Author: Jonathan Morgan
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The utility of refugees
There are several strands of conversation, or discourse, on the subject of refugees and why they should, or should not be offered the hospitality of our national borders. I find two of them particularly disturbing. First, the idea that refugees are worthy of help because of who they may become. The argument goes something like…
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Stop falling for the allure of News FOMO
Last night I dreamed that I bumped into Nassim Nicholas Taleb in a cafe. He was sat thinking, recording his ideas via audio note on his mobile phone. Then his phone rang and he spoke to someone in Arabic for a few minutes. After the phonecall I introduced myself. I told him how inspired I…
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Language Hack 6: Uncomfortable Situations
One way that you can really stretch yourself linguistically is to put yourself in situations that are uncomfortable. In comfortable situations you usually use vocabulary you know well. Only spending time with friends can leave you relying on their familiarity with with your style of speaking, rather than on your accuracy. It’s also easy to treat speaking your target language as a performance…
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Language Hack 5: Sleep
Sleep is one of the most under appreciated sources of energy and clear thinking. Because of the multi sensory experience of living outside my comfort zones continuously and trying to wrap my brain around new words and a brand new culture, my early days in Jordan were enveloped in a dull cloud of tiredness. At times I felt like…
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Antifragility and Modern Nation States
I’m reading a book at the moment that really has me thinking – Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (as recommended to me by @smn) I’ve found the ideas in the book so engaging that I’m going to write about some of them before I’ve even finished reading it, since I think I’ve got a handle on at least the core of…
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Language Hack 4: Use All Your Senses
There are some of us who learn really well directly from books. But most of us are wired to learn experientially: by doing. Although this applies to other spheres, it’s especially true of language learning. Learning a language isn’t just about the words that we’re speaking, but about the whole culture that those words belong to.…
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Language Hack 3: Telling Stories
Words get caught up in our memory much more easily when they have hooks to hang them on. Stories act as great hooks for these words. I find this particularly true of stories that I know well in my mother tongue. Movies are great for this. Or if you know a lot of Bible stories…
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Language Hack 2: Make It Default
This is where emersion can come in handy, but it’s not essential. The key is to do the ordinary, habitual things that you do, in your target language. If you watch movies to unwind, switch to movies in your target language. If you use Twitter, start an account in your target language and follow people…
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Language Hack 1: Carry A Notebook
This might seem super obvious on paper, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget to carry around some kind of recording device for the new words you’ll discover in your target language. I take a belt-and-braces approach with my word collection and carry a paper notebook and have the Anki app on…
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My Language Learning Hacks
I write this blog to document and explore change. At the moment the biggest change I’ve been going through is the transition from being a mono-and-a-half-lingual to bilingual. I’ve spent the last year and eight months learning Arabic. Before this point I was a mediocre Swedish speaker. I’d picked up most of my Swedish by osmosis,…