Mastering Vocabulary Learning: Routines

Before I started university, I had no system for learning vocabulary efficiently. I would usually just write down a list of words and their translation, and hope for the best to magically memorize them. This lack of a system soon turned out to be insufficient for my studies, and so I tried out several techniques to find one that helped me. Not too long ago, I finally found a method that works well for me: digital flashcards.

Prior to making flashcards, I analyze the words I need to study thoroughly: I look up explanations, synonyms, common collocations and, most importantly, example sentences. My favorite tools include Vocabulary.com and the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, and for further collocations, I have recently started using COCA. Unfortunately, collecting all this information is very time-consuming, which is definitely a drawback. However, in the long term, I benefit from it immensely, as I really get to know the contexts the words are likely to appear in and therefore get a feeling for how to use them properly.

Based on this analysis, I put together digital flashcards in a computer program called anki. It works just like physical flashcards: you put one piece of information on one side of the card, and put its definition on its on the other side. I usually type in collocations or phrases, rather than a single word, on the front side, and use synonyms or English explanations for the flip side. For words I don’t know how to pronounce, I also insert audio files, most often taken from the online pronunciation guide Forvo.com. After having typed in my list of words and their explanations, I can start studying these cards right away.

There are several reasons why I prefer anki over other flashcard programs. Firstly, anki exists both as a computer program and as an app, and will synchronize changes and learning progress across the devices it is used on. It also lets you modify the way you review cards: you can either simply look at the answer after guessing it in your head, or force yourself to manually type in the answer and compare it to the original solution. However, what I like the most about anki is that after answering a question, you have to rate how well you actually knew the answer. Based on these ratings, the program will ask you cards you were not so sure about more often and cards you knew for sure less often. It generally restricts the number of cards you revise per session to a realistic amount, but also provides a “cram mode” for emergencies. I think all these features really make a difference as I feel I am learning more efficiently now than before I started using anki.

In my experience, what really counts when learning vocabulary is discipline. It’s the true key to success. It is crucial to start studying early enough and to do it regularly; otherwise, there is simply not enough time to get it into your long-term memory. Unfortunately, discipline is not something a computer program can provide me with, so this is one factor I still have to work on. However, if I keep my motivation up, I think I will get better in learning vocabulary, especially now that I finally have an efficient method of doing it.

What Good Bloggers Do

About one year ago, I wrote a post about my rather unsuccessful blogger-career in my first semester as an SUK-student. Although I already had some blogging experience at that time, I was a bit overwhelmed by the task of writing a blog for a wider and more public audience. Luckily, things seem to have changed and I have become a more successful blogger in the meantime. I don't hesitate to share my opinion about something anymore and I realized how much fun it is to write about your own interests and to share your thoughts and knowledge about something.

Especially the sharing of knowledge is something I really grew fond of, because the process of writing about a topic I am enthusiastic about forces me me think of the best way to convey what you want to say in a clear matter, instead of writing "GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME!" in capslock. You have to organize your thoughts and make it easy to understand (and, naturally, also interesting) for people who don't know anything about that very topic. It is not about explaining the whole topic to the audience, but to explain what is interesting or cool about it and why you are interested in it. And maybe also why it could be interesting to the readers as well.

Naturally, not every topic somebody is excited about is automatically interesting to other people as well. But if you learn something new from a post about a topic you know not much about, then the blog (or rather the author) did everything right. That's also something I think most of the Top 10 Bloggers from the last semester did right: they managed to offer clear insights into topics that were interesting to them and mostly new to us. Some of them also used catchy post titles, funny pictures or a background story to catch the readers attention. But still: the post itself must be interesting to read as well.

What I also really liked about most of the top bloggers was that they stuck to one or two main topics in their blogs. Some wrote mostly about traveling, other focused on American history. That they were so consistent with that without becoming boring was something I was really impressed by. This way, you knew almost instantly what you can expect from their blogs and also if you might be interested in their future posts. I, on the other hand, posted about things that just came to my mind with no connection to the other topics I was talking about. Don't take me wrong: this can also work absolutely fine! But I decided that I also want to stick to one or two main topics so that people get a feeling about what I might be posting about in the future.

There are also two further things I want to change about my blogging behavior: firstly, I want to post more frequently and secondly, I want to read more blogs by others SUK-students and (okay, that makes it three things) leave more comments on their posts. This way, we might inspire each other to post about certain topics and consequently will also get motivated to post more as soon as we realize that people do read our blogs. Wouldn't that be great? I think it totally would.

The Lernen To Talk Show!

This is what it looks like to learn a language in one year. from Mickey Mangan on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, we were talking about language learning in class and came up with several approaches and qualities that are more or less required to learn a language successfully. One of the more useful qualities we mentioned was the joy to talk and to be sociable in the desired language.

An ideal example for becoming successful by being talk-active is Mickey Mangan: he moved from the U.S. to Germany for a year in order to learn German by simply talking to native speakers. He documented his process on camera week by week on his blog. By that, he created an interesting series of episodes which show how a person with hardly any German skills becomes quite fluent within a year. I think he also proves that talking is helpful to attain a language.From a language learner's perspective, it is really motivating to see how much progress can be made in a relatively short time.

For comparison, here is the first and the last episode of his series:

On his blog, he also listed his personal favorite episodes (you need to scroll down a bit further). When you click on the blog entries, you can also read his commentary and thoughts about particular videos, in which he also corrects himself or explains what he was trying to say.

One episode I liked is one in which he talked to the the German voice actor William Cohn. It is not only my favorite episode because I like William Cohn, but also because he says such nice and motivating things.

Inspired by this series, I have realized that talking in the language you are trying to learn is so much more important than I thought. Talking cannot be compared to simply reading or writing a text. When you talk, you have to be quick in your thinking to make correct connections. I feel that I sometimes memorize things better when I say them out loud than when I just write them down.

In my second foreign language, Russian, speaking is still something I am scared of. So talking out loud is definitely something I should do more in Russian.

Learning Languages Online - Busuu

We all know that learning a new language is not as easy as it seems. Studying a language at university might be one of the most effective ways to do that, however, there are of course many more ways to accomplish that. People want to learn languages faster, easier and without much effort. For those, books like "Learn Russian in 30 Days!" or "Becoming the Master of the Spanish Language in less than 14 Days!" are written and published, although most of these look more promising than they are in reality.

And then there is Buusu. I heard about it in a commercial on television and they instantly got my curiosity. Basically, it's a community connects native speakers with language learners. People can share their texts or audio recordings and get these corrected by native speakers.

I have tested it for about a week with Russian as my learning target as an additional exercise to university. As soon as I had signed up, I had access to several lessons relating to basic topics such as family or emotions. For each lesson, I could choose between watching a slide-show of pictures with topic-related vocabulary on them, reading and writing dialogues and -- most exciting -- chatting with native speakers.

Unfortunately, it is the most basic thing about this community that had disappointed me: their lessons, which are supposed to take you step by step to a higher language level, are translated by and therefore dependent on the online dictionary PONS. Their dependence on PONS is one of the major reasons why their computer-generated lessons are hardly helpful, because the vocabulary is often taken out of context, often providing a wrong translation.

I decided to take the opportunity to interact with native speakers instead. When I had shared a little introduction text with my Russian knowledge from university, I almost instantly got several suggestions and corrections on my text which were incredibly helpful. In the end, I had even found a tandem-partner who wants to study German while being a Russian native-speaker.

All in all, Busuu might not be the place to learn a new language starting by zero, but definitely the right place to find language-interested people from around the world who are very happy to help you on your way of learning their native language.

Tasty Search Engines and Asparagus

I can't remember how I stumbled upon Yummly.com. But what I know is that it was a good thing, because it makes life in the kitchen so much easier. Why, you ask? Because this page is a search engine dedicated to food. You type in one random ingredient and it delights you with the most delicious recipes from other pages around the world. As soon as you've typed in your ingredient, you can limit the results by choosing further ingredients or ingredients that should be avoided, choose which holiday the recipe should suit, which taste it should have (e.g. salty or spicy), which allergies you have or which diet you stick to, which techniques should be used (e.g. stir-fried or baked), which cuisine it derives from and even more.

I tested it a while ago when I had bought a bunch of asparagus. I had never prepared asparagus before, so I was pleased when I found this recipe for oven-roasted asparagus. It is really simple as it mostly consists of washing, cutting and putting the asparagus into the oven, however, the result was a very tasty snack. And, furthermore, I learned some new vocabulary from this recipe:

to lop off (to chop/cut off)
to pat something dry (to hit lightly -- e.g. with a cloth -- until it's dry)
to drizzle, e.g. with oil (to moisten)
Don't skimp! (Don't use too less!)

I am very happy that there is a search engine for recipes, because I usually tend to buy food without thinking of how to prepare them afterwards. So this is definitely a good way to avoid throwing away food because it gets bad before you think of what to do with it and it most certainly helps finding new recipes and techniques.

Why I'm not a good Blogger

source: ler0c

I was doing a bit of brain-storming for our first homework of this semester today, you know, how we plan to improve our blogs and what we like best about the blogs of our fellow students. All I could think of during gathering my thoughts was: why is it so hard for me to post regularly? How did the other students manage to post so much, while I was struggling with it all the time?

Blogging is not even new to me. I have always been writing about my private life, starting in 2004/2005 with shamelessly spamming my blog with writing ridiculously detailed posts about my everyday life (which mostly consisted of going to school back then). Obviously, I wasn't the only one doing this -- I knew lots of people on the internet who did the very same, although it wasn't that "mainstream" during that time. It was kind of a scene you belonged to when you managed to let your readers believe that your life is always full of adventures and fun. It made me feel good to present the kind of impressive parts of my life, because most of my readers didn't know me personally. This made it easier to act like a super heroine since they couldn't prove the opposite.

When social platforms like MySpace and Facebook came along, presenting your life on the internet became much more common, and slowly but surely also privacy on the internet became a topic. It was (luckily) the end of my glorious time of thinking "Notice me, internet! I'm interesting!". I started becoming more careful with my privacy, thinking twice whether my posts are worth being posted or not.

However, there was also the other direction: out of a sudden, a lot of people started blogging about their everyday life as well and/or posted their opinions about certain topics with sheer passion, while I more and more hesitated posting on my blog. I just felt that my everyday life was not interesting enough. I felt and still feel that blogging was yet again a way of showing off. My personal impression is that lots of bloggers think of themselves as being extraordinary, and that their metaphorical voice on the internet is loud and of big importance. On the internet, I am one person amongst millions and so in most cases, hardly anybody will be interested in what I ate today or why I don't like ridiculous high temperatures in summer.

In the end, I might be on the way of finding an answer to my question at the beginning: either I'm not self-confident enough to write down my personal opinions or I take blogging far too seriously. Either way, I have to find a better solution to be able to post on this blog more regularly than not posting at all -- at least for the sake of a good grade.