Judith's language learning blog

I’m not sure if you heard of Hunch, it’s a pretty cool free site to help you come to decisions about just about anything. I created several “quizzes” (decision-making engines) about language-learning there and I’d appreciate your feedback – you can also just make an account on Hunch and start improving those quizzes.

What should my next foreign language be? (considering 45 languages so far, I’d appreciate help adding others)
Should I learn Esperanto?
How can I learn a foreign language? (evaluating your aptitude for self-study, classroom study, study abroad etc.)
Which program should I use to learn a new language? (still very sketchy)

Considering the audience of this blog, you may also like Which non-English movie should I watch?

If you’re like me and several other forum members I know, you have books on all kinds of subjects and languages that sound interesting but that you may never study, you have dozens of started projects and you frequently re-decide what you want to concentrate your energy on.

I now found a book that seemed to know me better than I know myself. It also had an instant wowing effect on everybody else I know with the above-mentioned issues. The book is called “Refuse to Choose!
“, written by Barbara Sher, and after devouring it over Christmas break I can recommend it to everybody here. The book reveals more about yourself and puts you at ease with who you are, but since that was not much of a problem for me, I found another part most rewarding: the part where the author provides lots and lots of helpful tips and techniques to enable you to pursue your dreams. From where and how to start via time management techniques to how to finish projects that deserve to be completed (or that your boss/school requires), there’s a lot of helpful content.

Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams

I’m not sure if you’re aware of it, but beside working for GermanPod101 and teaching private German classes online, I also created a German course for people to study on their own on the iPhone. It’s a brand new concept, involving many tiny German lessons rather than several long ones. It’s just perfect for the iPhone. When you’re waiting for the elevator, or any other of those myriad of small time wasters every day, you can just whip out your iPhone and do a German lesson in that course. You don’t have to be afraid of starting something you can’t finish, and you’ll be slowly but surely making progress in German.

For just a few days, this iPhone app is now priced at only 3 Euros / 4 dollars, as we’re preparing to send out a free upgrade to 50 lessons. Once the upgrade has been approved by Apple, the regular price will go up to 5 Euros, so get this app now – you’ll never see it that cheap again!

Get it now!

I thought I’d share some of my favourite resources for Esperanto. I will divide this into information for the might-be-interested, study materials for the definitely-interested and cultural resources for those who have actually learned at least some Esperanto.

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I was just answering Rebecka’s comment on my Modern Greek milestone and I found that my answer turned into a lengthy argument about why I like taking private classes and how I use my tutor. So I decided to write a new blog post about it instead, so that others could read it as well.

Right now I’m supplementing both my Greek and Chinese studies with 1-on-1 lessons on Myngle. I find them very useful in helping me advance quickly (the opposite of what I experienced in group lessons).

I typically take a lesson when I have a concrete need or goal. For example, the other day I was reading a learners’ grammar on the Greek tense system and found that I didn’t really understand the difference between θα γράφω and θα γράψω, or generally tenses based on the stems -γράφ-, -γράψ- and γράφει. The grammar had some examples, but each sample sentence was about a different topic and I couldn’t infer much about the crux of the matter. So I scheduled a lesson and asked Rania to think of sample sentences where the same idea (writing a letter) will appear in different tenses due to slight changes of context. For a native speaker, it’s not really hard to do if you ask specifically “What is a context in which I’d have to say ‘θα γράφω μια γράμμα’?”. Having these sample sentences with minimal variance really helped me understand why the changes occur, plus I have now entered the sentences into my Anki and test myself on them regularly (English to Greek).

Of course the lessons are never just about questions I have, we also practise conversation or listening comprehension or whatever else I feel is my weakest area at the moment. I do need a tutor for conversation at this point, rather than an unsuspecting native speaker, because once I’m talking about a subject, I refuse to give up on expressing something I wanted to express. I do try to rephrase sentences, but, if that does not help, I will ask for every single word I’m missing and then try to build the sentence. Unlike a lot of language learners, I do not keep silent or change topics if an idea is clearly beyond my level to express. Whether I’m having the discussion in Greek or in my mother tongue, I do not allow my limited vocabulary and grammar to hinder me from expressing the same ideas. Right now that typically requires angelic patience from whomever I’m talking to, so I prefer not to talk too much in Greek with friends. However, I believe it’s the fastest way for me to improve, because I’m learning words and structures that are 150% relevant and useful to me. What’s more, I can then discuss the same topic in Greek decently well with anybody else, no matter if it’s music, Berlin, what’s happening in our lives, the economy crisis or anything else I have talked about with Rania.

Let me introduce myself here in this first post.

My name is Judith Meyer, I’m a 25-year-old German girl living in Berlin with my American boyfriend, Chuck Smith. I originally come from Kamp-Lintfort, a small town near Düsseldorf, but I’ve been living in Berlin since March 2008 and I absolutely love this city!

I have a huge interest in languages, programming, politics, history, philosophy and methods of learning and teaching. My university major is French studies, with minors in computational linguistics (wish I could take that as a major!) and management. I just need to write my thesis to complete my degree, but it’s taking longer than expected because I work so much on the side. I tutor people in German, Latin and Esperanto over the internet, occasionally also French or English, and I work as the project manager of GermanPod101.com, also writing and recording most lessons. When I need a mental challenge, I like to program in Ruby on Rails or play the ancient Asian game of Go.

Read more about my starting point in each of the categories!