Now entering the fourth week of my year without English, I’ve seen a lot of different advice for learning languages. Some people believe in huge amounts of listening and reading. Others say take classes or dive into conversations immediately. I won’t comment on those strategies (yet), but I will point out one common suggestion: you […]
Archives for September 2013
The Importance of Knowing What You Know
If I had to speculate what was the biggest obstacle to learning well, I wouldn’t guess reading speed, memory or even procrastination. I’d say it was metalearning. It’s important, and most people are lousy at it. “Meta” is a prefix that gets added to things that are about themselves. Metaphilosophy is the philosophy of philosophy. […]
Thoughts on the First Week Without Speaking English
Today was the first week into my year without speaking English. I wanted to share my thoughts on what it’s been like avoiding speaking English entirely, as a method to learn a language. First, though, a clarification. When I wrote my initial post about my challenge to not speak English for a year, I generated […]
I’m 25
Two weeks ago, I celebrated my 25th birthday. Normally I do a birthday post on the day, but the combination of reopening Learning on Steroids, Burning Man and selling my stuff and moving out to begin my next learning project left me with less time for introspection. For those of you new to the blog, […]