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thecoleopterawithana · 5 years ago

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When you were young and your heart was an open book

Don’t Let Me Down | Paul’s Upbringing

John, because of his upbringing and his unstable family life, had to be hard, witty, always ready for the cover-up, ready for the riposte, ready with the sharp little witticism. Whereas with my rather comfortable upbringing, a lot of family, lot of people, very northern, ‘Cup of tea, love?’, my surface grew to be easy-going. Put people at their ease. Chat to people, be nice, it’s nice to be nice.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Paul grew up in the warm embrace of a loving family. There was hardship, certainly: they were definitely working-class, and the war had been unkind to the cotton exchange business, so it fell on mother Mary to be the main bread-winner of the family, as a domiciliary housewife. Her nursing job also made it so they were always on the move, from one new outskirt council estate to the next, “always on the edge of the world” that was the rebuilding of a war-torn Liverpool. But despite this surrounding instability, the core of the family itself was a safe harbour of reliably loving parents.

I got my compassion for people from my mother. She was a midwife. I think that would probably be the most important quality. Again, respect and caring for others.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Jonathan Wingate for Record Collector: Paul McCartney gets back to work (July 2007).

[My mum] was very kind, very loving. There was a lot of sitting on laps and cuddling. She was very cuddly. I think I was very close to her. My brother thinks he was a little closer, being littler. I would just be trying to be a bit more butch, being the older one. She liked to joke and had a good sense of humour and she was very warm. There was more warmth than I now realise there was in most families. [...] They aspired to a better life. That idea that we had to get out of here, we had to do better than this. This was okay for everyone else in the street but we could do better than this. She was always moving to what she saw as a better place to bring her kids up.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Not only had this notion of rising out of their current situation been instilled in Paul and his brother Michael from an early age by his mother – by encouraging them to speak “the Queen’s English” and insist on their education, for example – his father, Jim McCartney, also did his best to pass down his values of “Toleration and Moderation”, a good education and a special emphasis on an honest and responsible work ethic.

I think I got my respect and tolerance for people from my dad, which is a pretty cool quality to inherit. He was very big on tolerance, my dad. It was a word he used to use all the time. I think I grew up with that attitude. You know, you’d say, ‘Bloody hell, I hate that guy.’ and then you’d stop and go, ‘Alright, wait a minute, maybe he’s got a point,’ and you’d try and consider it from his or her point of view. I think that was a great lesson.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Jonathan Wingate for Record Collector: Paul McCartney gets back to work (July 2007).

He had us out aged about nine. I was virtually a door-to-door salesman by the time I was twelve. [...] I was certainly not shy with people, I think because of all these activities my dad encouraged us into. I think it's probably very good for your confidence with people. It was all right. That was my upbringing.

[...]

My parents aspired for us, very much indeed. That is one of the great things you can find in ordinary people. My mum wanted me to be a doctor. 'My son the doctor' - and her being a nurse, too. No problem there. And my dad, who left school at fourteen, would have loved me to be a great scientist, a great university graduate. I always feel grateful for that. I mean, God, I certainly fulfilled their aspirations, talk about overachieving! That was all bred into me, that.

We had George Newnes Encyclopedias. I can still remember the smell of them. If you didn't know what a word meant or how it was spelled, my dad would say 'Look it up.' I think that's a great attitude to take with kids. It steers you in the right direction. It was part of a game where he was improving us without having had an awful lot of experience of improvement himself. But I always liked that, and I knew I would outstrip him. By going to grammar school I knew I'd fairly soon have Latin phrases or know about Shakespeare which he wouldn't know about.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Just from these passages alone, we can spot the origins of Paul’s tolerant and caring nature, social skills, self-reliance, and tireless drive for self-improvement (with its nuances of social climbing and fierce competitiveness).

All in all, it was a good solid childhood: exploring the woods outside of his house – “Mother Nature’s Son” through and through – playing and running from Speke teds with his friend George Harrison, going to school and working the occasional odd job, helping his family and making them proud.

And then, Paul McCartney’s secure existence was shattered.

My head was in a whirl, only then I realized, I lost my little girl

On the 31st of October 1956, Mary McCartney abruptly dies from complications following her mastectomy. She’d been admitted at a far too advanced state of breast cancer after she’d kept working – while in pain – for several weeks, choosing not to divulge this symptom or the fact that she had a lump in her breast to her colleagues.

The whole family is caught unawares, but the boys especially are mostly kept in the dark.

I remember one horrible day me and my brother going to the hospital. They must have known she was dying. It turned out to be our last visit and it was terrible because there was blood on the sheets somewhere and seeing that, and your mother, it was like "Holy cow!' And of course she was very brave, and would cry after we'd gone, though I think she cried on that visit. But we didn't really know what was happening. We were shielded from it all by our aunties and by our dad and everything.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

The boys are sent away to stay with relatives, noticing that something was wrong but unaware of what was going on, unable to actually say goodbye.

Two days later, it’s too late.

Paul is 14.

As Jim comes to break the news, and his brother Michael breaks down in tears, Paul has an unexpected response.

Mum was a working nurse. There wasn’t a lot of money around – and she was half the family pay packet. My reaction was: ‘How are we going to get by without her money?’ When I think back on it, I think, ‘Oh God, what? Did I really say that?’ It was a terrible logical thought which was preceded by the normal feelings of grief. It was very tough to take.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

It would not be the last time that Paul McCartney’s initial shock response to grief is considered “flippant” or “callous” by the people around him; a fact that has haunted him throughout his life.

I’m very funny when people die. I don’t handle it at all well, because I’m so brought down that I try to bring myself up. So I don’t show grief very well. It actually leads some people to think I don’t care, and I do. I’m not good at it like some people. [...] But I’ve always been kind of inward about those things. So I just deal with it myself.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

By virtue of nature or nurture, Paul exhibits from early on an extreme difficulty or unwillingness to deal with his less pleasant emotions.

His response to the alarm that is pain is to deny that it is ringing altogether.

And this manifested not only in inadequate optimism for some situations, it most often took the shape of what appeared to be too hard and cold pragmatism. Some people, unfortunately, saw his defence-mechanism of turning completely rational in the face of crisis and mistook it for him not caring; when, in fact, he cared so much that his only solution was to try and shut it off.

He carried with him a great burden of guilt and regret; not concerning his reaction to his mother’s death but also due to other misdemeanours and minor hurts he’d caused her when she was alive.

There's one moment that I've regretted all my life which is a strange little awkwardness for me. There was one time when she said 'ask' and she pronounced it posh. And I made fun of her and it slightly embarrassed her. Years later I've never forgiven myself. It's a terrible little thing. I wish I could go back and say, ‘I was only kidding, Mum.' I’m sure she knew. I'm sure she didn't take it too seriously.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

In retrospect, he even theorized that the lyrics to his acclaimed ‘Yesterday’ were related to his mother’s sudden departure.

With ‘Yesterday’, singing it now, I think without realising it I was singing about my mum who died five or six years previously, or whatever the timing was. Because I think now, “Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say, I said something wrong…”

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Pat Gilbert for MOJO: Don’t look back in anger (November 2013).

So in the aftermath of life completely pulling the rug from under his feet, Paul was not only struggling to deal with his own emotions, trying to bury them far from sight as best as he could, he was being consumed by terrible guilt for doing exactly that.

More than that, he was under the care of his uncle and aunt for several more days, trying to rally his brother so that they wouldn’t appear ‘softies’ in their cousins' eyes, while friends and family tried to hold together a shattered Jim McCartney, “whose first thought was to join his wife”.

Seeing his father break down like that had a huge impact on Paul.

My mother's death broke my dad up. That was the worst thing for me, hearing my dad cry. I'd never heard him cry before. It was a terrible blow to the family. You grow up real quick, because you never expect to hear your parents crying. You expect to see women crying, or kids in the playground, or even yourself crying – and you can explain all that. But when it's your dad, then you know something's really wrong and it shakes your faith in everything. But I was determined not to let it affect me. I carried on. I learnt to put a shell around me at that age.

— Paul McCartney, in The Anthology (1995).

This is very important.

Not only had the only reality he’d ever known been destroyed by his mother’s sudden death, his own father – who was supposed to be this strong, unshakable pillar in his life – couldn’t be relied on to hold it together.

Paul had been let down. He was on his own.

Fear steems from a feeling of powerlessness. You feel painfully vulnerable to whatever life might throw at you, at constant risk of being hurt again, and the only solution is to be on the lookout. Be prepared.

Paul was caught unawares because the people he’d counted on to always be there suddenly weren’t. And with his compassionate and reasonable nature, he probably didn't even blame them at all. But the facts were that Paul had been left hanging, not once but twice, when he needed them the most. So he kind of lost his faith in everything.

Life is chaotic and unpredictable; and people, through no fault of their own, are just as inconstant.

And so, in order not to risk being let down again, Paul took matters into his own hands. He tried to escape the pain and dread of being powerless by seizing control of whatever he could. And that was mostly himself.

And so begins Paul McCartney’s saga of isolating independence and other control-issues.

As Paul said above, he’s “always been kind of inward” about grief and other “negative” emotions. He’d rather be alone at this stage because he doesn’t want to expose his vulnerabilities. Not to others and much less to himself. So he needs a distraction. Something to devote himself to that’ll take his mind off the pain.

The saving grace, as usual, was music.

— Paul McCartney, The Q Interview (2007).

His brother Michael, probably the closest observer we could have of this period, recounts how Paul was like in the aftermath.

Paul was far more affected by Mum’s death than any of us imagined. His very character seemed to change and for a while he behaved like a hermit. He wasn’t very nice to live with at this period, I remember. He became completely wrapped up in himself and didn’t seem to care about anything or anybody outside himself.

He seemed interested only in his guitar, and his music. He would play that guitar in his bedroom, in the lavatory, even when he was taking a bath. It was never out of his hands except when he was at school or when he had to do his homework. Even in school, he and George Harrison used to seize the opportunity every break to sit and strum.

When we left our auntie’s house and returned home, it was agreed that Dad, Paul and I would take it in turns to do the housework.

“We’re a family on our own now,” Dad said. “We’ll all have to help.”

But time after time when I came home from school, I would find that Paul hadn’t done his bit. I would go looking for him and sometimes I would find him, up in his bedroom, perhaps, sitting in the dark, just strumming away on his guitar. Nothing, it seemed, mattered to him any more. He seldom went out anywhere – even with girls. He didn’t bother much with any of his friends except his schoolmate George Harrison and John Lennon, who was at the art school next door. Work and work alone – his school books and his guitar – appeared to be the only thing that could help him to forget.

— Mike McCartney, Woman: Portrait of Paul (21 August 1965).

So Paul takes to complete dedication to work and music to help him ignore his pain. And he’d rather go through this process of burying it on his own. We see him isolate himself from his family and friends, according to Mike socializing mostly with George, also in the context of playing music. John is also mentioned; this could be a smudging of the timeline in Mike’s recollections, as Paul would only meet John the following year. That or Paul’s mourning lasted until the autumn of 1957, when John was enrolled in art college.

We also have a clue about how guarded Paul was with his “negative” emotions – how resilient he always wanted to be – that no one imagined he would be so affected by his mother’s death as he was.

This will also be a repeating theme through Paul’s life: his wish to always be strong, positive and reliable will make others and himself overestimate his imperviousness to trauma. People will then feel free to burden him with their own pain or unload their frustrations on him, without feeling that there would be consequences; because Paul is so tough as to be unaffected by all that. This proved, time and again, not to be true.

His true strength arises, in my opinion, not in the fact that he is unshakable but in his determination to quietly pick himself up again and again.

Losing my mum when I was fourteen was a major tragic event in my life. But, when I think about myself, I am, overall, pretty optimistic, pretty enthusiastic, pretty much into getting on. One of the reasons being, she would want that. I know for certain she would want that. I know Linda would want that. I know John would want that, and George would want that. My dad would want that. They were very, very positive people. And the idea that their deaths would plunge me into some sort of morose depression would bother them. I know that for a fact. So that helps me to not go there.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by John Colapinto for the New Yorker: When I’m sixty-four (4 June 2007).

But as a 14-year-old Northern lad, his tactic of picking himself up didn’t involve dressing the wounds, which would continue to bleed silently in the recesses of his mind.

I certainly didn’t grieve enough for my mother. There was no such thing as a psychiatrist when I lost her. You kidding? I was a 14-year-old Liverpool boy. I wouldn’t have had access to one and I do now.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Nigel Farndale for The Telegraph: Love me do (17 May 2002).

But soon, Paul would find an even greater outlet for his love of music, almost magical in its specialness:

Someone to perform with.

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etudier-avec-bella · 5 years ago

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Studying a Language with your Degree?

Life is all about balance, and as someone who is passionate about learning, I like to try and dabble in many different areas of interest as I can. My extracurricular activities are just as valuable to me as my academic studies, because I believe it’s important to have things in your life that are productive without feeling like hard work. Things we enjoy engaging in that help us to enrich our lives outside of our main education pathway.

Whilst I don’t think I’ve ever formally stated it on my blog, I actually study French alongside my Chemistry degree with my university’s languages scheme. You might be thinking ‘Bella, what are you doing? Isn’t studying Chemistry enough for you? You want to cause yourself extra stress by picking up a voluntary language module as well?’, and the short answer is… Yeah, I guess so.

But, I’m actually here to show why studying a language is a wonderful thing to do whilst you’re at university, and to show you how I keep up with French alongside my degree. On y a va!

Why study a language course alongside your university degree?

I could go on for a long time about the benefits of learning a language- so to save you the pain of my waffle-ish ramblings, here are the three main reasons I think it’s something worth considering:

It’ll be a highly valuable skill when applying for a job. Communication is a vital ability underpinning most, if not all, careers- especially moving up towards top positions within your chosen field. Speaking one language fluently is fine, but being able to speak multiple languages instantly makes you stand out from the crowd and offers you a much broader range of potential career pathways and opportunities.

Your brain will never take it in as well as it will now. Let’s face it, we’ll never have the same neurological elasticity we did as babies. But as young adults who spend most of our time occupied with reading, writing, and studying for our degree courses, our brains are much more likely to absorb and retain information than they will in five, ten, or fifty years’ time. The perfect opportunity to learn something new!

Because languages are beautiful. It’s about so much more than what you can see on the paper. You’re now privy to the origins of the things we say, and why we say them. The emotions that your mother tongue alone cannot capture. Being able to feel the meaning of a word, rather than just knowing it… Why wouldn’t you want to study something so wonderful?

How do I keep up with French alongside my Chemistry Degree?

So far, I haven’t found it too difficult trying to keep up with my language course by making good use of my independent study time. This term has been quite light in terms of lecture content and contact hours (~17-20 per week), so I took it as my chance to organise things and create a schedule for myself in order to ensure I stay on track with French for the rest of the year. It’s pretty easy to slip up and just ignore it if you aren’t strict with the extra work you do outside of class to solidify what you’re learning, so I’m thankful I came up with my system so early on.

Again, I’ll make this easy and state the main methods I like to use to study for French- these tips can apply to anyone studying any level of language qualification!

Quizlet: An absolute essential when it comes to committing vocabulary to memory! Quizlet recognises the language you’re learning and can read out the words you have typed onto the flashcards, allowing you to practise your ability to recall, spell, and write the word.

Doing your grammar: Yes, most people find it boring, but it’s a necessity if you want to speak fluently and with confidence. I would recommend buying/borrowing a grammar textbook for your level of study and doing extra exercises outside of your classes to help you better understand the concepts you’re learning.

Reading Comprehension: By exposing yourself to more written works in the language you’re studying, you’ll not only improve your ability to retain information, but also pick up lots of new vocabulary. So, read anything and everything you can. Books, blog posts, news articles,

Writing Practise: I like to consolidate the topics we cover over one term by writing a piece that includes as much of the vocabulary that we’ve covered. It’s an excellent chance to practise your spelling, recall your tenses, and make sure your grammar is as polished as it can be. It doesn’t have to be from your own perspective- I actually find writing articles/stories a lot better, as you get to practise more he/she/they/them conjugation, and it means you can talk about things you don’t have personal experiences with. Plus, it can be hard to talk about a topic that you feel pretty indifferent about…

Talk to yourself. Like a crazy person: It feels weird and uncomfortable at first, but it seriously does help improve your fluency and pronunciation. Whether if you just read a comprehension exercise out loud, or have a full-blown argument with yourself in the shower, it’s all good practise.

Yes, you have to put in hard work to see improvement, but there are actually some really fun, effective ways to improve your language abilities, too! Here are the ones that I find the most useful:

Podcasts/Music: It can be really tricky to find useful listening resources outside of the ones your teacher has access to, so a great way to get some practise in is by finding some music or a podcast in your language! For French specifically, I like Intermediate French Podcast by innerFrench. The guy who records them doesn’t translate what he says, but rather explains it in French so that anybody listening can understand regardless of their native language. Smart!

Put your chosen language’s subtitles on for your favourite TV shows: I can't tell you how much vocab I’ve learned from bingeing Glee with French subtitles. It’s a good way to quickly pick up new words, and a lot more enjoyable than just memorising them from your textbook. If you’re feeling brave, you could even change the spoken language of the show to the one you’re learning (if it’s available) and put on your native language subtitles for extra listening practise!

Find a penpal: Whether it’s writing a physical letter, or just sending a text to an online friend, speaking to someone in your new language will do absolute wonders for your writing and spelling abilities. Plus, making new friends is always fun, and proof that learning a new language brings people closer together!

Name the things in your immediate surroundings: This is a good one to do on the go, or when you’re stuck somewhere for a long time with nothing better to do. I find it’s an excellent way of procrastinating my other work, just sitting at mon bureau and noticing all of les stylos in ma trousse… Yeah, be careful with this one

I hope this has helped anyone considering learning a language in university, and maybe it even convinced some of you who weren’t thinking about it before to give it a go!

I’d like to add that you don’t have to sign up for a course if that isn’t an option (my department covers the cost for me because my degree includes a year abroad), and that you can do it just as successfully with any number of free resources available to you online.

Thank you for reading!

#studyblr #studying #motivation #determination #organisation #university #language #language course #french #learning french #language tips

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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Advice I’ve found helpful:

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words.

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials.

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time.

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile... graded readers would fall into point 2 - but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now.

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1! It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are).

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed.

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books).

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’).

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence.

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot.

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all...). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me.

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’.... aahhh. So um... I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it’ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time.

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally?

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world.

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes).

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect).

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language... now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc.

Yes, with all of these goals you’ll eventually need to do the less fun less your-goal oriented more basic tasks, like grammar and vocab acquisition and pronunciation learning/listening etc (whatever you personally like more or less). But you’ll have reasons WHY you’re doing it that motivate you. You’ll have a REASON you’re willing to slog through vocab flashcards or a grammar guide or a pronunciation/convo learner podcast. Because it will directly help you do something you WILL like. And you’ll know at least a PIECE of your study, WILL be some tasks you do know you’d do/enjoy anyway - like trying to chat, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or browsing the internet, etc.

#rant #advice

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vikinglanguage · 5 years ago

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So. A question. A lot of advice for language learning include speaking with natives and having general conversations with yourself or anyone else in your target tongue. I’m having trouble getting to the point in which I CAN have a conversation with a fluent or learning speaker by myself. I think I can probably do it eventually with a class but that is a lot of time and money. Any suggestions for getting a jumping off point?

I’m going to be honest here, I’m in exactly the same situation. I’m sorry, I can’t be of much help, but truth is that I really feel the same struggle as you. Maybe some of my followers have some advice?

I’m quite seriously trying to learn German these days (I took it for three years through grades 7-9 but forgot most of it again), but I still find that I can’t get myself to speak German with my Austrian roommate, because I’m not confident enough in my skills. And I’m even in an extremely lucky situation here, because I have a native speaker with a decent level of English and even the ability to speak a little Danish readily available – but I don’t make any good use of it. English is the only foreign language that I speak fluently, and that’s a direct effect of watching a lot of movies in English and using the internet regularly in English from age 13 or 14 (that’d be around 7 years at this point). And then on top of that having my English teachers from age 14-19 insist that we speak English in English class.

However, I have seen how she has improved her Danish over the course of the past month. She started Danish classes some time in November (or maybe late October) and as of December 13th she passed her Danish test for A2 level. That’s just from using the small amount of Danish she knows in her day to day life: She will ask me and the other Dane things in Danish if she can, and even if she doesn’t know a word she will still ask in Danish and then just throw in an English word.

Likewise, I’ve seen how much my French roommate has improved his English since August, and let me tell you – it’s a lot. Like a lot. In the beginning he didn’t say much, always asked twice about everything to be sure he understood it correctly and had his phone with his translation app out half the time. I can’t remember the last time I saw him use the app for something that wasn’t a weirdly specific word such as chaffinch or what do I know.

If you want another story about how I’m also tragically bad at speaking languages there’s one under the cut.

About a year ago I was at a point where my writing, reading and listening comprehension in Spanish was somewhere in between B1 and B2 (it’s not anymore, I’ve been neglecting it for the past year...), but my speaking skills were somewhere between A2 and B1 – if people had patience with me and I had time to think a little about what I was going to say. And that’s after 3 years of Spanish classes. Due to the class I was in* not being... particularly great at or interested in Spanish AT ALL (we’re talking chunks of my class barely reaching A1 over the course of 3 years) we didn’t have a lot of talking exercises, because our teacher had a curriculum to teach us. When half the class can’t conjugate ir in any tense other than voy future after 2 years, you just have to throw some written exercises and grammar etc. after the ones who can and then try to get the rest to a level where they might be able to pass their exams. And so, as of currently I understand and am able to write quite a lot of Spanish, but I barely speak it, when it comes to actually talking – because I never got any practice. It was also a serious difficulty for me the three months that I was studying Spanish at university (before I dropped out), because almost everyone else had done a year abroad in a Spanish speaking country and had a much higher level than me when speaking.

*it was a somewhat compulsory “high school” subject with my line of study (social science + language) – we had to take a second foreign language apart from English (so German, Spanish, French or Italian)

#super unhelpful answer #ask #general #speaking #agarwaeneth

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svartikotturinn · 5 years ago

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Trimming down my OK Cupid profile: the ‘before’ part

My self-summary

אוֹקִ֥יר אֱנ֖וֹשׁ מִפָּ֑ז וְאָדָ֖ם מִכֶּ֥תֶם אוֹפִֽיר׃

I’m an unpredictable but fiercely empathetic person, with a somewhat off-beat sense of humour. A huge fan of languages and human cultures. Moved to Haifa in Dec. 2017 and loving it, now working as a tutor and loving it too. Currently working my MA in sign language linguistics at Haifa U, planning to study teaching ESL at NUI Galway later on and later then going to settle abroad somewhere undecided to work in Deaf education (likely Montréal).If you want to know more about me, you can read more about me on my Tumblog. You should probably read the ‘About’ page and maybe look through my more important posts (for some of my observations and opinions), and in general pay particular attention to this post. (I’m not re-typing everything over here…)

Also, I have a Quora account. And a mostly inactive YouTube channel, with Hebrew CC & English subs for all vids there.

What I'm doing with my life

Having finished my BA in linguistics and East Asian studies, I translate and teach Hebrew and English whenever I get to (I translated the young adult fantasy novel Murderess by Daya Marnin to English), while learning a whole bunch of languages, most notably improving my already decent Japanese, and being as politically active (staunch leftist here) as circumstances allow. Also, I am now a tutor for K–12 students, teaching English, math, and Hebrew grammar & composition.

You’re more than welcome to contact me if you’re interested in learning Hebrew!

Also, I’m trying to make some money off my poetry, either through personalised commissions or through Patreon supporters.

I'm really good at

Languages are definitely my thing. I’m studying all languages currently available on Duolingo (finished 11 already and counting) and then some, and when Duolingo releases more I’ll add them to the list. (So you’re more than welcome to tell me what languages get you going… 😉)

Other than that I’m very good with words, as a translator and a poet (as I pointed out, I translated a book, and it had poetry in it; I’ve written poetry that’s moved people to tears, too), and I’m a pretty good dancer. Also, I’m creative and rather skilful in the kitchen, having honed these skills somewhat during the time I was a vegan. (If I like you, I’ll definitely make you something nice!)

My golden rule

‘Integrity above all.’

Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food

BOOKS

My all-time favourite is Summer Celebration by Natan Alterman (look it up on TV Tropes; I wrote that article). Other than that I loved:

I Am a Cat by Natsume Souseki

Mr. Muo’s Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Lover by A. B. Yehoshu‘a

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Leviathan

The Narrow Road to Oku by Matsuo Basho: I actually wrote a book report on it and dressed up as Basho for Purim in the 10th grade

…and others

FILMS

My all-time favourite is Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Other than that I loved:

everything by Satoshi Kon

almost everything by Hayao Miyazaki (I’ve seen ALL of his films), the only exception being Porco Rosso

Love & Pop and Shiki Jitsu by Hideaki Anno

Wild Strawberries and The Best Intentions by Ingmar Bergman

anything by Akira Kurosawa

The White Ribbon and Funny Games by Michael Haneke

almost every Israeli film I’ve seen

almost every German film I’ve seen

The Rocky Horror Picture Show & Shock Treatment

(Needless to say, I’m somewhat of a film enthusiast; this doesn’t even begin to cover it)

SHOWS

My all-time favourite is Hideaki Anno’s life-changing fantastic Neon Genesis Evangelion. Others include quite a few good anime series and some non-anime ones:

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)

Elfen Lied

Samurai Champloo

Cowboy Bebop

Kino’s Journey

Gunbuster

Ouran High School Host Club

Loveless

Shinsekai Yori

Aggretsuko

Live action:

Kidding

The Good Wife & The Good Fight

Orange is the New Black

Dexter

Breaking Bad

Borgen

Ray Donovan

Please Like Me

Looking

Jinn

some Israeli series

Non-anime animated:

Steven Universe

Adventure Time

MUSIC

Pink Floyd is my favourite band. I also love:

Bands:

Sigur Rós, especially Von (though I struggle to listen to them after Orri Páll Dýrason got #MeToo’d)

HaBiluim

HaMechashefot

The Seatbelts

Enigma

Jane Bordeaux (my guilty pleasure)

Stereopony (another guilty pleasure)

Individual artists:

Nujabes

Zemfira

John Coltrane

Antonio Carlos Jobim

Thijs van Leer

Hughes de Courson

Jacques Brel

Composers:

Bach

Beethoven

Prokofiev

Scriabin

Purcell

(These lists are by no means exhaustive…)

Generally, I find Modern Hebrew to be just the right amount of rugged for rock music. But I’m probably biased because Israeli rock was very much in vogue here when I was a little kid…

My taste is generally very eclectic though I don’t listen to music all that much on my own; basically, it amounts to ‘everything good, especially ambience, Western art music, chillout, jazz, prog/post-rock, and folk’.

FOOD

I was a vegan for almost two years starting around November 2014; it was somewhat of a challenge, but it did teach me to be very creative in the kitchen, and very aware of vegans’ needs. Generally, I’m pretty open-minded, but I particularly love:

East Asian food: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese

French and Italian food

Seafood

Six things I could never do without

Cats

Human interaction (in moderation!)

Textbooks and other study materials

The ability to watch films

The ability to listen to music when I want to

Good food

I spend a lot of time thinking about

My day-to-day obligations, politics (including SJ), my ambitions, general philosophy… There’s plenty.

A perfect day

A day I feel I’ve been productive in: having read something, or learned something, worked out, cooked, written… and spent time with loved ones.

If I were sent to jail, I'd be arrested for

Either something I didn’t do, or some heroic act of vigilantism.

You should message me if

And now for what I’m looking for, especially for a more prolonged interaction.

As I said, I am obviously into languages and East Asian cultures (specifically Japanese), but I’m also happy to learn. If you’re willing to learn more about these topics (and in general) but your main field of interest is different, I’d be delighted, as I’d feel we could complete each other. (Same goes for speaking a foreign language.)

Genuine empathy matters a lot to me. If I think you lack it or deny it arbitrarily, I’ll be alarmed, but genuine warmth is something I love and will likely be drawn to you for.

With regards to personal convictions (e.g. political and religious): my main requirement is that you stick by what you believe in and be able to reasonably explain why you do. I may disagree with you fiercely, but I’ll respect you deeply for sticking by an informed opinion—I’ve gotten along surprisingly well with people from a very wide range of opinions.

Also, a pretty important pet peeve of mine: if I’m not calm or smiling there’s almost certainly a good, objective reason for it. You’re more than welcome to address those, or offer comfort and understanding, which I’ll appreciate immensely, but it really rubs me the wrong way when people try to tell me to react differently just because (‘Aw c’mon… Smile!’).

That’s about it in terms of personality. As for looks, I like soft facial features, smooth skin, and any body type that isn’t fat, or excessively muscular on women (nothing against those body types, they’re just not my taste).

Finally, as for expectations from talking: I’m not looking into anything too serious, for a variety of reasons. But I could make concessions if truly swept off my feet…

#me #personal #OK Cupid

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stellemorte · 8 years ago

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A few resources/tips on studying any language

Sometimes learning a new language can be a bit frustrating and confusing, but there’s a few ways to make it easier on yourself!! These have worked for me, but everyone learns differently :)

Try to expose yourself to the language you’re interested in studying as much as possible. If you surround yourself by it, you’re more likely to pick it up faster.

Read or watch the news in that language!! Not only are you exposing yourself to new vocabulary, but you’re also taking in some of the culture.

Children’s shows: This is especially helpful if you’re a beginner. It sounds a bit silly, but comprehension needs to start from somewhere. A lot of shows are dubbed in other languages, and you can find them on YouTube or on other websites. (I’ll link them in a separate post soon)

Music: Music is a very good way to understand and increase your fluency. There’s tons of songs and music videos out there no matter what language you’re interested in, and once you find the artist you like, reading over the lyrics and listening to the pronunciation (and maybe even singing along!!!) can be really helpful.

Change your device languages: I do this and people say, ‘‘but you can’t even read it! How will you be able to find anything??’‘ etc. It really isn’t a bad idea, as long as you know the interface well enough. It takes some time to adapt, but once you’re used to seeing it in your daily life you’ll grow used to the vocabulary and be more likely to remember it. We’re always on our phones anyways, and at least for me, it’s helped with learning a lot of new words.

Repetition: My French teacher is constantly preaching about this to our class. Repetition is the 100% proven way for a language to stick with you. If you’re trying to learn new vocabulary, write the words down 3x each. If you’re struggling with certain words, than write those down five times. Try saying them while you spell them out, too. The same works for verb charts/conjugations also!

Places to help improve your skills:

Duolingo - Drills you on words and sentence structure, they offer a lot of languages on their site and have quite a few on the app version. It’s best if you use this in conjunction with other things though, it doesn’t go into deep detail on grammar and is more supplementary if you already get the basics.

WordReference - Online bilingual dictionary that gives you accurate translations to words and provides examples.

LyricsTranslate - This one is good for those who listen to music in a foreign language. There’s a lot of songs updated here, and it’s good for looking at side-by-side translations. Also, if you want to take things a step further, you can make an account and translate songs that aren’t on the site already.

Quizlet - I use this on a daily basis. It’s more of a digital take on flashcards, you can test yourself on spelling and it also pronounces the word for you. There are already an abundance of sets available on the app and site so all you have to do is search the language and maybe vocabulary group, and then you can begin studying!

#langblr #languages #français #italiano #romana

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herrunawaystories-blog · 8 years ago

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10 THINGS I LEARNED (SO FAR), 100+ DAYS AFTER I WENT ABROAD

March 23, 2017: “The things that don’t kill you, only make you stronger”

A dramatic title! Or for some particular reason I might “just” be a dramatic person. So first of all, it took me more than 100 days later to finally write a post and have the courage to test my English-grammar-skills. It’s honestly “a climb” to improve my not-so-but-I-guess-okay-capacity to communicate with the German Language and the fact that I’m not entirely certain with my current English Grammar. But hey…I love writing and before this post comes up, I’d probably read it a couple of times to spare myself from more embarrassment.

Grammatically speaking… This post is not (really) about noun-verb-connections. It’s about something more scary: ADULT INDEPENDENCE 101. Let’s RECAP, 100 days ago, I flew to Germany to work and (to see the world), but honestly more on the work and study part. Yes… I know the studying part is quite endless. I too, actually wonder, when will it end but since the answer is at the moment blurry…I’m still studying at 26. (And I’m curious why mom and dad find it so great?)

So, when you decide on something massive, like moving out from your parents’ house, 6, 444 miles away, on your own, thinking that everything is going to be okay, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s NOT. I’m not a mean person, in fact I’m telling the truth. But it’s NOT that all BAD either. There are of course some perks and surprises. But hey that’s just the way life is, a balance of good and challenging experiences. And so, for one, I wrote all of my experiences and in congruence to that, 10 things that I learned about life, now that I’m so far away from all of the things that I was once used to.

IT’S HARDER TO SPEND YOUR OWN INCOME. I never really had the chance to fully understand this understatement. My parents would usually sponsor my financial deficiencies and I honestly don’t have to worry. I mean everybody knows how difficult dealing with your own money is. And now I find it more difficult to whether I’d buy something that I really (really) want or sparing it for the future. I’d die of wanting to buy something out of lust and find myself deciding to return it and just walking away from it while repeating the Mantra “Do not return”. It’s funny how my brain tells me to get it and how my conscience tells me otherwise. But 100 days later I’ve gotten used to it. One thing that I learned is: “Do not indulge on small, petty things. Save your money for the best, most important and unexpected occurrences of your life”.

THE ART OF BUDGETING IS KEY. It is the ultimate key of survival albeit wherever you are. But then you have to make new adjustments every now and then, depending on your needs (and not distinctly according to what you only want). But the most important aspect is that: “You make it all fit in. You make it work. And you stay firm.”

LONELINESS IS A CHOICE. This word is sad enough as a word. (LOL). That’s probably one of my many concerns before deciding to work outside my country. But the gift of time changes one’s illusion about life. You see time is an endless element and when a person uses it wisely, a lot of things can happen in a day. I guess, what I’ am trying to imply and what I had probably been doing this past four months, is using my time here in Germany on a happier scale and not on the depressive part. You can be physically lonely but you don’t have to feel alone. In the same way that you are not the only person on an island (unless you literally are) and that possibilities and opportunities towards reaching out are always abundant.

TO TRAVEL IS ALWAYS A GOOD INVESTMENT. You’d be surprise of how things are vastly different but still beautiful from one country to another. And I’ve been to only 2 European Countries and I want go further and experience more: the sights, the people, the culture, the food and so on. Diversity is more to what my camera can capture. And I wished I can do better and share it with the people I love at home. Personally, I think it is better to invest on good memories than buying an expensive signature bag that can only fit basically 3 to 5 items.

A LANGUAGE IS THE SOUL OF THE COUNTRY. I have to be honest, I learned German to be able to work here in Germany and as communication medium between me and my colleagues and also my patients. Which is basically the purpose of the course. But now that I’m really using it as part of my daily life I have to say that I understood more than just what the person is saying but also how they feel. The emotions strike through me: happiness, sadness, fear, excitement, loneliness and more. I finally understand now, that the language of a country is the fabric the holds its culture together: how the people of a place express their nationality, their traditions and their customs. And yes…I love every bit of the German Language the same way I love my mother tongue and the same way I was able to get through with my English Grammar.

THERE’S MORE OF YOU THAT YOU DON’T KNOW YET. It’s funny how you thought that you already figured yourself out and discover that you can actually do more. Made me smile that I’ve been trying new things and eventually find out that I’ am capable, I find it amusing and that I never thought I can do something like that. I mean, COOKING by the way. There’s actually more, like not eating rice 3 times a day, 7 days a week. That’s a compromise that I find so hard to accomplish. And 100 days later, here I’ am still alive and writing how ridiculous it is to be able to adapt to such change. One more example, I never thought I’d sweat at 10 Degrees.

INSURANCE IS IMPORTANT BUT D*#@ EXPENSIVE. Maybe I’m just too grown up and that I find myself day dreaming about my future. Not that 3-to-5 years-kind-of-future but the one that’s too far away, when I’m all wrinkly with gray hair kind-of-future. I still however find being ensured very important, I just never expected that insurance companies would also secure a good price. But I learned… and it’s fine. All things in life, those that are important cost more. And you should never be frugal when comes to these things. Health is still more important than Versace.

THE TIME ZONE DIFFERENCE IS A BRAIN TWISTER. Well you wake up and the people back home are eating lunch. You just finished lunch and the people back home are about to sleep. You’re about sleep and they’re at the peak of breaking dawn. And here I’ am counting the hours thinking if they are working, sleeping or watching whatever. Time is already too confusing for me and the Time Differences make it worst. I arrived here last December and I’ am 7 hours late than my parents in the Philippines and this coming spring I’ll be only 6 hours late. Why? I don’t know. The geographical explanation is too broad for me. Or maybe I wasn’t paying attention in school back then.

SOME THINGS JUST TAKE TIME. Is it just me or I just learned a lot of things about time? It’s to versatile. It can stretch towards extremes. It can be too fast or it can be to slow. Sometimes you chase after it sometimes you wait for it. But with adaptation it requires all measures. But what’s important is, you take (your new) life one day at a time. You work accordingly, sometimes you need to hurry up because time is almost up, sometimes you take work lightly while there’s still time. Also, every person has their own respective time. You can’t compare your clock value with other people. The situation, like people is always different, slightly the same but never exactly identical. That’s why you can’t pressure yourself with what or how fast others can achieve something. Things happen perfectly according to one’s own time.

FAMILY IS STILL EVERYTHING. Well apart from bigger dreams and greener Pasteur, I personally decided to go beyond boarders not just for me but for my family. It entails sacrifice with almost everything (that includes basically numbers): Distance, Time, Currency and an infinite amount of love that surpasses every challenge that I encountered so far. And it’s not just me… I’m sure somewhere not too far from where I’ am, there’s a Filipino who feels the same. And I’ am actually proud and happy because it is our innate nature (as a Filipino), without obligation to still find the heart to help without anything in return. And to share what you have, to the extent that you have less than what you gave, has always been difficult. And it’s funny because we still do it anyway.

And about the photos, I always wanted to shoot (with my camera) in the woods. But not as little riding hood, though the concept would have been epic. So, we went to this little town called Bastei, and hiked all the way to heaven. Just because it everything was heavenly at the top… Hoped you like the photos as much as like taking them.

And now that I’ve written 1,655 words in this article, then I think it’s already sufficient and also close to boring. I shall therefore end this post with day dreams and may fluffy unicorns navigate your way to the most colorful rainbow.

#photography #travels #europe #nature

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filipeteimuraz · 6 years ago

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Learn from the Best: 6 Skills All Great Writers Have (and How to Learn Them)

If you want to be a successful online marketer, there’s one thing you must be able to do:

you must be able to write.

Writing is involved in almost every type of content creation there is.

Emails, blog posts, and books are all primarily written content.

But even for videos, podcasts, and courses, you need to write content as well as scripts.

I’ll be honest with you:

If you’re a terrible writer, it’s unlikely you’ll be successful.

It’s harsh, but it’s true.

The good news is that you probably aren’t a terrible writer. It’s pretty hard to be one.

But at the same time, it’s hard to become a great writer.

Even after years of writing, I still wouldn’t say I’m a great writer—maybe a good one.

The key thing that you need to know is that you can improve your writing skills.

By studying the works of great writers, you can learn what makes their writing great.

And with practice, you can improve the effectiveness of your own writing, which means more traffic, subscribers, and customers.

Although you could spend dozens of hours doing that research yourself, you could just let me show you which skills are the most important when it comes to writing.

I have studied a wide variety of top notch writers (who are also great marketers) over the years and noticed that they all have certain skills in common.

In this article, I’ll break down these skills, showing you examples of them in action and ways to develop them.

By the end of this post, you should have a concrete game plan of how to become a better writer for the benefit of your business.

1. Having a big vocabulary doesn’t make you a great writer

When most people picture great writers, they think of them crafting sentences full of obscure words such as aphesis and esculent.

But the people who use words like that are usually terrible writers.

The measure of a writer is not how big his or her vocabulary is. As long as you have a decent vocabulary and understand the fundamentals of grammar of the language you’re using, you can be a good writer.

Even if you’re just learning a language, don’t think that you can’t be a good writer just because you don’t know every word of it.

There are plenty of successful bloggers who write in their second language (e.g., Bamidele Onibalusi).

Is their writing perfect from a grammar and vocabulary perspective? No, of course not.

But even without an extensive vocabulary, they’re able to create content that people love to read.

There’s actually a way for us to quantify the complexity of writing. It’s called the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scale.

It looks at the length of words, and a few other factors, in order to determine at what grade level people could understand your content.

By copying a few sample blog posts into this readability score calculator, I was able to create this chart:

The three other writers on this list are all great writers in my opinion, or at least very good.

Notice that Brian and Ramit both write at about 4th grade level, as do I. That means the average 10-year-old could read most of our content because it’s not very complex.

Even though Michael Hyatt writes at a more sophisticated level, it’s still only at a grade 7 level.

The big question then becomes: Why?

The reason why great writers use simple words and phrases is because they write for the reader, not themselves.

They may appreciate the intricacies of the English language, but most readers don’t care about that. They want their information in the simplest and easiest to comprehend way.

Obviously, it’s much easier to read and understand short simple words than to figure out what the heck clandestine means (if you are curious, it means “done in secret”).

Oh yeah, there’s one other benefit to writing simply: you can write much faster.

Instead of searching for the “perfect” word, you use plain language—typically the first words that come to mind. These words are usually the words that your audience understands easily as well, so they’re really the perfect choice.

How can you apply this? This is a very simple skill to develop: just write. When you’re writing something, write down the first things that come to mind instead of searching for more complicated words instead.

Don’t worry if you make mistakes; you can always fix them when you edit.

2. Do you care how your readers feel?

Poor writers do a variety of things.

Some write what they themselves would want to read.

Others write to sound as intelligent as possible.

Either way, it’s not about the reader. Instead, it’s more about “look at how smart and awesome I am.”

Very few people are interesting enough to make this strategy work for them.

When writers focus on themselves, their writing is not compelling to the reader. These kinds of writers either improve over time as they recognize their mistakes, or they blame the readers for not recognizing good content.

I have to ask you a tough question now:

When you write content, do you think of the reader first or do you think about how to make yourself look the best (as the author)?

It’s not necessarily one or the other. Your answer could be somewhere in the middle (i.e., sometimes you focus on yourself).

The simple solution: If you’ve recognized an opportunity for improvement here, it’s easy to take advantage of it, at least in theory.

The answer is to develop empathy.

Empathy basically means that you can understand your readers’ perspective: their problems, interests, personality, and other relevant aspects of their lives.

It takes time to develop empathy, and I’m not sure if you can ever master it completely.

But empathy really shows in great writing.

The best writers use empathy both to understand what readers need to hear (solve their problems) and to determine the best way to teach them.

Some audiences need to be shown direct solutions; others need step-by-step directions; while others need a gentle prod in the right direction.

Examples of empathy in action: When writers truly understand their audience and then focus all their attention on writing that will help the audience as much as possible, it shows.

Take a look at this post from Seth Godin. He mentions the word “you” or its variations 10 times in about 100 words. This post is all about the reader.

The post is about being passionate about your work.

Many bloggers write on this topic. Most would have focused on how their own corporate experience led them to the epiphany that they needed to care more.

But that would have fallen on deaf ears.

Instead, Seth focuses on the reader’s life. He explains the problem using the language that the reader would use to describe the problem in detail.

And then, he offers a simple, one-line solution.

Or how about James Clear? He’s another great writer.

His posts aren’t based on the numbers in Google’s Keyword Planner. They are based on questions that he gets from his readers.

He knows that for every person who expresses frustration or identifies a problem, there are a hundred other people in his audience with the same issue.

So James uses his readers’ language so that other readers can relate to it and feel that the content was created specifically for them.

There’s no other way to do that other than by writing solely for the reader.

The hard part – How to develop empathy: Telling you to develop empathy is easy, but actually doing it isn’t so easy: it takes a lot of conscious practice.

But it’s not all or nothing either. Just because you don’t perfectly understand your audience doesn’t mean you can’t partially understand them.

And as you get better at empathizing with your audience, your writing will improve.

To practice this skill and develop empathy, I suggest the following five-step process. Perform it every time you create content:

1. What problems (and related problems) do your readers have around [topic of choice]?

2. How significant are these problems (very serious? or just minor pains?)

3. How do you think your readers would describe these problems?

Use steps #1-3 to outline your post. Create an intro and headlines that a reader would not only understand but would see and think, “I was just wondering about that!”

4. After writing the content, look at every single sentence/paragraph and ask yourself: “Does my reader actually care about this?” If not, either rephrase it, or take it out completely.

5. Study all comments you get on your content (whether it’s a blog comment, review, email, etc.). Try to understand why a reader says they do or don’t like it.

Create a simple checklist using these five steps, and follow it every time you write.

If you do, you’ll notice that your content will start to resonate with readers more and more.

Your audience will be more excited to read your posts, and they’ll be more engaged. You’ll get readers’ comments telling you their thoughts and opinions, which will be full of great ideas for more content (I get great suggestions all the time from my readers).

Ultimately, when it comes to your business, this type of resonance is very important because it tells the reader that you understand them.

If you create a product, they know that you’ve created it just for them and that it will meet all their needs and wants. Developing empathy is a skill that will have a long-term impact on your revenue.

3. Great writers aren’t born overnight

Think of the great writers in history: Shakespeare, Hemingway,…Neil Patel (maybe one day).

Whomever you think of when you think of great writers, it’s important to realize that they were not born that way.

Although writing is more abstract than mathematics or programming, it is a skill like any other and can be developed.

At one point or another, all writing greats could barely string a sentence together.

However, they all shared one thing: a drive to be a great writer.

Right now, you need to check if your motivation to become a better writer is enough to get you to the level you want.

If you really want to be the best writer you can be, you’ll have to write many hours, every single day. That’s what it takes to be the very best.

If you want to be one of the best writers who is also a marketer, that’s still hard, but not quite as difficult. You’ll still want to practice at least 10-20 hours a week.

But the most important thing you need to determine is this: do you really want to be a better writer?

Determine your goals, and then figure out what you’ll need to do to get there.

For example, if you want to be a blogger, start by taking a look at your favorite bloggers.

If you scroll down to the bottom of Quick Sprout’s blog page, you can click on the “last” button to see my oldest posts.

And if you do, you’ll see that my first post on this blog was written in 2007:

If you wanted to reach my current level of success, are you prepared to write about 2-3 posts a week for 8 years?

And then write over 300 guest posts as well?

If you are willing to put in that work, I guarantee that you will be very successful.

How to put in your dues in a systematic way: If you simply say out loud, “I’m going to write a blog post every day for the next three years,” chances are that you won’t.

You need to develop your own system that keeps you accountable.

Step 1 is to determine what you need to do to become the writer you want to be.

Create a new document that clearly states what you think you need to do.

For example:

Step 2 is to determine a schedule that you can stick to. This is formed by your personal schedule. If you have more time to spend on writing, you have more flexibility.

Here’s what it might look like:

I will write and publish a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, no matter what.

You have the plan, but you need to make sure you follow through with it.

Step 3 is to find a way that will hold you accountable.

It’s really easy to just not write a post because you’ll barely notice the difference in the short term. But in the long term, it can make a huge difference.

So, how will you hold yourself accountable? There’s no wrong answer, but make sure that there’s a serious consequence if you don’t follow through with your plan.

For example, you could say that if you miss a post:

you will donate $50 to a charity

you will do something that you don’t like

you will email a friend or family member revealing an embarrassing secret

When you’re feeling motivated, you’ll have no problem writing. But when you’re not feeling motivated, this accountability plan will keep you on track.

Now you should have a simple but solid writing plan:

You should print this out and put it somewhere where you will see it at least once a day (at least until you develop good habits).

Finally, step 4 is to forget about the result, and focus on the process.

The reason for this is that in order to get the most out of your writing, you need to focus on writing itself as much as possible.

The whole point of this writing plan is for you to not focus on the results.

You don’t need to worry, thinking: “Am I doing enough to become a successful writer?” because you’ve already determined exactly what you need to do.

If you just focus on adhering to your plan, you’ll know with nearly 100% certainty that you will become a very good and successful writer when you are done.

So, don’t worry about traffic stats and other metrics while you write; just focus on writing well—the result will come.

4. “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time”

That quote has been attributed to many great writers, but it appears to have been first said by Blaise Pascal.

Regardless of who said it, the meaning is incredibly powerful.

When we talked about using simple words in writing, I advocated writing down the first words that came to mind.

When you do this, you’ll often end up using more words than you need to.

And the reason why this is a bad thing is because it dilutes the value in your content.

Think of it this way: your content has a message that has a certain value to your readers.

I would define the intensity—or quality—of writing using a simple formula:

Intensity = Value / Length

The longer your content is (if the value is held constant), the lower the intensity.

If you really want to inspire your readers to take action, your writing needs to blow them away.

It needs to provide value at a fast enough rate so that it feels to them as if a light bulb went off in their heads. In other words, your writing needs to be of a high intensity.

The more unnecessary words you have, the lower the intensity of your writing will be, and the smaller the impact your content will make.

Again, we can look at Seth Godin for a perfect example of high intensity writing. He makes every single word count.

Despite writing very short posts, he delivers a ton of value to his readers, which results in significant emotional reactions from them:

As you’ve noticed, I take a very different approach with my posts.

They are very long, usually at least 4,000 words. Since they are so long, I need to pack them with value.

Where Seth’s content is more strategic (broad thinking), my posts are more on specific tactics and ways to implement them, which takes more time to explain.

But although my posts are between 4,000 and 6,000 words, they are usually much longer when I first write them. I edit them down and remove as much “fluff” as I can.

With blog posts, you have a lot of flexibility with length. In other forms of writing, you don’t.

In emails or landing pages, you typically only have a limited amount of space (often fewer than 100 words) to get as much value across to your readers as possible.

Notice in the above example that every sentence either describes a feature or a benefit of the product.

How do you cut out the “fluff”? Like with these other skills, it takes practice to become a good editor (you could hire one if you wanted).

To practice, go through your content, sentence by sentence, and ask yourself if there is a simpler way to get your message across.

For example, the sentence:

There are some marketing channels that are better than others, like email marketing.

could be reduced to:

Email marketing produces the best ROI of any marketing channel.

That simple change took the sentence from 13 words to 10 words, and made the meaning of the sentence clearer.

That’s a 23% decrease in length. If you originally wrote a 3,000-word article and decreased every sentence by that percentage, you’d end up with a 2,300 word article.

Although it’s shorter, it will make a bigger impact on your readers because of its increased intensity.

Here’s a brilliant article on specific edits that you can make to make your writing more powerful to get you started.

5. I’ve never seen a great writer that doesn’t have this

What do typical writers do to prepare for an article?

They do a bit of research on Google and then compile what they learn into an article.

This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a recipe for producing content that is very similar to what’s already out there.

The best writers I’ve seen can write about any topic in their niche and put some kind of unique spin—angle—on it.

Besides being unique, that additional something is also insightful and adds to the value the reader gets.

In Breakthrough Advertising, a legendary copywriting book by Eugene Schwartz, he notes that great copywriters have a wide array of experience.

You might consider them jacks of all trades.

Great writers read and practice things in all sorts of fields. If I had to boil it down to specific traits, they all possess high levels of curiosity and an open mind.

They can write an article about social media marketing and use an example of hiking up a mountain in a way that makes the point they are making clearer to the reader.

One marketer that does this really well is Bryan Harris at Video Fruit. He often shares personal stories in the introduction of his posts. But he always finds a clever, insightful way to tie it back to the point he’s making:

Another well-known marketer, Ramit Sethi, often mentions real life stories in his blog posts and emails.

For example, in an email about “unconventional ways to win,” he mentions both baseball and government officials as examples:

The great power of connections: The reason why these unexpected connections are valuable is because they can relate your thoughts using a different language.

Some points will be difficult to explain no matter what niche you are writing for.

For example, maybe you’re trying to explain to your readers how to write in a conversational tone and why it’s more interesting to their readers.

If your readers don’t understand your explanation, reading it over and over again won’t help them.

But often, when you make a point in a different context, it becomes much clearer.

With regards to writing conversationally, for example, you could tell a story of being bored at a lecture when a lecturer simply read his slides to his students instead of talking to them. That’ll illustrate your point in a way that’s recognizable to most people.

So, how do you do it? The very nature of this skill is abstract. You’re making connections that other people don’t think of naturally, and that’s what adds a unique angle to your writing.

In order to do this, you need two things:

Experience – The more experiences you have in life, the more connections you can make.

Practice – At first, you won’t make these connections naturally. When you write about a complex topic, force yourself to come up with five connections you could use to explain your point. Over time, you will naturally notice good opportunities.

And when I’m talking about experience, I mean different experiences.

Always be ready to try something new:

travel

take a cooking class

reconnect with old acquaintances

take an online course in a subject you’ve never studied

Basically, now you have a very good reason to learn or try anything you’ve ever wanted.

6. Want to become (and stay) a great writer? You need to have this…

The final skill that the best writers (in a marketing context) have is adaptability.

Each content medium has its own quirks. Although your writing style will be more or less the same, the best writers know how to tailor their writing for each medium.

When I say medium, I’m talking about forms of content such as:

blog posts

emails

Kindle books

social media

I could give you many examples, but let’s look at Danny Iny, founder of Firepole Marketing.

He’s written multiple courses in the past:

But he’s also written hundreds of blog posts and guest posts.

On top of that, he actively engages with his followers and customers on social media:

And if that wasn’t enough, he just released a new book, in addition to several others:

On top of knowing how to write for different formats and audiences, great writers keep up with change.

Take me as an example. If you look at older Quick Sprout posts, you will see that many are only 500-1,000 words.

But as blogging has developed, good writing practices for the topics I cover have changed.

I noticed that longer posts performed better, and now almost all my posts are 4,000+ words long. I try to make every post the definitive post on that specific topic.

How do you develop adaptability? By definition, you need to learn how to respond positively to changing circumstances. And in the marketing world, things change fast, which makes it even more important.

The first key takeaway for you is this: adaptability comes second. First, you need to hone your initial skills.

In practical terms, this means that you should pick one main format of writing and focus as much of your attention on it as possible. That’s how you’ll learn all the ins and outs of it.

For most, blogging is a great place to start.

Once you’ve put in the time and effort to fully understand how to write great blog posts, you can move on to the next format, be it email, social media, or something else.

In the initial period, you can still write emails or other content, but most of your focus will be on the first format you’ve chosen. Then, you’ll shift that focus to the second medium.

The second key takeaway is that you always need to be looking for what’s next, whether it’s a new medium or changes happening within an old format.

When you see a new type of content becoming popular (e.g., lately video content and podcasts), give it a try because you can always learn something from it to become a better writer.

You should always be testing different ways of reaching your audience.

Conclusion

Being a great writer will be very valuable for the foreseeable future, no matter which industry you work in.

And even if you’re not an experienced writer today, you can become one with practice: all great writers had to start from some point.

If you follow the steps I laid out in this post, I guarantee that in a few years, you will be an excellent writer.

You can use those skills however you please, whether it’s to get more followers, subscribers, a better job, or take your sales to a new level.

http://www.quicksprout.com/learn-from-the-best-skills-all-great-writers-have-and-how-to-learn-them/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2019/03/learn-from-best-6-skills-all-great.html

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alisonfloresus · 7 years ago

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CREATING VALUE

CREATING VALUE AND ART OF LEADERSHIP, A PRESENTATION DELIVERED BY MR AYOTUNDE OKUNOWO DURING THE ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM OF AGSOBA CLUB OF FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC ILARO, OGUN STATE.

Today is indeed a remarkable day. I therefore count it as a great honour to be among you to share some thoughts together. I thank the executives of the club for putting up this kind of forum and for inviting me here . This is highly commendable and I salute your outstanding leadership! I also greet my audience with great humility. It takes few men to rule the world, and the few I believe, constitutes this audience.

In 1900, the world panels of engineers had a conference on how to build a device that could fly on air, and at the end of the symposium, it was unanimously agreed that no metal could fly as anything denser than the weight of air can not be suspended in the sky, therefore the first possibility of building an aircraft was washed away. Just three years after, mere bicycle repairers, people who weren’t skilled in physics or aeronautics engineering, Orville and Wilbur Wright, known as the Wright brothers constructed the first aircraft which flew on 15th December, 1903. If we are to talk about cars, Lamborghini cars remain one of the choicest and sleekest cars in history. This car was actually invented by an Agricultural scientist. Ferrucio Lamborghini was just dissatisfied with the clutch of his old Ferrari, rather than complain as we often do, he went into his laboratory and gave birth to the world famous and classic cars called Lamborghini.

As we have seen from the verdict of history, creating value is not a function of degrees, certificates, race, colour, creed, or tribe. Value is a measurable quantity which is created after the most rabid, radical, unusual and provoking thought line. In essence, anybody that wants to create value must not accept the status quo or be complacent with things around him. He must be a person who is ready to challenge and probe into normal things. He must have the courage to stand alone. The sufficiency to be abused as an abnormal person, and his ability not to go in the way of the crowd, because he that follows the crowd would not be followed by a crowd.

Like my book thirty things you must do before you are thirty, I want to give you five great ways to create Value. And the first one is that anybody that wants to create value must think without the box. What is the box? How do I know whether I think in d box? Thinking within the box is the pancea of letting your self think alone only in the acceptable standard way of behaving or limit once oneself only to the limits of the comfort zone or popular knowledge. Let’s test ourselves and know whether we are thinking without the box or outside the box. lets test ourselves and know whether we are thinking without the box or in the box. If you are in a race, and you overtake the person in the 2nd position, what position are you- if u say 1st, you are thinking inside the box Which is correct to say, the yolk of the egg is white or the yolk of eggs are white- if your answer still carries white, you are thinking inside the box. A man saw a snake crossing the road, and swerved to crush it with his tyres. All the street lights were off, as well as the car’s headlight. There were no other lights along the road. How did the man see the snake- if you are still thinking about a source of light, you are wrong, you are thinking inside the box A father and the son had a terrible accident, on getting to the hospital, the doctor exclaimed, “oh my son” who is the doctor? If you do not know that the doctor is the son’s mother, you are still thinking inside the box A farmer has five haystacks in one field, and four haystacks in another. How many haystack would he have if he combined them all in one field.- if you say nine, you are right inside the box.

Distinguished audience, anybody that wants to create value must improve his thought line and think without the box. The very first law of creating value is to think outside the box. The late business mogul Otunba Gadaffi of DMT mobile toilet saw money in the management of human excreta called shit, while other were covering their nose and looking sideways. What is the box in your life, it is your parent’s wealth, your beauty, your grades, or your religion? Don’t limit yourself. Explore the genius in you. Tap into your greatest resource. Don’t be cornered by anything. There’s a part of your yearning for expression. Don’t allow anything to pin you down. Think without it. Beautiful Nubia read Veterinary Medicine, how many who have known him as a veterinary doctor, or how many who have known Funke Akindele (Jennifer) as a lawyer, or Lagbaja as a mathematician.

Secondly, anybody that wants to create value must invest in himself. Abraham Lincoln said, “I will study and prepare, maybe one day my chance would come”. Opportunity dances to him who is already at the dance floor. Now is all that we have. Those would want to become champions do not need to carry weights; those who want to become champions should simply carry information. Everybody that thrives for create an impact must take the pain to develop himself. No pain, no gain. Go for seminars, read good books, be a part of a progressive association, dissociate yourself from time wasters. Unnecessary arguments about music and sport hardly take a man anywhere. Moreover, poor minds discuss people, average minds about events and great minds about ideas. Greek philosopher Sallust said ‘the renown that beauty and wealth confer is fleeting and frail, mental excellence is the splendid and lasting possession’ Take the necessary pain of development now. I recommend you read more than your peers because a man who wants to build a cage would lay a slab of wood, a man who wants to build a house would dig six feet down, while a man who wants to build a tower would dig many miles down. How robust and productive you want your life to be depends on how deep and wide you read as a person. A poem says ‘the height which great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companion slept were toiling upward through the night’. Don’t join the bandwagon of those who ping their lives away, they can’t buy a book but they can subscribe for BIS with N1500. What are you doing in facebook and face their book; they should not be carried away with the glitz and glamour, facebook is a fakebook. The world would never celebrate common men, the world only celebrates the uncommon men. Leave the majority to do what the majority desires, but be part of the minority that the majority would later celebrate.

Thirdly, anybody that wants to create Value Must have the spirit of persistence. Recent statistic shows that man can survive 40days Without Food, 4days Without Water, 4minutes Without Air, but only 4seconds Without Hope. That reminds me of the story of two popular drinks. In one, the foolish inventor, the man whose name was rubbed of history, took a drink in a black kettle and the formula for preparing it and sold it to a chemist known as Asa Candler for a peasant amount. The wise chemist took the leaflet from the foolish scientist and modified it till it become coca cola that you and I drink today. On the other hand, the inventor of the second drink was abused for his tasteless mixture, people complained that the drink was more of a drug, a sedative than refreshing, yet the unrelenting scientist tried again, and at the 7th mixture the drink became celebrated and accepted hence he named it 7up. While the first inventor sold a fortune due to lack of persistence, the other scientist maintained his fortune. The kindergarten poem says “good better best, I will never rest, until my good is better and my better best” only with persistence did the snail reach the ark that was the summation of Andres Lara in his book inspiring the sleeping giant within you. Nothing is ever done at once. The tallest building in the world starts brick after brick. Rome itself was not built in a day. Life, like bicycle is one step after another. It is the sun and the moon which keeps their tracks that lightens the world. A goldsmith as you know would hit the steel hundred of times before it splits into two. The road to success is lined with many tempting parking space, don’t park in one. Sir Winston Churchill of Britain said thus; never, never, never, never give in. So far you are faced in the right direction, it doesn’t matter the size of your step

Anybody that wants to create value must be humble; ‘My character is greater than my book’, so were we taught in Abeokuta Grammar School. What would limit a man, is grossly is character, that is why you must always put some checks and balances, always asking yourself, whether you are doing the right things. You must have heard the story of two job seekers who went for an interview. When they got to the venue, a short man, typical of a dwarf, mistakenly stepped on one of the guys. As if they had prepared for such an encounter, our bosom friends lambasted the man and called him all sorts of name. They only got to the interview room to learn that the dear man was the dear boss of the organization. Do not look condescending on anybody. Have sublime faith in your ideas, even if you have the highest purchasing power. Never be like the hen that has barely laid an egg but cackles as if it as laid an asteroid. You may never know who is who. Greet everybody you know, by name if possible. Benjamin Franklin advised “Be civil to all, acquainted to many, liberal to few and be friend to one”Never taste what you know you cannot eat. Desist in neither taking nor accepting bribe. Do not pay for marks in school, if you think you can bury your past, some of your friends know how well to use the shovel. Exposing your body would get you a man but that would not keep him. Tread the path of honour. Be time conscious in all you do. Somebody somewhere is watching you that you might know. If you do not have a good name, you have lost everything in life. Take care of your character.

Value is also created by running from energy reducers. If there is any relevant example I must also give here, that would take us to Sparta, in Greece. The story about the rise and fall of the Greek empire is a story that tells us, that we can be a man or woman of consistent value, only if we can be as disciplined as it warrants. In the days when Sparta embraced great disciplines they were the greatest warriors known on earth. History has it that they wore simple garment, ate cold meal and put their time to the discipline of the art and mind. They were on top of the world. But sooner or later, the citizens of Sparta started to keep harem of women, drinking wine and wearing fine robes. Their power no doubt began to grow less until the very mighty city of Sparta was overcome. The presence of sheer indiscipline robbed them of their hereditary values. He that wants to lead the orchestra must back the crowd

Finally, anybody That wants to create value must belive in God, As H.G Wells, rightly puts it ‘A man who is not religious begins at nowhere, and ends at nothing. God is the grand architect of the cosmic host. If you want to have a glorious end, take God seriously. He holds the key to every success. By strength shall no man prevail. Post Santa simpilicita “the world is spiritually entwisted” Be a man of no little religious standard, there is power in words. It is like a hammer which forges steel and shatters glass. Confess the right things, say I am great always like the famous Mohammed Alli. Sow words of prayer into your life. Hold your articles of faith and never let it go. Education without God is a waste of time. but when F.W Nietzsche experienced the spiritual toxicity of this world, he cried: O santa simplicita-this world is not spiritually simple.

My passionate listeners, I have taken much time to dwell upon how to create value because that’s where leadership starts from. Anybody that creates value is already a leader. Like I told the young man who came to me few days ago. The young man said sir, I want to become a public speaker can you teach me how to become one?, I told the young man I said “if you want to become a public speaker, go and do something worth hearing, that is go and create value and people would call you to come and speak in public”. The leadership in you is not expressed until people sees you as a person of value who can be trusted with elements of power.

I would consider the whole essence of this topic as not totally dealt with, if I do not pick some lines from the words of the English writer, novelist, poet and journalist; Rudyard Kipling, in his classic poem, If…, he wrote “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, If you can talk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch, If all men count with you, but none too much, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it” Then would you be a man my son!

from JournalsLINE http://journalsline.com/2017/06/09/creating-value/ from Journals LINE https://journalsline.tumblr.com/post/161609821100

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travelblogtips-blog · 8 years ago

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Tips to become professional travel blogger

1. Be inspired but don’t copy

I’m always shocked by the amount of travel bloggers out there who tell me they don’t read other blogs. WTF?

Could you imagine a fashion designer that never looks at clothes designed by others? Or a writer who never read a book written by someone else. Or a chef who only ate in their own restaurant?

If you don’t enjoy reading other people’s blogs then people probably won’t enjoy reading yours.

Blogs inspire me and help me create new ideas for blog content. They also encourage me to travel, bake, shop, create, design and photograph. I read blogs from all difference niches and try to bring all that inspiration back to The Travel Hack.

Use blogs to inspire you in your own writing but be careful not to copy or compare. Comparison is the thief of joy and all that…

Check out: Travel bloggers to look out for in 2014 if you’re looking for some cool blogs to follow.

2. Write about what you love and be informative

When I think about my favourite bloggers they have two things: passion and knowledge.

You need passion to keep your blog interesting, inspiring and entertaining but you need knowledge to keep your readers coming back.

Provide your readers with information they can’t find elsewhere and become an expert in your chosen subject.

Kash from Budget Traveller is a great example of someone who is passionate AND informative. Kash is the king of the Luxury Hostel and he even inspired me to start staying in stylish hostels such as KEX in Iceland. His passion for the luxury hostel is infectious and his knowledge about European hostels is incredible.

Find something that you’re passionate about and share your love with the world!

3. Be unique

This is easier said than done but in order to stand out from the crowd you need to step away from the crowd and be different. A simple way to find a unique voice for your blog is to combine two or three niches. Your first niche will probably be travel so be creative with your second and third niche. Maybe it’s travel and fashion, travel and camping, travel and city life, travel and pets, travel and books. The list could go on but I’m sure you get my point. Your second interest can help to define your blog and make it different.

4. What is success?

You can’t achieve your goals if you don’t know what they are.

In order to have a successful travel blog, you need to decide what success is to you. Do you want to have 100,000 readers a month, publish a book, improve your writing and photography, use your blog as a platform to get work or to have an online diary you can be proud of?

Whatever your reason for blogging, make sure you write it down somewhere so you can put together a plan to achieve your goals and know when you’re getting there.

5. Collaborate

Blogging can take up a lot of time and energy so why not work with friends, family or fellow bloggers to create either a collaborative blog or collaborative posts? A great example of a collaborative blog is Travelettes.

Some of my most popular posts, such as ‘The Best Places for a Weekend Escape’, were written with my favourite bloggers and my favourite blogs often have multiple writers.

A collaborative blog can still be very personal but you have the advantage of multiple voices and more time, more resources and more ideas to create something bigger and better.

6. Brush up on your photography skills

They say a picture speaks a thousand words so let your photos do the talking for a change. The internet is a fast-paced environment where people have a ridiculously short attention span and photographs are a great way to capture people’s attention.

You don’t need to have a fancy DSLR camera to take great pictures, you just need to have an eye detail. Some of my favourite photos that I’ve taken recently where taken on a Nokia 1020 such as this Instagram essay from Copenhagen.

If you are in the market for a fancy camera, take a look at ‘What cameras do travel bloggers use?’

7. Spelling and grammar ARE important

Spellcheck was invented for a reason. Use it. That is all.

8. Embrace social media

Social media is the best way to promote your blog, find new blogs and keep up with your favourite blogs. Personally, Twitter is my favourite because it’s a great way to have quick and informal chats. There are loads of social networks out there and I wouldn’t recommend trying to use them all. Stick to 2-3 that you enjoy using and use them well. I tend to use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on a daily basis and occasionally dip into Pinterest and G+.

Remember: The more you put into social media the more you’ll get out of it but don’t spend more than half an hour a day on it.

9. Learn about the techy stuff

By ‘techy stuff’ I basically mean everything that isn’t writing and social media because there is much more techy stuff to blogging then most people imagine. You need to know about hosting, WordPress, SEO, plugins, backups, scheduling, Photoshop and more. Next week I’ll be talking about how to set up a blog and I’ll be keeping it super simple for any technophobes out there.

10. Don’t do it for the money…

…because there isn’t any. (Or not a lot anyway!)

There are so many guides about ‘how to make money from your blog’ when really they should be entitled, ‘How to use your blog as a portfolio to showcase your talents to find work to make money.’ OK, it isn’t as catchy but there are lots of bloggers out there who are selling a dream that is unattainable for most people.

If you want to make money from your blog, think of it as a very time-consuming portfolio rather than a single source of income.

11. Just start blogging!

And finally, my bonus tip is to just start blogging. Stop worrying about design and what other people think and what other people are doing, just get started. It doesn’t matter if your blog isn’t perfect because the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll begin learning how to make it perfect.

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rigelmejo · 5 years ago

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Like to preface, I never learned a language to fluency so everything i say needs a million grains of salt but like i do think it’s true, that the more u study languages, the easier it gets. not in the sense that it will ever be magically fast, but in the sense you get a better idea of how to study proficiently. You get a better idea of how to do the most possible in the least amount of time.

Because like? Chinese - it’s objectively hard. It’s hard. I think it’s difficult. But I am making progress at maybe 50% the speed I made progress in French. Which is a LOT faster than I made progress in Japanese (which was about 30% of the speed I learned french). In French, I got to being able to read the gist of informational texts/forums at around 6 months - and maybe 3-4 months to start struggling through titles and simple texts. Then maybe 1-1.5 years for being able to mostly read simple texts, get the gist of historical texts and light novels, and struggle through pretty much anything else - but at least get the basic ideas.

For Japanese? It took me 1.5 years to get the basic gist of BASIC things like titles/short captions. It took me 2 years to get to the point where I could read simple short dialogues in some slice-of-life daily-activity mangas, and sometimes be able to get the gist of the plot. I think right now, for Chinese, I would probably be somewhere slightly under that point - because I can read fanart comics and watch short fanwork animations based on things I know and follow the gist - but if I looked at something completely new its uncertain if I’d be able to get the gist at all. But like... that’s 3 months of chinese in comparison to 2 whole YEARS working on japanese.

If I’m going to be GENEROUS, I also had a 3 month-ish high school chinese class once upon a time, although i don’t remember much from the class. So that would be like 6 months total in my life studying chinese. Which is still a FAIR BIT faster than I accomplished things in japanese. It’s still slower than french, but french is definitely one of the easiest languages to try to read in if you’re a native english speaker (so many words are similar once you get some basic grammar and high frequency words learned).

If I keep progressing at this speed, I might be able to start struggling through web-novels and comprehending the gist at around 1 year. And for me, reading is the easiest way (and my favorite way) to improve my skills in a language. So once I hit that sweet spot where I CAN struggle to read, I’ll just keep improving at reading more or less as I just keep making myself read. And if Chinese is anything like French, then I’ll just need to be aware of the need to listen to chinese as well (and shadow audio for pronunciation) if I don’t want my listening comprehension to lag behind. That could be... a relatively decent level of reading ability in a few years. If it’s like french, but half as fast, then maybe 3-4 years to finally get to the point I don’t need a dictionary to read the stuff I want to be reading, and probably 1-2 years to start being able to grasp the main ideas of the target-stuff I want to read.

But like - my point? Is just that I am CERTAIN part of why I’m managing to progress to something I consider useful at a speed I am happy with, is because I’ve learned how I learn best.

For me, I know that I learn fastest by USING a language. My brain does not like being hand held, it does not like going slowly. My brain likes being thrown into a problem and being expected to solve it. It likes learning from context. It REMEMBERS best by being given a real context to associate the new words and grammar structures to - if it has a memorable example, that will make me learn it faster than mnemonics or repetition or anything else. Secondly - my brain acts like it always wants to go slow, and the best thing for it is to push myself past where I feel comfortable and keep over-challenging myself. It learns faster than I think it does, but I only can see that progress if I push myself.

For me, the fastest way to learn is:

To look up that 200-300 most common words tumblr post, for being able to communicate one’s thoughts, and make that the first list I work on learning. My brain likes knowing how to say anything it would need to say, and that list is perfect for prioritizing usability of a language (versus textbooks, which often prioritize classroom/work/hobby words before sentences like ‘i hope that’ ‘i need help with’ etc).

To look up a grammar guide, and read through that bastard. I’m not kidding - read through it. Don’t wait, don’t slow down. If a grammar point makes sense, move forward and do NOT bother trying to memorize it. Grammar points WILL keep popping up again and again in other textbooks you look at later, and as you look up structures later in context - so first literally just prioritize EXPOSING yourself at least once to the grammar structures and the explanation of how they work. (My brain always, without fail, wants me to slow down here - but it never actually needs to, slowing down here just prevents me from making progress as quickly as I’m able to). It’s boring, but do it - this step is so the structure of the language will make some sense to you, and be something you can start to interpret when you see/hear it.

Now start engaging with native material - right now. It’s the biggest struggle in the world. You maybe know 50-150 words. Start engaging with native material and looking things up that keep popping up. It’s a painful struggle at first - but its the easiest way to get started on learning the rest of that 300 word list, and to get started on learning the most common words by frequency (because they’re the words pissing you off the most as you see them over and over but don’t understand them). At this point get a good dictionary app or website lined up (that has audio examples) to use. Bonus points if you are also LISTENING to native material. With Chinese, I started with watching shows from day 1, with chinese subtitles on - which made looking up new words really easy, and made attaching pronunciation to words really easy. Youtube videos are also good for this. Again, at this point EVERYTHING is an absolute struggle. You just live with it. This step is to throw yourself into the deep end and make your brain START LEARNING AND CARING - this is the problem it’s being given to solve: how to understand. The difficulty makes your brain want to figure out what things mean, and try to figure them out - and this is also the basis for context you’ll refer back to as you learn more.

Once the absolute pain of the struggle finally hits its breaking point, find a general word frequency list of 500-2000 of the most common words in the language. You can either use a flashcard app (memrise/anki), literally just go through that list over and over, use a book focused on teaching them, use clozemaster if you want context around the words (which WILL be a struggle at first just like reading native materials, but if you’re improving it will become MOST obvious on that app when suddenly sentences go from seeming awful to get through, to seeming overly easy). This also might be where a textbook comes in - just so you can see those frequent words used in textbook example sentences, with explanations, over and over. This step is so that the next time you dive into native material, it hurts less.This is about expanding vocabulary.

After a while, gauge your progress by going back to native materials. (To some degree, always be engaging in native materials - but during step 4 of expanding vocab you can just do it passively without actually trying to learn much from native material). But once you feel you’ve improved your vocabulary, go back to trying to read/listen and gauge progress. There should be some difference. What’s easier to read? What’s easier to hear? What are the weak points - is it certain grammar structures you now need to look up more in depth? is it idioms holding you back? have you been focusing on fantasy words too much and you need more business vocab? is the listening weak - do you need to listen while reading more? Whatever your weak points, that will help you plan your next specific learning goals (aside from the obvious long term goals of - acquire more vocabulary and keep re-looking up grammar points until they stick). Clozemaster, again, I think is one of the fastest ways to gauge progress - the short sentences make it clear if your reading is improving or not, without being overwhelming. Youtube videos make it clear if your listening is improving or not - can you understand more without english subtitltes/without ANY subtitles, or is it still the same? It’s pretty obvious if you’re in a ‘struggling’ stage, a ‘gist understood’ stage, or a ‘easily understood’ stage. This step is about engaging in native material intensively again, to see what topics you actually CARE about learning, to practice comprehension, to put all the hard work to use and feel satisfied at the improvements.

Once you have noticed a jump in progress, take the time to look at your original high frequency word list again. Did you learn all of the 300 basic common words? If not, finish that up now so there isn’t a gap in knowledge. If there’s a real basic grammar point you didn’t learn, fill that gap now too. Then move on to the 500-2000 high frequency word list. If there’s a gap in what you know, work on filling it in now (by doing step 4 some more). If you noticed that you only understand grammar up to a POINT, then consider now diving into a new grammar guide or book and start reading into grammar more again - just read through it, don’t worry about memorizing. You just want to become more familiar with the parts you don’t understand, and get more exposure to other explanations for those grammar structures. This step is all about working in a more structured manner to fill in the gaps in your knowledge so you make sure the foundations you’ve build are solid. This step is all about finishing reading the actual word lists/pushing through flashcard or clozemaster drills/reading textbooks, and making sure everything you’ve learned is a solid level - whatever level that is. (Sort of like A1-B1 etc, you don’t want some reading ability at B2 then you get thrown a topic you forgot to study and suddenly you aren’t even A1 level comprehending anything).

Now just keep repeating steps 3-6: (3) engage with native material and look up things when not understanding something that keeps coming up is frustrating/holding back comprehension, (4) find a word list of a higher size if you get too frustrated from too many unknown-words and focus on word drills, (5) go back to native materials once that gets boring and gauge progress again.

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Once you see a significant progress-jump in your comprehension of native materials, you can do step 6 again and make sure your newly-learned level of comprehension has all it’s gaps filled in - by scanning over the entire word list you’ve been using/scanning over grammar books for structures you’ve been struggling to understand/doing more listening practice if that’s what you need/etc.

The key to studying efficiently, for me, is to first find word frequency lists and grammar guides and start reading those through. Then to throw myself headfirst into native materials and struggle horrifically - but it’s interesting material, and I know I’ll look up a bunch of the high-frequency words/grammar structures I encounter that keep eluding me (and the native content will provide context for those words/structures so I remember them more easily). Then once that is no longer efficient, diving into learning materials and just cramming new information quickly - again, because I’ll go back to native material later to get more exposure to those new things, and to get context to remember them better with. Then finally, as I keep cycling through this process, occasionally gauge my own progress and make more specific goals if I realize I have gaps in certain areas (which is almost ALWAYS in either certain topics of vocabulary, listening comprehension, or grammar points I haven’t read about yet and should read about once they start hindering my ability to comprehend things).

I know myself, and what I’ve learned is my brain loves to encourage me to study much slower and less efficiently than I know I’m capable of - because being thrown headfirst into challenging content feels HARD, but it’s also the way I learn quickest, because I learn the easiest when I’m just problem solving.

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I also know that for myself, the things that have made the most significant difference in how fast I learn are:

Finding a frequency word list immediately and using THAT to prioritize which words to learn.

Finding a grammar guide and CHUGGING through that as fast as possible as early as possible.

Engaging with native materials immediately, and often, even though at first (and in waves throughout my progress) it can be an absolute slog.

Doing listening early, often - listening to shows, listening to youtube videos, listening to audiobooks, listening to the pronunciation in the translators/dictionaries when I learn new words. (I did NOT listen to french often enough or early enough, and that still holds me back in french. In contrast, I did listening so immediately in chinese that even though my listening still isn’t as good as my reading, it is FAR CLOSER in comprehensibility then my listening-to-reading ratio in french is.)

Not letting myself slow down and try to stop and memorize things. Instead, trying to prioritize learning from context. Flashcards and word lists DO help me, but not nearly as much as context based problem solving - so they’re more of a crutch to push up my ability to comprehend or to fill in gaps in knowledge. I should use those things to be exposed to the new word/structure, and then instead of memorizing jump into REAL CONTEXT and then start learning it as I keep coming across it. This is the easiest, fastest, way for me to learn new words and structures. Mnemonics/flashcards/lists are just crutches for when learning from context needs some more building blocks to even be possible to do. I am NOT good at sticking to flashcard/list regimes, and they don’t help me as much as just forcing myself to dive into native material anyway.

#rant #plan #goals #reference #to be fair to japanese... i think it takes a good long while...#to read through grammar guides enough and kanji references enough...#to even start to get to a place where you can dive into any native materials and even have #the basest amount of context to start guessing at what other things might mean #i do think that because in chinese at least the characters radicals usually hint at pronunciation or meaning #there's this slightly easier time of guessing what a few unknown parts of a sentence mean #so you can get by doing less flashcards/lists before diving back into native material and seeing at least some improvementy #but with japanese... at least for me i felt like you could get through 500 characters and still barely know whats going on #(although japanese's upside was all the word endings made it #pretty clear which word served what purpose in a sentence).#i just mean though... like...#in french you CAN really just... learn 300-500 french words #then dive into native materials and guess at a lot (since a lot of words are spelled quite close to an english synonym etc)#and in chinese once you learn the most common characters #a lot of dysyllable words might also relate to that character meaning #or you might see a familiar radical and make a vague guess at what something means #and you have a decent chance of guessing close to the correct meaning #(you might even be able to guess the pronunciation relatively closely)#and since i HATE flashcard drills #any language where i can learn from context quicker is just... gonna be easier for me to study....

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