I have been doing a lot of work on oral skills. For example, for the past few days I’ve been listening to VocabuLearn in the shower. (I mean not that I have been taking a shower for the past…
This is a good day. I feel great. I have done a bunch of Pimsleur, though I need to work more on my writing skills, since they are deteriorating. I just watched a remarkable video on YouTube about Daniel Tammet.…
This morning I woke up late and began doing Pimsleur. I started with lesson 28 (from the new and improved Level I), and I was doing okay, but I got discouraged and thought, this is not how I want it to…
As was also the case with the Russian series, I feel Pimsleur spends too much time on giving and getting directions for travel (take this route, go left, go straight, etc.). If your Arabic is shaky, you are not generally…
Today I taught again at the Arab American Association of New York. Out of several possible students—I have been taking the advanced ones—only one person showed this time. I’ll call her Fatima, though that’s not her…
I have to watch Arabic TV. I just assumed, stupidly, that I wouldn’t be able to understand anything, but I had it on this morning, and I could definitely pick out words, more or less as I could at…
It is 10:24 p.m., and I have just completed a Pimsleur marathon—the most Pimsleur I’ve ever done in a day. I redid lessons 1 and 2 (Level II), which I had already done multiple times yesterday. Then I ran. I…
I was too tired to run today, so I decided to do a Pimsleur walk instead. As I left home for Central Park, rain was a distinct possibility, but I looked at the sky hopefully, deciding that if it didn’…
Today I spoke French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian. Oh, and English. Not well, mind you, except possibly for the English. But still—it was a five-language day! There were two French incidents. The first came this morning as I was…
Today I went to Brooklyn to teach my weekly class at the Arab American Association. At first no one was there, and I was just sitting by myself in my small, not overwhelmingly clean classroom, with chairs in need of…
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