How To Learn A Language When You Dont Know Where To Start:

How to learn a language when you don’t know where to start:

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Get your writing corrected

Young voters look ready for a surge in turnout not seen since Obama's historic landslide

Joe Biden is already benefitting from eating into key Donald Trump support among seniors and white voters. But now there's evidence that younger voters—who largely side with Democrats—could turn in numbers not seen since Barack Obama jazzed the demographic back in 2008, according to the Washington P

PSA to stay diligent with your 2020 vote

Please remember to do your own research, for your own state, for your own county, on whether voting in person or receiving your mail in ballot and dropping off in person is best for YOU.  Some counties may be heavily affected by mail delays, others may experience little to no delays.

Understand how your county has handled voting machines and paper trails in the past, and whether dropping off a paper ballet is more advantageous, or vice versa.

Register yourself

Register others

Most states allow early in-person voting!

If you can safely vote in person, vote in person.

If you don’t want to vote in person, most states allow mail-in or absentee! You do not have to mail-out your ballot, you can drop it off in person!

Do not panic and cancel your mail in ballot if that is your preferred method!

Constantly check your registration and encourage others to do the same

Vote as early as possible in your State

If you receive your ballot in the mail and want to avoid USPS uncertainty then drop off your ballot at a ballot drop off box or your local county elections office.

If you must return your ballot in the mail, the USPS recommends sending at least 1 week before Nov 3rd, but you should return it as early as you are possible to account for compounding USPS delays.

If you do not receive a ballot in the mail or you later change your mind to vote in person, then most states allow you to still vote in person!

Follow this guide to ensure the integrity of your vote and others, whether in-person or mail-in!

Become a paid poll worker! The Trump Campaign is recruiting 50,000 poll “monitors” across 15 key states to challenge people they think shouldn’t vote. Keep them honest!

Plan your vote here with detailed information on your state regarding whether you can vote by mail, vote early in person, and more.

Axios has also put together a quick reference of voting methods and dates by state.

Another comprehensive list was put together regarding voting dates and deadlines, absentee rules, and answers to other frequent questions voters have, all in one place. Mobile friendly view here.

And of course, continue to hold your reps and senators and state AG and the USPS board of governors’ feet to the fire!

Stay informed

Jennifer Cohn is an attorney and election integrity advocate, covering important developments and information to make your vote count.

Democracy Docket provides analysis and tracks court cases and lawsuits across the country regarding your vote.

Pokeball Interior Posters made by Susan Lao

★ 【まいじ】 「 さくらちゃん 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter

Welcome!

Hello lovely followers and welcome to my new blog! Honestly I just got bored and on whim decided to remake my whole account because I felt bored and was getting sick of my old blog. This blog probably won’t be too different in terms of content (or lack thereof lol) tbh but hopefully it’ll be a bit cleaner and more organized. Anyways while I’m setting up feel free to read through my carrd https://nehamerchant123.carrd.co/ 

AO3 blocking

Do you wish you had the ability on AO3 to block works by tag, author, title, or words in the summary? You need AO3 Savior. 

Step One: Install the Tampermonkey extension on your browser (link is for the Chrome extension, so if you use a different browser, just search for it). This will allow you to install the AO3 Savior userscript. 

Step Two: Install AO3 Savior. Click on the link and hit the Install this Script button (image below)

This will open the userscript in Tampermonkey. Click the install button there too (screenshot below)

Step Three: Install AO3 Savior config the same way. It’s a separate file because if you update the code, it resets all of your blocks so you need to input them again. By having the config separate from the rest of the code, the other code can update while leaving your block settings in tact. 

Step Four: restart your browser 

Step Five: Click on the puzzle piece at the top right corner of your browser.  Click on Tampermonkey and then into your Dashboard. From there, find ao3 savior config in your list of installed scripts and click on the edit button (screenshot below)

Step Six: edit the code to block the things you want to block. This might sound intimidating, but it’s okay! 

In this config file, scroll down and read through the text. The first settings are turning options on or off. Use “true” to have that feature or “false” to turn that feature off. For example:

// Set to false if you don’t want to see why works were hidden.    showReasons: true,

When the code starts with // that means that it’s a comment or instructions to you. Read that line and then make the change on the line below it. In this case, change the word “true” to “false” if you don’t want to see the reason why the work was hidden from you.

To block on author, edit this part:

// Exclude works with an author that exactly matches at least one term.    authorBlacklist: [‘Hated Author 1’, ‘smeyer’],

Find the author’s name on AO3 and copy it so that you get the spelling right. Then paste it in here. To make sure your syntax is right, make sure that the author name is inside the square brackets [ ] and also inside apostrophes ‘. Separate each author name with a comma , like you see in the example provided. 

You can do the same thing with tags by copy/pasting the full tag and putting it inside apostrophes in the tag blacklist section. Same thing for specific fic titles or for words that appear in summaries.

Step Seven: After you have made all of your changes, go up to File and remember to Save. 

Step Eight: You can now close that tab and head on over to AO3 where the only sign of those fics/authors/tags etc you blocked will be a little box telling you a fic has been hidden, and why. If you don’t want to see those boxes, change those settings to false in step 6. 

In future, if you ever want to block a tag, author, or work from your AO3 experience, just go back into your config file and edit them in there. 

Note: in order to get this on mobile, use Firefox. Other browsers do not allow userscripts on mobile