Steven's Language Vlog Podcast Newsletter!

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Back to work this week as markets and jobs resumed on Tuesday, even though we were later informed that even government officials were working over the break scheduling meetings and releasing statements, etc. So that really does beg the question, just what is a holiday if everybody has to work?

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We were back to our regular posting schedule this week as we were able to host THREE LIVE STREAMS! We also seem to be attracting a few more peeps to watch and comment, which is good to keep things going and, most importantly, relevant.

This week's videos:

1. Chinese: Studying Chinese characters on DuChinese
2. Russian: Practicing declensions and taking a grammar test
3. English: What makes a good English teacher?
4. Short: Can you have a teacher if you're self taught?
5. EXTRA: ??

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This week we spent some time looking at tracing Traditional Chinese characters and reviewing flashcards on DuChinese.

I've been trying to make it a habit to sit down for 20 minutes every day to trace out these Traditional Chinese character sheets that I bought from Taobao recently. I've gotten through a few and they're easy enough to do. The challenge, however, is understanding what they say!

Turns out these traceable Traditional Character sheets are all words and phrases I'm completely unfamiliar with... because as I translate from English into Chinese I would use different words. They are "nice" things to say to describe or say to people, all of which are the Chinese method of description, not the English-to-Chinese method I use.

As a result, I'm tracing Traditional Characters for words I don't really know, so at some point I'll have to go through these sheets and translate some of them.

However, on the livestream for this week, I spent some time reviewing my flashcard deck on DuChinese. If you get a chance to watch one of these livestreams, they are times when I'm able to "deconstruct" the character and reason out its definition and pronunciation. I don't always get it right (actually, I get a lot wrong), but it's important to see how Chinese characters can be broken down into their constituent parts which give clues as to their meaning and usage.

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For this week's Russian livestream on Thursday, I took a look at a few websites for practicing grammar.

• A conjugation website: https://cooljugator.com/ru
• A lexical "reverse engineering" website: https://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-russian.html
• And an extensive grammar website: http://masterrussian.com/tests/Russian_Tests.htm

During the live stream I also took a grammar test and scored only 4 out of 15! It was deplorable I tells ya!

You can take the test yourself here: http://masterrussian.com/tests/6-cases.htm?page=16#focus

Overall, it was good practice and learned that my understanding of the в+...е ending is something I have to work on. That is to say, my knowledge of the Russian particles в, о, с, etc. is lacking. If you know Ukrainian, they are similar but the case endings for Russian are different. So, practice time it is!

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For this week's English language focused livestream, we discussed just what makes a good English teacher. This was posed by one of our viewers during the live chat. My response was rather immediate in that, first and foremost, the best teachers I've met over my years were all good with kids. That is to say, they either taught kids or had training to teach kids or young learners. These teachers often exhibited some common traits (which I discussed in the live stream). They were:

1. Patient - they let the learner / kids figure things out for themselves
2. Resilient - if something didn't work or didn't go right, they were quick to recover and continue on
3. Flexible - they adapted to situations outside of their control, such as technical malfunctions
4. Prepared - they put thought and effort into their classroom activities.

To that list I would add "encouraging" in that they often "elicited" the answer or correct response from the kids by asking questions, miming / acting out, and pointing and nodding to responses that were on the right track.

I'm sure there are other factors that go into being a good teacher, but those five elements seem to be the easiest and most clear to me.

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We ended the week with another short video asking the question, "Can you have a teacher if you are teaching yourself a language?"

This might seem like a silly question, but when someone says they are "self-taught", what does that mean? Does that mean they never talked to a teacher during their studies? Or does that mean that they weren't forced into studying a language at school or something and thus, as a result, they were dragged through the gauntlet that is language learning?

I would almost argue that everybody is "self-taught" in a very broad manner of speaking since it's us, the learner, who needs to take in the language and then use it for what we need and want. No one can force us to produce language output. All of which is a roundabout way of saying: yes, language production is a choice, but is language LEARNING something that can happen on our own or do we need a teacher to help us?

I think the answer is pretty clear: you need a teacher.

Regardless of how many "teach yourself" books you own, at some point it helps immensely to sit down with someone whose job it is to help you use your language better.

Once posted, YouTube viewers commented:

What do you think, can someone be truly self-taught in a language? Or is it okay for them to have a teacher while they study?

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We'll leave it there for this week! We hope this has been a useful and interesting read. It's one of our goals here at the language vlog: to give you something to read and think about in your own language learning journey.

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Get in touch! We'd love to hear from you! You can email us here or follow us on YouTube and post a comment, we'll get back to you!

Thanks for reading and let us know if there's anything we can help you with!

-Steve

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