I recently received this email from a high school teacher in Florida:
I came across your textbook reviews online and they all seem to focus on college level chinese and traditional characters.
I just started teaching high school Chinese and I’m looking for a textbook that will allow me to focus on tones, simplified characters, and pinyin. [...]

This is fascinating video about Daniel Tammet, a twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities. He’s capable of calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and he can acquire functional fluency in a foreign language in a single week. Most interesting is that unlike the vast majority of savants, he can communicate with and [...]

I’ve long been a fan of David Lancashire’s Chinese-English dictionary and anotation engine Adsotrans. I’ll admit I’ve had my share of frustrations with its previously poor support of traditional characters, but I’ve always loved the engine.
Since he David joined Chinese Pod, his various technical marvels have been springing up here and here throughout [...]

I love it when other teachers put up videos of their students. This school is obviously quite a bit different than mine is, but the kids sure are cute.

Here’s the final performance. The costumes sure were involved, but they didn’t have real hammer pants like I’d never admit to having wanted when I [...]

Three of my 1st and 2nd graders are ready to move to my evening classes. Here’s one of their spelling drills. They haven’t memorized these words; it’s all based on phonics. I’m not used to having so few students, and the video is a bit sluggish. I’m happy that I was able to [...]

Ever since I visited the Chinese Pod office last summer, I’d been meaning to really put in some time listening to their podcasts. Unfortunately, one thing came up after another- I changed jobs, I moved twice, Martin and I got really into watching DS9, etc… It wasn’t until this last couple of weeks that [...]

Since regaining my motivation to learn languages a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been trying out some of the methods from Barry Farber’s text, How to Learn any Language.
study stuff Hosted on Zooomr
There are several components in Farber’s system, but the one that has helped me the most is the use of what he calls [...]

As my motivation for language learning surges, I find myself practically stumbling over more useful tools. I’ve recently found an absolutely fantastic essay about language learning on Scribd. It’s both inspirational and full of useful advice.

Last night, Rika threw a dinner party over at my place. Since she and Martin already sold most of their things, including their refrigerator, to the Tealit vultures, she had to make the food over at my place. I’ve been really busy with work recently… but hey, they’re leaving and the party needed [...]

It’s nice to be on vacation. Really nice. I had good times in Shanghai and Beijing last summer, and in Colorado the winter before, but staying at home and just relaxing isn’t too bad either. I’ve had time to see more of my friends, which is always good, and I’ve also had [...]