Authentic videos for learning Chinese What is it? Yabla Chinese is a site aimed at helping learners of Mandarin improve their listening proficiency through watching “authentic” videos. Often, listening comprehension tools are based on scripts that sound unnatural and contrived, and th
Picking up words as they come Last week I blogged about different vocabulary retention methods, including using a digital flashcard system called Anki. I recently sat down to enter my new Turkish words into the Anki program, and I smiled at how disparate the words are. If I were learn
As I learn new Turkish words, I think about the best way to retain them. My methods so far have been mixed and haphazard, and I have no conclusion about the ‘best’ method. To get the conversation going, though, here are five methods that I have used or run into. 1. Anki Th
Abre los ojos A guest post by fellow language educator, Adam Samuel. My tri-weekly run usually takes me past the fish auction house and past the salt fields Las Salinas in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where I live, right in the south of Spain and roughly an hour from Morocco. Depending on t
The problem with more words As I learn more words in Turkish, I am encountering an unexpected problem: choosing which word to use. Back in the true beginner days, I was ecstatic to have any word that might convey meaning. Now I am almost wary of learning synonyms, because I often end
Language learning “check in” I started dreaming in Turkish. Well, I had one very mundane dream involving basic sentences (which makes sense, since my brain probably won’t produce Turkish sentences that it can’t comprehend), and a few times in the early morning
A website and podcast focused on Turkish listening Last week I wrote about my poor listening skills in Turkish. It prompted me to look for some online materials. Only after sifting through a dozen confusing websites with bad layouts and ancient recordings did I remember that someone h
A Great Supplement for Language Learners My partner, Gabe, is here with me in Peru. He had never studied Spanish before coming here and enrolled in classes when we first arrived. But the classes were too expensive for us to maintain long-term so Gabe has had to find other ways to impr
Quem são eles Os nossos colunistas e comentaristas são profissionais respeitados em suas áreas de atuação que contribuem regularmente com os principais veículos de comunicação: jornais, revistas, rádio e televisão. Embora muitos sejam jornalistas de profissão, entre eles há também méd
Living and Learning Turkish As I mentioned in the last blog post, I am doing new things in Turkey and as a result learning new Turkish expressions. This last week I have been volunteering for a farm and nature education program, and the new learning seems to have been dominated by new
