Hello! I am a beginner to learning Japanese and I was wondering if you had any workbooks you recommend or websites you use,etc. I'm kind of stuck because I dont know where to start. I'd really appreciate if you could help me 😄
I highly recommend Maggie Sensei’s website! She’s so helpful, and her explanations are really thorough. Also, she’s on Twitter so you can tweet her if you’re unsure of something, and she answers comments too 😊
Credits: l.luvhee on ig ; rai on we heart it
Do you like reading books? Can you suggest books that are easy to read in Spanish for beginners, or some movies?
Hi, of course! I hope some of these recommendations are helpful!
Books:
• Spanish Short Stories For Beginners by Lingo Mastery
• Short Stories In Spanish For Beginners & Spanish Short Stories For Beginners 2 by Olly Richards
• Easy Spanish Reader by William T. Tardy. This book is separated into three sections and the readings in each are followed by comprehension activities.
*All three of the previously mentioned books can be downloaded for free on https://z-lib.org
• This organization’s website has a few great picture books in Spanish that you can download for free. https://www.heifer.org/what-you-can-do/get-involved/schools/home-school-activities/books-and-reading-resources.html
• This website has a handful of great pdfs https://www.spanishplayground.net/spanish-books-for-beginners/
Movies:
• El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) This is available on Netflix and I’d suggest watching movies with subtitles. If you’re able to, there’s a chrome extension you can download called Language Learning with Nextflix where you can have subtitles in both your native & target language
• I also suggest watching any movie you’re familiar with like if you love Disney movies you should find the Spanish version of them
Sorry I don’t have any true movie recs yet! If anyone has any other resources they know of, feel free to add them :)
Hiya, your blog is so informative! I'm hopefully going to be studying a bachelors in linguistics starting in 2023, is there any reading or activities you could recommend to do/start to do now? Thanks 😊
Hey, I don't know where you're from and what your universities are like, so I can only talk from my experience here in Germany (or in my university at least):
In my first semester, the lectures were quite challenging for many students, since they're designed to give you a basic understanding of all of linguistics as fast as possible, so that you can progress in your studies. I think they were also designed to 'weed out' anyone who wasn't fit for this course or didn't take it seriously enough.
I had to learn the IPA alphabet, the terms used for how vowels and consonants are pronounced (e.g. open front; voiced alveolar fricative, etc.), how to note graphemes, allophones, morphemes, etc., what each of these terms means and how they work, word formation processes, all of the parts of speech, word classes, phrases, and clauses, semantic relations, some theories (e.g. speech act theory), and more. Most of it was just a lot of memorising / learning by heart.
But that's no reason to be scared :) in my uni, there were loads of "tutorial courses" where we met up once a week with a teaching assistant who was there to answer all of our questions and to repeat what we learned in that week's lecture. We were also repeatedly told that it's absolutely normal to struggle in the first semester; some of our lectures had a failure rate of 50% or higher. And that's perfectly fine. If you fail and have to do a course again, there won't be any new material, so you'll basically just get one semester more time to revise & study everything you learned.
So I would recommend to try finding out which books you'll be using in the "big" introductory courses (these lectures and books are usually called "Introduction to Linguistics" or "Introduction to [subject]"). Books like that are usually intended for students without any background knowledge. You could start looking through these books to get a first broad understanding of the different parts of linguistic studies and what you'll learn in the first semesters. The book I used in my "Introduction to Linguistics" lecture was "Introduction to English Linguistics" by Becker/Bieswanger (2017).
Also: if you have to write term papers for your lectures, try to schedule as few as possible in the first semester (if that's possible in your uni course). It's your first time writing a term paper, so it won't be perfect and you'll make mistakes. It's better to write one bad one at the beginning of your studies and learn from your mistakes than to rush ahead and write several bad ones. Maybe you could already find out which kind of citation rules your course uses and learn how to use that citation style.
Another thing I'd suggest is to inform yourself about your course beforehand. Read the exam regulations, what lectures you need, and what your suggested work load is. Don't go over this suggested work load in your first semester! In my course, I had about 6 suggested lectures a week which were each 2 hours long. That doesn't sound like a lot, but you'll also get homework and have to revise everything you learned. Some courses have midterm exams in addition to the final exams, so you basically have to revise/study from the start. And, as I said before, some courses have additional tutorials which you can attend during the week (most of them were 1 hour long).
I hope that this helps a bit :) All of this is solely based on my personal experience in my university, so your course outline and work load and schedule could be entirely different. But maybe it'll give you some first ideas about what to expect and what to keep in mind :) Good luck with your studies!
Omg!!! A bish finally got an Ipad Pro & now I can write my aesthetic notes for my Korean Class😭🙌🏽🌸
You need motivation to study? Let me introduce you to spiteful studying. When you study a subject to prove someone wrong. When you spend hours writing up notes so that you can get that grade and smile smugly at the teacher who predicted you a lower grade. Find someone to prove wrong, it can be a teacher, a parent, friend or just to prove society that you’re so much more capable then they say you are!
Trust me, it works.
spring quarter is staring off with an unusual start. through all of the uncertainty, it’s key for me to stay in a healthy routine in order to feel sane right now. grateful for a safe place to call my second home, water, electricity, and technology now more than ever before!
now listening:
wish you were sober- conan gray
💚💙
IG: @_akadanie
This website has documents, audio files, and other resources set up by N level. Happy studies!