Disqus - Latest Comments for lys1123

Re: About/Contact

Sheridan — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 11:43:30 -0000

When I started learning Mandarin I focused on pronunciation since it is so different from any of the other languages I speak. Not only did my mouth get sore, but I actually gagged several times when producing the new sounds. The one thing I can tell you, though is that it does get better. Your mouth gets accustomed to the new patterns as you continue to practice.

Re: Benny’s first time speaking Japanese in person? Not quite! [video at Manga Hall event]

Sheridan — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 16:34:28 -0000

You definitely shouldn't feel embarrassed. I completely agree that if you dress up in cosplay and go to a Japanese convention you are fair game for someone to try to speak in Japanese with you. In fact, I always ask (in Japanese) if anyone speaks Japanese when I go to a Japanese restaurant or even see someone making sushi in a grocery store. The majority of the time the answer is no, but I have had some wonderful surprises doing this (including a blonde waitress who turned out to be a fellow Japanese student).

You just have to keep looking for people no matter how many times you are disappointed.

七転八起

Re: Those tricky confirmation biases

Sheridan — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 10:56:18 -0000

Ironically, you gave us a glaring example of a bias in the first section of this article. "And by the way, it's nearly impossible to overcome such a situation. Better just to find a new job!" I've dealt with this situation myself, and it turns out that there are any number of possible ways to deal with it. One of the best, I think, is to sit down and ask your manager "I want to be one of your top performers. What actions would it take for you to see me as a top performer."

Sometimes, you find out that you actually haven't been as good of an employee as you thought. Maybe you've been doing X, Y, and Z very well... but from your manager's perspective A, B, and C are high priority and you've been focusing on the wrong things.

Sometimes, as you say, it is better to find a new job. But, I think communication can help the situation more than people think. As a bonus, if you can do all the things on the list which your manager gave you then you can show him concrete proof that you are a top performer. ^_^

Re: Hardship breeds strength

Sheridan — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:51:30 -0000

There is an Arabian proverb, "All sunshine makes a desert." That said, welcome back and I hope this year has more sunshine than last year for you.

Re: Mission Impossible? Polish in 5 Hours

Sheridan — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:39:06 -0000

It won't do much to help your ego. But here is his page explaining why Chinese is NOT as hard as you think. Enjoy. :-)

http://www.fluentin3months....

Re: Want to play Ingress? Win an invite here! #Ingress (UPDATE)

Sheridan — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:37:26 -0000

Dallas, Texas - Green

Re: “It’s a big bad scary world out there!” Are you sure North America?

Sheridan — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:03:11 -0000

I am also an American and while I think there are certainly countries where it is less safe, it is naive to believe that there isn't more violence and danger in our country that other developed countries (and many undeveloped countries). A lot of this has to do with the easy access every citizen (even felons who can skip a background check at a gun show) has to firearms, as Benny mentioned.

A friend sent me this after the recent Connecticut shooting. It's definitely an eye opener.

http://o.canada.com/2012/12...

Re: Solving specific problems rather than trying to learn everything: My first ever video in Arabic (reading)

Sheridan — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:30:05 -0000

In studying Japanese I found a Japanese church (I am in Dallas, not Japan BTW) and found that, surprisingly, church was a great place to practice my reading. Every time a song was sung the words were projected up on the screen. 95% of the words were either in kana (phonetic writing) or had kana written above the kanji. The few exceptions I learned since they were often repeated kanji.

Doing this, however, meant that I had to pick up my reading dramatically. I had to keep up with the song. I started out singing rather softly, and I got INSTANT feedback on any mistakes I made. There is nothing like singing the wrong word or syllable in church to give you immediate feedback.

Re: How to start learning a language: Full account of day 1 of my #Fi3M mission

Sheridan — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:09:10 -0000

Obviously, if you are in an area where there are fewer opportunities to meet native speakers then Skype is a wonderful tool. I am curious, though, how much do you feel you are missing when doing skype?

Is there is a big difference in the amount of non-verbal queues that you get from the other speaker? Differences in sound quality?

In my language learning I have focused on trying to spend times with native speakers, but I am wondering if the advantages really offset the scheduling and availability issues in person meetups involve.

Re: 10 Cult TV Shows Netflix Should Revive - TheStreet

Sheridan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:58:28 -0000

What about Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles?!? It had the ratings, it ended on a cliff hanger, it is recent enough that getting the cast back together could be feasible (unlike My So Called Life which I loved, but was surprised to see on this list)

Re: How much time does it take to learn a language?

Sheridan — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:22:27 -0000

Querer es poder.

Re: Hands on: Google's Galaxy Nexus and Android Ice Cream Sandwich

Sheridan — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:35:50 -0000

I don't know if you ran into this in your trial, but one thing I really wondered about is dealing with apps that have stopped responding when you don't have any physical buttons. I can't count the number of times I've had an app freeze (sometimes for something as simple as my thoughtlessly opening an app that expects Internet access in a parking garage where the signal wasn't getting through), and just hit the home button and either come back to it later or opened my applications manager and killed the app.

How does one recover from a frozen screen without physical buttons?

Re: C#: Builder pattern still useful for test data

Sheridan — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:23:55 -0000

What you are really replacing here is the Setter pattern, not the Builder pattern. The big difference is that with a builder I can have private variables within the object that are initialized via the builder, but then are immutable. There is no set property and no chance of having the value changed down the road. This can allow me the avoid situations where the object might be in an inconsistent state.

Re: How to raise a bilingual or multilingual kid

Sheridan — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:13:34 -0000

Just FYI, when I try to follow that link it tells me the story has been archived. I am not sure since I couldn't read the original article, but this link might be the same story.

http://thedailyrecord.com/2...

Re: Experiment: Learn Computer Programming

Sheridan — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:59:36 -0000

I am a programmer. I could tell that you spent some time thinking about this article and overall it was well written. I would say the one thing that might also be valuable is understanding how to break things up into small tasks. You mentioned breaking a task into small pieces, but I don't think you really captured the level to which a programmer needs to do this. Breaking down Facebook to Register and Display Profile is still at a task level. Basically:

1) You should know how to do the task you want the computer to do. (e.g. Register)
2) The smaller steps you can break it into the easier it will be to program.

So first, make sure you have a clear idea of what exactly the task is you are trying to do. I see a lot of novice programmers get lost here. They will say things like "I want to write a video game" but won't have any clear concept of what steps are needed.

A good way to start is to go step by step through exactly what the user is going to do. For example, when they start your video game do they select "New Game" from a menu? Can they load a saved game? Does the menu allow them to exit the game?

Note, I'm just focusing on the "Game Menu" task or page, however I need to break it down further.

Once you know what you want the program to do in general, break it down into steps. For example.

1) Display Game Menu
2) Allow character to select menu option (using mouse? Up and down buttons on controller?)
3) Perform task for menu option (e.g. If they pick Exit Game then exit your program).

Once you have some steps, try to tackle just one of them. Get the menu to display before you worry about what happens when someone selects New Game. Doing it piece by piece like this will make it much easier for you to see progress and eventually finish projects.

Re: Life Hack: 3 Ways to Resist Cookies and Make the Right Decisions

Sheridan — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:38:58 -0000

One tip that I have used successfully is to make decisions in advance. If I'm meeting people for lunch at someplace like the Cheesecake Factory, I might hop online and look at the menu before going. Many places provide more nutrition information online than in their printed menu so you can make an educated decision. More importantly, though, making decisions in advance removes some of the emotional element to the decision. If you tell yourself "I am going to the gym at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow" it is a much easier decision to make than it would be the next morning when you are getting out of bed.

The one tricky part of this is not allowing yourself to override your decisions. If 6:00 a.m. rolls around and you say, "I'm too tired. I'm going back to bed." then you've lost the benefit.

Pretend that the you that sets schedules is your boss. Act like you have no choice when you get up at 6:00 a.m. and think to yourself instead, "This is really hard. Next time we have a scheduling meeting I'm going to ask that this be moved to 6:30." It sounds silly, but it works. Then, of course, when you are emotionally removed again you can deny your request to adjust the schedule. :-)

Re: Girls vs guys and the dancing-monkey reason to learn a language

Sheridan — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:41:34 -0000

I couldn't agree more. This weekend I had a piano performance, and there was a reception afterwards. The host of the reception was introducing me to someone and she said, "And he's learning Japanese!" I answered one or two questions concerning this quickly and then changed the subject back to music. It wasn't that I am not interested in talking about Japanese, but no one at this party knew anything about it or showed any real interest in it. For me to start rattling off about it would have just felt inappropriate to me.

I would much rather discuss music in this setting as it was something we had in common and it would be much more likely that other people in the conversation would have something to contribute.

Re: divorce, death, and the afterlife

Sheridan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:35:58 -0000

I just re-read this. Thank you for this, I'm glad you shared. Reading thoughts like these help me since I am very much at the "think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel" point myself. Basically everything you said here resonated with me exactly.

Re: http://eatfoodlearnlanguage.tumblr.com/post/1569791301

Sheridan — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:46:32 -0000

First of all hello! Grandma just showed me your blog, so I might pop in from time to time.

I don't want to argue with the overall theme of your post, but I do take exception to this line.

"Why should I get to be so special when I haven’t done anything at all?"

You haven't done anything at all? Really?

You are a "Foreign Expert" because you have traveled half way around the world to try to help people. If that is nothing then I can't imagine how high the bar has been set. How many people from Monahans do you think have even left the continent? How many people in the entire U.S. have done what you have done?

Humility is well and good, but I also believe in credit where credit is due and if you can say you haven't done anything at all you are being way too hard on yourself.

Sheridan

Re: Learning Spanish with Shakira’s Tortura

Sheridan — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:05:09 -0000

I'm a native English speaker, with Spanish as my second language. I have ALWAYS preferred listening to Shakira in Spanish. She has a beautiful voice regardless of language, but to me it flows much better in Spanish.

I really enjoyed the post and will make sure to check out your Suerte post soon.

Re: Don’t think grammar is important? Think again!

Sheridan — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:30:13 -0000

The one thing you are overlooking here is that making these mistakes helps you to better remember the language. I knew a guy who was trying to learn Spanish, and went to Mexico. He was struggling with the language, being very new to it, and was flipping through his dictionary when trying to speak. This led him to say, "Como mucho" to a Taxi driver.

The guy was overweight, and the taxi driver replied "Claro que si."

For the benefit of Non-Spanish speakers, he had looked up the words "How" and "Much" and gotten the words "Como" and "Mucho". However, Como is also the Yo (I) form of the verb to eat. Since no one would ask how much something costs this way, the taxi driver heard "I eat a lot" and replied "Obviously"

There was a moment of embarrassment, but he told me that after he realized what had happened he made a point of learning the phrase "Cuanto Cuesta" and would never again have any problem remembering it.

The truth is, as long as you aren't afraid to learn from your mistakes, your mistakes provide very good motivation for you to learn and remember things. You need to look things up and find out the grammar behind things, but it is SO much easier to learn this in the context of things you are actually hearing and reading instead of just learning it by itself.

Re: The engineering mentality for language learning, being ready & input vs output

Sheridan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:47:45 -0000

I have run into something similar. More often for me, though, a mistake will get corrected once and then later I will hear myself make the same mistake and realize it even though I didn't get corrected the second time. It's almost like hitting the wrong note while playing the piano, as soon as I hear myself make the mistake I realize it.

In these cases I will go back and practice in order to avoid the mistake again. The advantage is that I have something to focus on and the motivation (not wanting to make the mistake again) to correct it.

Don't be afraid to roleplay scenarios in your head to get practice right before talking to native speakers again. After all, you probably do this in your native language before job interviews, important conversations, etc.

Re: The engineering mentality for language learning, being ready & input vs output

Sheridan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:38:01 -0000

Your comment brought to mind an odd image. You have two people stranded together, who have no common language. Both are just sitting quietly staring at one another. Neither one can speak to the other, because "output is not possible without input" as you said.

Re: Enough is enough

Sheridan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:20:16 -0000

Sorry, I had multiple tabs open and accidentally put this comment on the wrong article. I have posted it in the right place (http://www.yearlyglot.com/2....

Please feel free to delete these comments.

Re: Italian phrases that play tricks on my ears

Sheridan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:18:44 -0000

My dad was in the military during the Vietnam war and he volunteered to take Vietnamese classes. Growing up, I can't tell you the number of times I heard him recount this story.

His instructors were Vietnamese and they weren't fluent in English. The class had learned the word for ambush and words for several types of food, including something similar to a mango. Anyway, the students put these two together and their instructors were always asking, very confused, why the students were constantly talking about ambushes of mangos and laughing. The phrase (I only heard this spoken so please excuse my total lack of Vietnamese spelling ability) was:

Phuc Kick Hai Quit!