Year-End Review and Plans for 2024

Happy New Year.

I have a New Year's video prepared, but before I start that video, I wanted

to jump in with a story and something that's very important for 2024.

I was at our golf club and the wife of one of our pros says to me, I

tried learning French on your system.

I understand, but I can't speak, so I gave up.

I thought that was very, very important.

Most people give up.

The biggest problem language learners have is they don't stay with it.

Another problem is, some people convince themselves that they understand

well, but they just can't speak well.

First of all, she probably doesn't understand that well.

If you have very good comprehension, like in many different

situations, movies, three or four people talking to each other.

If you don't understand those situations, you don't have good comprehension.

So you have to have good comprehension.

But you also can't give up because language learning actually is not easy.

I sometimes liken it to a jigsaw puzzle.

But imagine a jigsaw puzzle where you don't know what the picture

looks like and all the little pieces.

Words, phrases that you pick up and put into the picture, they disappear

on you because you forget them.

And so, there's this continuing frustration.

The only way you gradually develop a sense of the language is by continuing.

You're listening and reading and speaking.

And the good news for 2024 is it has never been easier to acquire the language

through listening and reading because all the other activities, reviewing

words, which I do, looking at grammar, which I do, speaking to people, which

I do, it all hinges on having So, yeah, Content of interest and never has it

been easier to find content of interest and to bring it in as a video, as an

audio file, as a text file into LingQ or some other system and use it to learn.

By the way, make sure you take advantage of LingQ's end of the

year or new year special deals.

Avail yourself of the access code and get studying.

Now, without further ado, I will give you The New Year's video

that I produced a little earlier.

So New Year's resolutions, what do I want to do in 2024 here?

I'll be mostly 78 for most of the upcoming year.

So insofar as my channel is concerned, I want to continue

talking about language learning.

I hope to do maybe.

One foreign language, i.

e.

non English video every month, maybe every six weeks.

I want to continue talking about language learning, of course, but

I maybe want to expand it into the subject of learning in general, because

these are things that interest me.

So I want to take my interests and share them with you here at my channel.

So in talking about the subject of learning and how the brain learns

more broadly, I will be commenting on some of the things that.

Other people in, you know, on the internet through YouTube, influencers,

what they are saying and give you my sort of reaction to some of the

things that I find on the internet.

Insofar as language is concerned, I want to continue with my Arabic and Persian

because I'm certainly not satisfied with where I am in those languages.

In fact, I should promise that I will do a video both in Persian

and in Arabic in the upcoming year.

Of course, my involvement with these languages is also a part of my interest

in those histories and those cultures, because when I learn a language, I

start to sort of get a taste of the language and of the culture, but

then that drives me to do a lot of reading, uh, about those people.

So right now, for example, I'm, I'm listening to an audio book.

On the Arabs, but I also bought the book and it's by Tim McIntosh Smith.

It's fascinating.

It makes me realize that, you know, the Arabs, they didn't just

arrive on the scene with Mohammed.

The Arabs as a people from South Arabia through to the fertile Crescent have

been interacting with each other and with neighboring peoples for a long, long time.

And it's very useful to get a sense of all of that.

It puts my Arabic learning.

In a context, and of course the Arabic learning is not just standard Arabic

where I began, but it's also more now Levantine Arabic with, I've had,

had some forays into Egyptian Arabic.

And of course this helps because you don't know if you come across an Arabic speaker,

which form of Arabic they're going to use.

So I will continue my explorations there.

My Persian learning has.

Progress much more quickly than my Arabic because it's one language.

And I have done a lot of reading, you know, history of Iran here, a history

of the Tajiks and what else have we got?

The Persianate world.

And these are just some, you know, lost enlightenment.

You know, which again, talks about Central Asia, which is largely Persian

speaking, but also Turkish speaking.

And of course I did read a book on Salim the Magnificent, Turkish.

And of course the Greeks have also been on the edge of certainly Central Asia have

interacted with Arabic speaking people.

So it's all part of that discovery.

So I will definitely continue working on those languages.

I may.

Go after Turkish, but if we get Hindi at LingQ, which I'm hoping we do, then

I want to start exploring India and learning Hindi, it's not a necessity.

I understand that if you go to India, a lot of people speak English, but

I just feel that when I get into a language, it just introduces me to the

culture, the history in a different way.

I get very interested.

I read it more and more on the subject.

So I think I may start in Hindi this coming year.

We will see.

In any case, I will be dealing with.

Languages that I'm at, uh, call it, uh, I might be B1 in Persian, A2 in Arabic.

So those are languages that I'm in the middle of learning.

But if I take Hindi on, then it'll be a brand new language and

of course, a new writing system.

So, you know, if I think of those experiences and what advice I might

have for people Who are either starting from scratch or, you know,

wanting to improve in a language.

My advice usually is you obviously want to follow your interests.

So if you're interested in, in grammar, you're going to look into the grammar.

Whenever you are interested, whenever you're curious, following your curiosity

is always the right thing to do.

But there are moments when you feel you're not getting anywhere or with a

brand new language, particularly in a brand new writing system, you wonder

if you are ever going to get there.

If you will ever start to make sense of this language, and I have

had that feeling so many times.

Particularly most recently with Arabic and Persian, trying to

learn the script, hearing all these sounds that are totally new to me.

And yet, while I'm not as good as I would like to be, I have come a long way.

So I guess what I would suggest to people as you go into the new year and make your

new year's resolutions, remember that the heavy lifting is the amount of time that

you have to spend listening and reading.

That's where you will get the biggest return on your investment of time.

Don't worry about things you forget.

Don't worry about words you forget.

Don't worry about grammar rules that you forget or that you can't

follow when you're trying to speak.

None of that matters.

One thing matters, staying active, finding ways to enjoy the process,

finding the process of learning a language relevant and important to you.

If you can continue to do that, you will succeed.

So I wish everyone success.

In the new year, in whatever they choose to do, I didn't talk about

what my personal goals for the new year are because they are

personal, but they relate to family, friends, enjoying all the wonderful

things that we enjoy in this life.

So a happy new year to everyone.

Bye for now.