Lingomi is a new website with products that helps make studying languages simpler. It’s first product lets you turn a list of Chinese Mandarin words into a custom audio file. It will be available at the end of March. (I hope!)
I have a big secret. I never learned how to study. After 12 years of school and 6 years (!!) of college, I never had to take a class on studying more efficiently. Our schools teach us facts and information but don’t teach us how to learn. It just doesn’t seem right.
There are study methods that make learning easier. There are study methods that make learning more effective or more efficient. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find information that teaches people how to learn—and this is true of languages too.
Try searching for “learning Chinese” on the web (Google link, Bing link). You’ll find lots of sites that will “teach you Chinese”, but you don’t find sites that teach you how to learn Chinese. I’ve studied Chinese actively for over 6 years and spoken it for over 10 years. If I knew then what I know now, I could have achieved the same level of Chinese in half the time. Understanding that was a painful realization.
By describing how I’ve learned to learn, I hope that my pain will make your studies smoother. With both dedication and the right study methods, you will soar past your expectations.
[...] learning, I’d have to recommend Justin Klein’s post. His post also echoes one point I’ve mentioned before, the first key to learning language is to learn how to learn. (I find this idea so important that [...]