#Level : Beginner to Intermediate

[ghirahimbo]

quick plug for the Spanish Boost YouTube account if you're a beginner/intermediate Spanish learner looking for comprehensible input (slow, easier to follow speech). I've mostly been watching the Minecraft videos so far (eyeing the Stardew Valley series 👀) but they've been just about perfect for my learning level, and it's fun because it's the kind of stuff I'd be watching on YouTube anyway

[rigelmejo]

Something that always annoys me is the idea only 1 language learning method works. Which is not true. While it may be possible that, for a particular individual, only a few out of many study methods may work well enough for That Individual to make progress and stay motivated... that doesn't mean all the other study methods won't work for anyone else out there, or that those few methods will work for every other given person.

Obviously if you've been studying a while, then you already figured out what kinds of things work for you and don't. If you're a beginner, just wading into studying?

I would suggest you simply look for study methods that: 1. Teach you new things regularly, 2. Review and practice things you've learned, 3. Include studying things you need for your particular goals (for example if your goal is to read X book then the study materials at some point should involve reading practice and some words the book contains, if your goal is to talk about Y then the study materials should include some information about pronunciation and words you'll need to be able to say).

As you can imagine, a TON of study materials will meet these requirements. And you can study a given skill in a LOT of ways.

(Reading is my focus lol so just for reading, a beginner might: do vocabulary study with lists or conversations with native speakers or watching shows and looking words up or listening to dialogues with a transcript like in a textbook or graded readers or a picture book with word labels in the target language or a video game with labelled objects in target language, all of those things as long as your vocabulary is improving or reading practice is happening would help you make progress). So to improve reading skill as a beginner: you could study with a textbook, a podcast with transcript, a classroom or tutor with words written down in target language (like TPRS), a video game, a TV show and a translate app on your phone, a friend you talk with (who either writes words down or you look up words you hear with a translate app), a friend you text with, srs flashcards like anki (provided there's text) etc. As long as there's new words, and/or you're practicing reading, the study method may work. If it works will come down to if you can stay motivated doing it regularly, and make sure you regularly learn some new things and review/practice things you've already studied.

So consider those things when you see people selling a study method as a product (especially when it's costing you money). Consider if it teaches you NEW things, and are those new things related to your goals, and how MUCH new stuff will it teach you before you finish it? Consider if it provides review or practice, or if you can use it's materials to review on your own making up your own method, or if you'll need to do separate review/practice.

So examples:

LingQ. Can it teach you many new words? Yes, thousands, since you can import any texts you want when you get done with their provided material (I have no idea how much their beginner material covers though in terms of words... I would hope 1000-3000 words but that can be researched). Is your goal reading? It's suited to reading, so you will practice and review often with it. Cost? I think it was $12 a month when I last had it, and the price may have increased. Is it worth it? Depends on a learner's needs. I found it was wasting my money, so I chose to use free tools like Pleco and Readibu apps - since those apps are suited for Chinese learners and have better translations, Pleco has better paid graded reader material if I was going to spend money, and both Pleco and Readibu let me import texts so I can learn thousands of new words just like LingQ but free. Now that I'm not a beginner, I often use Microsoft Edge to read chinese... since I can still click-translate words easily (all my web browsers have that tool free), and Edge's TTS voice is helpful for pronunciation and sounds quite good. I read webnovels online so Edge works well. But it's translations aren't as good as Pleco or Readibu, so if I still needed translations more I would use them. So... is LingQ a good study method? Its certainly a study method marketed to buy. Well... the method is suited to improving reading skill, at least. It costs money, which is a negative, but it does offer a lot. However: everything it does regarding reading can be done free with other apps or sites or web browsers on their own. So if paying money motivates you to read... sure. LingQ does have a few word tracking features a learner may find worth the money, keeping in mind the actual read-to-learn method can be done free without lingq. (Also... while LingQ is a valid option for improving reading, if the learners goal is speaking then it would be important to think of what study activities the learner will do OUTSIDE of LingQ to improve speaking... because I've seen how LingQ is marketed as "how to learn a language" but it's only focused on some skills. It has vocabulary and grammar in some sense, since you'll read a lot and encounter new words and structures. But it doesnt have speaking or writing practice at least last time I was on it. Those activities would need to be worked on, on your own).

You can do that kind of cost/benefit contemplating with any study method material you see being sold. Amother example: there's a beginner Mandarin course called Mandarin Blueprint. It teaches like 800 words. Thats all. It may be worthwhile for a beginner... who still needs to learn 800 common words. But if you already know a few hundred words, the benefit of the course is less, you'll need to find a new material to teach you more new stuff soon. And the price was like a few hundred for the course... which for me personally was too much to spend, when I had already learned 800 hanzi from a book that cost me 12 dollars and 2000 words from a free user made memrise deck. The course claimed to get a person speaking, competent, but anyone not a beginner would say speaking basically with 800 words is nowhere near the level of working in Chinese or just doing a lot of daily life stuff, or reading/listening to media. (Although for the motivated beginner if you're learning 800 words on your own like I was, its definitely close to the point of jumping to learn more words and start reading kids and teenager books, and watching easier shows if you're willing to look new words up). So to me... Mandarin Blueprint felt like overselling some basic beginner materials. (Again when I know several other things that teach beginner stuff either more in depth so HSK test prep classes, and college courses, or that teach beginner stuff to the same depth as Mandarin Blueprint but free).

Some study materials aren't going to act like they teach everything. I've seen chinese courses just for learning to speak tones better and general pronunciation - probably worthwhile if your goal is to improve speaking and a teacher could help improve the issues your having. But a learner needs to be aware for that course that they'll need to study vocabulary on their own, its JUST a pronunciation improvement course.

[gymaaholic]

A Step By Step Guide To Go From Beginner To Intermediate

If you’ve been lifting for months and still see no progress then you’re stuck at the beginner level 🤔

Today we share ways to go from beginner to intermediate and continue to get results 👇

https://www.gymaholic.co/articles/how-to-transition-from-beginner-to-intermediate-lifter

[distantlaughter]

what level of french had you reached and why did you leave it?

Six years in total from middle school + high school... I left it because I really didn't have a need or desire to study it any further after I graduated and thought it more useful to study Japanese in college... also after six years of studying and still not being remotely able to speak French in any real way I was like oh well that's that then.

[languagegarden]

04 Slowing down & going back to move forward in my Korean journey

I think I started Korean with a routine that was just too much. I overdid it. Now it’s time to create a healthy enjoyable routine that I can stick to LONGTERM. I also need to slow down and go back to learning material I thought I left behind me for good. Since I was rushing in the beginning, a lot of material was left unfinished and not used in a way to reap the benefits from it: I used it in a passive way, an ”input way”. And because of this plus the rushing, I feel like a lot of useful vocabulary and sentence structures were not registered in my longterm memory. Using everything actively is harder than I thought and my brain seems to be a bloc of Swiss cheese.

So I need to climb down from my high horse, put my ego into the drawer and admit to myself: I need to go back to move forward. Because if there are cracks in the foundation like a lack of output (active use like writing and speaking/monologuing) and having more passive than active vocab, it will create problems later on. The cracks will grow bigger as I move forward and I will live in this illusion of being further than I actually am. You know, even if my reading and listening comprehension is better than my writing and speaking, it’s a wobbly foundation, because the difference is too big. I shouldn’t think of myself as being ”so intermediate baby yeah”. There are too many holes, too much I can’t recall in the second I need it, too much passive vocabulary rather than active one. I need to get all the aspects of the language to an +/- equal level and stuff the holes in the foundation.

Weak foundations will make the castle crumble. I don’t want that to happen.

Slowing down, going back, using (upper)beginner resources again, IS NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF and is not ”lowering” myself down to a less worthy level. It’s a good revision, it’s repetition, it’s learning new stuff. The awareness that I need to get stronger at the base to properly move forward is sth positive. And slowing down is not laziness, language learning is not a sprint anyway, so why not take my time, step by step and as a result enjoy it more. Sooner or later I will be where I want to be. I don’t care if it takes a few years longer, I’m not in the coffin yet lol, so let’s sail forward but first backwards.

xoxo,

A.

[charmed-redemption]

Spells of The Damned

Truth Spell:

"Be now plain of vocalizations, and homely in thy tongue's drift. For riddling confessions shall no longer find but riddling shrift!"

Category:

Defensive

General

Level:

Beginner: Stop gossiping

Intermediate: Counter mind control

Mastered: Forces the Truth

Downside:

Spell fails, and nothing happens

The person speaks slowly or not at all

Thinks slowly but speaks fast

[screamingay]

hi! do you know any good baking recipe that doesn't use milk and that an idiot can make by any chance? I trust you more than I trust google

honestly i feel like a majority of the things i bake don't include milk, although it's true i don't avoid it despite being lactose intolerant >.> anyway this is a vague request so im giving many suggestions to cover all my bases

1. lots of cakes are very simple to make and use water and/or oil instead of milk and/or butter (if butter is an issue for u also), especially chocolate cakes/cupcakes like this. and then id just go with store bought frosting tbh

2. cookies are pretty easy and dont require any milk. if dairy in general is the issue there are still looots of recipes out there like this one that use oil instead and come out perfectly fine. alternatively, cookie bars! even easier than cookies! and one step further is brownies, which usually use oil anyway

note that with all of these it is sooo so essential to either measure out ur flour on a scale or gently spoon it into ur measuring cup and then level it with a knife, u never want flour packed tightly in a measuring cup

3. im also thinking abt rice krispie treats! super versatile, my favorite way is smth like this but u can get so creative and cut out fun shapes and shit. make it as fancy or lowkey as u want. i enjoy mixing in some mini mallows at the very end after the cereal so u get a bite of just marshmallow sometimes. truly the hardest part for me is washing the pan afterwards lmao

4. in that same no-bake vein, i love melting chocolate (sometimes with peanut butter, sometimes without) and mixing in literally whatever cereal i want then forming little piles and letting them set. to this day the best ones i ever made used the fiber one cereal but chex works great too. there are recipes for these but measure with ur heart tbh.

5. if u want something like that but with baking maybe macaroons? dipped in chocolate usually? only if u like coconut ofc

6. banana bread is typically easy, as are most quick breads like it. usually the only dairy in banana bread is butter but replacing with oil is perfectly fine, just use a recipe like this that's meant to have oil

however at the end of the day if a recipe calls for plain old milk it's usually perfectly fine to substitute a nondairy milk. if it calls for cream or butter or yogurt those can be harder to substitute without affecting texture or flavor. and remember google can still be your friend! i am fully reliant on looking up recipes for almost everything i make lmao it's just about finding one that prioritizes my goals for the final product and is within my means to make

[donjuaninhell]

Gonna try to throw together my favourite music of 2024 list sometime later today, going to nap first though.

Also, I might have an announcement later concerning an opportunity some of you may be interested in.

[hedge-rambles]

I feel this may not fully register with American readers who aren't overly familiar with how small a kilometre is: It's about 5/8 of a mile.

To put it in more useful context though: Do you know how long it would take an average healthy adult walking at a "comfortable pace" to travel 1km? About twelve and a half minutes.

Not me though. See, I'm a fast walker, terrible at running but I walk good. Wanna take a wild guess at how long it takes me to walk a kilometre at my normal pace?

Periodically, I remember how absolutely fucked up the necromancers in TLT are meant to look. Like, necromancy does an absolute number on people physically.

Harrow is "rather small and feeble".

Necromantic Ianthe is "the starved shadow" of her non-necromantic twin.

Our first description of Palamedes is "a rangy, underfed young man" who is "gaunt".

Silas is "knife-faced...He had a necromancer build."

Ianthe parodies make-over scenes in House novels with "if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral'"

Jod acknowledges to Wake that even small children with aptitude would look odd to non-House eyes: "“I have access to any number of cute pictures of necromantic toddlers with their first bone. They don’t make for fat-cheeked roly-poly babies, but they’ve got a certain something."

In As Yet Unsent, Judith brags about her previous physical fitness: "I could run a kilometre in ten minutes, which was among the fastest for my adept group in the junior reserves." Which is about double the time you might expect for a physically fit woman her age.

In non-necromancer-friendly New Rho, Harrow's body is mistaken for a child's and has to be explained as a result of starvation and trauma to seem plausible: "Pyrrha explained without missing a beat that what with everything Nona had gone through she had been ill and still didn’t eat very much, which was why she was so knobbly and undergrown. The nice lady said that yes, many of the children had problems like that, but it was still hard to imagine Nona was anywhere over fourteen, wasn’t it?"

Tamsyn Muir's descriptions of the Canaan House gang on Tumblr back this up: "Judith is somewhat less completely scrawny than other necromancers on the cast, though she should be less built than Marta is", Palamedes is "seriously underfed" and "bony", Harrow is "scrawny".

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there's more.

Anyway, necromancers aren't slender in a conventionally attractive way, they're gaunt in a concerning way...and probably the only reason no one instantly clocked that Coronabeth wasn't a necromancer was because they all just thought it was par for the course that a Third House princess would have had a lot of plastic surgery flesh magic.

[artdivin]

[rigelmejo]

In honor of yet again seeing on reddit "how do I learn a language?"

I made a longer post on it. But the absolute shortest advice I have is: pick a study material and study plan and STICK TO IT. Ideally pick a study material/materials that teach you some new stuff regularly, and progress through them. Once in a while, review what you've studied either with that material or practicing what you learned by immersing (reading/watching/listening to something or chatting with someone in the language). Ideally pick a study material/materials which teach you the skills you wish to learn - reading, listening, speaking, writing. You may need to be creative to make up ways to use your study material/materials to study those 4 skills (or whichever ones you want to focus on). If you take a traditional class, generally the teacher will give you exercises to practice and study each of the 4 skills. If you need to, look up how other people use textbooks to study the 4 skills and copy what they do.

A mistake many people make is just... not finishing the study material they pick. Yeah, if you only ever study 100 words... 4 chapters of a beginner book... you'll remain a beginner. You must move forward. Study some new stuff regularly. Expand what you know over time.

Stick to your chosen study materials until you finish them, then pick a new study material that TEACHES YOU NEW STUFF. So if you just finished Assimil, don't start a Teach Yourself book as they teach the same stuff! Move onto an intermediate learning material after you finish a beginner material!

Do not repeatedly study various beginner materials for years. This is a mistake many people make, myself included. You need to keep picking study materials which teach you NEW stuff.

Good options for someone who struggles to pick study materials or get past the beginner stage: formal classes!!!! Take beginner 1 and 2, intermediate 1 and 2! There's free and cheap courses on Coursera and other online class sites, if you don't want to go to college and pay for courses. Or pick a series of textbooks learners use in classes - f9r beginner 1 and 2, intermediate 1 and 2. This could look like Chinese textbooks that teach HSK 1-6, or Japanese Textbooks that Teach N5-N1. Yes lots of people don't like "traditional study." But if you struggle to figure out how to improve, doing up to intermediate 2 classes then just practicing reading, listening, and chatting with people will teach you enough to do many things in the language. Intermediate 2 will prepare you enough to understand SOME shows, some reading materials, talk about conversational topics.

Alternative good options for beginners who struggle to pick a study material: pick a study method or approach and copy it. Do exactly what it says, progress through it regularly studying new stuff. Refold is a study approach with directions "do anki cards - usually premade sentence decks for a language (study new stuff regularly), and immerse regularly - practice understanding". So if you like Refold, look up Refold for the language you're learning and use the resources it recommends. (I suggest NOT making your own study materials such as your own anki sentence cards if you are bad at self motivating and making your own study materials as this could cause you to give up). Dreaming Spanish is a Great comprehensible input approach to language learning with a guide on the website to follow and lessons to follow for 1000 hours and directions on what to do after. It also has a community that mentions what resources they used like podcasts, and you can copy what others did. You like ALG and are learning Thai? There's youtube channels with ALG lessons and ALG tutor/teaching websites you can book lessons on. Just pick a study approach and STICK TO IT.

As long as you study new stuff regularly, and practice understanding the things you have studied before, you will learn a language. It mostly comes down to that, and how many hours you study.

Some people just keep repeatedly studying stuff they already studied so they don't make progress, or they studied 50 hours when... its probably going to take hundreds or thousands of hours.

If you like a very specific study method for a very specific goal? Find someone who already achieved your goal with your study method, and copy what they did. Use the materials they used (or improve on what they did and find equivalent materials that work better for you). Do the study activities they did. You have a good chance of getting similar results. That's how I came up with all my reading study plans... I found someone who'd already learned to read chinese, or french, and copied what they did. It worked. I'm using Dreaming Spanish as a guide now to figure out how to improve my listening skills, copying the suggestions dreaming spanish has for studying, its working well so far. I found the Listening Reading Method really cool, and copied that for a while, and did see significant improvements in my reading and listening skill after doing it.

[azcanyonrafting]

Rafting River Routes

Explore the best rafting river routes in the Grand Canyon with the expert help of Advantage Grand Canyon!

[anxietyrobot]

hilarious when someone tries to make a post or tweet giving advice to ppl looking to join an industry and yet they keep using jargon that i don’t understand lmao

[phagodyke]

rly interesting to see how climbing more regularly is affecting how my muscle works

[caramelmochacrow]

*shaking wet rat* hello.

[dandyshucks]

one of the only downsides to playing accordion is that sheet music is rare and difficult to come by