Monthly Archives: August 2010

This video explaining google translate is quite relevant to language learning. Our brains are better than computers at discovering patterns.Our brains are also better at discovering patterns than learning rules. The odd bit of grammar or vocabular… Continue reading →

My data plan with my iPad is as follows. I pay $15 monthly for 250 MB (or could pay $35 for 5 GB if I needed it) of data with my 3G iPad. I will be in Europe end Sept to Dec 1. Are similar plans available from European telecoms, and will they work… Continue reading →

We hope that our new expanded Lessons page, aimed mostly at beginners, will start up next week. There will be many more resources for learners, translations, notes, pin yin for Chinese, etc. as well as videos. I have been experimenting with how be… Continue reading →

It is my 65th birthday in October and my wife and I will be driving around Europe in the fall. It looks like our route will look something like this, but very much subject to change. Any LingQers or non-LingQer language keeners on our route? Sept … Continue reading →

I have been reading a book on Canadian history, Canada A People’s History, and am quite impressed with the statesmanship and courage of the native Indians, the spirit of adventure and stoicism of the early French-Canadians, who arrived from Europe… Continue reading →

I was listening to the gentle, refined and uplifting music of Mozart at dinner. Then I thought of the cruelty and brutishness of that time, and even of our time. I was reminded of the range of behaviour that humans are capable of. Continue reading →

There is no language that I speak that I have not enjoyed learning. There is no language that I have learned that I do not want to spend more time with. As long as we are enjoying the language, we are learning and improving. We would we want to co… Continue reading →

I had this question on a Forum at LingQ:”when learning..a language do you learn the literal translation .. or the given (poetic) translation. “My answer:”I learn words and form my own impression of what I am reading or listening to. I usually do n… Continue reading →

Yousef, a regular reader of this blog, in a comment to my previous post , asked the following question?”Steve, I’d be really interested in hearing what kind of approaches or skills you think are useful (for a teacher) to be able to generate intere… Continue reading →

What makes a good teacher? In this article in the LA Times there is discussion of the so-called value-added approach to teacher evaluation, which amounts to measuring the quality of teachers by their students test results. A variety of educators p… Continue reading →