Life becomes shorter because of the Internet Lately I've been having some serious thoughts about our life. It's interesting what do you think about my conclusion. I often catch myself with my smartphone in my hand without even remembering the initial cause of taking it. I haven't paid much attention to it until now. Now I'm scared because of amount of time I spend thoughtlessly with my phone or computer. I developed a frightened habit of filling every second of my free time with the Internet. I won't argue that it's the most amazing invention of humanity I know and that now it's become an outrageous source of knowledge for so many people. It's amazing that we can get almost everything from the Internet. But it seems I don't have the knowledge how to use it wisely. I'm happy that at least I started to think about it, that I understand now what's going on and how it affects me. You know why I started with "Life becomes shorter because of the Internet"? Because in my case, when I use my phone without any cause, just to fill up some gaps in my schedule, I lose so much time and I don't even notice that. Isn't it horrible? The first step was talking to my husband and asking him for help, because I felt that I won't be able to change without his support. We agreed to proceed little by little, starting with some little alterations to our morning routine. We have this common habit to scroll our Instagram feed for half an hour or so for "waking up" which is ridiculous. So from now on we won't touch our phones in the morning, before we get up, brush our teeth and prepare a breakfast. I don't know what we'll do next, but I'll keep you posted. Tell me what you think about it and take care!

La mia casa Questo è il mio primo testo in italiano. In questo testo parlo del mio appartamento. Ho un appartamento. Il mio appartamento non è grande, ma è bello. In questo appartamento c'è un balcone. Il balcone è grande, ma non è largo. In questo appartamento ci sono tre camere. Le camere non sono grandi. La mia camera ha due finestre. Le finestre sono grandi. Io non ho un giardino. Non ho molti fiori sul mio balcone.

How Instagram Helps To Learn More, Part II Hello, everybody! I promised to continue my story about me learning four languages at a time within a challenge on instagram called "100 days of languages". The idea is to spend at least fifteen minutes a day learning chosen languages. I picked English (you can read about it in my previous entry), French, Italian and German for myself. Today's text is about French. Some of you might know that I speak French fluently because I spent my last six years living in a French-speaking country. Why do I want to "learn" it? Because we do not have to stop learning a language, ever! It's impossible to be perfect in any language, even our native. So I've decided to expand my vocabulary and learn more precise words for different occasions, because I tend to use "general" vocabulary to express anything. And my favorite way of doing this is reading. So I chose a book written in modern language and from time to time I find some very useful words and expressions in there. I use a digital notebook to record them and I repeat these lists every day. But I don't just write the word and a translation. I always try to find an expression or a phrase that uses this particular word, because learning single words without context is useless, believe me. If you don't know how to use it in a phrase it won't stay in your head. Another thing that helps me to learn new words and expressions is to write definitions of words I learn in a language I learn. For example, for the word "emmener" it would look like this: emmener - mener quelqu'un avec soi d'un lieu dans un autre ; conduire, transporter Le bus vous emmènera jusqu'à la Concorde. So normally I wouldn't even write anything in Russian (my mother tongue), except for some really difficult cases. One last thing I want to improve in my French is grammar, because in a spoken language we don't use many tenses, just present, a few of past tenses and a future, so my knowledge of less popular ones fades with time. But sometimes, here and there, we actually need them and I'm getting lost, because I don't really remember the right way to use them. That's why I want to strengthen my knowledge of rare grammar tenses to be able to use them in a right moment. Today's entry might be a little messier then the previous, but I'm leaving it like this because we cannot correct ourselves in real life when speaking. Thank you for reading it until the end. I wish all the best with your learning experience and see you soon!

How Instagram Helps To Learn More It's been a while since I've last written anything here. Nothing has changed, though, I'm still studying English. In fact, I do more and more everyday, I think I am addicted to it. My passion for languages never wears thin (maybe you can suggest more correct expression here?) I decided to take part in a challenge on Instagram, called "100 days of languages". I'm already on my 26th day and I love it! The idea is that I choose one or more languages I want to improve and I dedicate at least fifteen minutes a day to work on them. I started with English, French, German and Italian. For some time I was trying to learn some Spanish too, but very quickly I understood that it's a bit too much right now. Maybe in future, because the language is fantastic. So first I had to set my goals for each of my chosen languages. Today I'm going to write about English. My goals are: 1. I want to read more in order to expand my vocabulary and maybe reach level C1 although it's really hard to know exactly where that is. 2. I would like to really boost my pronunciation. So together with my adorable teacher here on Italki we're working on it. My weak points are the difference between "i" and "e" (as in "ship" and "sheep" and so on), the "th" sound (my "favourites" words are "three" and "with"). There are other little things, but I'm working on it by reading almost everything aloud. 3. Of course I would also like to improve my grammar. Aside from doing exercises every day, reading helps me a lot with this because I see all these grammatical rules "in action". Maybe I forgot to mention something, but for me these three points are essential for now and I'm working really hard. I've just started to read "Wives and daughters" by Elizabeth Gaskell. I was a bit afraid of this book because it has almost eight hundred pages and the language isn't quite modern. But as I really want to improve my English, I can't look for simple ways to do this because it doesn't really work. Of course I understand that half of the words and expressions I will encounter it the book won't be useful for everyday conversations, but I think I'll "feel" the language much better with this "old" and beautiful way of expression once I finish it. Thank you for reading this until the end! I'll continue with other languages in my next entry. Thank you if you're going to correct my note, it would be so helpful. I'm still learning and I'm sure there are errors I haven't caught, but I'm glad to be back!