Dear Readers:
You've read the "Ready" and "Set" posts, and you are now "Go" with the quiz below.
Follow the instructions in the Set blog post (above) to win a prize.
Please write the word QUIZ on the email subject line.
I look forward to your email.
Look for the post Winners on Monday, February 28, 2022.
QUIZ
1. In which country was Noosha born?
2. Where did Afarin first go to school?
3. In which language did Noosha correspond with her father?
4. In which language did Afarin interact with her mother?
5. Why did Afarin meet President Jimmy Carter in person?
6. In which country did Noosha meet Malous?
7. In which language did Afarin like to read?
8. What was Noosha's biggest challenge in high school?
9. How did Afarin fill the gap in her university schedule?
10. Which part of speech did Afarin use to "kill" her boss?
11. Which tonal language did Noosha study?
12. Why did Noosha take Early Childhood Education classes?
13. How did Noosha start a huge chain of ESL classes in Orange County?
14. Where is Afarin now?
15. What is Noosha's first language?
The quiz will be posted on Sunday, February 27, 2022, at 8am Central Standard Time (GMT-6).
Copy all the questions into an email message and answer them.
Send the email to me by noon (12pm CST, Sunday, February 27, 2022):
afarinrava@gmail.com
If all your answers are correct, you will receive a prize.
"Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate."
Jon Bon Jovi
Dear Readers:
Are you ready for the quiz?
If you haven't yet finished Languages & Life Lessons, do it in the next 48 hours.
It's a small book... and the reward is a BIG prize.
The quiz will be posted soon,
and
ONLY people
who answer ALL the questions
CORRECTLY
in the FIRST TWO HOURS
will WIN the PRIZE
Look for the blog post titled Set in the next few days.
Step One - PRONUNCIATION (continued)
How exactly do I learn the pronunciation of a new language?
Because learning the pronunciation of a new language is so important, I spend a lot of time on it.
I do an average of ten to fifteen minutes twice a day -- morning and evening.
🍂
I start with the alphabet on YouTube.
I repeat this until I can say the alphabet the correct way without cheating (looking or listening).
Also, I use my phone to record myself, and then I compare my sound to that of the person teaching it, letter by letter.
Once I can spell my name (my whole name, made of 18 letters) correctly in the new language without any difficulty, I move on...
🍂
Then I learn the pronunciation of basic words, also on YouTube. I repeat this process a few times until I've learned those basic words, and then I move on to another similar video with other basic words.
The unexpected sounds I encounter are the ones I need to jot down and practice more.
🍂
The process of learning the pronunciation of a new language can take from one day to a few months, depending on how different the new language is, compared to the languages I know. For instance, learning Spanish pronunciation might take a day (or two), but learning Swedish pronunciation could easily take two to three weeks, and learning the pronunciation of Chinese, a tonal language (and a real challenge for me) could takes months.
This doesn't mean I won't learn anything in the new language until my pronunciation is perfect. While I'm learning to pronounce basic words, I'm learning vocabulary... and possibly some everyday phrases. It just means the focus is on getting the pronunciation right and practicing the correct way of saying words in the language... because my teaching experience has taught me that unlearning an incorrect way is harder than learning the correct way. Did you pay attention to that last part? Unlearning something that is incorrect is harder than learning something new correctly.
Step One - PRONUNCIATION
Learn the pronunciation rules. Learning the sounds and the pronunciation of letter combinations as a first step is crucial because the next step is repetition and practice, and you don't want to practice with the wrong pronunciation.
When it comes to pronunciation, English is a nightmare. Fortunately, most languages have fewer exceptions and clearer rules. Learn the sound(s) of each letter in the alphabet of the language, and then learn the sounds that combined letters make in words and phrases.
Thankfully, all of these are freely accessible online, on sites like YouTube, so you can get started right now... for free. Do a quick search. Try several different "instructors" and language channels. Choose two, switch back and forth, and practice pronunciation with both.
There will be a quiz very soon
and anyone who can answer all the questions will
(drum roll)
not enter a contest... but WIN a prize.
The answers are all in the book Languages & Life Lessons.
Get ready...
and look for the blog post titled Ready
on this blog - afarinrava.blogspot.com
in the next few days.
Here's a section I deleted from Languages & Life Lessons during the editing phase:
When I was eleven, a year after I had arrived in Iran, I didn't know the first thing about Iranian music. I was familiar with English, French, and even Arabic songs and singers, but I had never listened to Iranian songs. One day, I came across my dad's box of tapes. The name and face of each singer was on the cover of each tape. I saw one that said Ebi on it. What an unusual name! At the time, I didn't know it was short for Ebrahim. My curiosity made me take the tape out of its cover and put it in the player. The very first song that played was Pichak. I listened to it from beginning to end and understood all of it. I fell in love with the music, the lyrics, and the voice of the singer, Ebi. His voice was clear and beautiful. That was the beginning of my love for several Iranian singers: Ebi, Dariush, Googoosh, ...
Here's Pichak... in case I've piqued your interest:
https://youtu.be/B40_mMBp6S4
Ebi (playlist)
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nY6Bc9JsUv99pigRdCDflfDZcoyLU3iws
Dariush (playlist)
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_no-Bvw9_xPGaUJs13hxkaw7JbUC92Pox0
Googoosh (playlist)
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nlt_OE-3QpkAN_uCM9VYiph1fpi2IcVbk
What makes it difficult is a word that has different pronunciations based on its part of speech. For example, if I write the word record out of context, some will read it as a noun and some as a verb. If the first syllable of the word is stressed, REcord, it's a noun; if the second syllable of the verb is stressed, reCORD, it's a verb. This kind of word is called a heteronym.
In context, it becomes easier to distinguish, of course:
Here's a record of my expenses.
My students record my lectures.
However, for English learners, it is still a challenge.
When learning the intonation of different kinds of sentences in a language, it's important to pay attention to the stress, the relative loudness in a particular section of the sentence, depending on whether the sentence is affirmative, interrogative, etc.
One difficulty language learners may face is the stress in individual words in certain languages.
This stress, phonetically speaking, is the emphasis given to a syllable of a word. In English, for example, multi-syllabic words have stress. The word banana has three syllables. All three syllables are not pronounced with the same stress; the second syllable (the first na) is given more intensity in utterance. This can be learned by practice, but it means practicing the pronunciation of individual words, so it may take a long time, but it is not difficult.
Matthieu, I was thinking of you when I wrote this. You know why.
One aspect of the spoken language that is crucial to master in order to communicate is intonation. The right intonation is more important than the right pronunciation. If the pronunciation is not comprehensible but the intonation is correct, the listener can somewhat make sense of the speech by guessing the words and filling the voids in their comprehension, but if the intonation is not correct, the listener won't have a pattern or direction to follow. Intonation then becomes even more essential than pronunciation.
When learning a new language, it's important to pay attention to the intonation of sentences with various structures as well as the pronunciation of words.
When you learn a new language, you hope to speak it with the right accent. This doesn't always happen easily, though. I've met people living in the United States for decades and relatively fluent in the English language who speak English with a strong accent.
Why is it so difficult for some people to lose their accent when they learn a new language? The short answer is that for years and years, the muscles in their tongue, lips, jaw, and pharynx, which make sounds and words from the vocal cord vibrations, have practiced their first language. It becomes a matter of practice and willingness to produce the sounds of the new language.
The more you practice speaking, the better you get at it. If you speak clearly enough, as I've repeatedly told my students, and use the right grammar and vocabulary, your chances of being understood by others are good.
Carolyn Ruffles is the author of The Girl in the Scrapbook, Who to Trust, and the The Vanishing Encore.
I'm so honored to have been featured in this fabulous author's newsletter.
If you don't know Carolyn Ruffles, I suggest you get her book right now and read it: it's free to buy on Kindle now -- see below.
This is what Carolyn Ruffles has written about my book:
Languages & Life Lessons: Amazon.co.uk: Rava, Afarin: 9798479965753: Books
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf
Once you learn a word you weren't familiar with, don't be surprised if you start noticing it everywhere. Read the chapter titled "Persisting Questions" in Languages & Life Lessons.
When we learn a new word, it is not enough to look at its definition in the dictionary. We need to learn how it is spelled and pronounced as well. We also need to know its usage, how it is used in a sentence. To do that, we need to know whether it's a noun or an adjective or a verb that can be conjugated; in other words, we need to know its part of speech. If we are to use the word correctly, a basic level of grammar knowledge is crucial.
What does it mean to know a word? Word knowledge has different levels.
Every word in our word bank has a place somewhere on our word knowledge spectrum. On one end, we know a word very well and feel comfortable using it in the spoken and written language, and on the other end, we don't know a word exists.
Between these two ends of the word knowledge spectrum are other levels: We might know a word exists but not be able to define it. We might be able to guess the meaning, especially in context. We might know what a word means when it's heard or read but not feel confident to use it because we don't know its pronunciation, spelling, or usage.
