Tips, tutorials and resources to aid you on your path towards fluency.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
The Best Source of Words in Context: Google Images + Google Translate
In the last Q&A, I talked about getting words in context from Google images + Google translate. Let’s talk about this a bit, because it’s an extraordinary pair of tools.
Reader Q&A: How to learn abstract words, fixing ingrained grammar mistakes
Q: How do I learn abstract words like “to seem” and “to be”? A: Up until you have enough vocabulary to handle a monolingual dictionary, you’ll be reliant on context. My favorite source of words in context is the basic (old) version of Google Images plus Google Translate (I use the google toolbar to dump the Google images search results url directly into google translate). This will give me a bunch of pictures with translated captions underneath. Pick one that you like and turn it into a fill-in-the blank card. In Russian, my example for “seem” translates to “this house seems small“. I already know house and small and I remember enough about the meaning of the sentence that those two other words plus the associated picture from google images that the meaning stays pretty clear. Once that sentence makes sense to me then I can go in the other direction and have “to seem” on the front, and on the back my example sentence. In that card, I’m training myself to more-or-less remember in which context I’ve heard that word before.
Basically, you use pictures to provide concrete anchor points, and you build bridges between them with connecting words (He is a boy, He is mean, the dog wants a bone). Once you’re comfy with those words then you build bridges on top of your bridges (he is drowsy = he wants to sleep a little, etc). The structure gets bigger and bigger underneath, and eventually you can handle a monolingual dictionary and things get easier. It’s a fun process, once you get used to it.
Q: I speak German fluently, but I have a lot of ingrained mistakes. Can I fix them? A: Write, write, write. At your level, it’s how you figure out exactly where your ‘fossils’ are. Routinely write out a 5-minute journal in German and submit it to Lang-8.com. Get your correction and put it in Anki as a fill-in-the-blank-type card wherever you make a mistake. Get a daily Anki habit going.
The program will automatically focus on the more difficult stuff, because you’ll make more mistakes with it, and so you’ll see those cards more often, and it should pretty quickly replace your bad habits with good ones.
Video: The Sounds of French (aka “How to learn lots of new vowels”)
The first French video is done, and it should be helpful for learners of any language. French is an extremely vowel-heavy language, and the stuff I recommend in this video for developing those vowel sounds in your ear/mouth will be applicable to any new vowels.
Here’s the link (or go to YouTube directly)