Foreign Language Update: Monthly Language Challenges

Task #5 of the Alternative Graduate Program involved dabbling in a Foreign Language. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve taken that task a bit to the extreme and dedicated at least an hour a day to at least one of four different languages. Obviously this is a passion of mine and not a requirement, however everyone should learn at least one foreign language because I truly believe it trains our brains to think differently.

The secret to learning a language, or anything really, is practice and consistency. It is far better to spend 20 minutes a day learning it than 2 hours once a week. If you’re like me, perhaps sometimes you need a little accountability to stay motivated, which is how I ended up participating in THREE language challenges this month.

1. The 30 Day Speaking Challenge – a monthly hosted challenge that gives people a chance to record themselves speaking on provided topics in any language and occasionally recieving feedback from other participants and native speakers (not guaranteed in all languages). Find my speaking on YouTube!
2. #LanguageDiaryChallenge: An loose online community where participants write daily in their target language(s) on their language progress or any other topics of their choosing (just like a diary!) Read my diary on my other blog!
3. Private group challenge: I’m participating in another private challenge via Slack, with more various prompts for all different language skills. Similar to this one that was popular a few years ago!

After 30 days, I have found that (1) the habit becomes ingrained in me, and (2) my speaking levels and confidence in different languages improves substantially. In the course of 4 months, I have raised my French level from an A2 to almost a B2!

If none of these challenges interest you or you prefer not to be held accountable in your language learning journey, check out my list of other language learning resources!

Another Language Challenge

I’ve been participating in a new language challenge this month (as you may recall, I was participating in the 30 Day Speaking Challenge back in July). This challenge is focused more on writing, and really just interacting with the language everyday. It is the Language Diary Challenge.

In it, I write my thoughts about languages and language learning and just life in general. I’ve been writing my entries on my old personal blog, and you can find them here 🙂

Language Class?

In my last status update, I mentioned that I have started studying Greek as my 4th foreign language this month.  But, that is not entirely true. You see, I have been studying languages for a long time, long before the Alternative Graduate program. It’s my biggest hobby, actually. I have dabbled in many languages over the years, but only once I reach at least an A1 level, can I consider it among my repertoire of languages.

A brief history of my language learning endeavors…..

• Spanish class after school in the first grade
  • I can still say “Me llamo…” and count to 39 (which is perfect since that is my shoe size, I was able to buy shoes in Spain! )
• Japanese lessons in class once a week in 4th and 5th grade
  • Counting from 1-10 was surprisingly helpful when I had a ship full of 1400 Japanese people!
• French formal classes all through middle school, high school and university, and again in 2020
  • This is my strongest language, I would put it at a B1 level. I can carry on conversations in French (with some errors, but hey….)
• ASL (American Sign Language) classes in the tenth grade. I was top of my class!
  • I have forgotten most sign language, but I can still sign the lyrics to “A Whole New World” and “Silent Night”!
• Italian class my last semester of university (after I got fed up with French), and I started studying it again in 2020. I was better then than I am now 😦
  • “Vabbe. Vabbe. Io bisogno un pisolino.” I still remember my two favorite words!
• Arabic is pretty. I spent about a year after university learning it. I had a friend studying it for the military, and I thought it would be fun. I got pretty far too, I even knew the alphabet!
  • I forgot almost everything except “Shukran” and “Kayfa haluk?”
• Bible class Hebrew when I attended a Jewish church (yes that’s a thing!) for a couple years.
  • Everyone knows “Shabbat Shalom” and “L’Chaim”, but I also remember the letter ‘bet’ because as my video lessons explained, it looks like a bunk bed – which starts with ‘b’.
• Dutch became important when I started working for a semi-Dutch company (and ergo had many Dutch friends and a Dutch boyfriend). 
  • I can still understand quite a bit of Dutch, though I have a bad habit of responding in English, so my production skills are not the best. But I’m working on them!
• I have many Indonesian coworkers, so I decided to learn some Bahasa Indonesia.
  • I know everything “goreng” (fried) – pisang goreng, nasi goreng, bami goreng – as well as “makan dulu” or “koppie dulu”. I apparently like Indonesian food. I also remember “singa laut” (sea lion) and “hijau” (green, for “push the green button”). Not sure what this says about my job.
  • If nothing else, this page will make you want to learn Indonesian too!
• Hungarian is apparently one of the most difficult languages to learn. I became interested after spending 10 days in Budapest, and then again a couple years later via a Hungarian colleague.
  • After my 10 days, I knew exactly 3 (albeit important) phrases: “Szia” (hi/bye), “köszönöm” (thank you) and “Egészségedre!” (Cheers!). Since then, I’ve added only one more: “Hogy vagy?” (How are you?).
• I decided to learn Greek after spending last summer sailing in Greece.
  • Upon starting my lessons this month, I realised that I picked up quite a bit more words and nuances than I thought while I was there!
  • “Freddo espresso, parakaló.”

You might wonder: how do you learn all these?! Well, like I said, it’s my passion!

That’s the first thing, you must have a connection to the language. Why do you want to learn it? (A boyfriend/girlfriend who speaks the language is usually a high motivation!)

The quickest way to learn is to become immersed in the language. If moving to a place where it is spoken is not an option, you can mock this by immersing yourself in movies, TV, and news in the language.

Check out this page for all my favorite language learning resources!

P.S. After I get a handle on Greek, I think I’d like to revisit Arabic and Hungarian, you know, for a bit of a challenge!

Overdue Weekly Update – 9 August 2020

It is Monday morn—-er….. evening, so here is an update of my progress for the last week (I went away this weekend, so I took a bit of a break from everything!)

Reading is, well, going. Watch out tomorrow for a new post on my plans for that. I finished one novel, but I don’t quite think it fits in the program, it was more of a guilty pleasure. But I continue to read The Know It All, and have also started, The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson – which I intend to finish in four days……

Languages are the hot thing this month! I started learning Greek last week. For those of you who have lost track, that’s language number four, and the first one in a long time that I am starting from scratch – think I can reach A1 by the end of the month? Yeah, me neither. My French course is just about finished, and I dare say I can think in French again! And even understand French people finally! I’m also just about finished with my online courses in Applied Linguistics (where we studied the speech patterns of Margaret Thatcher and Donald Trump!) and Teaching English Online. I have also decided to read 4-5 English/Language Arts books this month. Wish me luck!

News/Politics/Economics are all happening. Yep. I spend almost an hour each morning reading two 5-minute newsletters (it’s all those links to extra articles that get you!) I did, however score 5 out of 5 on the newletter’s weekly quiz, which proves I not only ready the articles, but retained them for a whole week! I also learned some prime tips from my TED Talks on how to care for house plants!

As for Travel, I visited some new cities in my own state this weekend – that counts, right?! They have “mask police” there!

Language Learning Techniques: Laddering

The best souvenir I ever bought in my travels, is a children’s book from a market in Belgium. The book is written as small cartoons that are meant to teach the French-speaking children Dutch (or Flemish) words and vice versa.

Why am I telling you this?

As you may know, part of what drew me to this program in the first place is the focus on what I call “worldliness”. The focus on language learning and travel – how to best represent your own culture while also learning about others and helping others.

I have recently been studying there languages at once. Now I have studied all three languages to varying degrees at different points in the past, so it is much easier to maintain and slowly advance in them all at once. And in this quest, I have come across numerous resources (which I will compile in a list for you later) about learning languages. There is a whole society surrounding the learning and acquisition of languages.

Today, however, I want to talk about one technique: laddering. Laddering is the process of using a second language to learn a third, fourth, fifth, etc language. Now, I’m no expert on this, but ever since I took my first Italian class after twelve straight years of French study, I”ve been doing this to some extent. Many of you may do it too without even knowing it. Perhaps English is not your first language, but you speak it well enough to utilize the plethora of language learning materials readily available in English.

Now in order to use this method, you must be comfortable enough in your second language, but not necessarily fluent. I have spent many years between A2-B1 level in French, yet I use it to study Italian and sometimes Dutch. I use Duolingo from French>Italian instead of the English>Italian course. And, the book I mentioned above? It describes Dutch grammar in French and French grammar in Dutch!

Why you ask? Well, the theory is that by using a foreign language to learn another foreign language, you keep yourself from falling in the trap of “direct translation”. Plus, you kill two birds with one stone – while learning a new language, you uncover constructions or phrases in your second language you may not have known before. It can also help you begin to think in your second language, instead of your native tongue.

As I said, I am not an expert in this, but if you also like to study many languages, it’s a good suggestion to manage your time!

Babel No More!

I picked this book up because I like studying languages (in case you hadn’t noticed).

The book comprises of essentially two different parts – one is finding out methods how anyone can learn over 7 languages, the other is the possible genetics and neuroscience behind it.  The author, Michael Erard, does this by searching for people all over the world who speak over a dozen languages and interviewing them.

The book had me hooked when one of the interviewees told the author…

“Saying things is totally different from conversing.  I can say many things in different languages, but conversing is a different thing.  Talking a language is really different from knowing something about a language.”

I, too, can say lots of things in lots of languages – but only in maybe 3 can I converse, and even that is usually only in certain situations (like ordering in a restaurant).  I can still only discuss the meaning of life in English.

Although the book is semi-scientific, with lots of research done, it is still easy for everyone to understand. (There were maybe a few paragraphs that went over my head, but they are obviously not important to the story anyways.)

A few other conclusions resonated particularly for me…

“[Hyperpolyglots] tend to be meaning-oriented and pattern-seeking, and the majority of them were introverted intuitive thinkers.  Using the labels of the Meyers-Briggs personality type, most of these were INTJs.  This means they’re highly analytical people, introverted and intuitive, logical and precise, and prone to thinking in terms of systems.”

I’m an INTJ – or at least I was the last time I took the test.  I often wonder now if the I has become an E, though I don’t think this would terribly effect language learning, only the methods that would work the best.

Speaking of methods, the author, while acknowledging that there is some genetic disposition towards being a hyperpolyglot, says that there are things others can do to increase their success at learning languages.

“If you want big improvements, she said, chew gum. Gum? Sure enough, chewing gum has been shown to improve a person’s immediate recall of learned words by some 24 percent. Long-term recall improves by a larger 36 percent. To get the benefit, you actually have to chew gum as you are studying; for some reason you can’t merely move your jaw up and down. I also discovered that drinking sage tea increases one’s recall of words modestly, as does the odor of rosemary. Something as mundane as coffee provides a benefit, too. Drinking two cups of coffee increases neuronal activity in the frontal lobe, where working memory is controlled, and in the anterior cingulum, where attention is controlled.”

Good thing I drink a lot of coffee!  Now I need to start chewing more gum…

Finally, the most useful piece of advice, which is pretty much relevant to anything in life…

“Whatever the method is,” he said, “stick to the method.  That’s the method.”

It’s true.  You can choose to attend a class, download a podcast, read newspapers, or use Rosetta Stone, but none of it will work if you don’t stick with it!  A little bit of motivation for my course here…

Task #5: Foreign Language(s)

My favorite – and simultaneously the easiest and most difficult – task yet.

Subscribe to a language-learning podcast and listen to each 20-minute episode five times a week for the entire year. Attend a local language club once a week to practice.

Cost: $0 + 87 hours.

Here’s where I bite off more than I can chew.  For a long as I can remember, learning languages has been a weird hobby of mine.  I’ve studied Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian, ASL, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Dutch over the years.  If I can narrow it down to three I’d be happy, and if I could become fluent in one I’d be ecstatic.  So far, French, Italian and Dutch are the ones I know the most well.

For podcasts, there are a few really great ones.  I am rather fond of the Radiolingua Network series (this Italian podcast helped me a lot), and also the xxxPod101.com series from Innovative Languages (insert whichever language you want for the ‘xxx’s).

In addition to podcasts, I’ve found the DuoLingo app to be a great tool, and for extra credit, I plan to complete the entire trees of Dutch, Italian, and French.  (It’s a bit more difficult to learn languages with different scripts from this app, I have found).

As for language schools, well there’s many online forums to simulate this.  (Check out HelloLingo to start).   I also have the benefit of having a lot of friends who speak other languages natively.  Please speak/write them to me!  Even if I struggle, force me to answer back in said language!

My Cost: Free. But 87 hours is standard for Tier 1 languages; ones like Hebrew, Russian or Japanese require a bit more.