and can get pretty advanced if you want. Some of them contain individual words to help build your vocab, and others have entire sentences, which improves your conversation skills. Beyond just the flashcards, you can also study entire dialogues! I found this feature really useful, as it lets me see sentences in real-world contexts. Some days, I just don’t feel like studying a stack of flashcards. Dialogues are a great alternative because they tell a story. To study dialogues, just tap the ‘More’ tab, then the ‘Dialogues’ icon. Browse them by subject, select the one you want, and follow the steps to study the dialogue:

Audio only (just listen actively and look at the accompanying images, even if you don’t understand everything.)

Audio with foreign language subtitles (listen again, and read in your target language as you go)

Audio with English subtitles (listen again, and see the English translation)

Memorize (select which cards you’d like to add to your deck for your next learning session)

I also liked unlocking bonus material after completing a review session. A bonus item could be a joke, a fun fact about the language or culture, learning advice or a popular expression or quotation in your target language. You can add each of these items to your flashcard deck if you want. Another great aspect of MosaLingua is its incredible customer service. On virtually every screen in the app, you can tap the ? icon in the corner to get an explanation of what to do, followed by options to rate the page or send a suggestion. You can also report problems with individual flashcards. And the response time is fantastic. I left a lot of feedback on pages and flashcards, and I nearly always heard back from an actual person within 24 hours, to either confirm that there was an error that they will fix, or else to ask me more questions to better understand the issue. I’ve never had such good customer service on any app, ever. Kudos, MosaLingua. One of my favourite features about MosaLingua is how it doesn’t shove grammar down your throat. I don’t like to study grammar when I’m first learning a language. Often grammar rules just fall into place after I’ve learned a good number of phrases and their meanings. If you want to learn about grammar (and sometimes I do, too), you can go to the ‘Lessons’ category in the ‘Explore’ tab, and browse for specific grammar rules. Finally, I need to give a shout-out to MosaLingua’s non-spammy reminders. There are very few apps on my phone that I allow to send me push notifications. They always seem to abuse it with notifications like “Here are some tips to better use this app!” or “Looks like you haven’t logged in for a while. Why not see what your friends are up to?” Argh! I must admit, I only turned on MosaLingua notifications so I could comment on them for this review. But the developers were telling the truth: they don’t abuse the feature. You get one notification when you're approaching 24 hours since your last review session. Since the app works best when used daily, this is definitely not overkill at all. I left notifications turned on the entire time I was using the app for this review.

My Experience with MosaLingua: The Bad

As with any product that has a lot of functionality, MosaLingua has a few problem areas that could use some work. MosaLingua offers a hands-free function that lets you listen to your flashcards and try to remember the translation before the cards automatically flip over. This is great if you’re on the bus, going for a walk or just lying on the couch. But it has one flaw. You can’t lock your phone or navigate away from the app while you listen, or else the audio stops playing. This isn’t very useful when you’re not near a charger, because if your phone’s screen is constantly on while you listen to your flashcards, it will drain the battery pretty fast. I used the “suggestion” feature in the app to ask the developers about this, and they replied that they’re still perfecting this feature. So stay tuned. The search function I mentioned earlier, while useful, is not particularly “smart”. It only matches the exact search term you enter, spaces and punctuation included. I wanted to look up the word “software”, but I typed a space after the word, so MosaLingua filtered out every flashcard that contained the word “software” without a space after it. For example, one flashcard said on the Italian side, “il software, il programma”, but it didn’t match my search term because there’s a comma after “software”. Another flashcard said on the English side, “to run (software)”, and it didn’t match either because of the parenthesis after “software”. So some refinement is needed in the search function. My final comment only applies to the Italian version. I found that a small handful of native-speaker recordings were not of very good quality. They were muffled, or too quiet, or the speaker’s tone didn’t really match the “mood” of the phrase on the card. This didn’t happen too often, and I used the “report a problem” feature on the card to send a comment about it.

My Results with MosaLingua After 60 Days

You can see from my review so far that I’m a pretty big fan of learning with MosaLingua, even if it has a couple of flaws. I easily put in a bit of study time every day. Study sessions are really nice and manageable. If you learn ten new flashcards a day, then you’ll probably spend an average of 10-15 minutes per day in review. I defy anyone to assert that they don’t have 15 free minutes per day! In my case, I reviewed flashcards with MosaLingua right before bed for about ten minutes per day for nearly eight weeks - so a total of about ten hours. I learned an average of nine new cards per day. Obviously ten minutes of study per day isn’t a very well-rounded routine. But MosaLingua doesn’t pretend that it’s the only thing you’ll ever need. In fact, in addition to flashcards, dialogues, grammar and bonus items, the app also has a lot of advice for how to keep studying when you’re not using the app. For instance, it gives tips for starting a conversation with a stranger, and offers a list of movie and podcast suggestions in your target language. In my case, I chose to use only MosaLingua to study Italian, followed by three conversations with native speakers. I wanted to be absolutely clear about what MosaLingua can do, and what it can’t. If I watched Italian TV or went to frequent language meet-ups, I wouldn’t be sure if my improvement in Italian was really from MosaLingua. I did do three conversations with native speakers the week before recording my result video, to get a bit of speaking practice. I strongly feel that whether or not I use a single product like MosaLingua for my language studies, it’s still essential to occasionally use the language with native speakers.

The Video: Me Speaking Italian After 60 Days with MosaLingua

So, how was my Italian after using MosaLingua for 10 minutes a day for 60 days? I haven’t taken any placement tests, but I feel like I’m still an A1, though a strong A1. According to MosaLingua’s ‘Progress’ section, I have 264 cards stored in my long-term memory (out of 416 cards I’m currently learning). Many of these cards are complete phrases, not just single words. So I know quite a bit more than 247 Italian words. Although I’m still an A1, I know enough Italian to converse about a few basic topics, as you can see from my result video: httpvh://youtu.be/kswmF5ZaWi8 The video is only six minutes long, but Shannon and I actually talked for nearly 20 minutes, exclusively in Italian! Yes, I had to look up several words before I could say them, and Shannon had to repeat herself a few times, but our conversation was absolutely a success. I must admit I was a little worried at first! When I called Shannon on Skype and it was ringing, I felt minor panic when I tried to recall some Italian words and couldn’t think of a single one! But once we got talking, I gained some momentum and the words came to me as I needed them. Speaking the language with a real person is the only way I can overcome that mental block and start using the language naturally.

MosaLingua Review: The Bottom Line

Would I use MosaLingua again? Absolutely. Especially in the early stages of learning a new language. It’s a fast, efficient way of building up a nice foundation of vocab and phrases. No matter what your level is, I recommend including MosaLingua in your language studies. It requires a small enough time investment that you could even squeeze it into your existing routine without changing anything else. MosaLingua alone can’t make you fluent, but no single method can. But if you use MosaLingua correctly, you’ll store tons of useful material in your long-term memory, where it will be easily recalled when you need it. This recollection is the key to progressing in your target language toward fluency.

MosaLingua Links

To use MosaLingua to help you learn your target language, click the links below to find the app for the language you’re learning: Italian: MosaLingua Italian for iOS MosaLingua Italian for Android Spanish: MosaLingua Spanish for iOS MosaLingua Spanish for Android French: MosaLingua French for iOS MosaLingua French for Android German: MosaLingua German for iOS MosaLingua German for Android Brazilian Portuguese: MosaLingua Portuguese for iOS MosaLingua Portuguese for Android English: MosaLingua English for iOS MosaLingua English for Android

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addhunter · 8 years ago

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Mutants: Edgelord Supreme

March 20, 2017

Getting started writing is always the easy part. It’s the keeping at it until it’s finished that’s the super hard part.

I could probably list about a hundred stories that I started and never finished. Some of them had super cool plots, really well thought out characters, even amazing settings and circumstances, but for some reason, inspiration would just fizzle out. I think it was that I lost a lot of motivation after the first few stories, which is why after a while I just started writing one-shots and short stories. (Until Transcend, that is.) But it wasn’t college or even in school where I learned to write well.

It was on Neopets.

Honestly, I haven’t even heard the name Neopets spoken out loud in like, five years. Every once in a while, it comes up on tumblr, but apparently it’s so so SO different now. I don’t even know if I’d like it anymore. Originally, when I signed up, it was because the eyries were dope as hell. Then I found the roleplay boards, and I was a goner.

Okay, starting at the beginning.

I’ve always been a great reader. The summer before kindergarten, I got grounded, and as I spent the week in my room, I taught myself how to read. (I think is was Amelia Badelia, if I remember right.) By first grade, I was reading the Harry Potter series, and when I was in third grade, I was reading at a college level. (Not to toot my own horn, but I was a big nerd.)

I think a lot of me being able to write well (at least in my own opinion and my Creative Writing teacher for a semester in high school) comes from being able to read the harder books. At a younger age, I was reading those complex sentences and words and learning how to make things sound good. (That last sentence is a terrible example of that.) Combine that with an imaginative mind, and I was writing crazy stories since I was barely potty trained.

I’m shit at grammar, though. Absolutely terrible.

Around third or fourth grade, the internet started becoming a bigger thing, and we had a tiny computer at home that took five minutes to start up. (I remember the good ol dial up days. Fantastic. I was a much more patient person, then.) After getting a McDonalds toy, I logged onto Neopets to see what it was all about. A few months in, I found the roleplaying boards, and was like, “Oh, it’s like writing stories but only with one character at a time, cool.” So I did that. I loved it. Existing in those little stories and creating a new character every time was fascinating, and I did it as often as I could. I had a few recurring characters, and an embarrassing few as well, but I kept at it. When I was ten, I somehow found myself in a roleplay guild with a bunch of college friends, and they believed me when I said I was 16 because of how well I wrote. (That was wild. I had a lot of fun in that guild. Eventually I told them I was going into fifth grade, and then they were even more impressed, and it was cool. Huge ego boost.)

I wrote my first ‘official’ book when I was in fifth grade, and it was called Mutants. It was about these kids who had been trapped and experimented on and given crazy animal-like powers. They escaped the lab and went to live by themselves and it got weird for a bit and the story’s end made no sense at all, but it was cool. It also had a finished sequel, and I think that one was called ‘Mutants 2: On the Run’. (They disguised themselves as normal humans and things got weirder, but it was more well-thought out than the first one.) Honestly, for an elementary schooler, it was pretty good, but looking back on it is downright mortifying. The main character, Flame, is an emo edgelord, and vague as hell, and nothing she does makes sense. And she’s possessed? By something??? And her boyfriend man dude (whose name I have no idea how to pronounce) is basically a velociraptor-human with wings. He’s an emo edgelord as well. He’s constantly like “She’s so cruel but I have to help her but I’m sad but she needs me we’re SOULMATES!!!!!” The only non emo dude is Feng, and he’s a big wolf boy and can’t speak English.

Now that I think about it, Blaise might be the modern day version of the edgelord. He’s so angry all the time, and he wears black sweats every day and he swears like a sailor. Shit, I can’t get rid of him.

I got a bit off track there.

After the roleplay boards on Neopets, I moved onto a roleplay forum-based site and was a pretty high-ranking member because of my coherent posts and because I didn’t try and make every thread about me like everyone else did. And after that, I quit roleplaying and just started writing all my stories out by hand until I could get on my mom’s laptop, and then my own when I got to my senior year in high school. Some of my stories from even two years ago are pretty bad, but they still are leagues better than Mutants.

The point is, everyone has a shitty starting point. Mine was on Neopets roleplay boards. Now, I’m publishing a book about superhero kids. (Full circle, am I right?) But I learned a lot of tips along the way, and I got better. Sure, my writing isn’t like, Jane Eyre or anything, but I don’t think it needs to be.

That’s another point, honestly. Like, yes, my writing is a little more casual and relaxed, but it’s still good. I can do the flowery prose, I can do the crazy extended metaphors and page-long comparisons to galaxies and whatever else people compare love and eyes to, but I don’t think I need to. Not trying to bash those writing styles, but everyone has what works for them and their stories, and I don’t think my stories need super long descriptions about the way “his fingers grazed his arm like the way a gentle summer breeze dances across the top branches of a young sapling”. Like, no. My stories are about superhero young adults who are trying to figure out what the hell is happening in their town. They can focus on each others galaxy filled souls later.

(Or maybe I’ll write some moody side pieces. Those would be fun.)

I lost track of the point of this post. To sum it up: I taught myself to read like a nerd, learned vocab and read stories that no third grader should ever read, and wrote my first trashy action-romance at the tender age of ten. After that, I got better at writing through sheer practice alone.

And I STILL have only finished like, six stories, out of the hundreds I’ve written.

Two of those six are the Mutants stories.

Shit.

#blogging #lmao everything i write is a MESS #i'll post some snippets of mutants sometime #or maybe i'll rewrite it for practice #who knows #the prehistory of transcend

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