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On Learning Languages Quickly

I had a wonderful chat with Oscar del Ben last week. We swapped some interesting ideas, but one that fascinated me was him telling me how fast he learned English. Given I travel a lot, I was curious as to how he did it. Here's his thoughts -

Hey Sebastian, I think that in order to learn languages quickly, you have to use them. It took me a bit to learn English pronunciation, and I still make many mistakes without knowing it, but the trick is to continue despite the mistakes you make. When I was learning, my girlfriend said that there was no chance for me (bad memory, bad pronunciation), but I didn't give a damn.

Anyway, in my case I had some background from school, even though very little. What worked for me was reading tons of books in English, and then talk with other people via skype.

If you only read books, you'll be able to understand 70% of your target language in one month, assuming it's similar to ones you know (I've never tried wit very different languages). But by only reading you'll have no idea about pronunciation, so I encourage you to listen to music or audio as well. Note that you'll have to get the lyrics of the songs, otherwise it will be nearly impossible to understand, even if you already know the language.

With this, you can get very far, but you'll be missing communication abilities, because you never exercise your speaking abilities. To do that, find a friend who communicates in that language over skype (should be easy if you do english exchange), or practice alone by recording your voice.

Most better days.

On The Life Of An Ordinary Teenager

In order to be happy, you need to be strong. When people are mean to you or they simply on't like you at all, you only need to remember the good things about life and those who really care about you. Emiline was not very happy in the fact that i got over them and i had moved on. She doesn't like to see me happy because she doesn't approve of my existing. When things get tough and you think that you have no friends and every break of the day at school is extremely long, there are people that you will find who actually like your presence.

In P.E, we had different options. Soccer, basketball, badminton or hockey off-ice. I liked soccer i was going to play soccer but soccer was organized with the bigger kids and i didn't feel like being judged from people who think i'm immature because it's my first year in high school. Badminton sucks because we've been playing it for a couple months now and basketball.... The girls were playing. I wasn't escaping my problem just choosing not to deal with it at the present moment. My brother plays hockey and he's a defense. So, i thought i could kick some hockey ass. I chose hockey off-ice and had the time of my life. My childhood friend, Isabella, invited me to be with her other two friends because we were playing with another class. I was the only girl in my class who had the guts to play hockey with the boys. I definitely have defense in my blood because i never let the puck get in the goal. I was mostly playing against my ex, Alexander, and he is a very competitive guy but he is the first guy who loved me like crazy.

I sadly messed up my chances with him but believe it or not, i'm starting to get emotions for him again. He loved me so much to the point of being so nervous, he couldn't eat. He told me himself, that's how i know. But there's this other guy, Finn. He is really nice with me and he's a very sweet guy. I'm officially stuck in a love triangle.

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