I was a volunteer teacher in Africa from 1988-91.
I would write letter from my village, and it would take one month to get to my family in Canada. They would write a response, and it would take one month to get back to my village. That was just the reality.
Now the village I lived in has a cell phone tower in the middle of it. I haven’t been back, but I am willing to bet that a lot has changed.
He actually wrote a manual on his method, where it came from, and how it works. I’m not sure if it is still available for download. I got a copy a couple of years ago.
Are you have to do is get past the first lesson, and then it’s all language training.
It’s an interactive lesson. You listen to the teacher explaining something to the student, then you pause the audio and try to answer your self, then you continue and listen to the student’s response. If you try it, you’ll find that it’s very natural and effective.
One of those superlatives may well have been mine. I speak English natively, and have learned French, German, Sesotho, and Japanese (with a combination of classroom and immersion). Learning Spanish with Language Transfer immediately felt right and natural, and I wish I had it for those other languages. I really have never found a better system.
It’s not a miracle, and the teacher emphasizes the need for practicing the newfound skills (conversations with native speakers, watching TV or videos, etc.) in order to truly embed it in your brain. But this course really does give you the tools to understand grammar and the connections between the different languages.
The problem is that the introduction for each of the courses is simply a description of his teaching method. go to the second lesson, and you all find the meat of the course starting.
The courses are all just audio files. You don’t need anything else, and I think they work very well. The app is very convenient, simple but without unnecessary bills and whistles and it works fine. This also means that you can download them, put them into your favorite music or podcasting app, or whatever else you want. I consider it a feature, not a bug.
The first episode is an introduction to the teaching method. For the language part, you should start with the second episode.
He is not a native speaker for all the languages, of course. His accent is very English, and from his name I would guess that he speaks Greek natively. But he is also fluent in at least Spanish, the course that I have used, having lived in Spanish-speaking countries.
The best language learning system I’ve found is Language Transfer .
It’s free, but it easily beats Duolingo and anything else I have tried (short of total immersion).
I still donate $10/month even though I haven’t used it for a while, because I want it to succeed!
I’m in Malaysia right now, which is a majority Muslim country. Restaurants and convenience stores sell beer and other alcohol, but I have seen signs in the convenience stores covering the front of coolers saying that Muslims cannot buy alcohol.
I’m not sure how strictly that is enforced, most of the store clerks and waiters don’t seem to care.
Just audio. But it is presented in a way that helps you to learn, rather than just remember. If you give it a try, I promise that you will be shocked at how you can retain the knowledge.
It isn’t enough on its own, however. You need to reinforce the lessons by speaking to people, reading, and/or TV and movies.
A guy near my home is flying two American flags in front of his house. The thing is, we’re in Canada…
I have found Duolingo much, much less useful for language learning than Language Transfer. The latter actually helps you learn to think in another language rather than memorize things (which is still useful, but not nearly as much).
Short if total immersion, I have found nothing better than LT.
As does peanut butter and bacon.
Coincidentally, I just went on the autobahn yesterday, for the second time in my life. We were driving about 130 but there were plenty people probably going 30 or 40 km faster than us.
I used the homebrew channel to convert my Wii from Japanese to North American (games are region-locked). Never used it for posted games.
That’s exactly right. The proof is quite simple and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be taught instead of just getting students to accept magic rules.
I went through engineering school, and 20 years of work (not as an engineer), before finding a calculus text that explained why the derivative of x^2 is 2x. Along with many practical applications of calculus.
That book was Calculus Made Simple, published in 1914. Thanks, Project Gutenberg!
Edit: derivative of x^2 is 2x. Got my differentiation and integration confused!
I know someone who works in a university group related to privacy issues. He refuses to have a smartphone because of the ease which which almost anyone can track you and your activities. I think he has an old flip phone.
It makes more sense to refer to RFK Sr. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.
I have heard, and I think this came out of Google, that managers can be separated into two groups: shit funnels and shit umbrellas.
The shit funnel takes all the shit that is coming down from above comma and redirects it onto the people below.
The shit umbrella protects all the workers below from the shit that is falling from about. I was lucky enough to have an umbrella manager in one of my previous jobs.