In my daily life, I am frequently brought into contact with people who speak languages other than English. It’s not always Spanish—I overhear conversations in German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, and others that I haven’t been able to recognize—but most often it is in fact Spanish. And if there’s one surefire way to reinforce … Continue reading Listening to a Foreign Language: The Struggle is Real
I finished Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta last Friday and had to decide what to read next. Well, not really, Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban would be next, as I’ve been saying that I wanted to stay with the series. It’s a longstanding favorite that I find myself rereading again and again, … Continue reading The Role of Repetition
There’s this thing that a lot of people do to themselves when setting goals that leads to a self-defeating cycle. They don’t actually set a goal at all and leave their plans nebulous. This causes a whole host of problems, first and foremost being that it’s difficult to come up with a plan for how … Continue reading The Starting Line Mirage
Ostensibly, one of the primary goals of this blog is to serve as an example after the fact of “What it takes to learn a language,” (if I’d done it perfectly, I would have started this back on day one, but hindsight being what it is and all, just gotta make do with the portion … Continue reading Learning a Foreign Language: How Much Time Does it Take?
I’ve always hated The Tortoise and the Hare. The allegory has a good enough message and all; don’t be lazy, don’t be conceited, hard work pays off in the end, that’s all good stuff, sure. And it all applies very neatly to language learning if you think about it. Dashing forward in heavy sprints that … Continue reading The Tortoise and the Hare
In keeping track of all these numbers, one of the figures I haven’t been posting is what this is doing to my bank account. An old saw about language learning is how incredibly expensive it is by necessity. You need to go abroad and be immersed in the language in order to learn it, you … Continue reading Learning a Foreign Language Without Going Broke
So there’s an elephant in the room. It’s just a little one, but I’ve noticed it, as I’ve thought over these blogs and the topics I’d like to eventually cover. That elephant’s name is Motivation. I’ve skirted around the topic a few times. Having clear and compelling motivation is a key point of conversation in … Continue reading Motivational Speech
So last week, I was soundly defeated by a book. Things were nicely timed to where I finished El Maravilloso Mago de Oz on Monday, and would be beginning my next book at the start of this week: Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal. Perfect! I’d been working my way up in reading level more … Continue reading Facing Defeat and Bouncing Back
I have no memory of learning to read. The closest I have to that is hazy scenes of a time when I was very small and not wanting to read when asked, which is of course not the same thing. It was a time when I was capable of reading, but hadn’t yet fallen in … Continue reading Reading in a Foreign Language: The Struggle Is Real
Two weeks in, and I am finding myself struggling with trying to figure out how to start these blogs off. I haven’t quite nailed down the voice I’m aiming to strike in them, or have a pictured “audience” that I could project to, so there’s a bit of stumbling to fall into a tone I … Continue reading What and Why Deeper Dive
