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Language people
Those of you who've successfully learned other languages - what sort of study strategies did you use? One of my problems is that I've been able to retain just enough information for just long enough to regurgitate it into tests, and maintain a B or B+ average, so throughout highschool and undergrad, I never actually learned to study. It was less of a problem in grad schoo, because the fields I went into were a bit more focused on analysis than on internalizing data (when you're a librarian, it's all about leanring how to look it up, natch :D), so study skills were not actually required.*
And thus I throw myself on the mercy of the internet again for help in this. I also need some sort of language-neepery related icon, but I'm fresh out of ideas.
And if I manage to get four pages toned quickly, I'll toss up some of the pictures from this Italian book, just to prove to everyone that "Mark" (un altro americano) is gay and to show everyone the six-legged dog.
* My first stint in undergrad, the MA in anthropology, required more learning of that nature than did library school**, and my mother didn't let fall the gem of information that she was a kinesthetic learner, and thus typed all her notes throughout school because the action of typing fixed it in her brain, until the very last two weeks of the very last semester of my MA. I tried that, typing in the answers from our study guide, and by God it worked. Am I bitter that she didn't tell me that, say, back my freshman year of undergrad? GOSH NO WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT.
** Which requires approximately zero. The only test I had that wasn't open-book was a one-question essay test where the exact question had appeared on our qualifying exams the week before. The professor kept our blue books - she was pretty upfront that the primary reason for giving the exam like that was to have the results for her records so she could show people what the students were learning.
And thus I throw myself on the mercy of the internet again for help in this. I also need some sort of language-neepery related icon, but I'm fresh out of ideas.
And if I manage to get four pages toned quickly, I'll toss up some of the pictures from this Italian book, just to prove to everyone that "Mark" (un altro americano) is gay and to show everyone the six-legged dog.
* My first stint in undergrad, the MA in anthropology, required more learning of that nature than did library school**, and my mother didn't let fall the gem of information that she was a kinesthetic learner, and thus typed all her notes throughout school because the action of typing fixed it in her brain, until the very last two weeks of the very last semester of my MA. I tried that, typing in the answers from our study guide, and by God it worked. Am I bitter that she didn't tell me that, say, back my freshman year of undergrad? GOSH NO WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT.
** Which requires approximately zero. The only test I had that wasn't open-book was a one-question essay test where the exact question had appeared on our qualifying exams the week before. The professor kept our blue books - she was pretty upfront that the primary reason for giving the exam like that was to have the results for her records so she could show people what the students were learning.
no subject
When I took Spanish in high school, our teacher used to hand out dittoed vocabulary lists. I'd sit in class and trace over the letters. I usually picked a letter and went through the sheet, tracing over every instance of that letter, (I tried tracing everything over from beginning to end, but I tended to get bored and lose focus. Adding in the searching for letters kept me paying attention) and then went back, picked another letter and repeated the process. That not only gave me a kinestetic way of learning but also forced me to read the words over and over again.
I'd also suggest trying to write sentences in the language. If you can get as far as paragraphs, it'll help you work at the grammar. It's extra work, but it can be *very* helpful.
Depending on the language, you may also be able to find certain English language children's books translated into it. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Are All the Giants Dead? in Spanish and found that knowing the story made working out the verb tenses and conjugations and vocabulary easier. (I also picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz in French and could work out quite a bit more than I expected by combining my knowledge of Spanish with my knowledge of the stories.)