Learning a New Language… Again When I was in high school and university, I studied Spanish. During my second year, I mixed up courses and didn’t have the right credits to continue with Spanish, and didn’t need more language credits to graduate, so I stopped. One of m
What it means to dream in other languages People sometimes talk about dreaming in a new language as a marker. It marks that the language is somehow now in you, lodged in your brain or your way of being. If your unconscious can access it, well, that’s something. Arabic…nightmares? When
Why I don’t worry about “losing” additional languages A high school teacher once told me to stop studying (I had come to him terribly stressed about not fully understanding some calculus principles before a test) and instead to let the knowledge settle. The concept h
Beyond language acquisition As I embark as the coordinator of a new nine-week exchange program with Arabic and English speaking women, with some anxiety about exactly how we will introduce Arabic with seven different Arabic-speaking countries represented in the room, and how we will i
For those who know I grew up in Saudi Arabia, it may come as a surprise that I only started learning Arabic when I lived in Morocco in 2009-2010. After that huge wasted opportunity (liasaf jadid!) in Saudi Arabia, I was very eager to learn the language spoken across so much of the Mid
¿Partir o llegar? Los diferentes tipos de migrante Es interesante como en español tenemos tres variantes para una palabra que expresa el abandono de la región natal y la búsqueda de oportunidades en una diferente: emigrar, inmigrar y migrar. De la última, el Diccionario de la Real Aca
A famous folk singer in Turkey If you travel for long in Turkey as a Canadian you will inevitably be asked, “Do you know Brenna MacCrimmon?” or “Do you like Brenna MacCrimmon?” I once blogged about the most famous Canadian in China – Dashan – who achieved fame not for his
It has been a while since I profiled a multilingual person. You might remember Maria “going home” to English instead of Spanish, Jeremy describing the challenges of learning Kyrgyz, and Jordi reflecting on “foreignerisms” arising among non-native speakers. Here
Spanish Fluency in Five Not-So-Simple Steps What does it mean to be fluent in a language? Does it mean that you can read, write, speak, and understand everything in the language with no mistakes? Or is getting by with most day-to-day conversations good enough? This question has been t
I thought it would be interesting and useful to share my approach to tutoring English as an additional language. Potential learners—you can get an idea about what to expect from me. Other teachers—you can compare this with your own approach. A little background This approach has evolv
