My Favourite Youtube Channels For Studying Languages 🌷

My Favourite Youtube Channels for Studying Languages 🌷

- innerFrench -

innerFrench is a channel ran by Hugo Cotton, a French teacher situated in Poland. Hugo is a native French speaker and speaks only in this language on his channel - you will never hear a word of English! Even when he explains the meanings of more obscure French words, he still uses French to both convey the word’s meaning, and enable his viewers to continue practicing their comprehension skills. The French Hugo uses is slow, clear and easy to understand for intermediate speakers. Begginners will also find this channel useful as a way to immerse themselves in the language. Hugo focuses on explaining different aspects of French culture in his videos, with a foreign target audience in mind. Since he is both a French teacher, and has had to learn Polish, it’s fair to say that Hugo understands the struggles of learning a foreign language and so is able to help his viewers improve their French skills in a suitable way. This is by far my favourite channel for learning French and I truly believe it has helped me a lot over the years!

- The Purple Palace -

The Purple Palace is a channel ran by Shayna Klee, an artist from the US who moved to Paris for art school. She makes videos in both English and French, often combining the two. When she speaks in French, she always includes English subtitles so that beginners don’t feel lost. Most of Shayna’s videos are vlogs in which she talks about art (which is incredible btw), fashion, French lifestyle / culture and her own personal life. She is quite open about her personal life which definitely makes her viewers feel more close to her as a person. What makes Shayna’s channel so unique is her artwork. I have never seen anything like it before! Seeing her creations makes learning French so much more enjoyable. If you love art or French culture you must explore this channel!

- Easy German -

This is my favourite channel to use for learning German. The hosts of Easy German just seem so sweet and every video puts me in such a positive mood. The Easy Languages network make videos on a range of languages (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Polish, Greek, English, Russian, Turkish and many more) and the main premise of their videos is to “learn from the streets”. Most of their videos consist of street interviews with native speakers on various topics. This, of course, is a great way of learning because you get to hear conversational phrases, different accents and see different parts of the world. What makes Easy German so special is definetely the hosts. The channel has several hosts but the two main ones seem to be Cari and Janusz who just seem so lovely. Idk why but it seems like everyone they interview is always so friendly and sweet. It definetly breaks the stereotype that Germans are cold and distant. Easy German also make videos about grammar, vocab and any other things about German which they feel are important to point out. Another thing about this channel is that they don’t just focus on Germany - they also have videos situated in Austria and videos that talk about Swiss German and Austrian German.

- Spanish After Hours -

This channel reminds me of innerFrench as the host (Laura) speaks only in Spanish. Like Hugo from innerFrench, Laura uses a clear, slow register that makes it very easy for intermediate speakers to comprehend. Laura is a native Spanish speaker from Spain and so, if you are looking to speak Castilian Spanish, her accent is perfect to take inspiration from. Her videos are usually shorter than those at innerFrench which might help viewers who find it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. Laura’s videos are very diverse. In some she reads Spanish children’s stories, in others she does ASMR and sometimes she focuses on vocabulary. Nevertheless, her videos are always enjoyable and have definetly helped me with my Spanish listening skills recently.

- Parpalhon Blau -

This channel focuses on the Occitan language which is definetly a language which has very few learning resources. Occitan is a minority language, referring to several dialects spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Northern Spain and Western Italy. It is a romance language which has very close ties to Catalan. On Parpalhon Blau (which means blue butterfly), Gabrièu teaches his viewers how to pronounce Occitan words and helps them to improve their listening skills, catering for both beginners and intermediate learners. Before finding this channel, I had never even heard of Occitan but after hearing how beautiful it sounds, I just had to subscribe. Often with smaller languages like Occitan, the learning resources are very limited and the ones that do exist aren’t really the best quality. Parpalhon Blau however, is a great channel and the perfect introduction to the language.

- Langfocus -

On Langfocus, Paul makes videos surrounding an incredible range of languages. He has videos on almost every language I can think of! the chances are, if you are studying a language, Paul will have made a video about it. I genuinely cannot understand how one person can know so much about so many languages. Most of his videos focus on individual languages or dialects, however, he also has some very interesting ones in where he compares two languages together, highlighting the differences and similarities between them, whilst also explaining the reasons behind this. In each video, Paul aims to give a good overview of the language, discussing it’s origins, pronounciation, alphabet and grammar. Sometimes these videos can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know anything at all about the language so I mostly use his videos to learn more about languages I am already studying or as an introduction to a language I want to study in the future.

- JuLingo -

This channel is quite similar to Langfocus in the way that Julie mostly focuses on a different language per video, offering a general overview of it. Julie tends to focus on smaller languages, like Ainu and Basque that people may not know a lot about rather than more popular languages like Spanish and French. Julie’s channel is a great way of exploring new languages that you may have never thought to learn before. Like Paul from Langfocus, she doesn’t just talk about grammar and sentence structure, she also includes information on the language’s origins, which I personally find fascinating.

- Ecolinguist -

On Ecolinguist, Norbert challenges native speakers of different languages to try and understand a language foreign to them. Through these experiments, he reveals how similar and how different languages are to one another. Usually, he chooses speakers of the same language family as the language which they are listening to and, being a viewer, you are invited to test yourself too. As a native English speaker, I particularly enjoyed discovering how much Old English I could decipher but also since I speak intermediate French and Spanish, I was able to test myself against Latin, Italian, Romanian and Lombard too. Since Norbert is Polish, he also makes videos focused on learning Polish, mostly regarding speaking and listening. Another series Norbet has is his guess the language challenge, in which a guest is presented with audios of language from anywhere in the world and has to guess it. Although I am very bad at these theyre always fun to watch. Its incredible how skilled his guests are!

How to Create a Life Organizational System (when everything’s a mess)

• 1/14/20 • 11:30 am •

The other day I helped my friend through this process since she had basically no organizational system and it was getting really difficult to get things done on time and for her to take care of herself on top of schoolwork and a job. I thought some of you would benefit from this considering some of the comments and messages I get, so here you go! No shame here, I just want to help and share what I’ve helped several people to do and it seems to be pretty effective!

The first step is to have a desire to change things. The first step to making a substantial change is to acknowledge that there’s a problem in the first place. You need to have a system for managing your life, and if you don’t currently have one then you need to develop one and try to stick to it (you can always change it up later if it’s not working! These are designed to help you and make life easier, not harder!)

Write a list of all your commitments. This can include things like work, school, a hobby, a club, and taking care of yourself, or any other categories that are relevant to your life! Be as specific as possible to write down all of your recurring commitments, this will help you later in the process.

Figure out what isn’t working the most. What’s the biggest problem? Do you keep missing important things because you don’t remember when things are scheduled for? Is your email inbox overflowing? Do you start every day by scrambling around in the morning, unsure of what to do first? Do you keep turning in assignments late? All of the above? Figure out your most important problem to fix and make that your top priority for now. We can also address other issues, but this will be your main focus.

Brainstorm solutions to your main issue. Do you need to set up a calendar system? Need to sort through your email and create a system moving forward so it stays manageable? Do you need to set a specific morning routine? Need a planner or other time management system? Think of some solutions to your main issues and some reasonable, actionable steps that you can take to do it.

Take the first step towards tackling this issue. This can be a small step or a big step, whatever you have time for! If you need to set up a calendar system, for example, you could start by inputting important commitments for the upcoming week. If you need to figure out your email system, you could start by making a couple of folders to organize things. It’s totally up to you!

Once you’ve started to tackle your main issue, now it’s time to focus on how you want to be spending your days. Make a list of any habits you want to incorporate into your life on a regular basis (whether that’s daily, weekly, or monthly), and determine what specific days (and times, if applicable) you want to do each habit. If they are time-specific, put them into your calendar as a recurring event! These habits aren’t permanent, you can change them up as you go if you find they’re too much or not a right fit, so try not to put too much pressure on yourself! Also try to just focus on doing 2-5 things on a regular basis, since I’ve found doing any more than that can get overwhelming and frustrating. Start smaller, and you can always add more as you like.

Now for another list, this time it’s our short-term to do’s! What do you need to get done in the next week, or next few days? I find it helpful to sort tasks by categories based on my recurring commitment list, as well as a miscellaneous list for anything that doesn’t fit in the other categories. Write down the due dates next to each task, if they have one. Then, write down what day you want to work on each task, and try to estimate how much time each task will take. No worries if a task is going to take more than one day, just write it down for all of those days that you think it might take to complete it!

Then, write down a list of long-term to do’s! Not everyone will have stuff in this category, but this is for bigger tasks like essays or projects that need to be broken up into smaller steps. Write down any longer-term projects you have, and then below them write down some smaller steps that you need to do to build up to the completion of the project. Be as specific as possible! Then, write down “due dates” for each sub-task so that it’ll help to pace out the project over time instead of just doing everything at the last minute.

Look at your lists and ask yourself if all of them are entirely necessary. It’s ok if they’re all important, but taking time to consider if there’s anything you can cut down on to make your life a little easier can really pay off in the long term.

Make one last list for the next week (or next couple of days), sorting through your habits, short-term to do’s, and long-term to do’s lists and order tasks based on what day they need to get done. For example, on Monday you might have to do laundry, to do a homework assignment, and to create an outline for your essay. If you have an overwhelming amount of stuff all on one day, try to re-allocate some of the tasks to other days if possible. Otherwise, at least you know ahead of time that it’s going to be a busy day and you can plan accordingly!

If you aren’t sure you’ll remember to check your list (which you can totally write into a planner or other system if you don’t want to just use the plain ol’ list, it can be a great start to using a planner or bullet journal if you aren’t already using one!), I’d recommend setting a reminder on your phone to check it every day. (I’d also recommend taking a photo of your lists if you’re the kind of person who loses things!)

The last step is to continue! Keep working on tackling your main issue and follow your list(s) to the best of your ability! Once you feel like you have a handle on things, then you can work towards getting a hold on another issue that you have with your organizational system! It’s totally ok to continuously revise your system, if anything it’s even better to keep improving it since continual progress is amazing!

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walkingonsunshine

4 years ago

Dark academia moodboard for a botany student?