And here we are, a mere ten months after my previous blog post! Rock and roll! Yeah!
I all of a sudden have a fairly vast amount of time on my hands, having given up my PGCE (teacher training course) and currently being of the great unemployed masses.
So, Gulliver, what are you doing with your time? Well, Internet, I have started learning Chinese again (and Japanese is soon to follow) and will start looking for a job tomorrow. Honestly, tomorrow. No, I mean it.
I heartily recommend Livemocha if you want to start learning a new language - although its use of Chinese characters is somewhat uneven (sometimes they are mandatory, other times they aren't allowed - peculiar). Livemocha has a social-networking vibe going on, so the exercises you do are actually marked by real people, in their native languages. This may not sound very exciting, but it really adds a layer of reality to the "learning a language on the internet" experience.
Before Christmas, on my way to my placement school, I "played" My Japanese Coach and My Chinese Coach every morning. They are both fine, as long as you are adamant that your DS is the best way to learn, but they both kind of fire vocabulary at you in a not-so-structured way.
Also, they are in no way suited for learning Chinese or Japanese writing; like Livemocha, they are uneven in when they use kanji/hanzi. In addition, there are spelling tests. Of how you spell them in roman characters. Which may be splendifferous in Spanish or German, but just doesn't work in a language that doesn't (technically) have a spelling system. Sigh!
On the plus side, there is a lot of vocabulary there, and the games are sort of amusing. Still, it's very easy to plough through them whilst keeping the words in short-term memory and then forget them later.
Anyway, Internet, go and sign up on Livemocha and make some friends who you don't understand yet.
