If Zorro can learn Swedish & Norwegian (Norwegish), Anyone can!

The other night I was desperate for a free action movie, so I whipped out my trusty iPad and opened my favorite Chinese Movie app, PPTV, to begin my hunt for a worthy candidate.  My expectations include only the basest of manly virtues, that is, senseless violence.  I tend to watch more medieval action flicks because while heavy in action, they’re primarily low in vulgarity and naked nudes.

After scrolling around for a few minutes, I thought my quest was all for naught, but behold!  Antonio Banderas starring as the 13^th Warrior.  Ahmed ibn Fadlan is banished from…Babel? Baghdad? Whatever, he’s not even from that continent so I don’t care, to the north as an “ambassador”.  Anyway, Zorro is chosen to travel with a band of warriors to save a village from a mysterious evil.  Hard to resist right?  If my wife was there, there’s no way I’d have gotten away with this movie, not since the DragonBall Evolution fiasco…worst…date…ever.  But I liked the movie, just to throw that in there.  But I digress…

Sexy Context is Essential

At work, I probably do 2 whole hours of real work each day. The rest of my time is spent bouncing between side projects I have going on. One such project is going through a Chinese grammar wiki my buddy is helping edit for ChinesePod and All Set Learning.

One of the structures I was learning was, “Subj. + isn’t Adjective at all” or “Subj. isn’t the least bit Adjective.” One example included, “You’re not sexy at all,” and “He’s not smart at all!” These structures, along with others are carefully written in my study journal.

Learning Languages & Killing Birds

When learning foreign languages, seemingly sage advice such as ‘Kill two birds with one stone,’ just won’t cut it.
I currently have a goal to figure out my reading level in Chinese by…you guessed it…reading!  Along the way, however, I’ve found myself trying to kill other birds with this one stone, meaning, while reading, I’m trying to boost my vocab, or I’m trying to increase my reading speed, or I’m trying to lengthen my sit-down time while reading.

All these side-missions have made my reading experiment turn into five other mini experiments.  I’m essentially trying to kill ten birds with one stone.

What I need to do, is kill one bird, one chinese reading bird, and kill him good, while using only one stonehenge sized stone to make sure I don’t miss.  (I’m sorry to any bird lovers, this is just a metaphor, no hard feelings against birds, except for the ones that use my car as target practice).

I’ve decided to quit expanding my experiments to try and include outlying elements and just use the experiment the way it is designed, and that is as a tightly controlled experiment with as few variables as possible.

How have you managed to kill your bird?  What are your distractions?  Share!

Learning Languages & Rock Climbing

When rock climbing, especially bouldering, there are three ways to approach your ‘problem’ or your goal: (stay with me, see if you can see where I’m going)

 1) On-sight climbing: You start climbing without prior observation, and make climbing decisions en route.  Sounds nuts right?  On-sight climbing is considered bad ace in the climbing world…if you can do it.  This method requires greater endurance, because you use strength experimenting different possibilities, and without coming off the rock, change your mind and go a different way.  It emphasizes path finding, quick thinking and problem solving.

2) Planned climbing: Before you even touch the rock, you sit back, take in the terrain, plan which moves you’ll use where, and you do this all the way until your goal, the top of the rock.  This method requires a realistic understanding of your abilities, otherwise your planning means nothing and you fall off the rock.

3) Beta climbing: This is when you watch someone better than you climb a problem you’re working on.  This way, you observe their moves (getting beta or info) and are better able to solve the problem when it’s your turn.  This method requires humility and a keen eye.  If you don’t have humility, you won’t get any beta because you’ll just see some ace solving your problem and showing you up and stealing your girlfriend…anyway.  Everyone has different strengths and experience, and so different methods on the same problem are also common.