It’s kind of hokey to say, but I think of myself as a lifetime learner. I wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a good student back in high school, but I still managed to learn quite a lot while I was attending (the problem being that what I spent most of my time learning wasn’t … Continue reading Learning Languages Vs. Anything Else
I am a rather introverted person. That claim might seem odd for me to make in the context of this blog, where I share large chunks of my life a week at a time publicly, but of course this is a very different venue than normal, day to day life. In practice I’m a rather … Continue reading Introversion and Language Learning
(This blog is the English translation of this week’s primary blog, which was originally written in Spanish.) This is the first blog entry that I’ve written in Spanish. I started learning the language a little more than a year ago, around fifteen months. In that time, I haven’t done much traditional studying. Instead, most of … Continue reading Reading to Learn Spanish
(This blog entry is written in Spanish. There will be an English translation available tomorrow morning / Esta entrada está escrito en español. Habrá una traducción de inglés disponible mañana por la mañana.) Este es mi primer blog que he escrito en español. Empecé a aprender el idioma hace un poco más que un año, … Continue reading Leer para Aprender Español
So after spending four weeks limiting my language study time to reading only, the big question I had left was how my listening comprehension fared from the experience. This experiment was prompted by some case histories that I read, covering a variety of people at different levels of fluency in a second language who improved … Continue reading Reading-Only Experiment Postmortem
A big topic of discussion when it comes to language learning is the goal of efficiency. Efficiency comes in lots of forms for language learning, to varying effect. It’s obviously something to strive for in general, because if you’re working hard, but on something that isn’t efficient, you’re going to have less to show for … Continue reading Efficiency in Language Learning and What it Doesn’t Mean
Motivation is a perennial topic of discussion when it comes to language learning, because so much of what it takes to succeed at the endeavor hinges on a learner keeping their motivation high. Most of the advice that floats around about the subject attacks from two points: advice on keeping your motivation up day-to-day, and … Continue reading The Third Variety of Motivation
As time has gone on in this language learning project, I’ve tried to pay attention to how things have changed and adjusted for me since I first started. A part of that is just to try and keep in mind how I’ve improved, as a means of keeping my confidence up, because remembering how much … Continue reading Patience in Language Learning
So after last week’s blog musing over the idea of switching over to just reading, I decided that even if I didn’t stick with the experiment, it was at least worth a shot. So at the start of the week, I bought the remainder of the Dresden Files books that were available in Spanish (which … Continue reading Adjusting to Just Reading
At the start of the new year, I outlined some of my yearly themes that I’m keeping in mind, not resolutions per se, just general courses of action I’m trying to take for both this language project and my life in general. The theme of The Year of Striving was the new one I added, … Continue reading Reevaluating Methods
Fumbling Toward Fluent 