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This Week: Daily Life in Beijing & The Variety of Chinese Postage Stamps (plus some AI)

This week's newsletter is a little bit late since my usual routine was interrupted by a visit to the aviation museum. However, we did manage to publish another language progress check video in addition to a short about Chinese postage stamps. Also, in this newsletter, we take a look at if it's possible to build our own language teacher from all the tools and technologies we currently have available to us.

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Listen to the latest podcast episode

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This Week’s Videos

1. 🚲 北京日常VLOG | 健身、买二手自行车 & 清明节感想 – A casual Chinese-language vlog about life, fitness, biking, Qingming, and teaching in northern Beijing. Watch here
2. ✉️ Collecting Chinese Postage Stamps?! – A spontaneous trip to the post office turns into a small collection of modern Chinese stamps. Watch here
3. 📖 Are you using AI to learn a language? - Wondering if it's worth hiring a language teacher or trying to teach myself... automation AND language learning.

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北京日常VLOG | 健身、买二手自行车 & 清明节感想

An attempt at a Mandarin Chinese-only video of interest. This vlog takes me through a typical day in Beijing—filmed entirely in Mandarin. It covers:

• A short morning workout (get the pull ups in!)
• Searching for a second-hand bicycle
• Reflections on 清明节 (Qingming Festival)
• Observations on life in 昌平 (Changping) and 沙河 (Shahe)
• Some honest thoughts about language learning progress

It’s part local exploration, part language practice, and part behind-the-scenes of what it’s like teaching and living here in northern Beijing.

📹 Watch here: YouTube Link

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Collecting Chinese Postage Stamps?!

What started as a favour for my mother's friend turned into a little bit of an exploration of collecting stuff.

I was tasked with finding a few postage stamps so I stopped by the university post office thinking I could send a few post cards to Canada. Turns out, the university post office didn't have a enough stamps to sell me to send post cards overseas. Or so they said.

After a short back-and-forth with the staff (and some low-pressure bargaining), I managed to convince them to sell me some one-offs and other stamps they weren't using.

Here's what I took home:

Are you a collector? Stamps, coins, receipts, language notes? Or is that the stuff of hoarders?

📹 Watch here: YouTube Link

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📖 Are You Using AI to Learn a Language?

With tools like ChatGPT, voice cloning, and auto-translation improving seemingly every day, I wonder if it's even necessary to hire a teacher these days. In particular, I'm thinking of my upcoming summer break and I'm starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, a trip is in order and if I'll need to resurrect some of my language skills.

In particular, I was thinking of starting up Russian classes again but then got thinking, what is learning a language but a bunch of vocabulary strung together by some logic that it coordinated by grammar constructions?

Ok, a bit of an oversimplification, but the idea is there: could I automate or glue together a bunch of modern AI tools to help me practice the language each and every day?

I would have a multi-pronged approach:

• A morning email
• A vocabulary list
• Typing practice
• Speaking practice
• As much listening as time allows

For this project I would be using Zapier, ChatGPT and Apple's own built-in tools to try to recreate an immersive experience (or at least thorough) that would help me build up the basics I still so sorely lack in the language.

Add to that, I was also thinking of adding in Ukrainian at the same time.

Is this possible? Have you tried using any AI tools to construct a hard-to-ignore-language-teaching experience? Or are you waiting for someone to program it for you?

I know there are AI programs out there, but with the modern tech (and a few YouTube videos demonstrating how), I wonder if it's possible to imitate a similar APP experience as using LinQ's ability to parse any text it is given.

Are you using AI to learn a language? Have you completely dropped your teacher—or are you now learning faster because of both? Let me know.

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Best,

Steve