Language Explorer

Fri, 12 June 2009

Hello everybody,

Many people want to learn a language, but often we are too busy to spend a lot of time on language learning. This is especially true if we are not students and have to work most days in a job, or we are busy with family matters.

I have a new idea for you to try if you like. I believe everybody would have time to do this, no matter how busy we are.

My idea is to write a small diary of around 50 words per day,(or maybe a little more or fewer words)

Maybe I will do this every day of the week, or just 2 or 3 days a week.

The idea is to concentrate on writing about what I do and what I am thinking about, and write it down in the languages I am learning. The idea is an extension to my "20 minutes a day to learn a language idea"

The idea is to help me:

1. Concentrate on vocabulary I can use on a daily basis

2. Describe events, activities, feelings and thoughts - but using not so many words

3. Put these thoughts together in a way other people can understand.

4. Something to remind me about words I know so I don't forget them.

5. Something to enjoy looking back on later and reading aloud.

6. A small "time-line" of learning to show others and keep as a way to see language progress.

7. Opportunity to learn new words - referring to a dictionary

8. A way to check small errors: grammatical, spelling etc

Also, not many words are involved, because it is not an essay or a long letter. I would suggest 75 words maximum.

I got the idea from a website called "Twitter" http://twitter.com/ which is becoming very popular. This is a website where people leave text messages for others, but only 140 words are allowed for each message. It is meant to keep people informed and in touch with each other. It can be useful for friends and family alike. The restriction to 140 words makes people concentrate their thoughts and say what they need to say in a concise way. It is also a quick and easy way to communicate.

To show you an example, here is my first diary entry: 54 words

English

"June 10th. Today at work I wrote to a supplier in Chinese, then later I went to my mother's to help her - she had a problem with her security alarm following a power cut. Later I went to a Chinese lesson. Very rainy weather and the roof I just put on the garden shed worked well!

French

"Le 10 juin. Aujourd'hui au travail, j'ai envoye un E-mail a un fournisseur en chinois. Plus tard, je suis alle chez ma mere pour l'aider. Elle a eu un probleme avec l'alarme de securite apres une coupure d'electricite. Plus tard je suis alle d'avoir une lecon chinoise. Il a beaucoup plu. Le toit que j'ai fait recemment sur l'abri au jardin etait tres efficace!

60 words

German

Am 10 Juni. Heute im Buero habe ich ein E-mail in Chineisich nach einem Anbieter geshickt. Spaeter musste ich bei meiner Mutter besuchen. Sie wollte die Hilfe mit ihrem Sicherheitsanlage nach einer Stromabschaltung. Spaeter ich bin fuer eine Chineisichelektion gegangen. Es hat viel geregnet. Das Dach von meinem Gartenschuppen, das ich habe kurzlich montiert hatte, war hocheffizient!

54 words

I just wrote the French and German quickly, and probably there are some errors, but I can check them later - when I read back my diary!

I can also tell you that I needed to look up the word "garden shed" in the dictionary for French and the same word and a few other words for German. The rest of the diary entry I thought of the words directly.

After reading it back to myself, I changed a few words for different words.

I can't write this way in Chinese yet, but I think I will try a small diary soon

I hope you like the idea.

A nice friend said to me about this idea "It's very much like we put one penny into our language bank every single day, small as it is, we'll end up with a considerable amount of treasure several years later"

That is exactly what I had in mind!

Bye for now

Alan

Category: Text Blog -- posted at: 5:21 AM

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