Language-Learning Dictionary You Should Try Out: Reverso Context

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my blog! I wanted to start off by apologizing for not having posted for a while. As many of you already know, I am currently abroad and have not had the opportunity to blog as much as I originally wanted to do, however, am hoping to post more consistently for the remainder of the semester from now on. For the first post of the academic semester, I thought that I would post about an application that I found out about a few months ago through a YouTuber polyglot, Lina Vasquez, called Reverso Context. 

In Lina's video (watch it down below), I remember her talking about a few other language-learning apps that she has recently been loving, but she particularly liked this one, as it is better than simply using Google Translate, or another online dictionary. I started using it, because I also find it very practical and easy to use. Instead of just typing in a word and the search engine coming up with 15 different results, you not knowing how to use the word, or you not knowing which definition is the correct one as a non-native speaker, this app helps you narrow down your results. What I like about the free phone version is that you can translate words from English into 12 other languages. The majority of the languages that you and I are learning are on there, but I hope that they continue adding more in the future.

You can change the language that you are translating from and translating into at any given moment in time. I use it for over 3 languages on a daily-basis, so I do not have to worry about only being able to use it for a language at a time. All you have to do is type in a word, a phrase, or a full sentence that you would like to translate into your target language and if whatever you type in is available in the database of the website, then it will automatically come up with a whole bunch of sample sentences and will bold the word(s) that you typed in for a quick reference. In this way, you can easily know for what you are looking in your target language. As far as I know, these sentences are written by and written for native speakers, so they are not literal translations when they should not be. It is also great for learning new idiomatic expressions and more complicated constructions that you may not know or unsure about.

I have been consistently using this app since this past June when I was studying abroad in France and it has been a lifesaver ever since. So far, I have mainly been using it for my essays when I do not have access to native speakers who can help me edit them, but have also found it helpful when I am trying to immerse myself in another language. Since I like writing emotively, I find it very difficult to fully convey my thoughts in another language without having a reliable resource such as this one. Whenever I have been in doubt, it has helped me create more native-sounding structures and sentences. I personally love scrolling through all of the sample sentences and seeing whether or not they convey the same context of which I am thinking. After all, that is why it is called Reverso Context!

Since it puts words and thoughts into perspective, it is more visual than most other dictionaries you will find, as you are not just seeing a word without knowing how to use it. Instead, you get to see how words function in a sentence and learn their various meanings, which makes learning a new language more fun! As someone who has to write and talk in over 4 languages on a daily basis, it can get confusing and frustrating to remember all of the words that I would like to use in all of them, but this app has worked miracles to help fix that problem. 

Aside from these reasons and more, I recommend using it for learners who want to use it for more than just one language at once to avoid having dozens of applications for each individual language on your phone. I believe that there is also a premium version of this app, but do not currently own it since I have been satisfied with its free version (feel free to check out the premium version if you are looking for even more language-learning resources). This app is also a great tool for college students who are taking language courses who need to write more elaborately than usual. All in all, if you are on the lookout for a new resource that gives you meaning and context behind what you want to look up, you may want to give this app a try!

How ‘Talking to Yourself’ Can Boost Your Ability to Speak a Language

Hello, everyone and welcome back to this page! After 6 weeks of studying abroad in France and being a French teacher at a language immersion camp, I have finally started to settle down and to take time for myself before studying abroad again. For this week’s post, I wanted to focus on a skill that I have developed and strengthened over the years: talking to myself in my target languages. I know what you are probably thinking: “Why would I ever do that? Wouldn’t I sound weird and be made fun of?”. Those questions are very natural to have, but I hope to convince you to at least give it a try before the end of the year.

Since the video below could not have summarized what you should do after talking to yourself any better, I will list all of the points that the he made and will add a few of my own remarks to them.

1.  As you could have already guessed, once you have decided that you will talk to yourself in one of your target languages, one of the best ways to see your progress over the years is to record yourself when speaking. With all of the technology that we have nowadays, there are many ways to do so. The two easiest ways are by either grabbing a voice recorder, or your phone. If for some reason neither of these objects are at your disposal, you can do it the old-fashioned way by simply talking to yourself without a device that tracks your progress.

2. Speak for 5 minutes in the foreign language without stopping. Choose a different topic every time: As intimidating as this next step may sound, it is very important to hold yourself accountable for the progress, or lack thereof that you make when learning other languages. Therefore, setting yourself a goal of a short 5 minutes should be feasible for most language learners. Keep in mind that if you are an absolute beginner of a language, or if you have not had the chance to brush up on one of your languages for a while, this goal may not be as realistic for you. If that is the case, do not fret, lower your expectations at first, and set timely goals to eventually reach a 5-minute conversation with yourself.

Aside from choosing for how long you will talk to yourself, you should also change the topic every time in order to put yourself on the spot. Say that you are currently on a clothing unit in your textbook, then you should focus your conversation on clothing items and what you would like to buy next. On the other hand, if you are preparing for a business trip to China, then you should focus on proper formal greetings and how to ask polite questions to your colleagues. I personally like switching them up, as I find it more interactive and fun. I like being challenged and find that when I change the topic, I tend to make faster progress in the long run.

3. Listen to recordings of yourself and make notes: Once the 5 or so minutes have finished up, make sure to listen to your recordings. It will seem a bit unnatural and strange at first, but try to resist the temptation of deleting them instead of listening to the mistakes that you made and on which you could improve. Below are some questions that the video suggests that you should ask yourself when taking notes of what you said:

a.     What sounds are you not pronouncing well ? : For example, if you are learning Russian, you may have a hard time pronouncing guttural sounds, making it a priority of sounds that you should regularly practice. In Spanish, you may have to practice how to roll your r’s over and over again until it starts feeling more natural.

b.    What problems with tenses do you have? For example, if you are learning any of the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc) the conditional, or the pluperfect may trip you up. Instead of giving up and telling yourself that you will never master all of these tenses, you can listen to your recordings and see which tenses do not come to you as easily as the others. You can then take an entire study day to review them until you feel like you have a better grasp on them. Remember that consistency is key.

c.     What words did you not know? Look them up. : For me personally, I have a hard time remembering long words that have few vowel sounds in both German and Russian, so I tend to focus on those words more-so than shorter words. After listening to myself talk for a few minutes, I take the time to write down any words that I did not know in those languages, look them up in a dictionary, and write them down in a notebook, so that I can easily refer back them to them later on.

d.    What mistakes did you hear? Note them down. : This question is a bit broader than the others, but is just as important. The mistakes that you can hear can be anything from mispronouncing a word to saying the wrong gender of a common word, such as “the book”. Instead of assuming that you what you said was correct, it is best to look up those words and to hear them being pronounced on online dictionaries, or on other websites.

e.  Find a friend/a teacher/a native speaker to listen for you. : Finally, once you have followed all of these simple steps, if you have someone at your disposal in real life, or virtually, you can ask him/her to listen to your recording and to give you feedback. This step is optional and is not always necessary, but if you are learning a language that is completely unrelated to your native language, or if you are not still not comfortable speaking your language (usually until you are an intermediate-learner), this can be helpful. Once you have listened to yourself several times, make sure to jot down any words or phrases about which you are unsure and then verify them with someone else. If you are confused about something, it is best to fix your mistakes sooner rather than later, as it is much more difficult to train your brain to say something the right way after having done it incorrectly for a long time. I hope that these tips help you out and that you consider trying this out for yourself. 

   

Until next time, happy language learning! Feel free to also comment on this post any post ideas that you would like me to write next.

Why Being Bilingual is Beautiful: Beautifully Bilingual

Hello, returning and new readers and welcome to my latest post. Before getting into this week’s post, I wanted to apologize for my lack of content these past few months. As a  second semester sophomore in college, I wanted take everything in and fully enjoy one of my last semesters on my college's campus before embarking on a journey to study abroad for an entire academic school-year. That being said, it is now summer, which means that more consistent content will be on its way. I am planning on posting once a week from now on and am excited to say that I will be writing blog posts about my experiences in France and Italy, in hopes to reach fluency in French and Italian, so make sure to stay tuned for them. 

“Testing one two, one two, yeah, not one, but two, como tú. You know it’s true. Dos idiomas son más and it’s getting big, we’re reaching critical mass. Nuestro mundo de dos mundos será el mundo. When mundane is something unknown and nobody feels alone…”

I have recently been thinking about topic ideas for this week’s post and have come to a realization about just how much being bilingual has impacted my life. To this day, I thank my parents for every waking hour spent with me speaking to me in their mother tongue. I thank them for their patience, love, and dedication to never give up despite what societal norms may be thought out to be. I thank them for taking me to music lessons with a native Spanish speaker, for enrolling me in a bilingual elementary school, and for prioritizing language classes above everything else. When I say this, I hope to not give anyone the impression that I was not brought up in a household that valued a well-rounded education, but rather am thankful for having parents who supported me to take three foreign languages at my high-school and now two new languages at the college level when nobody else encouraged me to do so. At my school and in numerous other occasions, being bilingual has been looked down upon, it has been misrepresented, and, worse yet, has discouraged millions of once bilingual Americans to give up their mother tongues in order to fit in, or so they believe.

If you gain anything out of this post, I want you to know that there are millions of other bilingual and multilingual individuals out there who have faced some kind of discrimination throughout their lives, but who have persevered despite all odds and any obstacles that may have come their way. In the society in which we live, it is almost impossible to not have a week go by without having someone questioning you and your choice to preserve a part of your culture that you hold so dearly to your heart. I am here with you. I am here for you if nobody else is to tell you that being bilingual is beautiful. It is a gift with which you were born, or that you have cultivated with so much passion that you deserve to share with others and to to the rest of the world. If you are bilingual, you know that you may not belong neither here nor there, but rather to at least two different, yet completely unique worlds. As I have mentioned in another one of my posts, one of my most defining moments growing up was when I questioned my own identity. At that moment, my mom reaffirmed my love for both my English (American) and Spanish (Colombian) self and told me that I was a world citizen and she was right.

As a bilingual, you are prepared with the necessary tools to have an open mind, an open heart, and most importantly, the ability to understand others’ thought processes when nobody else can. I am still a firm believer that the most thought-provoking, deep, and meaningful conversations of my life have all been when speaking to another person in their native tongue. Even though we have technology and dictionaries, I have never been able to replace any of those tools with real human interaction. I will give you a short anecdote of a recent experience that I had this past semester when teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to a Salvadorian family. Despite gaining more experience teaching English and practicing English with the family with whom I worked, what I learned the most was the beauty that bilingualism is. My most memorable moments working with them were not when I saw their improvement in their English-speaking abilities, but rather when they asked me questions about America, our way of life, and any doubts that they may have had in their mother tongue. You could tell that any kind of barrier that that had existed prior to that moment had been completely erased. The mother instantly lost any kind of physical tension that had prevented her from speaking from the heart. Those are the moments for which I live.

When other students, or adults ask me what my future career path will be, I prefer to be transparent and say that I have no idea. On the other hand, something that I do know is that if I could leave my footprint on this world by doing one good deed, I would choose to be a mentor, a friend, and a companion to anyone out there who has been negatively affected by the current stigma about bilingualism, multilingualism, and multiculturalism. All of the negativity, the hate, and the hurt that has brought millions of other bilingual individuals down should be replaced with a constant source of love and support. My experiences teaching and mentoring children, adolescents, and adults in Spanish, French, and Italian have made me become a more tolerant, compassionate, and patient individual. I have witnessed others about to burst into tears due to fear or confusion of what was to come, because they simply could not express themselves as fully, or as transparently as they could in their mother tongues as they could in English. When nobody else encouraged my friends to continue to pursue a language full-time, whether if it was through a job, or by declaring a language minor, I was the friend to lend a helping hand. Whatever your life goal may be, let the fire and passion within you transform your life vision and dedicate your life to making that goal become a reality. You are our future. We are our future.

We need more bilingual individuals to share their compassion, their understanding, and their creativity in order to solve some of the world’s most complex twenty-first century problems. Mistranslations can often lead to misinterpretations, tension, and uncertainty instead of mutual comprehension, a genuine desire to understand other points-of-view, and most importantly, the incredible ability to reach others’ minds, souls, and hearts. Being bilingual is a feeling that you cannot describe. It is a way of life like no other, allowing you to have full communication with family members and friends around the world with little to no boundaries. I hope that you continue to share your gift with others and to not be ashamed of who you are: every living particle that makes up your being, including all of your mother tongues.

If you are interested in reading more of my posts about my bilingualism, make sure to give these previous blog posts a read:

5 Benefits of Bilingualism: Why You Should Be Bilingual: http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/02/5-benefits-of-bilingualism-why-you.html 

Raising Your Kids Bilingually:

http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/03/raising-your-kids-bilingually_2.html

How are Language and Culture Related?:

http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/04/language-and-culture.html

The Power of Language:

http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-power-of-language.html

Personality Changes When Speaking Multiple Languages:

http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/02/personality-changes-when-speaking.html

How Language Brings People Together:

http://switchinglanguages.blogspot.com/2016/07/how-language-brings-people-together.html