Author: Jonathan Morgan
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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,…
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What Downton Abbey Can Teach Us About The Future
I’m usually more attracted to future-oriented ideas and stories, but I grew to like Downton Abbey when I realised that, even though it’s a historical drama, it’s all about change.
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Inspiration: Top 10 of 2015
Before we’re finished with January, I thought it’d be fun to present my list of things that inspired me this year. To begin with, I was going to present my “best reads of…” but felt like this would be more interesting… Zeitoun by Dave Eggers: the true story of a Syrian man and his family…
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The Psychology of Conflict
It can be so easy to view institutions as unshakeable, fixed perspective, entities. They stand for something that is public and impersonal, something unchangeable. But what if we looked at organisations more as the sum of their individual parts than as an official whole? A few weeks ago I was listening to the wonderful Analysis…
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Eating Our Way To A More Inclusive Society: An Interview With Beatrice Eriksson
Every day we hear stories about the overwhelming number of refugees arriving in Europe from Syria (and elsewhere) seeking to start a new life away from the disarray of their homelands. Much of what we hear is bad news. In the midst of all the negativity, I thought it’d be fun to hear some of…
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When Values Trump Profits
Like many aspiring writers out there, I’ve read my fair share of “How To Grow Your Readership, Publish A Book, Make A Six Figure Salary And Get Voted President In Just One Year” posts. I’ve done my best to understand how people build platforms and tribes. I’ve memorised mantras like “don’t guest post without making sure…
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Dear Henning (A Tribute To Henning Mankell)
Dear Henning, With the news of your death, today is a sad day for many of us. We devoured your novels, whether the Wallander series, or lesser known works. We revelled in your storytelling, which despite being fictional always felt deeply honest. We were inspired by your actions, how you consistently spoke up against injustice…
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Stumbling Over My Words
Learning a new language opens a world of opportunities to experience vulnerability, especially if navigating your every day life depends on it. Just over a year ago, my wife and I relocated to Jordan in order to learn Arabic. In the future we want to work with Syrian refugees, and we know that speaking the…