Blog

September 21, 2013 | Review Period

Language-Learning Frenzy!

I am in heaven.

Every night lately I’ve been dreaming about foreign language. Two nights ago I dreamt that I was in line to pick up my dog from a dogsitter kind of business. I don’t have a dog, but my sleeping…

September 18, 2013 | Review Period

Living Language!

I try out a new language-learning product and, to my surprise, like it.

Four years and two and a half months into this project, I had still never tried the Living Language products. This was true even though I had repeatedly encountered their ads on the subway and I think also seen them…

September 15, 2013 | Review Period

I Love Learning Fruits and Vegetables in Foreign Languages

In which I study carrots and lettuce and apples.

I don’t care for the term “foodie”; my eating life is very simple. Maybe that’s why I don’t like when language books try to teach me fancy food names—but I do 

September 12, 2013 | Review Period

Thoughts on a Controversial Learning Technique: The Art of Copying

When I am studying a language, I constantly copy over words, phrases, sentences.

Last weekend, I went to my first ever grade school reunion at Carlthorp School in Santa Monica, California. It was a blast. My Fifth-Grade Elementary School Class, 1976, with Me on Upper Left Being there got me thinking again about the…

September 11, 2013 | Review Period

Not a Fan of Supposedly Practical Language Guides

An emphasis on travel and tourism language is dull and doesn't usually yield great results anyway.

I have returned to a book I got only at the very end of last year’s Portuguese unit and therefore didn’t experience much of before now: Sue Tyson-Ward’s Practice Makes Perfect: Beginning Portuguese with Two Audio…

September 10, 2013 | Review Period

A Portuguese Grammar Book with Many Exercises

I am enjoying a practice book from Adams Media in Massachusetts.

While redoing nearly all my Pimsleur Portuguese audio lessons, I have also been working away at an Adams Media book called The Everything Brazilian Portuguese Practice Book by Fernanda Ferreira, a professor at Bridgewater State University. For…

September 9, 2013 | Review Period

It Is Impossible to Extract Review Copies from McGraw-Hill

But I am going to keep writing about them anyway, because they have a lot of cool stuff and I can't help myself.

I am pretty annoyed with McGraw-Hill right now. What I have gone through since the advent of this website to try to get review copies out of them: too embarrassing to detail here. I am, where McGraw-Hill is concerned, impotent.…

September 6, 2013 | Review Period

But I Don’t Want to Be a Dummy!

To my annoyance, darn it, I am initially liking a language book in the "For Dummies" series.

I have my entire adult life studiously avoided books from the For Dummies and Idiot’s Guides series.  For Dummies books come from the publishing company Wiley. Launched in 1991, this…

September 5, 2013 | Review Period

Another Dream in Yiddish

Though my Yiddish-while-sleeping skills leave much to be desired.

Before I went to bed last night, I was studying 501 Essential Spanish Verbs, from Dover Publications, and before that some French vocabulary, and before that some Italian grammar, and before that some Portuguese Pimsleur—but in the night…

September 1, 2013 | Review Period

A New(ish) Chapter

In which I plot my next steps, linguistically speaking.

This project has gotten way out of hand. I was supposed to be done in late June 2010, then late June 2011, and now here I am, on the verge of Labor Day of 2013, still going. To be honest, I cannot imagine…