I recently wrote a little intro to Livemocha, an online community which I think is great for learning a new language. Not all aspects of the site are great, though. This is especially true when it comes the courses. Basically, here’s how the courses work…. You hear and read a bunch of words and phrases [...]
All right, I’m going to tell you how to learn Spanish fast, and by fast, I mean about 10 times faster than your average sit-and-soak classroom setting. I’m planning on writing a lot more about how I’ve hacked Spanish, so make sure you subscribe via email at the end of the post, or grab the [...]
The 2011 year has raced by faster than any year I can remember. It has been one of the most eye-opening, inspiring, life-altering years of my life in so many ways. This blog hardly begins to scratch the surface it all. But what makes me chuckle often are the moments when I say to myself [...]
At last. When this post goes live, I will be en route to Bogotá, Colombia, the start of my 3 month (minimum) trip abroad. It’s the first long-term travel I’ve ever done. I am so excited. I am totally stoked. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am. The first part of [...]
The past few weeks I have been studying Spanish pretty hard. It really feels like working out. I literally feel tired after an hour of intensive study. My method has mainly been the Pimsleur audio program and LiveMocha courses in Spanish, and occasionally I have a Skype conversation with a native Spanish speaker. I am [...]
I have thus far been taking a fairly “academic” approach to learning Spanish, i.e., following the Pimsleur program it its listen-and-repeat mode. But there’s a problem. In an academic approach, everything feels more like a drill and is fairly boring, honestly. Now, drills can be a very good thing to do. But, with LiveMocha, I [...]
