The art of learning languages - talkday1

When learning a foreign language, many learners focus primarily on reading and listening. These activities are undoubtedly important. Every time we encounter a word, phrase, or sentence through input, our brain forms a memory trace. With repeated exposure, these traces gradually become stronger, allowing us to recognize and understand the language more easily. However, understanding a word is not the same as being able to use it. Many learners have had the experience of understanding a sentence perfectly when reading or listening, only to find themselves unable to produce a similar sentence in conversation. This is because recognition and production are different skills. While input helps us recognize language, actual use helps us retrieve and produce it. When we engage in conversation, we are required to actively search our memory for the words and expressions we have previously encountered. We must select them, organize them, and use them to communicate a message. This process streng...

The i+1 principle is a concept introduced by linguist Dr. Stephen Krashen as part of his Input Hypothesis in language acquisition theory. Here’s a detailed breakdown: What is i+1? "i" refers to the learner's current language level, or what they already know. "+1" represents a new, slightly more advanced language input that the learner has not yet fully mastered but can understand with some context or support. In essence, i+1 is the idea that learners acquire a new language best when they are exposed to material that is just one step beyond their current level of proficiency. This material should be comprehensible overall but contain some elements that stretch the learner’s understanding and challenge them to grow. Why is i+1 Important? Balance between Challenge and Comprehensibility: If the input is too easy (just "i"), learners won’t be challenged enough to make progress. If the input is too hard (much more than +1), learners may become overwhelmed an...

 Many people try to memorize a large number of words all at once. However, this method is inefficient. Let’s take an example. Nowadays, we have smartphones that allow us to store names and make calls with just one click. But before, with public phones, we had to first remember the phone number from a small notebook (memorization) and then dial it to make a call. However, once the goal of dialing the phone number was achieved, there was no need to keep remembering the number, as the purpose of memorizing it had been fulfilled. As a result, this information stays in memory for a short time and then disappears. This is what we call short-term memory. Now, how would we retain this phone number for longer without needing to refer to the notebook? We might try writing down the number while memorizing it, or we could assign special meaning to it. For example, if the number is '1004,' we might remember it as "angel" in Korean (천사), which helps us convert general information i...

Is learning Pinyin from the scratch efficient?   Do you want to understand how Chinese sounds form? Or do you want to communicate with Chinese people? If you really want to understand how we talk and talk in Chinese, please watch this video WE CHINESE DON’T LEARN PINYIN TO UNDERSTAND OR SPEAK CHINESE (Intro video) 1.       Native Chinese never use Pinyin to learn Chinese speaking 2.       We learn Mandarin by hearing from our parents 3.       We start to learn Pinyin after we are already fluent in Chinese. We hear and speak Chinese to learn Pinyin, not the other way around None of us learned Pinyin before we could understand and speak Chinese Learning Pinyin first makes foreign students to feel very hard to learn Chinese and they find themselves to be stuck in troubles of understanding or making a good pronunciation themselves even after a long period of time Besides of that, Pinyin is NOT the Chinese langua...

  Let’s think about this first How badly do you really want to learn the words? Is it enough to read the book or do you want to use the words in your real life? You could read more than 10,000words per hour if you are a competent reader. So, it means you could encounter many unknown words during the reading and learn a lot of words per day. If you look up the unknown words, you would say that you could learn more than hundreds of words a day. On the contrary, if you really focus on learning the new words to be able to achieve mastery level so that you use them in your real life, you should read articles to see how those words are applied in a real sentence and connect the meaning to your previous knowledge and experiences or image in your mind including finding the definition of the words. The development of language is a byproduct produced by the process of understanding the usage in a real life. If you try to do this, that could be 5 ~ 10 words with contextualized pra...