How to unclog a toilet without a plunger

How to fix a blown fuse

How to fix a leaky faucet 

How to clean soap scum from your tub and shower

How to escape from a house fire

How to make a budget and stick to it

How to sharpen a knife

How to clean a self-cleaning oven

How to clean red wine stains from carpet

How to clean blood stains from fabric

How to clean grease stains from fabric

How to do a load of laundry

How to iron your clothes

How to test your smoke detectors

Cooking Skills:

How to tell if produce is ripe

How to know if food is expired 

How to properly sanitize a kitchen

How to cook an egg

How to make rice

How to make pasta

How to put out a kitchen grease fire safely

How to use a gas stove

How to use a convection oven

How to cook meat safely

How to use a stand mixer

How to use kitchen knives properly

How to make mashed potatoes

How to make grilled cheese sandwiches 

Health Skills:

How to stop bleeding

How to treat a burn 

How to do CPR (on an adult)

How to do CPR (on a child)

How to do CPR (on a baby)

How to help someone who is choking

How to save yourself if you are choking alone

How to read a nutrition label

How to treat frostbite

How to recognize when someone is having a stroke

How to maintain a healthy sleep schedule

Mental Health Skills:

How to calm down during a panic attack

How to help someone who is suicidal 

How to meditate 

How to stop self-harming

How to recognize problem drinking

How to choose a therapist

How to deal with disappointment

How to cope with grief

How to raise your self-esteem

Relationship and Social Skills:

How to apologize

How to cope with a breakup 

How to accept criticism 

How to deal with bullying 

How to argue in a healthy way

How to ask someone out

How to break up with someone

How to recognize an abusive relationship

How to rekindle a damaged friendship

How to speak in public

Job Hunting Skills:

How to tie a tie

How to write a resume

How to write a cover letter

How to dress for a job interview (for women/femmes)

How to dress for a job interview (for men/masculines)

How to properly shake hands

How to nail a job interview

Other Skills:

How to sew on a button 

How to hammer a nail

How to change your oil

How to put gas in your car

How to jump-start a car

How to pick a good password

How to back up your files

10 приемчиков, как спасти Новый год от четвероногих хулиганов.

JRR #2: August 1 - August 13, 2020 

If you saw this earlier and noticed it was a giant wall of text, that’s because posting drafts from mobile seems to erase all links and other formatting in my posts. Note to self. Anyway: here’s to another set of resources. 

Yuki’s Japanese TV: He’s got a variety of video content from JLPT and grammar to vocab but also topics like food and life during a pandemic. What makes his channel extra special in my book (can you guess?) is that he speaks in Japanese. He does have some in English, and others where he speaks both, but as far as grammar—it’s in Japanese (from what I’ve seen). If that sounds intimidating, he hard subs a lot of his sentences (still in Japanese) and supplies graphics to help demonstrate points, so even if you don’t understand all that he says it’s still difficult to feel lost with Yuki.  

Automatic Japanese: I am in love with Asari’s channel! Most of her videos are spoken in Japanese and accompanied by Japanese and English subtitles (that she herself makes). She speaks with clarity and in a fair pace that I feel isn’t too fast or too slow, plus she’s given me some pretty solid learning tips this week. I also recommend checking out her IG! 

Learning Language with Youtube BETA: something I discovered from Asari! It’s similar to the LLN extension, but for YouTube. 

Learn Japanese with Noriko: a podcast in Japanese for listening practice, of course. But I love this one a little more because she offers some (limited) transcripts on her site, and that makes it a little easier (and more fun) for me to follow along. 

Erin’s Challenge! I Can Speak Japanese: having never used Erin’s Challenge, I’m not sure if this is an update of the old content or entirely new, but it’s here and ready to help you learn Japanese╭( ･ㅂ･)و ̑̑ ˂ᵒ͜͡ᵏᵎ⁾✩ It’s a series of basic and advanced skit videos with additional parts like key phrases, scripts, and manga for onomatopoeia. I went into Lesson 7 and found it to be, yeah–completely cheesy–but also fun!  

Hito’s World: a fun game for learning kanji that I think is best for beginners–either that, or for hammering in the romaji spellings. Or at least in regards to the level I’ve worked up to. (And speaking as someone who never remembers which way is left or right–as in I literally bombed the same A&P quiz twice because I confused left and right–I really have to think about whether I need to type 右 or 左. It’s… a mental exercise.) I wish it allowed or accepted hiragana, but I know it’s a WIP. You can also join r/Hito and check out the road map. 

Tobira Vocabulary: Anki deck for Tobira (obviously). Beware: although it says it’s a complete vocab set, I’ve read two comments that claim otherwise. 

Tobira Kanji: includes kanji and vocab from all Tobira chapters. Another option if Anki’s not your thing (+ it may actually contain all vocab?). I’ve tried both the Tobira Anki deck and Memrise course, and I actually prefer Memrise in this case. But that’s just me. 

Learning ENG & JPN: I did a lot of hunting to find this again, and I almost thought it was a lost resource—this is a blog run by a native Japanese speaker who is learning English. Posts are short and written in both English and Japanese while containing interesting tidbits about Japan and its culture. 

Oshaberi Izakaya: this is a completely free way to get in some speaking practice with other learners organized by Japanese teacher Izumi Ise. They meet up a few times a month, but you’re not required to attend all meetings. 

kot - a regular cat

koshka - a regular female cat

kote (internet slang) - a cute chubby little guy, every single cute cat on the internet

kisa -  a pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kisunya - an extra pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kis’ - just a dork, controlled by aliens

kotik - a bit more disney version of a regulat cat

koten’ka - cuddly little fella, will purr and knead you to death 

kotofei - usually a big, old, extra fluffy cat, who knows a lot of bed time stories

kotyandra - fast, thin and slinky, we not sure if it’s even a cat 

koshak - a tough street guy, dogs fear him

May I present before you some new Japanese learning resources? I may?! Excellent, because last month had some real hits! Let’s get right down to it.

JLPT Stories

Onomatopedia

Bunpo: Android

Kanjikai

duolingo- a lot of language learners have issues with it but it’s good to get a base on the language and they’re always adding new languages!

memrise- good for vocabulary and memorizing, they have a wide list of languages

babbel- really effective if you want to learn how to communicate with people or get around, costs money for the full version but they have sales all the time

hellotalk- language exchange app, i’ve had really good experiences with this app, the only downside is that you have to pay to select more than one language you want to learn

tandem- similar to hellotalk, i like it slightly less but it allows you to choose as many languages as you want!

forvo- you can listen to native speakers pronounce things! it’s amazing!

ipachart- interactive chart with the international phonetic alphabet

wordreference- online dictionary for french, spanish, german, italian, portuguese, dutch, swedish, russian, polish, romanian, czech, greek, turkish, chinese, japanese, korean, and arabic

bab.la- another online dictionary with 24 languages

linguee- really great for learning phrases and seeing words in context

omniglot- encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, really great for learning new writing systems & also basic phrases! also has links to other resources!

the great language game- game for testing listening comprehension to several dozen languages!

ba ba dum- fun vocabulary game

easy languages- youtube channel featuring native speakers speaking a variety of languages but mostly spanish, french, and german

wikitongues- youtube channel attempting to document every language in the world

languagepod101- offers podcasts and youtube videos in a wide variety of languages

verbix- verb conjugating website with a wide variety of languages

quizlet- flashcard website that’s great for compiling vocab lists

lingq- i’ve only used it a little but it seems helpful especially for beginners!

tunein- allows you to listen to radio in a variety of languages

wikipedia- they have thousands to millions of articles in various languages so it’s a great place to test your reading skills, and in addition you can read articles about the language you’re learning and get a grasp on the language’s structure and sound system

lyricstraining- allows you to learn languages using song lyrics, really helpful for comprehension

lang-8- you can post things and have native speakers correct them, and correct things from other people!

Study in the same format that your test will be.

The research: In a study done by Morris & Coworkers, participants’ retrieval performance, which was a rhyming task, depended on whether or not their encoding task was that of processing for meaning or for rhyming.  In other words, participants who had an encoding task that required processing for rhyming had a better retrieval performance than did participants who had an encoding task that required processing for meaning. This is known as transfer-appropriate processing.

How it applies to your studying: If you know your exam is going to be exclusively short answers, then study by answering short answers and not by completing practice multiple choice tests. If you know a set of terms will be tested in a matching format, then create a study guide that involves you having to match terms to definitions or examples.

Match the context.

The research: Godden and Baddely really worked hard to prove their point about encoding specificity.  They had half of their participants study, or encode, underwater while diving and half study on land.  Recall for all participants was underwater and those from the diving condition had a higher recall than those who studied in land.

How it applies to your studying: Study in the same room that your exam will be in.  If your exam is in the same room as your class, it’s even more beneficial.

Match your internal state.

The research: Eich and Metcalfe measured the impact of state-dependent learning by having subjects listen to happy or sad music and think thoughts that matched the mood of the music.  They rated their mood and once it reached “very pleasant” or “very unpleasant”, the encoding aspect of the study began and they studied lists of words.  The participants returned two days later, followed the same procedure to put them in happy or sad moods, and were then given a memory test.  Those whose mood at retrieval matched their mood at encoding had higher rates of recall. 

How it applies to your studying: Try to match your moods when studying with your mood during your exam.  This does not mean stress yourself out at all times, but if you’re relaxed and content when studying and during the exam, that is better than being sad while studying but content during the exam. 

Relate the material to yourself.

The research: Rogers and coworkers presented participants with a question for 3 seconds and then a word who then had to answer if the word answered the question or not.  Questions included “Printed in small case? Rhymes with happy? Means the same as happy? Describes you?”  During recall tests, subjects remembered 25% more words that they had rated as describing themselves, as compared to only 5% recall for size, 8% for rhyme, and 14% for meaning. This is known as the self-reference effect.

How it applies to your studying: Try to find things in your material to remind them of you.  For instance, I had an exam on the endocrine system recently and my dog has an endocrine disorder so I related the flow of hormones to my dog. By writing this article, I’m relating long term memory to myself in preparation for my Cognition exam. 

Use visual images.

The research: Bower and Winzenz used paired-associate learning (a list of word pairs is presented) and later presented only the first word.  Participants were tasked with recalling the word it was paired with.  One group was instructed to silently repeat the pairs while the other group was told to make a mental image of the word pairs interacting.  Subjects who created visual mental images remembered twice as many word pairs than those who silently repeated words.

How it applies to your studying: Assign different concepts to different things in the room.  This works whether you are studying in the exam room or if you’re studying in your dorm.  If I were doing this for my bio exam, I’d “hang up” the idea of the systemic and pulmonary circuits of the heart in my closet, put the idea of homeotherms and poikilotherms on my key hook, and microwave the concept of action potentials, etc.

Consolidate. 

The research: Muller and Pilzecker had two groups of participants; one group learned one list of words and immediately learned a second list while the other group learned one list of words, waited six minutes, and then learned the second list.  When asked to recall the first list of words, the six minute delay group were able to recall 48% more than the immediate group.  By having a delay, it allowed for the formation of a stable memory of the first list, otherwise known as consolidation.