Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, August 18th 1921

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

anecdote of the pig, tory adkisson // achilles & partoclus // house of dragon, 1x07 // plainwater, anne carson // the truth about forever, sarah dessen // lighthousekeeping, jeanette winterson

A list of bkdk djs that have been sitting in my notes app for awhile ! all are on myreadingmanga and in english (the website does have p*rn ads on it, so please be cautious!)

last updated : 5/6/23

NSFW :

[yazaki] Stay Stay

[kase] How irrational can you be!

[Kuranosukee (Kase)] Ideal Body

[Fujii Niya] WILD LIFE

[dokosahekisaensan (aroe)] PLEASE YOUR HEART

[kuroi] NO MORE Quirk Thief

[Kometsubu] most disliking

[henjen69] HUG me! KISS me! LOVE me! Darling

[kuroi] NO MORE Quirk Thief

[Bakuchi Jinsei SP (Satsuki Fumi)] Boku no Osananajimi ga Seishintekini Osanaku Narimashita

[Bakuchi Jinsei SP (Satsuki Fumi)] Boku no Hero Academia dj – Crazy Crazy Sideshow [Eng]

[yuka] All Night Long with Kacchan

[unomaru] My Sweet Strawberry

[Marushiru (AKITO)] T shōnen to K shōnen no

[yazaki] The Passing On of Light Particles

[lapin] The Fork in the Road

[Tanuki] Rainy Day

[aroe] My ideal future

[hobakununo] Risk of addiction Take only as prescribed

Funny (and cute lol) :

[yanuyanu (OOP)] our sweet home – (One of my favs it’s so cute ><)

[aroe] spice – Boku no Hero Academia dj [Eng]

[dokosahekisaensan (aroe)] spice second

[aroe] spice third

[Traumerei (vis)] Boku no Hero Academia dj – Love Complex [Eng]

[tuno_maruta (Tsuno)] REC

[Kometsubu] The future us are lovers!

[Korosuke] Married as a disguise, but Kacchan

[lapin] CALL YOUR NAME

[aroe] Honey Honey Honey!

Drama :

[cai] Antinomie part 1

[cai] Antinomie After (part 2)

(These 2 are SO GOOD. )

Fantasy :

[dokosahekisaensan (aroe)] tabi ni deruno ha sorekara

[cai] For You

If you have any more suggestions PLS lmkk!! :))

"If you're going, I will too."

? // east, edith pattou // cotton candy on a rainy day, nikki giovanni // little women, louisa may // go forget your father, cathy linh che // ? // molly mccully brown

Summer Language Plan

OKAY ! So I’ve got quite a bit of plans for language learning this summer and I was thinking if I post it to tumblr then hopefully it’ll be more than just wishful thinking. SO without further ado, here are my plans. 

French (reach B2)

finish Dracula by August 31 (6 pages per day minimum) 

at least one hour of active learning a day (grammar practice, vocabulary, etc) 

at least five new words each day

write 3,000+ word story

German (reach B2)

at least one hour of active learning a day (grammar practice, vocabulary, etc)

at least five new words each day

translate one poem/song/paragraph a week

Italian (reach A1)

at least one hour and a half of active learning a day (grammar practice, vocabulary, etc)

at least seven new words a day

What does active learning look like?

I’m glad you asked, self. While reading books and listening to music is great for language learning, unless there are comprehension questions at the end, I would consider it passive learning. Here are some active learning exercises that are (hopefully) more interesting than just doing plain textbook drills. 

write a sparknotes summary for each episode of a TV show or book you’re engaging with. Bonus points if show/book is in a different language than your summaries, because that requires you to interact with new vocabulary.

find x number of vocabulary terms then weave them into a story or poem. Doesn’t have to be long or complex

film or voice record yourself talking about a topic that means a lot to you, then note down what words and grammar you have yet to learn

Ne crains jamais d’en faire trop,

car je n’en ai jamais assez de toi.

Je me délecte de tes paroles, 

et tes soupirs sont mon oxygène.

Si seulement je pouvais fondre contre toi,

je ne connaîtrais plus jamais ni le froid,

ni la crainte

de te voir partir

à tout jamais

Never fear to be too much,

for I can never have enough of you.

I revel in your words,

and your sighs are my oxygen.

If only I could melt into you,

I would never know cold again,

nor the fear

to see you go

forever 

Do you happen to have any Patrochilles modern au fic or comic recommendations?

I haven’t read too many but here’s a short list with links (most of these are just the popular ones on ao3):

Not Homer’s Iliad (I remember this was pretty good and a little funny)

at least as deep as the pacific ocean  (I am a sucker for Coffeeshop AUs)

tell me again (Blind Patroclus AU, depressing but also sweet)

as the poets say (short but I loved the way it was written, just beautiful)

your name like a song  (this one’s just pretty)

We were like gods (this one’s a longer)

Lux Aeterna (a tiny bit angsty, totally worth the read)

Also, this one’s not a Modern AU but definitely worth mentioning is The Good Soul which was absolutely amazing.

Bear in mind, these are mainly TSOA fanfics, not Iliad fanfics.

I haven’t found any comics yet but I will keep a lookout. Does anyone else have any suggestions?