Category Archives: learning

BOOKS: “The Story of Chinese Characters” by Fang Zeng

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Languages - The Story Of Chinese Characters: 汉字的故事 (Bilingual Chinese with Pinyin and English - Simplified Chinese Version) - Preschool, Kindergarten (Educational ... Books For Smart Kids: 聪明宝宝益智成长绘本 Book 2)Languages – The Story Of Chinese Characters: 汉字的故事 (Bilingual Chinese with Pinyin and English – Simplified Chinese Version) – Preschool, Kindergarten by Elite Panda book
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s YouTube Channel

This story book is apparently perfect for preschoolers and definitely is for someone newly learning Chinese. It is the tale of a man who goes hunting and his mild trials and successes. It’s not a gripping tale, but that’s perfect for those new to the language as it allows simple language and concepts. The language is grammatically and semantically straightforward. This bilingual book presents Chinese characters, pinyin with tone markers, and the English translation all on the same page.

The story teaches a few rudimentary Chinese characters (person, mountain, boat, bird, etc.,) particularly ones that are either pictographic or lend themselves to pictographic memory tricks. (For those unfamiliar with Chinese, it is a common misconception that all the characters are pictographic. In fact, about eighty percent of characters appear as they do because of their spoken sound quality [i.e. they appear similar to another character with the same sound, but often with an entirely unrelated meaning.]) The illustrations not only tell the story but invokes the shape of the character that is under study.

I found this book useful for learning to read in Chinese. A little more separation of the pinyin and characters might be nice so one could cover it up to focus on reading characters, but I was clearly not the intended demographic. I don’t see any reason why the book couldn’t work either way, i.e. for English learning Chinese speakers as well as English speaking Chinese learners.

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PROMPT: Lose Track of Time

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Daily writing prompt
Which activities make you lose track of time?
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Reading, thinking, and learning.

Note to Self [Lyric Poem]

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Allow me to make a
    Socratic suggestion:
 That you pursue the lowly
    Art of the question.

Showing you love knowing
   More than you love learning
 Shows only that you're not
   Discerning, and lack requisite
 Yearning to find the Truth.

BOOKS: “Fluent Forever” by Gabriel Wyner

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Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget ItFluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Website

This is one of the most useful books I’ve read in some time. Wyner proposes a method to learn a new language that both removes some of the drudgery while improving retention. Anticipating the skepticism that I would have myself at this point: no, it is not one of those books that makes ridiculous and unfounded claims such as that you can learn a language entirely in your sleep or that you can develop native fluency in seven days. Instead, Wyner’s method is based on sound scientific ideas.

So, what does this method consist of? A few of the key points are: first, one doesn’t skip straight to basic conversational phrases as many books and courses do, but rather places great emphasis on learning how to hear and say the sounds of the target language. This phase is often given short shrift, presumably assuming that this skill will be picked up automatically in the process, but Wyner’s argument is that not being able to hear what’s correct or not great slows progress in the long run. Second, memorization tasks use the “spaced repetition system” (SRS) method whereby you increase the time between exposure to new knowledge as you learn it until it is firmly entrenched in one’s mind. Third, one seeks to build a more visceral connection to the new vocabulary and phrases, and this makes learning more fun while improving retention. This is principally done by making flash cards that tell a story relevant to one’s personal experience (and / or which uses subject matter such as sex [which tends to produce more indelibility of memories.])

Beyond the method presented by the book, one is also presented with a great number of resources that can be helpful. Some of these resources are a part of the author’s own website, but many are external resources (from Anki [an app that allows one to build flashcards and study them on a SRS schedule] to courses of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.)

I’ve started to learn Mandarin and have begun employing a number of ideas from this book. I would highly recommend the book for anyone who is interested in learning another language, no matter what said language might be. (This is a book of “how to” learn, not “what to” learn.)

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The Circle of Play [Lyric Poem]

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Sometime not too distant,
   There will come a day
 When you will return to
   A frequent state of play.

When that day comes around,
   You'll have lost all concern
 For the adults' belief that
   Frivolity must be spurned.

You'll take to tossing balls
 And climbing up the walls,
 Just like you used to do
  When you were one or two --
    Before that human zoo
     Got its hooks in you.

PROMPT: Teacher

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Daily writing prompt
Who was your most influential teacher? Why?
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By the measure of having taught still useful lessons about HOW to think (those who taught me WHAT to think are largely forgotten along with their lessons,) that would be a tie between my 11th grade Psychology teacher and an undergrad Religious Studies professor. The former, among other ideas, first exposed me to what I would come to believe is the most important lesson of human existence under his label of the “gestalt of expectations.” [I’ve never heard anyone else refer to it as such, but the lesson was sound and I would latter find it in philosophies from Buddhism to Stoicism.] The latter teacher, among other ideas, exposed me to two common opposing modes of fallacious thinking, what he called “the outhouse fallacy” and “the first-est is best-est fallacy” (he was a folksy, if erudite, professor.)

In terms of personal growth and development, generally speaking, there are numerous teachers of martial arts, yoga, and other mind-body practices that are incomparable and thus unrankable. Not to mention, a sound argument can made for the repugnantly unhumble statement that I am my most influential (and most important) teacher. (I state this claim not as though I am unique, but as one that could apply to anyone.)

PROMPT: Learned

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Daily writing prompt
What is the last thing you learned?
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Heavy Indian Club movement patterns and the core tenets of Perennial Philosophy.

PROMPT: Skills

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Daily writing prompt
What skills or lessons have you learned recently?
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I’ve been learning to juggle. It’s an excellent skill because you have to fail a million times before you can be successful, and you can’t partially fail or fail in a controlled fashion. It’s kind of all or nothing. So, it teaches persistence and to be less prone to becoming demoralized. It also teaches one a lot about how one’s mind works at the speed of instinct.

PROMPT: Out of Place

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Daily writing prompt
Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
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I feel out of place in social settings pretty much everywhere and always. This, perhaps surprisingly, has made me an excellent and avid traveler because I feel the same level of out of place among a group of people who speak a different native language, practice an unfamiliar religion, and who have different skin and hair characteristics as I would with a group of people who share a common ancestry, went to the same school, and grew up with the same cultural trappings. This creates an internal pressure to go to unfamiliar places, because familiar places offer the same anxiety with none of the learning opportunities, whereas the unfamiliar always offers new lessons.

PROMPT: Skills

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Daily writing prompt
What skill would you like to learn?
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There are so many. Life is short and there’s so much to learn. There are swim strokes (and related skills) I’d like to pick up, including drownproofing. I never learned to drive a proper motorcycle. Archery would be nifty.