Hello everybody and welcome to yet another edition of the language vlog podcast newsletter ;P hahaha

This week:

• Mid-Autumn Festival in China
• Tenth anniversary being in China
• Livestreams
• Just because you can speak, does that mean you can teach?

LISTEN IN

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It was the Mid-Autumn Festival here in China, which meant a lot of things were shut down for a few days, particularly banks and government offices. However, the working people of the rank file continued about their jobs, some getting paid 3x salary on Tuesday.

It was also a time to try out mooncakes (月饼) once again, as those are released around this time of year. This year's flavours included two egg, black sesame and sugar, traditional five seeds, and some sort of meat-ish-like mooncake. We posted a short video about this on Tuesday while out at DaoXiangCun (稻香村), a famous pastry shop here in Beijing.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024 also marked my tenth anniversary in the country. I decided to focus this week's English livestream on the lead up and first entrance to the country back in 2014. It was a bit off the cuff and took a look at some of the photos I had taken in and around the time I first came over, but it served as a reminder that time sure flies! We may very well make this into a separate video later on.

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This past week's livestreams included the usual Chinese broadcast on Monday, during which we literally spent over an hour going through a bunch of flash cards on DuChinese. This was a good broadcast as we had a bit of audience interaction throughout the stream, particularly about how Chinese characters can reduplicate themselves, yet the pronunciation changes completely (eg, 人，从，众；木，林，森).

Sadly our Russian livestream on Wednesday didn't really work out as for some reason the screen share feature cut out about 20 minutes in. This is too bad because I was reviewing a YouTube channel I use quite a bit for my own studies, Yaroslava Russian, and so we were left with a glitchy livestream that is mostly me just looking away from the camera. *tear* Hopefully it works next time. Her work is quite neat to look at because she also has a Buy Me A Coffee site, but also offers transcripts and in depth readings of various topics in Russian and English for people to study from.

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And something to think about: just because you can speak a language, does that mean you can teach it?

Here's the YouTube short:

Speaking and Teaching are NOT the same!

I've talked about this idea before, particularly as it pertains to teaching English. However, this is something people need to be aware of should they move to another country and meet someone who says they can teach them their language (and possibly charge them a fee).

This may just be a friendly gesture in order to break the ice, but I'd be wary of depending on such a method to learn a language. Yes, you will be able to learn a little bit, particularly slang and the like, but if you really want to progress in the language, you'll need to learn the vocabulary on your own and then have the grammar explained in a way that doesn't leave room for doubt as to why something is the way it is... even though that's often the case.

Learning a language is a different skill set apart from teaching that language to another person, especially given the unique needs each learner can have.

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Alright, we'll leave it there for this week. I hope that helped and gave you something to think about. Please do get in touch with any comments or suggestions, we really appreciate the feedback! And, as I'm sure you've noticed, since we are a small operation, that feedback tends to get incorporated rather quickly.

Thanks for reading!

Steve

YOUTUBE

PS - I realize in last week's email I said I'd link to the deltoid muscle group pictures from the livestream I did. However, as files and time go, I don't know where they went! When I find them I will let you know! (Let this be a reminder to do things when you're thinking of them and not put them off until "later"!)

PPS - We've just hit over 600 subscribers on the YouTube channel! Thank you! :D