Foreign Language Vocabulary Builder Using Anki (Application)

I have been waiting months to write this post, because I wanted to make sure that I gave you the best tips and that I genuinely knew how to best use Anki. In case you have never heard of it, Anki is an application, which you can download online for free, or on your phone for a decent price. I first found out about it when I read a book that gave practical tips on ways that you could start making a better use of time when learning languages. Although I have not been able to use it every day, due to being a full-time student and doing a lot of extracurricular activities, I have used it for a total of over a year, so I can confidently say that Anki alone is one of the most valuable tools of which I have taken advantage over the years. I have not only increased my vocabulary, but also now know how to teach myself abstract words that are harder to master.

The way that it is used is very simple. When you open up the application, you have three tabs from which to choose: Decks, Add, or Browse. If you click “Decks”, you can directly click on one of your decks and start learning a fixed number of cards a day. For example, in my deck named “Deutsch”, it currently says that I have 30 new cards and 0 new cards. This means that, based off of the amount of cards that I want to learn per day, I should review all 30 of those cards today.

If you click on the tool icon to the right of where it says “New”, you have 4 options: Rename, Options, Export, and Delete. If you want to change the name of one of your deck of cards, simply click “Rename” and type in what you want that deck to be called. In the options tab, you can choose “Default” if you feel that you can study the amount of cards that the program is defaulted as. You can also choose “Show new cards in random order”, or “Show new cards in order added” under “Order”. Lastly, you simply choose how many cards you want to learn a day in a certain graduation interval (ex: 1 day), as well as change the easy interval and the percent of your starting ease.

I usually learn 10, or 20 cards a day, but what is great about this application, is if you ever feel that you cannot learn, say 20 cards a day like you originally set out to do, you can adjust that every day if you feel like it is necessary to do so. Anki is an application that you can adjust based on your particular needs and does not make you do something that you do not want to do.

Now that I have covered the basics as to how Anki works, you are probably wondering how I actually use it. Although I will try to do my best to explain how this application works, please make sure to watch the video that I attached above, so that you know how to properly use it step by step. Otherwise, you will probably be very confused and will not understand what I feel like any language learner should know how to use. The first step to adding cards to a deck that you name is to click “Add” and to click on one of the decks that you have, so that you are assured that the new cards that you will add are placed into the correct deck.

Then, I go to www.google.com/images and search for an unknown word in its original language (keep in mind that this step is absolutely crucial if you want to get the most out of this application). For example, if I did not know that “la Estrella” were “the star” in Spanish, I would type in “la estrella” and would find the image that most appealed to me. In other words, I try finding images that are not only visually appealing, but that also help me remember what the word means without translating it from Spanish to English. I then pu the word in its original language where it says “Back”, or I will copy and paste a phrase that is attached to an image and leave the word that I am trying to learn underlined like this: ___________.

Although this process can be time-consuming, what is great about it is that there is truly no wrong way to do it. You do not have to add 100 new words every day. Instead, you have to be consistent and try to use it every day when you are starting if you can. If you cannot, then try using it several times a week. It should not take you more than 15 minutes to study the amount of words that you asked Anki to show you, and it is a really fun and interactive way to expand your vocabulary. Instead of simply using the traditional notecard method that can be tedious to write and use, you are using, reading, and saying new words in your target language. This forces you to switch from, say German mode to English mode.

What is most important about this process is that you search for words, or even phrases of the words that you want to learn in your original language. Avoid translating words as much as possible, and only do so to quickly check if you know the direct translation from your target language to your native language, but avoid putting in any words, or even images that contain words in your native language if you want to expand your vocabulary by twofold, or threefold.

I hope that you found this post practical and helpful. Have an amazing week and continue enjoying summer!

How to Improve Your Accent in a Language

If someone were to ask me what I thought were one of the most important elements that demonstrated a level of mastery in another language, I would say that accurate and authentic pronunciation were key to becoming fluent. Even though I am nowhere near perfect, as no one is, I have always had an ear for having what many would say is a “good”, or a “native-sounding” pronunciation. I have already been mistaken for a native French speaker and have been told that my German accent is good by students who have already studied abroad in Germany and by other native German speakers. This ability, just like anything else, did not just happen overnight. I can still clearly remember stumbling across words that were unfamiliar and trying to force myself to produce German sounds by being my American-self and by trying to transfer that over to a language whose pronunciation was nothing like that of English.

This is where I went wrong. I truly believe that anyone, including immigrant parents, adults, and teenagers who have never been exposed to a language other than their native languages can eventually sound like a native speaker in a foreign language. My hope for this post is not to try to denounce accents, or to say that you must sound a hundred percent authentic, but I do hope that you can gain some words of wisdom from someone who has had years of experience trying to find the best methods to completely get rid of, or to improve on your accent.

My first tip is to try to speak as early as you can. Even if you only know a few basic phrases, or have an elementary-level vocabulary, there are no real excuses to not start using your language as frequently as possible. I would recommend talking to yourself, finding language partners online, talking to your friends, your classmates, or your family-members, and to get as much exposure to authentic listening material as you can find. If you have been keeping up with my blog posts, you will know how strong of a proponent I am of YouTube. It is just like Google, in the sense that there are hundreds of thousands of videos dedicated to learning another language, or, what I almost solely do, listen to YouTubers who are from a country of your target language. (Feel free to read my post “How to Improve Speaking a Language” and “Listen to YouTubers in Your Target Language” if you want to know how to improve on those skills).

I also recommend reading passages out loud as many times as you feel necessary on a regular basis, so that you get used to making new sounds with your throat, with your mouth, and with your tongue. Remember that you should not try to make sounds using the same parts of your mouth as you would with your target language. Instead, you have to slowly train yourself to start using different parts of your mouth in order to make them without even thinking about it. The more practice that you get, the less you will have to have stop and think about where your tongue should be placed in order to make a particular sound. In other words, the more audio, reading, and speaking exposure that you get, the more likely it will be that you will start to familiarize yourself with how words should be pronounced.

Lastly, it is very important to ask advanced language learners, especially native speakers, if you can have conversational practice with them. If you do so, you can ask them to correct your pronunciation, or words that you are not saying correctly. You should not be corrected after every mistake, especially if you are a beginner, or feel that you need a lot of speaking practice in order to become proficient; however, you should take any criticism to heart and work on your weak spots. If, for example, you had trouble pronouncing words with accents, you could practice saying those words out loud based on what you thought were their correct pronunciation. After a lot of repetition, the extra exposure will help make you confident when speaking without worrying about sounding “very (too) American”, or “not very good.”

I hope that you found this post helpful. I figured that I would give you tips about how to start taking your language skills to the next level, as I feel that perfecting my pronunciation has helped me gain more confidence and become closer to reaching fluency in several languages.

Review of The Novel “Mother Tongue”

I am very excited to say that this is my first book review on this blog. Although I have read many books about languages in the past, I had not started my blog then, but recently read a novel, which I was thought was worth sharing to any aspiring language-learner. The reason why I decided to review “Mother Tongue”, written by Christine Gilbert, in particular was because I could see its relevance to anyone who happened to find this blog.

Starting off with its cover and its description “My Family’s Globe-Trotting Quest to Dream in Mandarin, Laugh in Arabic, and Sing in Spanish” automatically catches your attention and makes you curious about how she reached to that point in three completely different, and what are oftentimes considered to be difficult languages for native English speakers. Christine takes you on a journey living in Thailand, China, Lebanon, and finally in Mexico by dedicating an entire part to all three countries, as well as mentioning her occasional temporary visits and stays in Thailand. Her commitment of doing so demonstrates her careful attention to detail, and all of the research that she had done prior to writing the book about multilingualism, bilingualism, the cognitive benefits of acquiring languages by a certain age, and about polyglots.

What is quirky about this book is that her mission was to raise her child bilingually, so that he could speak at least two languages natively as a child. Without spoiling too much, her journey takes its twists and turns as she realizes the challenges, the rewards, and the peaks of teaching herself some of the world’s most highly spoken languages almost completely from scratch. My favorite lines that I believe best summarize the novel are: “The gift of language is…opening up your worldview. If we want to prepare our children for the future- one that will no doubt be more globalized than ever- then that broadened sense of identity is the most useful tool a young person can have. It makes them adaptable, it helps them think about issues across cultures, and it will be a required skill for the next generation of workers” (Gilbert, p. 270).

You may be asking yourself what distinguishes this novel from other language-related novels, and this what I have to say. Christine’s and her family’s experiences differ from most in that she and her husband were monolingual before embarking on a lifelong journey and commitment to living in communities with their locals abroad. Instead of simply living in Beirut and only interacting with Americans, Christine made a sincere and conscious effort to use her Arabic skills in markets, in restaurants, and, most importantly, in her everyday life.

If you were looking for an enjoyable read that mixed scientific data and findings about multilingualism, along with real-life anecdotes of a monolingual who eventually became multilingual in many respects, then I would highly recommend this novel. Feel free to write your personal opinions after reading this novel in the comments down below.