Tag: goals

My Teach Yourself Dabbling Shelf

Mastering Beginnings : Dabbling Through the New Year

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I set myself a task in 2021: to collect the full set of Teach Yourself language courses from the 1980s and 1990s. That task is nearly complete, with the missing languages now counting in the single figures. I’ve ended up with a really comprehensive language learning library including a bunch of languages I’ve never even thought of studying, from Afrikaans to Zulu.

So what now?

Well, it is the season for New Year’s Resolutions, so I had a crackpot idea. What about working through each of them in 2022, attempting to complete the first chapter in every one?

The Dabbling Library

You crazy fool! I hear you cry, what’s the gain in that? After all, a bunch of introductory chapters won’t result in a very strong working knowledge of any of them. A bit of a lot, but not a lot of much.

That all depends on your goals in language learning, though. Of course, I still have those core projects with the aim of high-level functional or conversation fluency, like Gaelic, Greek and Polish. And I have my maintenance projects to retain fluency in languages like German, Norwegian and Spanish.

But there’s a huge amount to be gained from casual dabbling, and my little TY cache promises to be fertile ground for that.

A Little Goes A Long Way

For one thing, I’ve learnt over the past year-and-a-bit of master study in linguistics that knowing about languages – regardless of your ability to speak them conversationally – is invaluable. Even a brief foray into how wildly disparate tongues work can give you a whole new perspective on how humans do this whole language business. Exploring beyond the Indo-European bubble, for example, helped me to dismantle some sticklers of limits to my linguistic thinking. Arming your mind with a thousand varied examples is great prep for linguistic research.

My single-chapter dabbling spree is a chance to fill in some telling gaps, too. Some of those languages on my TY shelf are close siblings to others I know well. Catalan, Portuguese, Italian… I’m expecting my Spanish to help prise the door open a little bit more than the very first pages. Just learning a few regular sound correspondences and cognate (mis)matches can provide a working knowledge beyond the concrete words and structures you learn from the page itself. That’s not to mention the bird’s eye view you get of particular language families, particularly on how close pairings differ.

And finally, there’s the caveat that building bridges with languages doesn’t require absolute fluency. Just a few words – a hello, a please, a thank you – is enough to make a human connection. Knowing just jó napot (good day) in Hungarian was ice-breaker enough to strike up conversation with restaurant staff in Birmingham. A smattering of 100 or so Hebrew words was ample for having a hybrid French-Hebrew conversation with Israelis in a bar in Paris. In short: don’t discount the value of even a tiny bit of knowledge.

Dabbling Down on Languages

So, wish me fun, enjoying this lot. I would ask for luck, but when language is the pleasure it is to all of us, we don’t need too much of that. Because that joy is the clincher, it’ll remain very low-key in terms of organised study, particularly since I’m ever-wary of goal exhaustion.

But please, feel free to join me on this journey mastering beginnings, if I’ve convinced you. Giving old books a new lease of life is an easy and really affordable way to start your own dabbling shelf!

Goal setting. Image of a dart board and a dart hitting bullseye from FreeImages.com

Goal Setting Or Less Fretting?

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With the new year approaching, there’s lots of talk about goal setting and language targets on #langtwt. So what are mine?

Well, let’s start with what were mine? In 2021, for one thing or another (mainly the fact that it was a mad busy year), I didn’t manage to stick rigidly to all my concrete language learning plans. Things like weekend podcast listening and daily reading sometimes slipped though the gaps between uni assignments and work commitments.

Goal Setting – Quick ‘n’ Easy?

Now, I usually talk a lot about quick ‘n’ easy tactics for daily learning – the kind of things that you can do in five or ten minutes every day. The idea is that they take little effort, but have great cumulative effect.

The thing is, sometimes quick ‘n’ easy is too much if you’re already overloaded. It’s so easy to promise to slip in a podcast on a train or while you’re relaxing after work. But it’s equally easy to forget that brains need occasional rest. Sometimes, I was just too tired to do anything but chill to music, rather than podcasts or read novels. And that is absolutely OK.

Quicker ‘n’ Easier : Weave Goals Into the Everyday

That said, where I wove language learning into my daily, often online routine, I had much more consistency. Idling on social media threw lots of target language my way. iTalki lessons were often chances to catch up with teachers I consider friends, so I’d gladly find time for an hour here and there.

And it worked.

For instance, I’m proud of how my Greek has come on over the last twelve months, largely thanks to that simmer on a low heat approach. Somehow, those low stakes, minimum outlay tactics just clicked. I’m already planning how to carry those successes over to my other language projects.

Goal Setting or Less Fretting?

This much more organic approach worked brilliantly for me at a time when time was in short supply. That’s why my 2022 goal setting will be more about everyday immersion strategies like this, rather than concrete levels or progress markers.

All the old favourites will still be there, of course. I’ll be working mainly on Gaelic, Greek, Icelandic, Norwegian and Polish, as well as maintaining my German and Spanish. I’m sure I’ll find time for some dabbling, too, as well as revisiting some of those languages in limbo where I have gone beyond just dabbling, but not quite taken off in (French, Hebrew, Irish, Swahili).

The fact is that I don’t even know where I’d begin if I were calendarising all of those. Better to go with the flow and just enjoy them!

A firework mid-display! Image from freeimages.com

New year, new goals: a language resolutions toolkit

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New year, new decade. And time again for lots of New Year language learning resolutions and great intentions.

Twitter is awash with plans, hopes and dreams from language enthusiasts far and wide. We certainly know what we want out of 2020. But how to best go about it?

Arm yourself with the right kit with these top tools for staying on track!

Get your streak on in Anki

One of the most motivating, keep-on-track features of platforms like Duolingo is the streak feature. However, this is not always available in staple, bare bones vocabulary drill tools like Anki.

That is, until Review Heatmap came along!

This desktop Anki add-on helps you keep daily momentum by offering stats like streak and past performance. The heatmap graph allows you to glance forward and gauge how many card reviews are coming your way in future. An excellent way for language geeks to stick to daily vocabulary resolutions.

Review Heatmap in lovely magenta.

Review Heatmap in lovely magenta.

Resolutions reminders

Establishing a new routine and changing ways can be tough as a typical creature-of-habit human being. Thankfully, there are plenty of to-do list apps to help organise our resolutions, and Wunderlist has been one of the best (not to mention free).

You can organise goals and subgoals using the rich, tiered reminders in the app. Personally, I like to take a weekly tactics approach, with regular repeated tasks. This is a piece of pie to set up on Wunderlist, with phone notifications to remind you when items are due to be ticked off.

Creating a regular language routine with Wunderlist

Creating a regular language routine with Wunderlist

Now, since I first began proselytising about the app, it seems to have caught the attention and imagination of the bigwigs. The upshot is that the company and app will morph into Microsoft To-Do by May 2020. So somebody was clearly listening!

Luckily, everything that made Wunderlist so great looks set to stay. So, jump straight into Microsoft To-Do if you want to give to-do organising a go with your languages. Existing Wunderlist users can easily import their data into the new app, too.

Evernote for ever-ready resolutions

Talking of list-writing applications, cross-platform Evernote allows for to-do tick lists as well, amongst a geeksome cascade of other features.

Evernote is as much a place to plan as it is to collect, study, write and do just about anything else you need language-wise. Clip a web article into it to translate and create a vocabulary list from. Create your weekly plan in it, and let the app notify you when a review is due. Email yourself a list of words while you’re at work to pick up and work with later. Or snap a page of exercises from a textbook, and complete your answers in the note rather than deface your book. You can even share that note with your tutor for marking.

However you use it – and there are as many ways as there are users – Evernote can be a real workhorse for language learning.

And it’s free to use on a basic plan!

Write to remember with apps and reusable pads

My love of lists and notes betrays my true colours. I am a big proponent of good, old-fashioned writing to remember (as no doubt many of us are!).

I just love a scribble. And one of my all-time favourite techniques to take advantage of this for language learning is the brain dump. Regularly recycle what you’ve learnt by letting it all flow, as creatively as possible, onto a single page. Incidentally, this makes for a great weekly tactic in your resolutions to-do list above!

Now, for the sake of saving paper, I enjoy using sketch apps on my tablet to splurge:

A brain dump of elementary Irish

A brain dump of elementary Irish

However, nothing quite beats traditional pen and paper. Thankfully, there is a tech-savvy way to work traditional media into your 2020 resolutions without working through a forest:

Rocket Pad - stick to your writing resolutions without wasting trees! Image from Amazon.com.

Rocket Pad – stick to your writing resolutions without wasting trees!

The best of resolutions

As a good rule of thumb, the very best resolutions are both well-defined and measurable. So, as you prepare to work with these fabulous support tools, ensure that you know what you are aiming for. Threshing out the detail of what your realised ambition looks like really helps you see the path to get there.

That said, before you set off, keep in mind the best of all language learning resolutions: have fun. Language learning should never be a chore, but always a joy. Explore, dabble, and never feel guilty for doing what you love.

Just revel in that love of words.

Good luck with all your language learning goals and resolutions for 2020. Happy New Year – and happy learning!

Fireworks at New Year - a great time for Language Learning resolutions!

Happy New Language? Linguaphile Resolutions for 2018! 🎉

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It’s that time of year again, when we take stock of the last twelve months, and formulate resolutions for the next. And a major part of my planning for the next year will focus on my favourite topic: language learning.

I’ve had a packed year when it comes to languages. It hasn’t always been a breeze, especially when trying new techniques or tackling new languages. But easy or difficult, it’s all been a valuable learning experience! Picking through the spoils of 2017, here are a few things I want to take forward into the coming year.

Try new techniques

It’s easy to get stuck in your ways. In 2018, I’ll be making a concerted effort to research and try out new learning methods. Particularly helpful sources of new ideas this year have included language guru Benny Lewis’ packed website and newsletter – highly recommended.

One technique I want to try over the coming months is bidirectional translation, popularised by polyglot legend Luca Lampariello and recommended to me by fellow polyglot friend Marcel, one of iTalki’s very best German community tutors. It looks like a great way to approach learning from texts in a systematic, efficient way.

But I’ve also made a pact with myself to continue old, tried-and-tested techniques. Why mess with what works? Even better if old mingles with new, like when pen and paper meets the digital.

Not get carried away

I have a tendency to want to learn anything and everything. I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I only have a single lifetime to fill, and am maybe better off focussing on a few, choice areas to excel in. That means a few – not a hundred – languages. (Boo!)

As such, 2018 will be about consolidation of my two lifelong ‘biggies’, German and Spanish. I’ll also carry on learning Norwegian (B1), Icelandic (A1) and Polish (A1/2). And maybe Russian. And perhaps a bit of French and Chinese? OK, I’m already mentally breaking this resolution…

Be a couch potato

Well, not exactly. But I want to carry on watching fab foreign-language TV series on Netflix and other platforms. I was late to the party, discovering these treasures in 2017, and I keep uncovering new gems with every passing week.

I’ve already worked my way through Norwegian Okkupert, Icelandic Hraunið and Brazilian Portuguese 3%, amongst others. I’ve just discovered the Cold War, DDR-themed Der gleiche Himmel, too, which I’m sure I’ll devour in a matter of days. Hopefully Netflix will keep the foreign series flowing throughout 2018.

In terms of audio-only entertainment, trusty companions throughout 2017 have included NRK’s Språkteigen podcast on the Norwegian language and ORF’s news journal radio programmes from Austria. They’ll continue to keep me company in 2018, and hopefully be joined by others. I managed to switch out a lot of my trashy TV watching for foreign-language entz in 2017, and I plan to carry on that trend.

Keep blogging

2017 was the year of the blog for me. And I’ve enjoyed it hugely; it’s allowed me to crystallise my own approaches to language learning in writing. Simply putting words onto a page can be a fantastic way to consolidate your thoughts and plans.

What’s more, it’s a great way to share. And the more I learn about the online polyglot community, the more I see that sharing reigns supreme in our world. I hope that my humble blog has also helped or inspired others to try new things with languages.

Set targets

Setting and maintaining targets, like my aim of one blog article per week, has been a great self-confidence boost. It’s all about about sticking to personal goals, which has everything in common with language learning. I’ll be keeping this up in 2018, making full use of productivity scaffolds like the 12-week year system.

We all have our favourite apps for doing this. Personally, Evernote, Wunderlist and Anki are my workhorses of choice, and I’ll continue to milk them for their maximum organising power.

Resolutions for fun

Of all my resolutions, one jumps out as the most obvious. Above all, I’ll continue to love learning languages, and enjoy travelling to practise them (on a budget, of course). It’s probably the easiest of all resolutions to keep, too.

Whatever your own personal resolutions, may your 2018 also be filled with success and language fun. Thanks for reading and learning along with me. I hope to spend lots more time with you on our learning journey next year!