Assorted Articles in Astoria

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  • Questions: School System

    There are lots of ideas floating around the internet about the typical school system and whether it’s ideal. What do you think? Do countries like Finland have the right idea? Does anything need changing? If so, would you bother change it? How could you change it?

  • Why Learn a Language?

    With today’s quick and reliable translation aids, and with nearly everyone having some level of English fluency, is there really a purpose to learning any language?

    Yes.

    In compliance with today’s tiny attention span, I’ve gathered my reasons in a list format.

    • Improve your Attention Span: So you’re not limited to short little list formats.
    • Cognitive Abilities: Learning a language makes your brain stronger, if you think of things in the sense of a muscle. You decrease your risk of getting neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and have an easier time switching between tasks.
    • Humor: A world of jokes and plays-on-words will open up that you never even knew existed.
    • New Sounds: Maybe this is just a silly thing that only I ever thought of, but I sometimes tried to find sounds that weren’t in the English language. Doesn’t reaching your full vocal capabilities sound cool? No? Just me then? Alright…
    • Because That Cool Character Speaks It: Believe it or not, people with this seemingly silly reason are some of the most likely to stick with their language
    • 🎵🎶A Whole New Worrrrrrld🎶🎵: Culture is so underrated…possibly because America has none of it…
    • Mental Resilience: Buff brain=cope with whatever gets thrown your way.
    • More Career Options: The workforce is competitive, no secret there. Why not bump up your resume with a nice I’m bilingual or I’m multilingual?
    • Do Better In School: I’m not joking, academic performance is significantly better.
    • Most People Aren’t Monolingual: Don’t be the odd one out.
    • Bragging Rights: I take that back. It just sounds smart, yapping in another language. Ultimate respect boost like oh wait, this person isn’t stupid. Of course, you can learn a language as long as your perceived stupidity level isn’t so low that you can’t read this article, so maybe the things that come out of learning the language are gained smarts…
    • Eavesdropping: We’ve all been there: You’re sure someone is talking trash about you in another language. Maybe next time you can say “Thank you for calling me a *****” in their lingo and enjoy the shocked look on their face while you walk away dramatically. Instant +200 aura (if you know you know).

  • Language Learning (Actually)

    If you were to Google (or Safari, or Yahoo, or whatever it’s called when you search up on another browser) “How to learn a language”, you would be met with generic advice like “learn to speak, listen, read, and write through consistent practice.”

    NO KIDDING, GOOGLE

    Then Duolingo will be suggested. Guaranteed.

    Besides the internet’s extremely mixed (and strong) opinions on this little green owl’s methods for learning a language, advice on language learning is rather difficult to come by, but I have some strategies gathered here.

    But, before I get into that, some background:

    A year ago, I diligently practiced Spanish on Duolingo every day for 3 months and learned some vocabulary, and the Spanish course is one of the best courses. Even the Greek course is decent for someone in the brushing-up-on-vocab market. But will Duolingo alone do much?

    NO

    Am I a Duolingo hater though?

    Meh. My reasons are more related to the use of AI and the guilt-tripping rather than the actual content, which can be of use IF (and only if) it’s paired with other learning methods.

    So, now for the straight-forward language advice from a bilingual person who’s been trying to learn Spanish for school on her own because her teacher is an honest to goodness deadbeat.

    1.Podcasts

    Great for listening and some speaking, you can get the hang of pronunciation right off the bat, learn some vocabulary and sentence structure, and make good progress. They’re fairly easy to stick to if you listen to them in order at the same time each day (like during your daily commute) or if you do something quiet or mindless with your hands while you listen (I like to crochet). They’re great for killing otherwise empty time (the average person spend 10 DAYS out of the year commuting to work, search it up if you don’t believe me). Best of all, there are loads of podcasts on Spotify alone for any language level, from a beginner who can’t say “Hello” to someone advanced who can find interesting topics explained in detail.

    2. Old School Studying

    Make flashcards with vocabulary, write down word lists, read basic sentences off websites that offer common phrases translated. This is the what most people consider literal language studying, and it’s effective. Just make sure you don’t passively glance at the flashcards or glaze over the word lists and waste your time.

    3.Language Apps

    Yes, Duolingo falls into this category. Other apps, specifically ones that aren’t free, tend to be considered better though. They won’t make you fluent, but they can help in the vocabulary department, and most lessons are pretty short so you can make better use of small bits of down time.

    4.Karaoke & songs

    Fun & good for any skill level, you can master pronunciation. speaking, vocabulary, and your singing skill all in one. Plus, you’ll develop knowledge of the languages’s culture and about the country if you ever visit. (Culture-another thing everyone harps about, but they never say how to learn it, really…)

    5. Nursery Rhymes

    This is the beginner-friendly version of karaoke and music, but it’s perfect since it’ll teach you basic words that children know, and you likely won’t need a translation. Take Baby Shark. We all have the lyrics memorized (whether we like it or not) and can learn the names of family members (Baby, mommy, daddy, grandma, grandpa) a basic animal (shark) and phrases (let’s go hunt), (run away), (safe at last), (it’s the end). Plus, everything is repeated several times so you can catch it. All of this perfectly summed up into a short and infectiously catchy song-perfect.

    6. Switch your phone language

    If you switch your phone language, you’ll learn everyday words, and -let’s be honest- you have most of your phone’s functions memorized. Or, make your AI assistant speak your target language with a Youtube tutorial and have chats. You can even add your target language to your phone’s keyboard as well so you can text people in a completely new language to show off your skills and keep you motivated while practicing. Maybe you’ll even inspire someone🤷

    7: Yapping

    Get an online speaker to chat with! (They’re fairly cheap and often fun to talk to)

    Chat with a friend!

    Order at a Mexican restaurant in Spanish! (Just an example. Don’t kill me if the guy behind the counter only knows French.)

    Bottom Line: FIND AN EXCUSE TO YAP

    8. Writing

    Write your shopping list in your new language, or maybe journal if you’re more advanced. Just find an excuse to scribble down some non-English words and work on your writing skills while recalling what you know and reinforcing it.

    9. TV, Movies, Youtube

    Alright, I know a lot of you are gonna say that you’re not this advanced yet, but little kids learn to talk by watching others talk, so you’re going to learn that language by getting context clues from the visual part and understanding what you can. You can learn to understand the language at the speed it’s typically spoken at. Plus, if you can find a dubbed version of a movie or TV show you’ve already seen, even better.

    10: Reading

    Read anything you can get your hands on. Cram information into your head even if you don’t understand half of it. I say information because fantasy novels tend to contain words you’ll never use anywhere (alohomora?) and not your best bet if your goal is to learn fast. Like with movies and TV shows, I suggest books that you’ve read before so you’ll remember what certain translations were.

    Well, these are all the methods that I’ve accumulated over my great many years. Please comment any methods that I didn’t mention, since we all want to know. Remember to practice a lot, especially at first. 🕊

  • Multitasking: To Stay or to Go?

    I was an Elementary schooler buckled into my car seat, stretching up to see out my window when my friend’s mom put on a podcast. She explained to me that podcasts were like TV with only the audio part, and that she often put on podcasts for her kids on long car rides.

    I was disgusted by the idea and felt somewhat lost on what was happening in the podcast about dinosaurs. Were the pterodactyl sounds real? What did those people talking look like? Is that a kid’s voice? Which one is Janet? I would’ve much preferred to just yap with the people in the car (Yeah, I was a weird little kid and everyone else is normal 🙄)

    Fast-forward to age 13 when I downloaded Spotify. My initial motive had been to play music without the screen staying on, but I soon discovered several language podcasts to help me learn languages far faster than with Duolingo.

    But that wasn’t all. There were audiobooks (I like old-fashioned paper books, but I can see the usefulness) and stories and tons of other kinds of information that I could now absorb while multitasking.

    But here’s the thing: Is multitasking really the best?

    Some argue that multitasking isn’t even possible, but just about anyone can rattle off at least a few examples. Talking while jogging. Whistling while changing a light bulb. Listening to a podcast while studying. I suppose those people are referring to things that are less mindless, in which case they have a point.

    But an overwhelming number of studies show that multitasking can lead to decreased productivity and getting less done. Going back to the Listening to a podcast while studying example, some of you may have thought that one seemed a bit off. Dividing your attention like that does exactly what it sounds like: it divides your attention between studying and the podcast, giving a smaller share to both. This leads to less information getting reinforced or memorized while you’re studying, as well as only part of the podcast being understood, since true complex multitasking is hardly achievable; what most people consider more complicated multitasking is just switching between tasks quickly (not immersing yourself in a task for more than a couple of minutes does wonders for the attention span, I’m sure). In the case of the studying student, he will have to go over the information again to understand all that he would’ve understood had he given his work his undivided attention the first time, and have to listen to the same podcast again at a later date.

    So multitasking with something like a podcast can potentially divide your attention and hinder your other activity, even rendering itself useless through you only paying attention to it part of the time.

    But what about other types of multitasking?

    Perfecting your whistling skills while changing a light bulb for the millionth time doesn’t seem to take much away from either task, and it might even make staying on task with whistling easier because your hands are occupied and you won’t feel tempted to do something else besides sit still and whistle.

    So, while most studies will harp on how horrible multitasking is, the studies that we conduct in our everyday lives show that sometimes multitasking isn’t so bad.

    It seems that the bottom line is, multitasking is ok sometimes for certain, more mindless tasks, but it’s often better to focus on one complicated piece of work at a time.

  • A Kid’s Take on the “Bell to Bell” Ban

    “What if they need to make a call?”

    “It’s just a distraction!”

    “It’s the kid’s property!”

    There are a whole lot of arguments on the new Bell to Bell ban on phones in school, but here is my view on the topic as a student myself (no, I will not whine about ‘how unfair everything is’).

    My school always took phones in morning homeroom and returned them in the afternoon, with the penalty for getting caught with your cell phone being confiscation and the student’s parents or guardians having to come to the school to pick up the phone.

    This meant that there were hardly any instances of kids filming other kids in school or completely ignoring the lesson while they scrolled on TikTok. Of course, there are always the ones who slip under the radar and film TikToks between classes, but overall things are fairly orderly. That is to say, I support this ban, BUT I still see the points that some with a contrasting viewpoint can make.

    For starter, the phone is personal property. But, then again, so are folding knives and popper disks. Schools have to take some personal items away from students if they’re dangerous or disruptive, and phones are arguably both.

    Then there’s the fact that kids without phones can’t make calls, but there are few situations, if you really think about it, where this could be necessary in a school full of people and adults with cell access. While I could see the benefit of being able to contact your parents or the police in an emergency, or maybe just calling your friend at lunch, the cons of having a phone in class seem to outweigh the pros.

    Phones are a buzzing distraction that can be used to humiliate others online or turn the brain to mush, but while they can be used in a mature manner, many students are unable to do so.

    My final word on the subject is that I wish kids could be more responsible with their devices so they could keep them during the school day, but it seems to me that there really isn’t much choice at this point other than banning the cell phone in schools.