Relax with Me: How to Use ASMR Videos for Language Learning

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! In today's post, I want to talk about one of my favorite ways to incorporate languages into my daily routine. I don't know about you, but I have been under constant stress since high-school, as I have had to balance my work, school, and personal life more than ever before. I always had to worry about the next assignment, or deadline coming up, so I would feel tired and worn out without even noticing it. The list goes on and on. Unfortunately, the burden was much larger than I thought I could carry when it came to prioritizing certain decisions, or people in my life. That happened until May 31st, 2018. On that day, my life changed. I remember going on YouTube and seeing a suggested video pop up titled "ASMR Different Languages Whispering". I clicked on it and as soon as I saw it, I was intrigued.

The video that I watched on that day is attached to this post and now has over 2.5 million views since it was published. I have to admit that I had no idea what ASMR stood for, or what its purpose was until I started to watch Sharon's videos on a more regular basis. ASMR can best be defined as "a feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation in the scalp and down the back of the neck, as experienced by some people in response to a specific gentle stimulus, often a particular sound". Essentially, ASMR videos are meant to help relax you, or put you to sleep. These videos are made for any viewer, but I have found them to be especially helpful when I have been under a lot of anxiety, confusion, or stress.

I have been watching ASMR videos ever since I watched Sharon's video and have found that I have had healthier thoughts and sleeping patterns. I have watched ASMR videos in Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese, which has helped me not only improve my listening comprehension skills, but has also increased my vocabulary in those respective languages while putting me into a zen mood. I now know words like "whisper", "relax", and "massage" in 7 languages, which is amazing, ins't it? These videos have transformed my life in such a way that I can no longer imagine my life without them.

I invite you to watch Sharon's video found in this post if you're interested in getting tingles in multiple languages and to also look up other ASMR artists in the languages you're learning. As my parents would say, you can kill two birds with one stone when doing this. You can get in some language practice and do yourself a favor by taking some time to stop what you're doing, let your body breathe, and, most importantly, be free of any negative thoughts and vibrations.

Here are some of my top ASMR artists:


English: Madi ASMR

English + French:  ASMR Glow

French: Colomba ASMR
German: annawhispers ASMR

Italian: Chiara ASMR
Russian: HeyHelen ASMR 

Spanish:  Susurros para relajar ASMR

I hope that you found this post helpful. I wish you a nice and relaxing rest of your day! 

Until next time, 

Laura

Sharing my First TED-Style Talk "The Power of Language"

Ciao a tutti e bentornati sulla mia pagina! (Hello, everyone and welcome to my page!) I wanted to start off by apologizing for not writing on here for a few months. I have to admit that senior year has been much busier than I originally thought, so I hope that you understand. Despite my inactivity, I’m happy to start regularly blogging again for the rest of the year. Though I’m still unsure as to what the future awaits me, I know that this year will be filled with many new adventures.

For today’s post, I’m sharing the links to part 1 and part 2 of the TED-style talk that I gave on Thursday, March 28^th titled The Power of Language. The name of my talk was inspired by my favorite post on this blog with the same name, because the feedback that you all gave me about it was so incredible that I felt that I had to share it with all of you a few years later.

Are you curious about how my bilingual upbringing and bicultural identity have influenced me throughout my life? Do you want to know how I have managed to reach conversational fluency in 6 languages and an advanced level in a 7^th language at the age of 22? If you answered yes to any, or both of those questions, I highly encourage you to watch both parts of my talk.

Once again, I want to thank each and every one of you. None of this would have been possible alone. In fact, most of what I have been able to achieve has taken years of unending love and support from my friends and especially my parents and my sister, Carolina. Espero que sepan que los amo con todo mi corazón. Gracias por siempre apoyarme en todos mis empeños y por ayudarme a realizar todos mis sueños.

Thank you for everything! // Muchas gracias por todo! // Je vous remercie pour tout! // Danke für alles! // Grazie di tutto! // Спасибо вам за всё! // Obrigada por tudo!

Yours,

Laura

Documentary Review of "First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee"

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! I hope that you have all been having a good week so far. For this post, I wanted to switch things up. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more and watch more films and documentaries to inform myself more about problems that the world is facing. A few weeks ago, I had the desire to watch a language documentary, which lead me to the documentary called First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee.

This documentary intrigued me, given that it is about the urgency of preserving the Cherokee language. I have also recently been reading more about the active efforts that indigenous people have put forth to pass on their traditions and languages. I find the Cherokee language to be especially relevant in 2019, because many Cherokee speakers seem to be passing away every year. To our dismay, the Cherokee language is classified as an endangered language, having between 11,000-13,000 native speakers according to 2008 estimates. In North Carolina, where the documentary takes place, there are no more than 200 native Cherokee speakers left. This number made my heart sink, but even so, this short documentary gave me hope for a better tomorrow.

It’s truly inspiring to see native Cherokee speakers taking on the role of educators, especially in an immersion school designed to teach young Cherokee about their language and culture in Cherokee. Despite many obstacles that have come their way, including funding, support, and hiring qualified educators, there is now a new generation of Cherokee who is speaking Cherokee at a native level even though many of their parents do not know how to speak it fluently. What I found to be the most remarkable was how dedicated and passionate Cherokee teachers are. They realize that there are little to no textbooks, or resources that are published, or available in Cherokee, so they often spend sleepless nights creating original and translated material for their students in their native language.

Once you learn more about the devastation that the Cherokee have gone through for centuries due to boarding schools that many Cherokee were forced to attend to “learn the white man’s ways”, it makes you very upset. These children were given no choice but to stop speaking Cherokee in order to “perfect” their English, which was deemed to be the superior language. This led to the punishment and prohibition of speaking their “inferior” Cherokee language. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I encourage you to have deep and meaningful conversations about this situation with your family and friends. I continue to believe that the best way to bring more peace to this world is through conversation. Words are much stronger and powerful than you would think.

Though this is a sad reality, many Cherokee children living in North Carolina are starting to speak Cherokee with the older generations after 60 years of not hearing many Cherokee children speak their so-called heritage language. Since this a documentary review, I don’t want to spoil anything else, so if this is of interest to you, make sure to watch it by clicking the video that I have attached to this post. Qué tengan un buen día!

Love,

Laura

Switching Languages- What Does it Mean to Switch Languages?

Hello, everyone and welcome to my blog! I have to admit that it has been too many months since I last posted on here, but I promise that I will be posting more regularly in the upcoming year. I wanted to get back on track by posting about what started this blog in the first place: the concept of switching languages.

Why did I decide to name this blog Switching Languages and what does switching languages even mean? Three years ago, I sat on our living room couch and had a conversation with both of my parents. I remember telling them that I had the idea of creating a blog about the relevance and importance of spreading my love for language learning, but had no idea what I wanted to call my blog. After some reflecting, my dad suggested to call it Switching Languages, because he knew that I had to switch from one language to another on a daily-basis without even thinking twice.

For me personally, switching languages is the ability to speak multiple languages without confusing them, or hesitating when speaking more than one language. You know that you can successfully do so when you hear your parents ask: “Niñas, están listas?” and then immediately talk to your friend and say: “My parents are asking me if we’re ready to leave.” I think of it like a puzzle, or a game. For bilingual or multilingual individuals, this ability is innate. We don’t have to stop and think about every single word we’re going to say before saying it. We simply formulate our thoughts in our head and then say them. It’s really that simple.

A lot of people ask me: “How do you not get confused when speaking 7 different languages?” and “Don’t they get mixed up in your head?” Just like any other human being, I’m not perfect, so there are times in which I forget how to say a word that is rather simple in x language that I have known for years, but, aside from those instances, the answer to both of those questions is no. All of the years of training and changing personas has led me to where I am today.

In other words, languages are not just subjects that I choose to take at university and they are also not just a hobby that I choose to do whenever I have a little bit of free time. They are much more than that. In fact, they have been incorporated into my daily routine for years. The friendships I have made and the people I have met live anywhere from Pennsylvania to Japan, so it is not unusual for me to send messages to my friends in their native languages to ask them how they are doing.

Similarly, all of the notifications that pop up on my feed on my social media are about dozens of countries in more languages than I can recognize, or speak. My family is bilingual, so calling them automatically ensures that I will have spoken, or written in at least 2 languages on that given day. Furthermore, I listen to music and watch videos and movies from around the world. Now that is what I call the power and beauty of switching languages.

If you liked this post and want to keep up with my travel and languages adventures domestically and abroad, feel free to subscribe to my blog by hitting the “subscribe” button on the upper right-hand corner of this blog. I’m looking forward to the third year since the launch of Switching Languages. Espero que tengan un buen fin de semana!