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Schools Interchange - links to 400,000 schools worldwide, plus Government websites and education departments Infinite Facts Series - from Police Letters to Prime Ministers - also huge free Keywords for Learning resource with word search puzzles ranging from the human body, invertebrates and football to Pokémon, Shakespeare, Dickens + the Bible the Project HappyChild Directory of organizations helping children - 80+ charities helping kids in many different ways Accelerated Learning - by world silver medallist Michael Tipper - amazing brain, book reviews, great minds, memory training, mnemonics - huge resource, all pages free to print free maths worksheets - addition, subtraction, times tables, division, fractions, percentages; English worksheets for poetry writing, lateral thinking, mc lyrics, crosswords, spelling, writing practice; huge index to free educational resources on line worldwide Reading System - complete free-to-print system 'Bricks and Mortar' for teaching children the basics of reading in English fundraising + resources, free stuff, events calendar, website sponsors, plus free on-line serialization of 'How to run a Successful Car Wash Fundraiser' by Lance Winslow III Aesop's Fables - over 200 now on line here, including 'The Hare and the Tortoise', 'The Grasshopper and the Ants', 'The Slave and the Lion', 'The Serpent and the Eagle' and many other well-loved tales created over 2500 years ago Projects helping children in over 200 countries - huge colour-coded index to countries worldwide and links to the websites of charities working to help children overseas Andy's Guide to Pokémon - huge pokédexes for red, blue, yellow, gold, silver, crystal, ruby, sapphire, emerald, fire red, leaf green, diamond, pearl + platinum, plus lots of help and info sent in by visitors + over 200 Pokémon pictures French - 800+ free-to-print self-test French-English worksheets, verbs + vocabulary, eg food + drink [38 pages], trees, numbers, shops, colours, telling the time, animals, birds, insects, sports, driving, car parts, tools, home, family, etc. Sol's guide to The Magical World of Harry Potter - wands, characters, spells, creatures, locations, items, Hogwarts, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Diagon Alley, Gringotts, Ministry of Magic plus book reviews and film reviews Syndromes - links to organizations helping children with dyslexia, asthma, eczema and more serious conditions News
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Learning a Foreign Language Part 1

I am often asked whether the learning techniques I talk about can be applied to learning a language. "Of course they can" is my normal answer and then I proceed to give my view on how it can be done. Now though probably good advice, it is based on my knowledge of others and what they have done to learn a language and not from my own experience. Now I am a strong believer that the best teaching comes from experience and so now I have decided to put my advice to the test and have begun to learn to speak German.

I have a bit of a German background in that it was a subject I had to attend classes in for 5 years at school. Sadly for me and probably unfortunately for her, I did not see eye to eye with my German Teacher and so I never developed a love of the subject. I failed my examinations miserably and vowed that I would never have to do German again. That was until I managed to use a couple of words that did stick in my mind when I went on a trip to Austria. For the first time I experienced the joy of successfully communicating in another language with another human being. At that time I regretted not trying harder at school and for 18 years I have lived with that regret. It has been gnawing at me from inside and so for this year I have chosen German as my learning project.

I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know some of the things I am doing to help me learn. I am a great believer of little and often and so I spend about 30-40 minutes every morning before I start work. I do 3 things. First of all I learn 10-12 new words every single day using the principles that I talked about in my article on Learning Foreign Words in February 1999. I put the new words on 3x5 cards with the German on one side and the English Translation on the other. Then every day I test myself on the words that I have learned before. Most of the time because I have used a mnemonic technique the translations are easy to recall but occasionally I have to revisit the images I have made to reinforce them.

The next thing I do is to work my way through a German Text Book learning aspects of grammar and sentence structure. As I do this I am building up a Master Mind Map on a very large sheet of paper so that I can capture all of the grammar on a single sheet. Already I am beginning to make some distinctions on things like the different cases that I had covered at school but never really understood (probably because I never listened!!). The Mind Map is building up nicely at the moment and is extremely helpful for me to keep on top of what I have learned so that it does not fade from my recall.

The last thing that I do is to listen to at least 10 minutes of German Radio. The Internet is a very powerful medium for learning and so access to German Radio channels online is simple. I listen to Berlin InfoRadio which is a news and current affairs channel. At first I did not understand a thing but it started to get me used to the "music" of the language and the sound of native Germans speaking it. After a while I began to pick out some of the words I knew and then began to identify new words. I am still a long way off being able to understand it totally to a fluent level but now I am starting to get the gist of what is being talked about.

One final thing that I do whenever I am in my car is that I play German Language audio tapes. I keep playing them over and over again and slowly but surely my pronunciation and understanding is getting better and better.

I am really enjoying the little bits of progress that I am making and that was illustrated when a German friend of mine rang one morning a few weeks ago. I have been promising him that I will learn German because his English is so good and I am embarrassed that I can't communicate as well as him in another language. I told him about my progress and then we had a stimulating 20 minute conversation in German about all sorts of things. I knew much more than I thought and was able to make myself understood in a number of areas that I thought I knew nothing about. It really got me motivated and strengthened my resolve to do that again because I probably got more value from that session than a whole month of reading verbs and mainly that was because my belief in myself as a linguist was raised.

I will keep you posted on how I get on and will let you know of any other tips for learning a language.






To ask about any aspect of Accelerated Learning, you can contact Michael Tipper direct via the link at the top of this page.




Frequently Asked Questions MIND MAPPING MEMORY SPEED READING GENERAL
WELCOME PAGE The Accelerated Learning pages at Project HappyChild were written (free) by Michael Tipper,
Silver Medallist in the World Memory Championships.
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BOOK REVIEWS MNEMONICS AMAZING BRAIN GREAT MINDS MEMORY TRAINING


The main index to Michael Tipper's pages on Accelerated Learning is at
https://www.happychild.org.uk/acc/tpr/index.htm
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Area 3 at Project HappyChild - linking children all across the world

guestbook appeals fundraising Directory USA counties schools latest news events sponsors

your support is always welcomed for the Children's Charities in the Project HappyChild Directory - just click here for details of 80+ organizations

NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.

your support is always welcomed for the Children's Charities in the Project HappyChild Directory - just click here for details of more than 80 organizations
Your support is always welcomed for the Children's Charities in the Project HappyChild Directory - just click here for details of 80+ organizations.

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