Books of the Year: 2011

This is the 4th consecutive year that I've kept track of what books I read. Unfortunately, this is the only year where the number of books decreased from the previous year (last year I read 51 books). I attribute this to grad school and being a new teacher. Despite reading less books in their entirety, I know I spent tons of time reading this year. Last semester, it seems like all I did was read. So, even though I apparently read less, I probably read at least the same amount, or possibly more.

Anyway, the books. It goes Title author, date I finished reading it

1. Children of God, Mary Doria Russel 1/2 (don't worry, this is a sci-fi novel)
2. The Rise and Fall of Languages, RMW Dixon 1/5
3. The Forever Machine, Mark Clifton 1/11
4. The Art of Teaching Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis, Salaberry & Lafford 1/14
5. Double Star, Robert Heinlein 1/16
6. What to Eat, Marion Nestle 1/26
7. The Big Time, Fritz Leiber 1/28
8. Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov 2/17
9. Seedfolks, Paul Fleischman 2/23
10. The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi 2/28
11. Starship Troopers, Robery Heinlein 3/13
12. Foundation, Isaac Asimov 3/21
13. Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov 3/22
14. Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov 3/24
15. Foundation's Edge, Isaac Asimov 4/2
16. If I'm so Successful, Why do I Feel like a Fake? Harvey Katz 4/11
17. Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov 4/21
18. The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, Tony Attwood 4/25
19. Aspergirls, Rudy Simone 4/26
20. Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson 4/30
21. Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov 5/18
22. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins 5/21
23. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins 5/23
24. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins 5/26
25. Asperger's Syndrome and Anxiety: A Guide to Successful Stress Management, Nick Dubin 5/31
26. Omnilingual, H. Beam Piper 5/31
27. Containment, Christian Cantrell 6/3
28. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, H.R. Ellis Davidson 6/15
29. Forward the Foundation, Isaac Asimov 6/17
30. The Passage, Justin Cronin 6/26
31. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, Marilyn Johnson 7/1
32. The Wild Things, Dave Eggers 7/2
33. Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages, Alex Wright 7/14
34. Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger 7/19
35. Hyperion, Dan Simmons 7/28
36. Ambient Findability, Peter Morville 8/9
37. Crash Course in Public Library Administration, Wayne Disher 8/15
38. The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War, Michael Shaara 9/17
39. The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons 11/5
40. A Fire upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge 11/24
41. The Lightening Thief, Rick Riordan 11/25
42. California: A History, Kevin Starr 12/28

Trends:

• I didn't manage to get through any books in languages other than English this year. Sort of horrifying, but I think this is indicative of how all-consuming it was to finish my credential/get a job/maintain my job/start my masters
• I started reading through Hugo Award winners, of which I read 8 this year.
• 30 of the books I read were Kindle books, which means I'm reading a lot more digitally. 
• 15 were non-fiction. My non-fiction doesn't seem to follow much of a trend. Once again, I seem interested in everything.

Goals for 2012?

I can't really bring myself to set any goals because I know this year is going to be crazy between work, my MLIS and getting my clear credential. Other things being equal, I hope to read at least 50 books, some of those should be in languages other than English (notably Spanish and Arabic). I want to keep reading through Hugo winners because that has been interesting so far.

My non-reading goal is to write and blog more. We'll see how that goes, too.

It begins

It should be noted by readers of this blog that I'm starting my first year of teaching on Monday. I'm a bit anxious about it but also a bit excited. We've had a lot of teacher in-service and time to prep so, in theory, I'm completely ready. In practice, well, we'll see.

So, school hasn't started but I've already received my first parent complaint. Apparently, I'm not being a "good role model" by not sitting in a chair properly during the parent orientation. I'm the first to admit that I could be unprofessional, but then again, I challenge anyone to find a comfortable position in those little, hard-backed chairs. My principal called me in to discuss it. He said, what I will generously paraphrase as, "haters gonna hate." And on the one hand, I do think it's silly to complain about a teacher in the back of the room not sitting still, it is a good reminder that teachers are constantly being scrutinized. So, fair warning. The game is afoot.

On teams, appropriateness of online learning

One of the main reasons that I wanted to do the MLIS program at San Jose State is because their program is 100% online. The thing that I've always hated most about school is always the actual, physical necessity of being in class. I felt like it would be more effective for me to just stay home and read the book. Unfortunately, many a "participation" grade prevented that. I just get really bored in an actual class, as my teaching cohort, in particular, can attest. I think that I absorb information faster than most people, so classes feel slow for me. I'm always in the back, reading a book or something in a class.

The SJSU School of Library Science has this checklist to help determine if online school is "right for you." I laughed when I read it because I am like a check + for all of those. As readers of this blog doubtless know, I'm always taking up languages and learning them on my own time. I'm (usually, barring everything in my life happening at once) really good about keeping up on them. Readers may also recall that I have tested out of language classes more than once through a self-directed summer of studying. Take that, elementary Persian.

My introductory SLIS class has a segment that is meant to prepare everyone for working in teams. Apparently, I'm not the first person to dislike teamwork. Probably the best advice from the slew of information about how not to completely fail at teams is that the group has to set up clear rules and goals at the very beginning. This is to prevent one person from doing all the work while the rest do only some work. I'm still a little skeptical about that, being someone who always does the work. I am, however, willing to give it a go. And hopefully, people at the graduate level are the sort who really have their shit together and take care of business in a team situation. We shall see.

And now for something slightly different

As usual, I have overestimated the amount of things I can do at one time. Now that I'm starting my teaching job and my MLIS (masters in library and information science for those who haven't been paying attention), I don't think I'm going to have a lot of time for language learning, and hence, blogging about language learning. However, I will definitely blog about that when I do it. For the moment, let's talk about information science.

Being the--I hesitate to say over-achiever so,--early-achiever that I am, I've already read 4 of my textbooks for this semester. I hope they aren't representative of the whole thing because, while they were interesting, I found the information fairly repetitive. The possibility exists that I am, actually, over-achieving and don't have to read the entirety of all these books. In which case, I guess it's my own fault for reading repetitive things. So far, I've read This Book is Overdue, Glut, Everything is Miscellaneous, and I'm about halfway through Ambient Findability (thank you, Kindle editions!). The first three (and to a small extent, the fourth), dealt a lot with the history of information and information management, which was interesting the first time, but less so the second and third. They all seem to use the same anecdotes as well. There's one about Borges making up a ridiculous system of categories for a Chinese emperor, which, I suppose, is used to illustrate the point that categories are only useful to us if things that make sense are grouped together and if the categories are functional. This feels self evident to me. In fact, a lot of it felt self evident to me. I guess it's because I've grown up as a "technological native," but long discussions of  the usefulness of tagging or that information is no longer limited by physical space just make me say, "duh."

I am, however, hopeful that the MLIS program will be interesting. I really like information and I am looking forward to learning how to manage it. I just hope that things get more challenging soon!

Return to Blogging

The last month has been completely insane due to my extreme efforts in getting a teaching job. I put in over 250 applications, went on around 15 interviews, and probably drove around 5,000 miles, but the good news is that I got a job and I'll be starting on August 1st. Yay! So, amid all that I had little time for language acquisition, but now I am back at it.

Let's talk about my new favorite Spanish word: vagabundear. In English, it translates to "to drift around" or "to wander, to roam." It also makes me think of the English word "vagabond," which is a word that amuses me. It kind of makes me think of gypsies. Semi-non-sequitor, when I was a kid, and walking off to the bathroom or something, my mom always used to say "don't get kidnapped by gypsies!" So, there you have it, drifting, wandering, and don't get kidnapped by gypsies.

Here's what I want to work on for this week (okay, for the rest of this week).

• Read in Spanish for at least 30 minutes every day.
• Keep building my "Spanish definish" Anki deck and review those words
• Work on Remembering the Kanji
• Listen to some Japanese Pod 101
• Do some reading in Arabic

A trip to la ciudad de mexico

The last four days, I was on vacation in Mexico City because a) I'd never been to a Spanish-speaking country before, and I knew I needed to do that before I got a job as a Spanish teacher so that I wouldn't feel like a tool b) to test out my Spanish skills c) to look at things and d) to buy handicrafts. With those objectives in mind, I'd say it was a pretty successful vacation.

This trip made me feel simultaneously good and awful about my Spanish skills, which seems paradoxical. For the most part, I understand what people are saying to me and I can respond with things that make sense. This made me feel good. I learned, however, that when people speak to me in Spanish, especially if they're saying things fast, I need an extra moment to process what's been said. Most people will assume that if you didn't respond right away, they need to repeat or rephrase what they just said, which actually does not help. I also became aware of some gaps in my vocabulary (just how does one say "I knocked it over"? Me lo cayó?). Most of my vocabulary problems are regarding what to say in everyday sorts of situations in terms of how to phrase things. I think I need to get a speaking buddy to practice these sorts of things.

The good news is that after even a few days immersed in Spanish-speaking culture, my brain is already tending more Spanish-wise. More of the thoughts in my head are in Spanish, which is awesome. I think if I spent a few months living in a Spanish-speaking country, I would get to a spoken fluency pretty quickly.

I found myself frequently comparing my experience in Mexico City with my experience in Cairo, probably because it's the main non-English speaking urban area that I've spent much time in. I am definitely more competent at Spanish on this trip than I was at Arabic on that trip, so it's interesting for me to compare the amount of effort I'm making to understand what's going on around me. I have to pay attention to what people are saying, but I'm not having a lot of acute "what the hell is going on here?" moments, like I did in Cairo. I understand all the shop signs I see. While it still takes some mental effort to understand things, I can generally understand them. Whereas when I was in Cairo, people would say things and my friends and I would all look at each other and try to puzzle out what was happening. Frequent use was made of dictionaries.

Another thing that's interesting about Mexico City is, in my opinion, it's so hard to find anything. In the US, everything is labelled very clearly. Here, you kind of have to know what you're looking for a bit better. Since the city is old and everything is kind of stacked on top of other things, a lot of shops are set back from the street and tricky to spot if you don't know they're there.

In terms of the actual vacationing part, I am kind of a low-key sight-seer. I went to the National Art Museum, the Alameda Central, and Tenotihuacan. My hotel is right next to the Zocalo, so I saw that, too. I did a lot of walking around just idly looking at things and getting a feel for the place. I'd say the highlight of the trip was definitely taking a tour to Tenotihuacan, where I climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

If you want to see the rest of the pictures, you can check out the set on my flickr.

The number 8 and other thoughts from this week

I did not do a whole lot of language stuff this week; time got away from me. Today I have been making up for that somewhat.

In Japanese, I started working on the Katakana alphabet (syllabary, if you want to be technical). It seems to have similarities with the Hiragana, but it is different enough that one actually has to learn it, rather than just guess at the characters. Katakana is used to spell out words that are borrowed, i.e. not native Japanese words. Here's what it looks like. 
I'm up to the t's, so I have a ways to go yet. I also started working on Kanji. I'm using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji I: A complete course on how not to forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese characters. The approach of this book is interesting because it focuses only on how the characters are written and what they mean and completely ignores pronunciation. In a way, this makes sense because kanji are only a written convention, not a spoken one. However, a Japanese learner must eventually integrate these skills. Today I learned the first 15 kanji in the book--there are 2,042 total. So, if I do 15 everyday, I'll be through it in about 4 months. Uh...we'll see how that goes.

Here is the entry for 'eight' from Remembering the Kanji (hereafter referred to as RTK).

What I found interesting about this entry is that it says "Just at the Arabic numeral '8' is composed of a small circle for a larger one, so the kanji for eight is composed of a short line followed by a longer line." When someone mentions "Arabic numerals," I do not think of our western numbers, I think of these:

Coincidentally, the Arabic numeral for 8 actually does resemble the Japanese 8. I think the RTK description of 8 would be hard to remember, but it did make me remember this kanji, so job well done, Remembering the Kanji!

I started using the flashcard program Anki. I downloaded a deck that corresponds to RTK, showing the kanji on one side and the meaning on the other. I also set about making a companion deck that shows the kanji on one side and the pronunciation on the other, so hopefully that is going to work well.

I have to admit that I haven't done any Spanish this week, although hopefully I'll get some done this afternoon. I have decided to start on an Akni deck of Spanish words I've alreaday learned where I have the word and its definition in Spanish. One problem I have with Spanish is that I know words in isolation, but I have a hard time going into much detail, I'm hoping this will help with that, as well as get my brain to work in Spanish better.

I'm not going to post any goals for this week, since I'm going on vacation to Mexico! I'm hoping that this will be a sort of practicum for my Spanish skills. I should return with pictures and hopefully some funny stories.

This week in language learning

This week I had some spare time because student teaching is over and I haven't gone back to work yet. So, naturally, I put my time to use for language. This pleased me.

I re-started reading Historia breve de china to work on my Spanish. The goal has been to read for about 20 minutes a day, which has worked out alright. I have the last bit of the run of Camaleones, a Mexican soap opera, on the DVR that I've been watching as well. It's kind of hard to follow because I came in halfway through the show and because the language is fairly colloquial; colloquial language is not my strong suit. I think the plan for the summer is to read a bit more non-fiction, read some narrative fiction--figurative language is always difficult--, build my vocabulary, learn some idioms, watch some TV shows. I need to find another good show to watch. Suggestions are welcome.

In regards to Japanese, I've not done a whole lot of study, but rather, I've been preparing to study. I joined JapanesePod101 with a one month subscription. Since I don't want to keep paying for the subscription, I've been systematically downloading all the podcasts with the lesson notes. I am going to have plenty of Japanese to do for some time. I worked through their "Absolute Beginner" lessons, so I've learned how to say things like "thank you" and "nice to meet you" and "This is a ___." I have the hiragana alphabet pretty down, I need to get started on the katakana now.

I'm trying to decide which materials to use to get going on my reading and writing for Japanese. I have Japanese the Manga Way, which I'm planning to start on this week. I asked the learn Japanese section of Reddit what their suggestions for learning Kanji are. There were a lot of good suggestions and I decided to order Remembering the Kanji, which apparently is quite a good book for learning to read kanji. I've also been looking at Kanji Damage, which is a really amusing way to be introduced to kanji. It has hilarious example sentences and breaks things down really well.

One of my current questions about learning kanji is how does one look them up? It can't possibly be alphabetical look-up because if you don't know the symbol, you won't know what it the phonemes are either. Hopefully, I'll have the answer for this next time!

I'm trying out a flashcard program called Anki. It uses a spaced repetition system of reviewing vocabulary. You can either make your own set of flashcards, or download a set of cards that other people have made. There are a ton of sets for Japanese and for kanji, which look super useful. I also downloaded one that says it has the 10,000 most common Spanish words, so we'll see how that one goes.

Here's what needs to happen in the next week or so:

• Learn katakana
• Read something in Spanish 20 minutes a day
• Start learning some new Spanish vocab
• Keep going with the JapanesePod lessons.
• Start on Japanese the Manga Way.
• Find out how kanji is listed in a dictionary!

A love song for linguists

Well, this is pretty awesome.

Diacritics in Hiragana, scheduling

I've continued working on my Japanese a bit this week, despite the business of circus and the end of student teaching (woo!). I got through the main letters of the hiragana syllabary and then started working on the voiced sounds. This is something really interesting. Japanese has a couple of diacritics, one is two lines that look like a quotation mark (colloquially called 'ten ten') and another is a circle (colloquially called 'maru'). The presence of these diacritics indicate that the sounds should be voiced--in most cases. Actually, I should be more specific. Since the Japanese "letters" are mostly syllables in CV (consonant, vowel) form, the consonant is either voiced or unvoiced. Vowels are, obviously, voiced. So here are the unvoiced and voiced sounds. 

With the diacritics the syllables starting with /k/ now start with /g/, /s/ to /z/, /t/ to /d/. These changes make linguistic sense. Unvoiced stops and fricatives are changing to their voiced counterparts. The crazy part is when we want to make syllables starting with /b/ and /p/. For one /p/ is not a voiced sound, and its voiced counterpart would be /b/. In any case, these are bilabial sounds, so we might expect them to be related to the /m/ set of syllables, but they're not! Rather, both come from the /h/ line of syllables. I guess this is just one more example of language being arbitrary.

As I mentioned last week, I started using Japanesepod 101. It seems pretty good. I've been making frequent use of the hiragana symbols quiz thing; it shows you a letter and you have to name it. I've only listened to a couple of podcasts (I can now say, "hello, nice to meet you."), which were pretty accessible. All of the podcasts have "lesson notes" with them that have transcripts and grammar notes. They also have kanji notes available for each lesson. The notes are for paid subscribers, so I decided to subscribe for a month. I noticed that you can download everything when you are a subscriber. So, being cheap, I have been systematically downloading all the content so that I won't have to keep paying for it. Go loopholes.

I've been trying to work out how I want to schedule my language studying time for the next while. It's necessary for me to have some kind of schedule. In the past, I have usually decided what to do by saying "I have to do X things today." However, that slowly drives me mad since I can't always get through everything, things take different amounts of time, I end up focusing on the wrong sorts of activities, etc. I think I need to make a time schedule. Right now, I'm leaning towards doing something like this on weekdays, weekends are kind of a melee for whatever I feel like doing:

• One hour of Japanese. Since it's new, I need to work on it a bit more for now
• At least 30 minutes of Spanish, probably in reading and watching TV (news, telenovelas)
• 30 minutes of Arabic: a bit of everything. Maybe vocab one day, reading, listening and then reading again.
• French? I'm thinking about doing 15 minutes a day or just something small to keep going with it. Probably in the form of listening to podcasts (yay for the internet).

I'm hoping this will work. In reality, I'll probably end up doing more than this, since I'll be working a boring job all summer where there's very little to do. So, we'll see how it goes!

New blog, starting Japanese

So, this is the new blog wherein I discuss all the language acquisition stuff that I do. For now, you can expect to hear about me starting out with Japanese, getting better at Spanish with particular focus on figurative language and conversational skills, improving my Arabic, and maybe starting up again with French (if not that, then just listening to French techno). There will be talk of what I'm doing, what I've learned, and probably lots of other bits and pieces.

I've decided to start learning Japanese with the goal of teaching English in Japan after two or so years. Right now I'm working on learning the alphabets, or more accurately, syllabaries. The Japanese writing system includes Katakana, which is used for words taken from languages other than Chinese, Hiragana is for other phonetic writing. There is also Kanji, which are symbols that are not written phonetically and which represent words/morphemes.

For the moment, I'm mostly just working on learning the Hiragana. I've been using A Guide to Learning  Hiragana & Katakana. It's been useful, but I don't think they really give you enough space to practice.

And for the curious, here is a chart that shows all the Hiragana.

I feel pretty ready to get going on learning some actual words, but I know it's best to wait until I have this down at least. I think while I get the rest of the letters down, I'm going to start on some listening stuff. I heard that Japanesepod 101 is quite useful, so I'm going to try that out.