Follow the language meanderings of an English teacher and language enthusiast.
Hi and welcome to the 31st episode of the Language Meanderings podcast. My name is Jonathan and today I received a special email from myself from about 3 months ago in the middle of January by using the website FutureMe.org. I’m going to read this letter that I sent myself and I’m going to comment on it.
The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on January 23, 2016. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org
Dear FutureMe,
This is PastMe from mid-January. You were attempting to learn some Swahili after trying out Swedish and Turkish before that. I hope you have finally perfected your learning methodology for each week and get better at listening and speaking early on in the week and not letting days go. You must be on language #15 by now, that’s crazy! A few days ago after I wrote this message, I may or may not have gotten fired from EY, I’m thinking you got fired and that it turned out to be great news because you could dedicate yourself to teaching on italki.
A few weeks after I wrote this letter, the All Ears English interview podcast was published and then I started to get a lot more italki students. As I was writing this letter, there were almost 3600 members in the Facebook group and I was planning an interview with people from the International Language Exchange group. I had launched a story reading project and was still in shock about finding out about Scott Dinsmore’s death back in September. Life is short, do what your dreams are, and don’t waste time.
So about Language Heroes, the morning you wrote this letter, you finally had your first skype chat with Zhenia and it went well. You brainstormed a lot of ideas. I hope she has a successful facebook group by now.
You said you were going to make youtube videos in Russian every day during the marathon. There had better be at least 80 or so new youtube videos by now! You’d also better have at least 80 italki notebook entries each day in Russian. How many words have you managed to learn in Russian? You’d better have a pretty good vocabulary method going on and maybe some kind of vocab hacking process working well. How many skype chats have you had in Russian in the past 3 months? I hope it was at least twice a week.
How is your daughter? She had just started really walking a day or two before you wrote this letter.
How is your son? Is he still talking about dinosaurs and watching Peppa Pig on his mother’s tablet?
Be nice to her, spoil her rotten with kisses and spend more time with her and the kids, make her feel special. She is wonderful and deserves the best!
You are awesome Jonathan and you are accomplishing awesome things! The sky is the limit and I hope you are flying high!
Transcript in progress