Learning strategy #2 I wrote several days ago about my strategy to learn English. It was very simple. I spend two hours per day on learning: half-hour for reading/listening, half-hour for writing articles like this one, and whole hour for speaking with language partners from italki. Did it work? Well... when I was writing about the perfect strategy, I started with setting goals. My goal was to improve my speaking English. I read a lot of articles about learning new languages, and I created my strategy based on them. But English it’s not a NEW language for me, I practice it for several years already. Moreover, I wrong estimated my English level. I found out, that I can have a normal conversation in English for about hour without making any bigger mistakes. After a two weeks of learning due my strategy I don’t feel that I made any bigger progress. So I have to change it. I skip to read articles about moving from intermediate to advanced level of language proficiency and some rules repeats: - reading newspapers, listen podcasts, watching movies with “higher level” of English - lessons with professional teachers (that would correct all mistakes and find out my weaknesses) - practice accent and intonation (e.g. with youtube video) I have to change my goal too. It’s not enough to say, that I want to speak fluent in English (because I already achieve that). To make progress I need to set more ambitious and measurable goal. I’m thinking about getting certificate C1 or C2. I have some ideas what to do, but I need a time to think about it:: - get some professional lessons on italki - get some preparation for C1 with some e-learning courses - get fluentu account with articles and videos on high language level If you have any ideas or your own experience in getting advanced, please share in comments.

Mixtube Playing music on a house parties is a serious problem and there are two main scenario. First, when one person (let's call him a dominator) play music he wants, and everyone else are too scared or drunk to oppose. Second, more like in democratic countries, when everybody fighting for an access to the laptop. In this part of program we would focus on the second case. In Poland we call this party-with-violence a youtube parties and it’s really huge problem for society, especially for poor, young people. Situations like this leaded to break relationships, fightings, crimes, destroyed properties etc. How to deal with this sociological issue? After many researches and participatory observation we created mixtube.co - a special tool to canalise peoples creativity and aggression for make a perfect playlist for party. How it works? That’s so easy even completely drunk party-cipant can deal with it. First you create a new playlist (name it as you want - you don’t need any registration or sign up). That would generate a special link, which you send to all of your friends. Every person who gets the link, can add and vote for a songs on a playlist (from their computers, phones, tablets, smartphones, etc.). Computer on which you created a playlist has a admin privileges, which means you can remove any song, skip and of course operate the player. Platform was created by special designer and UX and tested by crowds of drunk students to be sure that it’s understandable and party-proof.

Topics for writing I have a resolution that every day I will write a short text in English. As you can see I’m doing this with more or less good results. But the problem is I ran out of ideas and topics to write about. I’m not interested in writing some random texts. Writing itself is hard for me and I don’t want discuss hard or boring topics as an additional obstacle. I like to write about learning English and italki society, that’s what I’m doing everyday and I feel that I’m writing about some concrete things that happens to me. How many texts can I write about this things? Not many. I thought about writing about all the conversation I had with my language partners, but I supposed, that would be strange and discouraging for my friends from italki. I was trying to write about the history and culture of Poland, but in these cases I ended up reading Wikipedia instead of learning English. If you have any good ideas please share them in comments box, I will spend the next half an hour in writing down all possible topics, I hope that my next text wouldn’t be so meaningless (excluding of course all new words you can pick up).

All Saints' Day Today, when the whole world celebrates Halloween, in Poland we have other holiday connected with afterlife - All Saints’ Day. This day is free from work, people gather together with families, go to the cemetery and burn candles on graves of loved ones. The weather in Poland in November is very helpful in creating atmosphere of reverie and meditation. Days are dark, cloudy and usually it rains. I admire the evening walks in cemeteries. There are about thousands of little, twinkling candles, you can smell wax in the air, and there are a lot of silent and focused people walking next to you. Everyone is thoughtful and serious. It’s a good time to reminisce some of the national heros. I’m lucky because in Warsaw we have great, old cemetery from about 1790, with lots of famous and important for national history peoples. Cemetery in Poland (especially in big cities like Warsaw) looks more like little cities then gardens or parks (like cemetery I saw in Dublin or in Oxford). Some of graves are about 4-5 meters and looks like monuments or little houses. To not be so gloomy I might add that these days in front of the cemetery gates you can buy candies - skin of the lord (literally translation) - it’s a very sweet, almost all made with sugar.

Strategy to learn So what is my strategy to learn English? First thing, before I started, is to consider what is my goal. What do I want to achieve in more specific and measurable way (S.M.A.R.T as some of you may know). My main goal is to speak fluent and sound relaxed on English interviews. So other aspects of language (vocabulary, grammar, phrasal verbs) are important for me just in extent that facilitate my communication. Of course communication without vocabulary doesn’t exists, so it's important to not overestimate pure communication skills. Back to the things, I decided to spend about 2 hours per day on learning English. First half of hour I read or listen English articles. I mainly choose articles about learning English, motivation in learning languages, etc. Invaluable source of those articles are blogs of polyglots (like Benny Lewis). I write down all vocabulary I don’t know, and add them to AnkiDroid app using google chrome extension. Then I go for a breakfast and have an another coffee. Due to the breakfast I download on AnkiDroid new vocabulary and learn it by rote. Then I spend next half of hour on writing. I had a list of interesting topics, but I used all of them, so now I just write whatever I think about. Then I publish my work on italki and look for some new friends... because next whole hour I’m spending on speaking. Of course that the ideal plan and it changes in case of different circumstances. I’m using it for about week, I wonder how you rating it. Any comments are welcome, especially tips & tricks about the fastest way to speak advanced English! By the way I'm still looking for language partners to practice speaking, so if you interested, don't hesitate to invite me!

Why italki Why I signed up on italki? Well, my main reason was very practical - I just wanted to practice my speaking english, so I wanted to meet as many language partners as it’s possible. I thought that all italki members are here to practice speaking (especially among language partners), but as I already learned, many people here want to know other cultures and countries and have more idealistic approaches (which is nice) than just practicing language. So why not just go for some english school and work in groups with teacher? First of all I admire every goodness related to the Internet. I took some online programming courses (on coursera), most of my shopping I make on websites, but I never meet anyone new (and speak with him/her) through the Internet. So I thought that could be exciting and it’s worth to try. Another reason (important for me personally) is connected with my job. I’m working as a remote programmer, so sometimes I have job interview on Skype or google hangouts, which is more stressful for me, because I’m not used to meet new people via Internet. That why italki is an ideal place for me - I can practice my speaking skills and became more self-confident in the same time! But here occur my little problem: I’m not sure how language partners works and at this point, I’m too afraid to ask (no, not really). I thought that I invite someone, give a Skype contact and call to this person. I know, that’s a jump into the deep end (i Poland we would say “jump into the deep water”), maybe I’m too serious because I read Beeny Lewis blog, where he preach "learning language in a hard way”. Anyway I’m still looking for language partner to speak on Skype.