Where the heck do I begin?

Sorry, It has been a few weeks, I am doing this on the side on top of my full time job. I understand it is tough to find time to sit down and really grind away at a new language.  The first question I asked myself before even starting to learn German was 

Where the heck do I begin?

This is the same question I asked when I started to learn Japanese or Chinese. I am no expert so I had no Idea and really I still don't, but I have an Idea. From my experiences you need a basic vocabulary to begin.

I work as an ESL teacher part time. I do not know my student's language and she well doesn't know English. Forming sentences with no vocabulary nothing to relate to is impossible. I remember back in high school sitting in Italian class, we would go over long lists of Italian words

Buon giorno

Buona sera

Buona notte.....
We droned on  and on and on. I hated it.... Today I cannot speak Italian aside from a few words. Back then, then only way for me to study these words was FLASH CARDS.

They are cheap inexpensive versatile and you can throw them right in the trash where they belong!
Life moves fast and life is busy. Who has time to sit there and write out hundreds of words on tiny cards? On top of that your stacks will get thick bulky and it is downright uncomfortable to carry them around. It's the 21st century we should have to put up with this stone age technology of inscribing vocabulary words one by one.

Luckily you don't there is an alternative. Digital Flash cards. Or if you want to be fancy "SPACED REPETITION"

Memrise

https://www.memrise.com/

I have grown to love memrise. Best of all it is free,Unless you want to pay for the "ADVANCED FEATURES". Maybe someday I will see how these features stand up but for now let's talk about what this brings to us.

Memrise brings a unique approach to language learning which I feel it doesn't get enough credit for. They are electronic flash cards at the core but they are so much more. Memrise does exsactly what the same says it gets you to MEMORIZE.  Right now I am accessing the website on my computer but there is an app  for APPLE and ANDROID.

When you login, you have the ability to choose from any language some even of the even more uncommon ones too! The courses for the most part are all user made so if you are lucky you can find a book that compliments a Memrise course.

Memrise isn't just a program that flashes a few words in front of you like you would if you wrote your own flashcards. It utilizes, Audio, Visual and Spelling comprehension.

It says ich bin glücklich I am happy!

Although sometimes I find some of the choices it gives you makes it a little too easy to guess. Another feature which I enjoy is the ability to just learn new words. Some spaced repetition apps force you to review before learning something new. After a few days of not reviewing I would find several hundred words I needed to review! I think reviewing is important but when does anyone have time to review 500 vocabulary words?!?

I  do not want to make this a blog about reviewing different apps I only want to help you in the right direction. Memrise might not be right for you.shop around. Maybe regular old flashcards are your cup of tea, but from my experiences when starting to learn a language you need to strengthen your vocabulary then we can start putting them into sentences.  Until next time...