Category Archives: Motivation
The Office Learning Environment
I was busy working on a presentation I’m doing for a bunch of students at work tomorrow (looks like I may have an audience of about 100! Nice.), and I took this picture and made it into one of my slides for the presentation (On technology and self-study).
There’s a couple of items here that are [...]
Also posted in Extensive Reading, Language Learning Techniques 5 Comments
Beware of Crocodile!
I happen to know the kanji for “crocodile.”
鰐
This is a fun conversational piece when talking about learning Japanese. Especially with Japanese people. I often describe it to them (if they don’t know it) as “fish” and “signal,” but with two ”mouths” instead of one.
Of course, then they say that I won’t need to write it ever.
. . [...]
Also posted in Fun Stuff, Language 13 Comments
Thought Patterns that Just Don’t Work
I just got back from Osaka last night after attending the JALT conference over there. Good times were had and I saw some interesting presentations.
One presentation by Darcy de Lint, which was about students keeping journals of conversational strategies that worked and that didn’t work while studying abroad, turned out to be interesting.
In general, the [...]
Posted in Motivation 5 Comments
One Man`s Learning Environment
So here`s your chance. You get to take a peek at the inside of my (rather messy) book shelf, where you can get an idea of just one of the many ways I create an environment ideal for learning a language.
As you can see, I have a mix of both manga and actual books. By [...]
Also posted in Extensive Reading, Language Learning Techniques 12 Comments
Long Before this Blog…
There was a video. Sadly, I didn`t make it. But it was definitely one of the many things that set me on the right path, and so I think it should be important for you, as well.
When talking about language, it is often very difficult to put things into a medium other than words. A [...]
Also posted in Video 40 Comments
Be Ready to Change, Because you Probably Will