A little less than three months ago today, I arrived with my friend Vat with very limited Spanish, with the goal of not speaking English for our entire stay. The challenge was an experiment: would it be possible to get by with no English even though our Spanish was rudimentary? And more, how much could […]
How Do You Learn a New Language, Without Forgetting the Old One?
The biggest difficulty I had when learning Spanish was, perhaps surprisingly, speaking French. I had learned French to conversational fluency before learning Spanish. However, as my Spanish got better, I found it made speaking French much harder. The problem got so bad, that after only a week or two in Spain, I could speak better […]
My Next Project – The Year Without English
Last year, in October, I finished the MIT Challenge. Now, I’m proud to announce my next yearlong learning project The Year Without English. As with the MIT Challenge, I’ve made a central page where I’ll post all the daily conversation logs and the videos for each leg of the trip. Click here to see the […]
Rethinking “Learn it Once”
When I wrote Learn More, Study Less in 2008, one of the big pieces of advice was to “learn it once”. The main idea being that, while review is still necessary, you shouldn’t procrastinate on what you’re learning—if you don’t understand something, the pre-exam cram session isn’t the time to learn it. I stand by […]