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Wanda Kaishin

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Everything posted by Wanda Kaishin

  1. I suppose anything is possible. It sort of flies in the face of the old "opposites attract" adage though.
  2. It amazes me that anyone opposes having defined language levels. How is defining a language level hurting you? If you're required to have a B2 in French for a certain job, should you be angry at the definition of B2? Why not be angry at the people who made it a requirement? If conversation isn't required for the job, and you've passed B2 listening, reading and writing, should you be mad at the definition of B2, or should you be mad at the people who won't accept your exam scores? If you've been put into a B2 level French class, and it's too easy for you, should you be upset with the definition of B2, or upset with your placement? What I like about the CEFR is that it gives us an approximate level for our language skills. I can't count how many times I've been told by someone "I'm fluent", which means absolutely nothing to me. If people would just state their CEFR level, we might actually know approximately how skilled they are. I know - what a radical idea.
  3. Definitely the thing the OP most needs to do is converse. I believe the excuses he gives for not conversing are indicative of his problem. If the excuses are valid, then why would anyone want to become a good speaker in a language they have no chance to speak? Strange. If it were me, I'd pay for lessons from a teacher on italki. The teachers are reasonably priced, and this will save a lot of time. Pay for an hour of conversation, and be finished in an hour; exchange languages with someone, and be finished in 2 hours. Your choice. If you're looking for conversation tips, I recommend the book How to improve your foreign language immediately. That being said, I particularly like Anna's suggestion. I might have to give it a try some day.
  4. Ok, I know this is an old post, but here goes. It's not helpful because you aren't using Thai script, which leads to mispronunciation.
  5. It is quite possible, and there are many free tests online that will help you do it. I don't really understand why you posted the rest of what you wrote here, because it doesn't pertain to estimating vocabulary size. This is a good question, and one I can't answer. The tests are generally free and quick, so maybe take 2 or 3 and use the average? Sorry I can't be more help, but I'm interested in hearing recommendations from you if you do this.
  6. Try googling something like "free spanish podcasts". There are many.
  7. You are right to look elsewhere for learning pronunciation. But his pronunciation isn't so bad to the point where it isn't understandable.
  8. I think what you're looking for is not the Mediterranean diet, but the MIND diet, developed specifically for the mind.
  9. A bit of a warning here. While Michel Thomas's accents aren't bad, they aren't native. He has been criticized for this, and for giving pronunciation tips that aren't correct/helpful. I believe he's a native Polish speaker. This doesn't affect me, because I learn my pronunciation elsewhere before ever listening to his course. I like to compartmentalize my learning, so I'm only trying to get grammar out of them.
  10. No, but I've heard it's pretty good. That one was created by Michel Thomas himself (he is the teacher in the recording), and all of those have a reputation for being quite good.
  11. It's an audio course designed to give the learner a good grasp on a large portion of the target language's grammar in a very short period of time. Unlike Pimsleur, it comes with notes, and actually encourages you to pause the recording and formulate your answers. There is always a teacher (sometimes 2) and 2 students - a smart student and a dumb student. The teacher explains something, delivers a sample sentence, and the students repeat it. If the smart student repeats it, it's usually right. If the dumb student repeats it, it's often wrong, and the teacher makes a correction. Although it sounds bizarre/annoying, I've found Michel Thomas to be helpful and well worth the money. How helpful depends on the language. Here's how I rate the ones I've used: French - very good (except the vocabulary course, which is absolutely terrible) Russian - good Japanese - good Chinese - ok
  12. Ok, since some people here still seem to be upset about friends not jumping at the opportunity to "teach their language", let me recap. The op said she asked her friend to teach her Spanish. To a native English speaker, this sounds like a big imposition, but the op says we misunderstood her, and that her friend knew she meant she just wanted to occasionally ask a question about Spanish. The op said her friend avoided this request and wouldn't "teach" her Spanish. But later, the op admitted that her friend answered "if you teach me some english". I had no intention of bringing this quote up, because I was sure people would see it and stop replying to this thread. But I see the op continues to complain about people "not understanding" her posts. I'm through with this thread now, and I'm not coming back, but I just wanted to let people know that, intentional or not, there's definitely some misrepresentation going on here.
  13. I recommend using google translate. You can either translate the whole web page, or just some specific text.
  14. This is an old post, but in case there's any confusion, threads in which you've posted have a star to the left of the title. Threads which contain posts that you haven't seen before have bold titles. There is no indication of how many posts you've made in a given thread, but I haven't seen this in any other forum either.
  15. Ok, this is old, but in case there's any confusion, go to the top of the page the thread is on. There should be a "Follow this" button on the rh side.
  16. Hi czarina84, Are you requesting a sub-forum specifically for Celtic/Gaelic? I ask because this is the suggestions/requests thread. Anyway, it's not my call, but I don't think it would be very active. If you look under "other languages", I think there is only one post for Gaelic, and none for Celtic.
  17. I'm locking this since it's not language related. I personally don't have a problem with discussing non-language related topics at Linguaholic, but until there's a sub-forum created for off-topic discussions, there's no appropriate place to put it. If you feel strongly about this, please request a new sub-forum under Forum suggestions/Requests.
  18. I've heard it's possible for a child to have up to 4 native languages: 1) mother's language 2) father's language 3) nanny's language 4) country's language But that's really pushing it. I think most kids in this situation end up not being native level in all 4 because of lack of balance. It's better to have complete mastery of one than problems in more than one at this early stage, imo. I've seen some people claim 4 or even more native languages, but they can't really pass for a native in all of them, or the languages are very similar.
  19. Well then, you shouldn't have said "The only real function this whole easy vs hard discussion has, is to discourage you from learning a language." What's discouraging about receiving information? If a learner decides to be discouraged, that's his problem, not yours. I'd also like to point out that your blog post contradicts itself. You say that languages aren't inherently hard or easy, but then you go on to list "components" that are hard or easy. You can't have it both ways.
  20. Is it worth mentioning? Absolutely. Every bit of information I can get about a language is helpful. Benny Lewis's obsession about getting people to ignore useful information about the languages they are learning amazes me. I say give the people the information, and let them to decide what to do with it.
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