I think I’ve written before about how I study at university, but I wanted to go in depth about my system for studying Chinese characters, because I’ve been really enjoying it and I think it’s been working really well. I kind of figured out this system through trial and error, so there is kind of…
Category: Polyglottery
At the beginning of this year, I was reflecting on where I wanted to go with language learning. I decided I didn’t want to take on any new languages and I wanted to focus on the ones I’ve already started. That’s not at all how this year turned out. At the end of 2014, I…
This whole summer I told myself I would review everything I learned in my first year of Chinese classes and that I would get ahead so coming back after summer wouldn’t be hard. I never managed get myself to open a book about Chinese, so I was really nervous about coming back to it. I…
Today I’m really excited to have my first guest post on this blog! My friend James, who went with me on my recent trip to Finland had some thoughts about bilingualism, so I asked him to write about it for my blog and he wrote a lovely reflection on his experience in Finland. It’s weird…
Back in February, I made a video of my presentation for my last Chinese oral exam (watch here), and I decided to do that again. This is my presentation for the oral component of my final exam for Chinese 1. I’m fairly content with my progress, but I wish we had learned a little more….
I read mostly non-fiction books in my own time, and most of them are language-learning or linguistics books, so I was thinking about writing about the ones I read. I should come up with a catchy name for this series, but first we’ll see if I actually get around to making a second post. The…
Ok, let me explain. The Common European Framework of Referencing for Language (CEFR) is a scale that many people use to describe language proficiency levels, rather than trying to understand all those arbitrary terms like fluent, intermediate, conversational, etc. There are three levels – A, B, and C – and each level has two sub-levels,…
Finding time to study your target language is difficult, especially if you are a university student or you have a job. It’s not that you don’t have the time, it’s just that you’re not taking advantage of the free time you do have. Every time you go on a social media account, such as Instagram,…
Recientemente he hablado en español mucho, entonces yo quería escribir algo sobre lo que estoy haciendo para practicar y cómo siento acerca de mi progreso. Tengo un amigo que habla conmigo en español y el jueves pasado hablamos por 2 horas y media en español. Eso me sorprendió un poco porque no puedo recordar la última…
So last time I mentioned Chinese in a video, I think I said I could only say that I like coffee, and since then I think I’ve made some progress. I know my tones still aren’t great and my vocabulary is pretty limited, but by practicing for this test, I feel that I’ve gotten a…