World AIDS Day and Aaron Myer's Mission

Today is World AIDS Day and to recognize this and support the work that is being done to combat AIDS is sub-Saharan Africa, Aaron Myers is doing something special.

Aaron is another teacher with an excellent website and great attitude to language learning.  He sells learning guides to help people build their language skills even if they don't have a teacher or regular face-to-face classes.  For the whole month of December, Aaron is going to donate 100% of the money he makes to Blood:Water Mission, a charity which helps communities in Africa to deal with HIV problems as well as water crises.

If you have been following my blog for a while then you will know how much I believe in trying to support charities.  I think this is a great thing Aaron is doing so I encourage you go over to his website and learn more about what he is doing to help support World AIDS Day this month.

Shaving for Movember!

"raising money" means to collect money for charity (Picture from thestayathomemother.com)

Last year a lot of you saw that I raised money for charity in Argentina by learning 1000 new Spanish words in a month. Unfortunately, with my work and my university studies I don’t have time to learn 1000 more words but I am doing something a little easier this month. 

This month I have shaved off my beard and started growing a moustache. This has changed my appearance remarkably and a few people think I look very funny now but this is all to raise awareness and raise money for research into testicular and prostate cancer.

I am very grateful to my school and my colleagues. A few of them, including my friend Michael, are growing moustaches as well, many others will be donating money. For more information, read more (and see pictures) about it on my school’s blog.

If you want to donate then follow this link.

I’ll keep you posted with photo updates. :-D

Learning and Forgetting Vocabulary

Do you see the link on the top bar?  The one that says 1000 Challenge.  It goes to a page that talks about a language learning challenge I did earlier this year.  Learning 1000 new words in a foreign language.  I was quite successful – in one month I memorized 869 new words and phrases.  However, that was in July and now it is October.  After the challenge finished, I had a holiday, I was busy with other projects and I was lazy – I didn’t continue studying and now I probably remember about 200/300 words. :-(

This is not surprising and it is explained very well in this article, 'Do not forget The Forgetting Curve'.  I highly recommend reading the article.  It talks about spaced repetition.  This means, learning something and then going back (meaning ‘returning’) to it a day later, a week later, a month later.  I did not review the words I learned after July 1^st and that is why I do not remember all 869 of my words.  However, I still remember 200/300 new words and phrases - and that is not bad!

How I originally learned all those words and phrases in one month was with note cards.  Aaron Myers wrote a short blog post, 'The Stack', about using note cards to help you put language learning in more parts of your life; on the bus, waiting in a line.  These are perfect moments to continue your language learning.

So I did my challenge to inspire people and to raise money for charity.  Giving my money and time to charity is one of the most enjoyable things I do.  It makes me feel really good about myself and it motivates me to do more things because I am doing those things to help other people, not just me.

So have I convinced any of you to do something similar?  I know that I have one friend who is going to do a similar challenge to improve his Japanese.  However, if you are a learner of English and you are reading this, can I convince you to do your own 1000 Challenge?

Please say yes.  Choose a learning goal, choose a month, choose a charity and then get started.  If you are on Twitter then tell people about your challenge using the hashtags: #educharity and #ellchar.  Have I inspired you to push yourself, to challenge yourself, to do something that will help you and an organization that needs support?

Please say yes.  If you like the idea then suggest it to a friend or suggest it to a family member and give them help.  Suggest it to your teacher, suggest it to your students, suggest it to your boss or whoever.  The idea is do language learning and to help charity.

Please say yes. :-)

Setting Goals and Realizing Them (Trying to Understand Motivation)

First of all, ‘to realize your goal’ is similar to ‘realizing your dreams’: to have a goal or dream and to do the work so that is actually happens. For example:

One of the many wonderful things
I found in Mexico - a stray dog we
rescued and called Bianca. She's
 now happily living in the USA! :-)

“He realized his dream of living abroad by moving to Mexico.”

“She realized her goal of becoming an artist by quitting her job and taking a course at college.”

What goals have you realized recently?

I'm not very good at realizing goals. Recently, I gave myself the challenge of learning 1000 new words and phrases in Spanish – I managed 869 in 1 month (see video here). I’m happy with this achievement but I know there are lots of other times in the past when I ‘gave up’ (meaning stopped trying) and I didn’t complete a goal that I set (‘setting goals’ means ‘making goals’).

How do we achieve learning goals and why do we sometimes fail?

I talked about this in a previous post and video, SMART Goals. In addition to this, here are two more videos that talk about goals.

I love this video. Matt Cutts’s enthusiasm is inspirational. Although I did my charity challenge before I saw this video, I think that my challenge is a perfect example of something we can achieve if we really try and have a reasonable 'deadline' (meaning a 'time limit').

Thanks to Kylie Barker, I saw this video about setting goals.  According to Derek Sivers, telling everybody about your goals isn’t a great idea because apparently you feel less motivated to realize those goals after telling people.  Do you believe this?

I do!  I think this is true for me sometimes.

Examples of Failure

Before arriving in Argentina I decided that I wanted to do the Buenos Aires Marathon.  I told people about this goal and I asked people where I could go running.  Unfortunately the marathon is in October and I won’t be running in it.  I gave up training about a month after I arrived in Argentina.  I know I can do a marathon but somewhere I lost motivation, maybe because I told everybody about it.

Here is a second example.  After the 1000 Charity Challenge I decided that I wanted to do a more physical challenge.  I told people I would train for 1 month and be able to do 100 push-ups in 2 minutes.  Unfortunately the deadline for that was August 6^th... and I gave up training after about a week.  So obviously, I didn’t complete that challenge.  Maybe I did not have the motivation because I told everybody about my challenge.

Examples of Success

I ran the Brighton Marathon last year.  I trained with some good friends as well as by myself but I didn't tell many people that I was going to run the marathon.  I didn't want everybody to know in case I didn't complete the race.

I scored 87% in the memory challenge for charity.  When I did this challenge I told everybody about it but I told people so I could get help (lots of people gave me words to learn) and start raising money.  My motivation here was to achieve the goal so I could help a charity.  I think this helped me because I knew that if I stopped, I would be disappointing a lot of people.  In this way, my goal was not only for me.

Another thing that helped me was that, as you see in the video, there was a very public event to test me at the end of my month of study.  I didn’t want to look stupid and I couldn’t give up.

You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?

This phrase in English is basically a challenge: you can talk about doing something but can you actually do it?  If we believe Derek Sivers, maybe it is better not to talk about something until after you have finished it.

I am very interested to hear people’s opinions and experiences about this. Please comment below.

Video: 1000 New Words & Phrases (Learning Language for Charity)

On July 1st 2011 my students tested me in a fun event to improve vocabulary and raise money for charity. This is how and why we did it!

During June this year, I spent at least half an hour every day trying to memorize 1000 new Spanish words and phrases. This was for an event to raise money for a local charity, Asociación Promover, in Argentina, where I am teaching at the moment.

The idea was simple: I had 1 month to learn the words and on July 1st my students tested me to see how many I could remember. Sometimes they gave me the English and I needed to give them the Spanish translation, and sometimes they gave me the Spanish and I gave them the English translation.

It was a fun event and I think everybody who helped improved their vocabulary!

We raised money by asking each person to donate for every word I remembered correctly: $0.02 for 1 word, $0.04 for 2 words, etc. A lot of the students helped by donating as well as helping me to find 1000 Spanish words and phrases to learn. Thank you very much to them!

To know about how I learned and memorized the vocabulary, take a look at my post, No Magic Please (Learning Vocabulary). In future posts this week, I will give some more information about the challenge, the motivation and how much I remember now, 2 months later.

Thanks for everybody’s messages of support. They were very much appreciated. :-)

If you are still a bit confused, here is my video explaining the challenge.

1000 Challenge Update

Here is a journal of my progress since the beginning of the month.

Day 2

Spent 1 hour finding and putting down my first 60 words (Day 1 was a non-starter).  Hopefully I’ll get faster at this.  I’ve also found a few websites with common verbs, words and Argentinian phrases.  Added to this, my Facebook is now in Spanish.  Let the learning commence!

Day 4

I have to go to Uruguay today.  Yesterday I added a total of 2 words only.  I was very tired.  Not good enough!

Day 5

I'm going to try learning from Spanish to English instead of English to Spanish.  I’m hoping that after acquiring the Spanish to English, I’ll have quicker success with the English to Spanish.

For this challenge it is important not to get overwhelmed* by the task… I am only at Day 5 so I should not be trying to do too much too quickly.  Every word learned is a success!

* overwhelmed = to feel too much pressure or stress

Day 6

I quickly moved back to English to Spanish - starting from L1 to L2 works much better.

Day 7

Unfortunately I’m not following some of my own rules here.  I have to learn a lot of words quickly so I am looking at word lists and finding any words I don’t know.  This means that I have a lot of unrelated words written together and not in groups, like I recommended.

Words that I’m having problems with at the end of the first week:

To shake or jerk – SACUDIR

To help or assist – SOCORRER

To find out or investigate – AVERIGUAR (I remember this one but not the spelling so I can’t pronounce it.)

Posh/snobby – CHETO

To happen – SUCEDER

To scold or quarrel – RENIR

To distribute – REPARTIR

To put out or extinguish – APAGAR

To heave or pick up – ALZAR

To exhaust or use up – AGOTAR

T-Shirt - REMERA

Day 11

Okay, I have recorded (written down) more than half the words/phrases I need for 1^st July.  See links below for websites I have been using.  I want to give a big thank you to Silvia Bernaudo for some of these links – they have been really useful!

I have probably learned about 100-150 words from English to Spanish.  I haven’t learned any words Spanish to English yet.

How am I finding my 1000 words?

http://quizlet.com/117515/501-spanish-verbs-flash-cards/
http://wordsgalore.com/wordsgalore/languages/spanish/spanish1000.html
http://exposebuenosaires.com/argentine-spanish-the-most-common-words-and-phrases/
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g294266-s604/Argentina:Important.Phrases.html
http://exposebuenosaires.com/argentine-slang/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo
http://www.freerice.com
http://spanish.about.com
http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/rgshiwyc/school/curric/Spanish/Caminos2/Cam2New/Cam2New1/index.htm
http://www.leoloqueveo.org
http://www.ver-taal.com

http://www.mansioningles.com/Vocabulario.htm

Other Things I've Done for Charity

Recognize the guy in these photos? Yes, this is me doing some silly things for charity; specifically, shaving off a long pony-tail and doing a 10k run in a kilt - it's NOT a skirt! :-)

So by now, you have probably seen my video post about my 'sponsored learning'. I just wanted to give you a bit more information about my motivation for this. I've decided to do this to:

• Improve my Spanish.
• Raise money for Asociación Promover in Gualeguaychú, part of the Argentinian Fundación Conin
• Hopefully inspire you with your language learning.
• Maybe inspire you with your fundraising efforts for other charities around the world (a lot of people need help).
• Investigate how effective memorization for language learning can be.
• Share my experiences with memorization as I work on this.
• Show what great progress is possible with a little effort (I hope).
• Improve your English as well (I'll share my difficult words with you so even if you don't speak Spanish, you might learn some new English vocabulary).

I'll post later today or tomorrow to give you a summary of some problem words I'm having and my feelings about the memorization so far.

Remember to share this with your friends.

Gordon

1000 Words & Phrases for Charity in Argentina (#ELLchar)

Free Rice for Vocabulary

Hello all!

I’m preparing for a seminar this Saturday this will be a short post.

Have you seen the banner/link near the top of the page?  www.freerice.com.  This is a great tool to improve your vocabulary.  It builds from words you already know and asks you to recognize synonyms.  Don’t worry about level – it has 60 levels of difficulty and level 60 is FAR too difficult for me.  It will give you questions for your level based on what you get right and wrong.  It’s quite clever really.  :-)

I promise a bigger post next week.

Gordon

A Quick Note about Japan

Just a small note to friends in Japan hoping that you are well and that recovery will be quick.

For everyone else, here is somewhere you can donate money for the relief effort.