This is a guest article by Momoko, Khatzumoto’s…how do you say…”special lady”. This was meant to be a regular article, but it unintentionally turned into a book recommendation. In keeping with the other book recommendations, we will later discuss the cons as well as the pros of this book…Probably. Maybe. At first I was scared…
Chinese Project Notes 2: Went Monolingual
by khatzumoto
Today, July 20, 2007, I crossed the Rubicon and went fully monolingual in Chinese. I do sometimes look up a Japanese word to find Chinese example sentences for it. So I guess this, makes me a mix between Steps 3 and 4 as outlined in this post on how to make the transition. As far…
The Expert Mind
by khatzumoto
There’s an article written a while back in the Scientific American that discusses what makes someone an expert in something. I found a lot of parrallels with learning sentences (these are the small chunks/quanta that the article discusses) and spaced repetition. You shouldn’t be reading English ;), but do check it out for some quick…
Chinese Project Notes 1: On Shopping Trips and Sentence Sources
by khatzumoto
In the spirit of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, Ihave set a $40-$50/month Chinese media budget, which allows for about 4-5 books or DVDs. So, today (July 18, 2007) I was learning sentences mined from an order confirmation notice I got from 博客來 (books.com.tw) where I had bought the stuff, and it struck…
Why Monolingual Dictionaries Are Worth Your Time
by khatzumoto
A lot of you have posted various quite valid concerns about monolingual dictionaries. Perhaps you’re too slow with them. You have to look up words in order to understand the word you looked up in the first place.Et cetera. To me, all of that only underscores why we need to be using monolingual dictionaries. If…
FAQ Section
by khatzumoto
There is a new FAQ page up. Feel free to give it a look, it might save you having to send an email and wait for a reply. Of course, if your specific question is not answered, feel free to ask! When this site first started last year, I was getting these questions for the…