same 

Pochita doodles! He is so very friend shaped <3

Bookworm

eatingwithwinnie

Stray (2/?)

sakuranbobaby

1000 creatures challenge (72/1000)

千と千尋の神隠し 2001, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

saku saku

ink + watercolour

1000 creatures challenge (110/1000)

✩彡 shell collector ✩彡

Learning a foreign language is intimidating to many students, so I though I’d share some of my best tips for effective language studying!

MEMORIZE SMARTLY

Be selective about vocabulary. If you’re learning a language for class, you most likely won’t have much control over the material you learn. However, if you’re self-studying and you do have a choice, invest your time and energy wisely by prioritizing vocabulary to memorize based on what is significant and relevant.

Use spaced repetition to memorize faster. I explain how to use the spaced repetition method in this post, although you can also achieve the same effect without using Anki.

Apply the vocabulary you’ve learned. You can engage with new vocabulary by doing the following:

Don’t neglect memorizing correct spelling, accent marks, or the genders of new words. These often seem like trivial details to beginning language learners, but slacking off on these will come back to bite you down the road. Even small mistakes can change the entire meaning of what you want to say. Genders, especially, are hard to memorize but imperative to know for making adjectives and object pronouns agree.

AVOID TRANSLATING

Most language learners will hear/read something being spoken/written in their target language, mentally translate it to their native language and formulate a response in their native language, then translate their response back to their target language. This direct translation will slow down your rate of comprehension and expression, make you unable to speak naturally and fluently, and increase your chances of making mistakes with idiomatic expressions (ex: incorrectly writing Je suis 12 ans instead of J’ai 12 ans). Aim to avoid internally translating as much as possible.

Instead, learn to think in your target language by using the following methods:

However, don’t feel discouraged if you find yourself frequently translating in your head. The way most schools teach foreign languages focuses on translating, not thinking in the target language, so you’ll likely have some tendencies and habits that are hard to break. Practice, practice, practice, and you’ll get better!

IMMERSE YOURSELF

Obviously, the fastest way to learn a new language is to travel to a foreign country where you’ll be forced to use it. But if you don’t have the resources to take a trip, there are many ways to get the immersion effect from the comfort of your own home.

Consume a variety of written and spoken language though television, movies, music, news, blogs, poetry, comics, podcasts, audiobooks, YouTube videos, and/or children’s books.

If you’ve already completed your Duolingo course, try doing it backwards.  Instead of the native language to target language course, do the target language to native language course. If you know 3+ languages, do the Language 2 to Language 3 course for an extra challenge!

Speaking of Duolingo, the immersion feature is a great way to find articles in your target language that are both appropriate to your skill level and relevant to your interests. I tend to avoid the translation aspect for reasons stated in the previous section, but I still think reading the articles is useful.

Find a pen pal who’s a native speaker. You can communicate through email or online chat, but snail mail could allow you to also send each other trinkets and souvenirs from your respective countries/cultures. HelloTalk is a great app that allows you to connect with native speakers of your target language who are learning your native language, so you can teach and help each other.

Change the language on your phone, laptop, and/or browser to your target language. You can change the language in your device settings, and I personally use the extension Language Immersion for Chrome for my browser. Just make sure you know how to change it back!

Lastly, have confidence and take risks! Make an attempt to say something even if you’re not 100% sure it’s correct. I know how embarrassing mistakes can be (I once used “un baiser” as a verb and I still cringe thinking about it. Yikes!), but ultimately it’s all part of the learning process and leaving your comfort zone is the only way to improve. Trying to learn other languages is admirable in itself, so take pride in that and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there!

Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask.

+Click here for the rest of my original reference posts!

—Sophia :)

We’ve all had to slog through pages and pages of long, boring textbooks, so I’ve compiled some tips to help make your readings more efficient and effective!

CREATE A PLAN

Break your reading into chunks. Divide the number of pages to read over the number of days you’ve been given to read it. Evaluate the difficulty of the text and your own level of concentration to make sure these chunks are manageable. For example, if your text is light and/or your focus is strong, you may want to read in 4 chunks of 15 pages. But if your text is harder and/or your focus is weaker, you may want to read in 6 chunks of 10 pages.

Schedule your reading time. Determine the exact days in the week (or even the exact hours during the day) you’re going to read, so you’re not tempted to push everything off until the last minute. When scheduling, make a reasonable estimate of how long the reading will take, leave a little wiggle room, and account for taking breaks as well. Additionally, keep in mind restrictions on your schedule, such as sports practices or social gatherings, that may prevent you from reading on certain days. Put the chunks of reading into your planner or timetable under the day or times you’re going to complete them.

GET A BIG PICTURE

If you just flip to the first page of your reading and start taking notes, you’ll have no idea what’s important or what you should be looking for. In order to identify which parts are significant enough to write down, you need to get a big picture of the entire topic. You can get that “thirty-thousand foot view” before reading by doing the following:

Those resources will help you figure out the main points the textbook author wants to get across and your teacher wants you to learn, which will allow you to speed up your note-taking process by not taking notes on unimportant things.

READ SELECTIVELY

Not all information in a textbook should be treated equally. For maximum reading efficiency, adjust your reading rate depending on the importance of the material. Introductions and filler information might be quickly skimmed, or even skipped, while you should take your time reading and processing difficult/complicated explanations.

You should also adjust your reading rate depending on the relevance of the material, which I explain in further depth here.

Disclaimer: This tip may not work for you if your textbook is concise and doesn’t contain much, if any, filler text. As a high school student, the vast majority of my textbooks are very to-the-point, so I mostly only use this trick for a few supplemental readings. However, I’ve heard that college textbooks tend to be more rambling, so I figured this advice was still worth mentioning!

PEN>HIGHLIGHTER

In my annotating literature post, I recommended using highlighting, underlining, and marking up the text as active reading strategies. However, the same advice does not apply to textbooks. Marking quotes and passages to analyze later is helpful, but for information that you have to memorize and synthesize, studies have shown that highlighting and underlining are among the least effective study strategies.

Taking notes is a much better way to ingrain what you’re reading. Note-taking requires active engagement with the text, so you’ll understand more deeply and memorize it for longer. I also find that the act of summarizing and writing things down helps keep me awake while reading long and boring texts. Use these guidelines when taking notes:

If you’re reading the textbook to prepare for a lecture on the same topic, I recommend leaving lots of space in your textbook notes to fill in during your lecture. You could either write on every other page (textbook notes on left, lecture notes on right) or skip several lines between each section. That way you don’t have to start your notes from scratch during the lecture– the bulk of the information is already there from the textbook and you just have to add in a few extra details from your professor in class.

(P.S.: Once the school year starts and I begin to take my own textbook and lecture notes, I’ll post pictures of my own notes and explain my personal system in more detail, so stay tuned for that!)

EXTRA TIPS

Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask.

+Click here for the rest of my original reference posts!

—Sophia :)

Perfectionism is a vice that many students, especially “gifted” ones, struggle with. If left unchecked, it can lead to anxiety, procrastination, and lower academic performance. This post will hopefully inspire you to stop fearing failure and embrace the fact that making errors is an essential part of the learning process.

RECOGNIZING PERFECTIONISM

Striving for improvement is a great thing, but it can turn into perfectionism if taken overboard. Knowing that you are capable of great things and pushing yourself to meet your full potential is healthy and encouraged. Feeling inadequate and trying to meet a goal to validate yourself is perfectionism, which is both stressful and unhealthy.

You may have perfectionistic tendencies if you meet some or all of the following criteria:

OVERCOMING PERFECTIONISM

Don’t take it personally. As my English teacher used to tell us, “I grade the writing, not the writer.” A judgement on your work is not a judgement on yourself. It’s easier said than done, I know, but remember that grades are not a reflection of your intelligence, self-worth, or potential. All they measure is how the work you produced compared to the grading criteria. Read the scores/comments you get, resolve not to make the same mistakes again, then apply what you’ve learned next time.

Zoom out. When you find yourself dwelling on one failure, step back to look at the bigger picture. Will this still matter tomorrow? Next week? Next year? In ten years? Chances are the answer is no. You’ll have so many more opportunities to succeed, because you are the one who determines your future success and happiness– not the test you failed, not the teacher who gave you a low score, not the old, grumpy admissions officer who rejected you.

Be your own best friend. We tend to be much harsher on ourselves than on others. Instead of criticizing yourself, think about what you would say to a close friend if he/she were in your shoes. You would never look down on your friend for missing the winning goal in her soccer game; you would instead congratulate her for her effort, sportsmanship, improvement, team spirit, and bravery in taking risks. So treat yourself the same way.

Surround yourself with positivity. If the people you hang out with are constantly agonizing about missed test questions, comparing themselves to others, and making you feel bad about yourself, it’s going to be a lot harder to end your own perfectionism. Don’t read magazines that make you insecure about your body. Unfollow social media friends who only post to show off their “perfect” life. Distance yourself from people who are negative and draining, and spend more time with friends who are encouraging and uplifting.

Set boundaries. In my post about getting better sleep, I mentioned that I set a rule for myself to always, always go to bed by 11 pm, even if I have incomplete schoolwork. This boundary ensures I’m getting adequate sleep and taking care of my health, and it also pressures me to finish my assignments in a reasonable amount of time. I won’t be tempted to spend an hour making the color and font on my Powerpoint slides perfect if I know I have other tasks that need to be finished before 11. This technique works for studying in general, not just your sleep schedule. Schedule a reasonable amount of time to complete something, stick to it, and learn to settle for “good enough” instead of “perfect”.

Find others’ mistakes…and realize they don’t matter. The next time you’re nervous about messing up during a class presentation, think about the way your favorite teacher teaches. I can guarantee that he stumbles, stutters, and loses his train of thought at least once during every class. But those slip-ups don’t prevent you from learning from him, right? Yes, your teacher could spend more time making his delivery absolutely flawless (just as you could spend hours and hours making your presentation perfect), but he doesn’t (and you shouldn’t), because minor mistakes don’t prevent his lesson (and your presentation) from being valuable and informative.

The same goes for just about everything else, and mistakes both big and small. All the TV shows you watch have goofs, plot holes, and/or gaps in editing, but that doesn’t stop you from loving them. All of your friends have received grades they weren’t happy with, but that doesn’t stop them from being good, intelligent, talented people. All famous actors have been in a box office bomb, all business gurus have had companies fail, all Olympians have lost important competitions. None of those people have let their failures stop them from getting up and trying again. And neither should you.

Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask.

+Click here for the rest of my original reference posts!

—Sophia :)

this is a masterpost dedicated to those who want to organize themselves but are too lazy to start aka me everyday

01. organizing your schoolwork

for more tips, see this masterpost by @tbhstudying/seo!

02. organizing your supplies

03. organizing your desk space

I hope this was helpful to you guys! I personally still struggle with organization, but over the course of my 2015-16 school year, I’m starting to find ways to keep my things and my life together. if you have any questions, feel free to drop an ask in my inbox ^-^

- soko ◟(๑•͈ᴗ•͈)◞

チルアニメビート / chillanimebeats サウンドクラウド / soundcloud ミックスクラウド / mixcloud ユーチューブ / youtube ツイッター / twitter ヴァイン / Vine  

The Language Tag

So… apart from handwriting and lettering, one of the things I`m most obsessed about is learning new languages. I grew up in a family where both of my parents spoke 2 languages (Spanish and English), and I was put into a school that taught me English from a very young age, reason why I can say that I`m pretty fluent in that language by now. Also, my older sister shared that passion for languages too, actually, she was probably the one that got me into it… She started learning Italian while in High School, and years after managed to go live in Italy for 6 months, and came back as a trilingual So… it didn’t took long before I wanted to learn a language too.

Languages are really fun to be honest, and they open so many new opportunities too. It`s probably one of my main goals when I get to college, to keep practicing, and become proficient in more than 2 languages. And well… because I was recently looking down my dashboard, trying to find a post I saw long time ago for a tag, and instead found this set of questions about learning Languages, I decided to make this tag, to share with you some of the things I like about this topic, and hopefully inspire some of you to go and learn a new language yourselves. Let`s go!

Disclaimer: Even though this post is a Tag, and my style when answering these, is writing a simple answer, and then maybe a paragraph of “explanation”, in this case it may be a little different. Some of these questions don’t have much room for me to explain, and as a result this Tag might end up being short in comparison to the other ones. But anyways, I hope you like it as much as I did.

What is your first language? Spanish

OK, so for those who don’t know pretty much anything about me, I`m Peruvian, and I was born in the capital, Lima, so I speak Spanish as my first language. If you wanted to be more specific you could call it Latin-American Spanish, but the truth is that I hate that term, and the only differences we have with the “original” Spanish, is our accent, and maybe the lack or addition of a few words.. So yeah… been speaking Spanish for 17 years now.

Did you grew up bilingual? Yes

See? This is what happens when you don’t read the whole Tag before starting to write about it… I shall be more careful from now on. But yes, I grew up bilingual. My father was especially eager on the idea of me learning a second language as soon as possible (which now I appreciate). I also went to a bilingual school, and I have been studying English for 11 years and actually most of my last year English classes were basically IB ones, we focused on literature and “real-world” problems, not grammar. So by now, I think I have achieved fluency… and I can say I grew up bilingual, thanks to my parents and school.

Is there more than 1 official language in your country? Yes

Peru actually has 3 official languages: Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The first one being brought by people from Spain, and the other 2, being languages native from this country. The thing is…. On the practice, pretty much all of the country (an extremely big percentage) speaks Spanish, and the amount of people who only (emphasis on “only”) speak either Quechua or Aymara is very small. In my whole life I haven’t met anyone who only spoke one of these 2 languages.

Because of that, most laws that are made to protect people with “original languages” get quickly turned down, which means that many other dialects that existed here, may already be dead. Many people only want us to have as an official language; Spanish. There are a ton of arguments around the topic, and I would be lying if I`d tell you I knew enough about it to make a sole entry with my opinion….

And, I think I went a little bit of topic. Yes, there is 2 more official languages here in Peru, and I would love to meet any native speaker of either one of those.

What other languages do you speak? Spanish… and very little French and Japanese

So I write my blog in English because it serves as practice, and I`m Peruvian so my native tongue is Spanish. But apart from that I think I can say, that I can communicate up to some point in French and Japanese too. Although I`m nowhere near fluency, and I would probably still need to use English from time to time to communicate in their respective countries.

Around the time my sister went to Italy, I wanted to learn a third language too. So I got into French classes, and I went every Saturday for almost 3 years, to the “Alliance Francaise” near my house, to study. But most people were there for making “cool” friends that also wanted to become trilingual (and I was no different), so I didn’t learn as much as I could. I can read in French without much trouble (I would need to look up some words in a dictionary though), but at the moment of speaking it…. Hmm…

And well, I have been living in Japan for around 5 months now, and before that I studied for 2 more months, every day. When living in a country with a totally new languages, and go to a school that doesn’t teach much English, you need to learn their language. That is why I have grown a little more confident at the moment of speaking with my friends and classmates here. I guess I could say I`m around N4 level (which is extremely low), but well, at least I can communicate better than when I came here, and my friends understand me, so that is nice.

Are you fluent in any language other than your first? English

I started learning English when I was about 5 – 6, and didn’t stop taking English classes until 1 year ago, when I graduated High School. My school was pretty good at teaching English to be honest, and by grade 8 we were completely finished with learning grammar, so after that it was just literature and practice for the IB Exams. By now, some native people that I have talked with, have told me that my English is good (every time I hear that, it’s a great boost for the rest of the day), so I could consider myself fluent.

If you want to go all the way into official exams…. Well, I`m taking the TOEFL as soon as I go back to Peru, as it is a requisite of most colleges I`m applying to.

When did you start learning new languages?

Well, as I said, I started learning English when I got into Elementary/Primary School, which was 11 years ago. With French, I started learning it when my sister went to Italy, and that was about 4 years ago I think, but I only studied French for 3 years, before I had to quit, because I wanted to focus completely on the IB Program (and also, I didn’t want to wake up at 8:00 am on Saturdays). Finally, I only started learning Japanese half a year ago.

Yeah… it was a pretty straight forward answer here, and I already explained why I started learning each language. So, I don’t think I have much to talk about for this question… Sorry L

Do you have a favorite language? French

Stylish, classy, and overall elegant, French has to be my favorite language. I might have some sort of bias towards Latin languages (native language being Spanish), and from them all, French is my favorite. It just sounds so… cool, and that is probably the reason I chose it as the 3rd language I wanted to learn at its moment. Also, the French accent when speaking other languages is also pretty nice (at least, compared to the Spanish one), and even though learning French won’t give me that accent, it is still one of my reasons for it being my favorite language.

I wish that as soon as I come back from Japan, I can go back to studying French again, even if it is from the basics, I really want to be proficient at it.

Which language do you want to learn next? Portuguese or Italian

So, if I get to achieve proficiency in both Japanese and French (which you could say are the languages that I`m in the process of learning), I would like to go to something a little bit easier after Japanese, like another Latin language. I have not decided which one yet, I think it is a little bit early to do so. So let`s just fantasize for a moment…

Italian at one side, my sister already knows how to speak it… so I guess it would be easier for me to learn it with her help. Also, Italy seems as a beautiful place to go (even though that is the main reason I learn every language). Portuguese may be a little bit more useful though (actually, I`m not really sure about the difference between the Portuguese of each country), but I don’t know… I`m still unsure, but I will have time to think.

I guess I`ll choose a language based on the next country I plan to visit… but at the moment it is completely unclear.

What is your favorite word in your mother tongue? “Pensamiento”

“Thought” in English, as you may have guessed. This was really difficult to answer, and probably if I really sat down to think about it, my answer might change, but overall, I find “thought” to be a pretty cool world in Spanish. Phonetically is pretty nice, and that might have been the main reason for this choice, but I guess that its meaning is also very deep…

Really, it is difficult to come up with these things. How often do you stop, lay on your bed, and start thinking in which is your favorite word in any language….

Either that or “gomita”, which literally means “gummy”.

What is your favorite word in any other language? Ethereal – English

My favorite language in terms of how it sounds is French, yes, but my favorite word (that I know) belongs to English, and is ethereal (get it? The word itself is ethereal… no? No…). In this case, not only I like the word because of how it sounds, but its meaning is pretty nice too.

“Very delicate light/not of this world”

I always felt some sort of curiosity for that theme (things that are not physical, I mean), so I guess this word fits me perfectly. The only problem is that I don’t find many cases in which I can use it (I must write an entry on paranormal activities). But I guess the uncommon factor makes it more special.

A short note to all your followers in your mother tongue: Spanish

Bueno… a pesar de que ya lo he dicho antes, creo que no me cansare de repetirlo: “Un agradecimiento enorme a todos mis seguidores, y a la gente que ha leído mi blog en algún momento”. Cuando empecé a escribir este blog, nunca pensé que tendría seguidores (veía  todos los blogs con 1000+ seguidores, y no entendía como lo habían logrado), sobre todo porque mis post son un poco… largos, pero ahora ya supere la pequeña marca de 10 seguidores, y aunque no sea tanto, en verdad me hace feliz. Tumblr es uno de mis proyectos personales que más me gustan… así que ha seguir escribiendo…. Ojala pueda seguir creciendo.

Por cierto… esto fue completamente improvisado, quizá se escuche un poco tonto… No soy muy bueno con esto.

A short note to all your followers in other language that isn’t your first: English

This is the translation of the previous note, for anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish.

Well, even though I have said it before, I don’t think I will ever get tired of saying: “Thank you so much to all of my followers, and anyone who read my blog at any given moment”. When I started writing this blog, I never thought I would have followers (I saw all these blogs with 1000+ followers, and I didn’t understand how did they manage to accomplish that), especially because my posts tend to be a little… long. But now, I managed to break the mark of 10 followers, and although it isn’t that much, it really makes me happy. Tumblr is one of my favorite personal projects… so I will keep writing, and I hope I can keep growing.

By the way, this was completely improvised, so it may sound a little dumb…. I`m not good at this.

(Some things may not be literally translated)

…

And that`s it, I did it. As I said, learning new languages is one of my main passions, so I really enjoyed making this post. When you really like something that much… words just flow (and also because a Tag, it might be a little easier)…

Lately I have had some ideas of opening a YouTube channel, but it is still in progress, and actually the language I`m going to be using is a decision I have not taken. But it is still just an idea, if something happens, don’t worry, I will make sure to update you…

Exam week is starting here, so I might have a little trouble with getting the next post in time… But I`ll try my hardest, I promise.

See ya,

Diego

Good luck on your exams. 👍

studyblr inspirations: @elkstudies, @studyign, @thecoffeedesk, @gaystudies, @bookmrk, @nehrdist

Welcome to the studyblr community Jamie! 🍃