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Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Mini Speaking Challenge!

My Norwegian tutor’s away for the next two weeks (boo) and I’m left without a lot of opportunities for speaking practice. So! I’ve come up with a mini speaking challenge. If anyone wants to join me, feel free!

Official start date: Monday 13th June (I’m actually starting today because it’s the start of my two weeks without my tutor, but I’ll post everything a week late so it feels like I’m doing the challenge with you!) Of course you can join late or do this any time! It’s 15 days long, so it will end on Monday 27th June.

To take part:

Do the daily tasks

Upload or don’t upload the recording - it’s up to you! (You don’t even have to record yourself if you don’t want to, but it can be useful!)

If you do post the recording, let people know if you want feedback/corrections or not

Make a short summary of what you did/how it went/how you felt

Use the hashtag #langblrminispeakingchallenge

Like and leave kind/encouraging comments on other people’s posts

Remember that the rules are more like guidelines, and you should absolutely do what works for you!

The Daily Tasks

Day One: Free Speaking

Introduce yourself or talk about your day or maybe some thoughts you have. Just go with the flow. This day is for you to see how you feel! Write down how you felt while speaking and what areas you think you need to work on. Then, set yourself at least one specific goal to focus on (e.g. improve my pronunciation of X sound, learn to differentiate between sounds X & Y, stop making X grammar mistake.) My suggestion is to pick 1-2 sounds, 1 specific grammar point or 10-20 words you want to learn (or a combination, of course). Try to refrain from setting lots of goals as this will be overwhelming!

Day Two: Research & Drilling

Try to find information about the sound, grammar or vocabulary you struggle with most. (If there are multiple things, you can work on multiple things, but it’s a good idea to start by focusing on just one or two.) Find/come up with some tongue twisters/minimal pairs to practise that sound or write some sentences with your target grammar/vocabulary, then practise saying them aloud.

Day Three: Describe a picture

Find a picture on any website (unsplash, pixabay, pinterest, social media, news websites etc). Try to describe it: say what’s in the picture, what you think it shows, whether you like it and why (not). If you’re a beginner, look up some words and phrases such as “there is…” and “I can see…” and practise saying them. You can describe multiple pictures if you like.

Day Four: Drills

Practise the drills/sentences you came up with on day 2. Maybe come up with some new ones too if you want!

Day Five: Parroting

Watch a short video or listen to a podcast in your target language. Try to parrot back phrases, words or even just sounds (depending on your level). Pay attention to intonation and rhythm in the sentences!

Day Six: Retell a Story

Think of a book/TV show/film and try to summarise the story or the premise. If you’re still a beginner, learn some book/tv/film genres and say which ones you like/dislike.

Day Seven: Drills

Practise the drills/sentences you came up with on days 2 and 4. Remember to reflect on your progress!

Day Eight: Free Speaking

Talk about your day/week/thoughts/any topic you want. Reflect on your progress so far (there might not be much/any at this point, and that’s okay!) and your goals. Make some adjustments to your goals if you want (e.g. add some new words into the mix, focus on a different grammar point or focus on a different sound).

Day Nine: Read aloud

Find an article, a book or some simple beginner sentences from a textbook/website and read aloud. Make a list of new words/difficult words to pronounce/examples of grammar you often mess up.

Day Ten: Drills

Practice the drills/sentences you came up with previously. Alternatively, practice the words/sentences from the list you made yesterday.

Day Eleven: Would You Rather

Go to this website. Translate the Would You Rather prompts given, then say which you’d rather do and why. You can do this as many times as you want! If you’re still a beginner, look up useful phrases or verbs for giving opinions (e.g. “I think…” “I believe…” “In my opinion…”), or just try to translate the prompts.

Day Twelve: Practice mouth shapes

Watch a video of a native speaker speaking your target language (choosing something that’s your level will make this activity easier!) Pay close attention to the person’s mouth. Video yourself saying some of the same words/sentences. Watch both videos back and compare your mouth shape. Repeat the exercise, trying to mimic the native speaker’s mouth shape.

Day Thirteen: Drills

Practice the drills/sentences you came up with previously. Reflect on your progress and come up with new drills/sentences if necessary.

Day Fourteen: Choose a Topic

Talk about one of the topics from the Speaking in 20 challenge week 2 (or any of the other weeks, or choose your own topic). If you’re still a beginner, learn some vocabulary/simple sentences related to the topic and repeat them aloud. If you’re more advanced, try to talk about one (or more!) of the prompts.

Day Fifteen: Reflect

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People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person, you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one.

In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.

The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means.

In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest.

What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.

But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.

It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

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China’s netizens are all in a twitter over the account of a carpenter who was commissioned to make a cinnabar red high-backed chair with the finials at the top to be “in the shape of dragons’ heads” (chéng lóngtóu 成龍頭).  Unfortunately, he misinterpreted the directions to mean “[in the shape of] Jackie Chan’s head” (“Chénglóng tóu 成龍頭”).

The thing you need to understand about Chinese names is that they all have meaning. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “if you trace the etymology back through two languages it has its roots in a Hebrew phrase that means “God is my ____” that many Western names have. I mean that in the sense of “almost all of these words are still in regular use today and my parents very literally named me “pretty [and] wise” in Chinese.

(Sidenote: This is why we get annoyed at made-up ‘Chinese’ names that just pull two random vaguely Chinese-sounding syllables together. It is blindingly obvious when it’s not a real name).

成 (chéng) means “to become”, “to turn into”. 龍 (lóng) is “dragon”. Thus, Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name,  成龍 (Chénglóng), literally means “become dragon”. (頭 (tóu), of course, means “head”)  

(Further sidenote: This is actually a bit of a pun/reference. Specifically, it is a reference to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was 小龍 (Xiǎolóng), or, “Little dragon”. So Jackie’s chosen stage name means both “become dragon”, and “become [like] Bruce Lee”)

The other thing you need to know about Chinese is that we don’t put spaces between terms in written text.