25 Must-Know Halloween Words for a Spooky Season
Halloween is just around the corner, and it's time to brush up on your spooky vocabulary with some special Halloween words!
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“It’s a big bad scary world out there!” Are you sure North America?
Edit: I wasn’t expecting this post to cause so much debate, but like the one linked just below, the reason I wrote it isn’t to be “anti-American” as far too many crybabies are claiming, but because you guys need to read a different perspective and understand how us non-Americans think for a retrospective look at […]
Dozens of xmas gift ideas to cheer up your language-learning loved ones
Language learning can and should be free, and there are many ways to do it without spending a penny, which I discuss regularly on this site. However, there is one time when spending a bit of bob can certainly be justifiable – when giving in to the consumerist frenzy that we celebrate just after the […]
“Skype me maybe” – Inspiring music video sung by 17 polyglots in over 30 languages
After a LOT of work to prepare the lyrics, round people together, send way too many emails, have contributors pick verses and languages, give them feedback for several different takes, blend it all together, get through the immense task of video and sound editing, and making sure everyone was happy with it… “Skype me maybe” is finally ready for the world! 🙂
As you can see, the storyline is that I’m a hopeless language learner, ready to give up, when 16 of the Internet’s most famous polyglots show up to give me some encouraging words… in the tune of Carla Rae Jepsen’s “Call me maybe” that was popular this year, and inover thirty languages. Yes, it’s as crazy and as good as it sounds! 🙂
Interview #1 with Tim Ferriss: Language Learning
Today I’m very happy to share an interview I did with New York Times best selling author, Tim Ferriss.
He got his fame initially for writing the 4 hour workweek, followed it up with the 4 hour body, and has just released the third in the series, the 4 hour chef.
The first book was about working well, and he inspired a lot of people to go location independent and start their own businesses after reading it (although I had been travelling for several years already myself when I first read his book), his second book was about living healthily, and to complete his healthy-wealthy-wise series, his final book is about how to learn.
Cloud-Tutoring: Combining Automated Teaching and Personalized Learning
Idohosaa Ness shares his vision of language education: Every student should have a personalized learning experience. No teacher should ever have to repeat herself more than once.
The most important skill a traditional learning approach will never teach you (+2 month Arabic video)
Here it is; my official two month point in Arabic! Subtitles in English, Arabic and Portuguese via Youtube.
I had initially planned to go to the Egyptian consulate in Rio, to finally speak the language for the first time in my life in person, but there were issues in setting up a meeting there. Luckily, I randomly ran into an Egyptian-American, Ahmed, at a Couchsurfing meeting!
I decided to only speak English with him then and ask him if he’d be up for recording a video with me. We still spoke English before recording the video, so he had no idea what my level would have been at. The reason I did this, was so you could literally see the very first time I genuinely spoke the language face-to-face with someone in my life, the moment after I pressed record.
Sharing this key moment is good for tracking my progress, since I know people are curious about such important milestones of the mission, (unlike some friends of mine, I don’t tend to have a camera on my head to catch such moments in cognito!) but obviously breaking into Arabic suddenly, after not speaking it for over a day since my previous Skype session, meant I didn’t have quite the ideal kind of flow I’d like. In future, I’ll speak in the relevant language for several minutes before recording, so I have this flow.
Why focus will get you much more than talent ever will
Shortly after I started blogging on Fi3M, I came across another site about learning and improving your ability to learn and made contact with the author. A few months later, Scott Young and I met up while I was passing through Paris briefly. (He’s the one who took that photo of me in front of […]
The month I lost faith in the system, and gained it in humanity
Today, I want to mention one of the most important points in my life, when my destiny changed and my faith in the traditional system of study hard, get a job, work up the ladder, and retire with as much money as possible, was absolutely shattered and I decided to start over from scratch, and why I’m really glad that I did.
Sorry it’s a little long, but I do want to give the full picture so you have the context of how my philosophy on life evolved dramatically in a very short time.
There are no quantum leaps in language learning – but that doesn’t mean you can’t sprint
Today’s video marks the half-way point of my mission to learn Egyptian Arabic to fluency in 3 months, while in Brazil. I’m talking to Henry, an Egyptian who lives in Australia, and it was the first time we ever talked. He’s a reader of this blog, and offered to let me record our Skype conversation.
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