babelhut.com

If you’ve been keeping up with the language learning scene online, you have probably heard of Learning With Texts (LWT), which is software to assist you in studying foreign language text. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, then I recommend checking out Benny’s excellent introduction to Learning With Texts, because the rest [...]

Here’s a language learning tip that has worked really well for me: learn to cook.  And when you do, use recipes in your target language.  Great way to learn language.  Here’s why: Recipes are short – most recipes fit on one piece of paper, and that’s including a big picture of the end result. Recipes [...]

It’s been a little over a month since I started learning Thai using the TV Method.  I finished my first drama on April 10th.  Since then, I’ve started two new dramas and have been watching them plus some cartoons. BORING STATS In the 33 days I’ve been watching Thai television, I’ve racked up about 41 [...]

I just finished the 8th episode of the Thai drama I’ve been watching.  That brings me up to 12 hours of Thai TV watched.  Passing the 10 hour mark seems as good a time as any to make my first progress report, so here goes.. Greetings Keith tipped me off that the first thing that [...]

One of my favorite language blogs to read is Keith’s Voice on Extreme Language Learning.  Keith is analytical about his language learning methods and he writes very clearly.  Currently, he is trying to learn Chinese through what he calls the TV Method.  The TV Method is a system where you watch a lot of TV [...]

Here’s a language learning tip that has worked really well for me: read children’s books.  I’m talking books intended for children aged 0-5. Even if you aren’t a beginner. Here’s why: They are easy – This is as easy as reading material comes. Even if you are a complete beginner, if you have a dictionary [...]

Here’s a language learning tip that has recently worked really well for me: start a translation project! Here are the steps: Find something in your target language that hasn’t been translated into English before. It could be a novel, a comic book, a children’s book, a movie, a TV show, a cereal box, a magazine, [...]

For Japanese, I use Anki as my SRS. It’s a great piece of software for studying Japanese. Here are a few reasons why: It guesses kanji (Chinese character) readings automatically. This saves me from having to manually type in readings. It has a lot of cool graphs and stats you can use to analyse your [...]

“Al rescate” is Spanish for “to the rescue.” Some of you may have noticed my lack of posts in the past couple of weeks. My work life and my home life conspired to consume any free time I had so that I could not even study new Spanish or Greek material, let alone write about [...]

I’ve been studying Japanese off and on for about 8 years. If you break it down chronologically, I had: 2 years in a Texas university 1 year in a Japanese university 1 more semester in a Texas university 3 or 4 years of not studying Japanese at all 1 year living in Japan, surrounded by [...]