Mountain Climbing vs. Hiking

Many times I ask the question, "What did you do in the weekend?"
I get varied answers but a common one is "I went mountain hiking"

WOW, awesome, adventurous and outgoing. Not what I expected at all.

Unfortunately my student didn't really go mountain climbing. PaShan

Pa = climb
Shan  = Mountain

Ok, so that's the literal translation. But not the correct activity in English.

You would have gone hiking. I.e. you walked up/around a mountain. Mountain climbing is when you climb Mt. Everest, you might have to do some rock climbing too. (This is not exactly true when talking about the mountains in south america as they're not so steep so you can hike up them, but they are so high, you'd definately say it's mountain climbing)

If you and your family friends are walking around Yangminshan, or Gushan et.al. then you'd be hiking.

I when hiking around GuShan on Saturday with my family. We saw some monkeys.

Personally I hate hiking. Why? Because I had to do it all the time when I was in Elementary and Junior High School. Hiking in the forest...again. Oh look, a tree, a bird...again!

Mountain biking might be more my cup of tea.

Would you like to go mountain climbing? Or simply go hiking?

How to learn new vocabulary?

A common question, a common problem.

I can't remember the vocabulary! Don't worry, you're not alone. Me too! I can't remember all the Chinese words I'm trying to learn.

But try this. Actually use the new vocabulary and use it as much as possible over the next couple of days.
It's not enough just to understand this word means this. It's better to learn the new words in context, i.e. as it's used, either in a book, article or conversation.

Example.
Diaphanous

During summer many ladies wear a diaphanous top over their t-shirt. It's more fashionable, protects their skin from direct sunlight, yet allows air to easily pass through keeping her cool.

"She was wearing a diaphanous shirt so I could see what she was wearing underneath!"

Now, from these two examples, what do you think diaphanous means? Guess!

I hope you guessed. If you guessed something like see-through, transparent you are correct.
Now you have to use it!

Do you have any diaphanous clothing? (When you answer make sure you use the vocabulary word!)
   - Yes, I have a pink diaphanous shirt.

Now when you're walking down the street, or riding your scooter, and you see someone wearing a diaphanous top, say to yourself, "Ahh, that top is very diaphanous" Do this for a few days and congratulations, diaphanous, is now a part of your vocabulary.

Now do this for all your other vocab words. If this can work for a word that most native English speakers don't know, it can work for any other word too!

The Importance of Reviewing

Depending on your point of view regarding the acquisition of another language, successful learning can be attributed to a number of factors. Materials studied. Appropriate level of said material. Teaching style/method and effectiveness of it with regards to the students learning style. Frequency of lessons. Comprehension of material and ability to practice it in class.

All of these have to do with the class itself. If a class is once or twice a week the opportunity to learn new material and practice it is quite small/short for the material to be a real part of a students skill set.

I know.

This term in the English language encompasses a wide range of 'knowing'. The Greek language has two words for what we say in English 'know'.

Oida
Ginosko

Ginosko is more like an objective knowledge or mental understanding of what is going on.
Oida is a subjective knowledge which is acquired from experience.

I believe from our own consideration, forgetting our experiences of getting kissed the first time is much harder than forgetting what Miss Monteith taught us in Physics class last Wednesday afternoon.

Learning or understanding objectively (ginosko) English material isn't really that hard. Actually using it effectively in either daily conversation, writing emails etc. is another matter entirely. So how do we get our new information from something we know (ginosko) to something we know (oida).

This is not totally analogous to a discussion about how to transfer information from our short term memory to long term memory yet it does share some similarities, but simply knowing something (ginosko) and being able to recall it from our long term memory still does not give us what many commonly consider fluency. Consider your own native tongue. We really don't 'think' about what we are going to say, we just say it. The words are just magically there (unless we are thinking of a particularly elusive/difficult word). How does this happen. Well, I think a lot of us make a mistake in considering what language is. Is it a subject or a skill? Objectively it's a subject, so we have to study it. Subjectively it's a skill, so we need to practice it. It's at this point we as English Instructors fail our students.

Our classes, teaching methodology, materials may be off the hook fantastic, our students can leave the class with 100% comprehension of all the new stuff they learned. 100% ginosko. Use this new material next week in a conversation with a new client... and it's at this point, this juncture I say, Reviewing is the real key to acquiring language skill. It's reviewing that takes I know (ginosko) to I know (oida).

A big hurdle to overcome is that reviewing or practicing the same stuff over and over is boring. At a university setting the students would complain to the Dean that they're not learning anything new. In a private business setting, students would just drop out of class. So just like any business the old (many would argue erroneous, myself included) phrase the customer is always right, needs to be changed to 'the customer needs to be educated'.

Students need to understand how pivotal and vital it is to review material. To practice it repeatedly until it IS second nature to just 'say it like that' without thinking. Only then with their English skills really start to take off. Teaching ginosko is easy. Encouraging students to spend the time, everyday to practice and review material for it to become oida is the hard part.

The tragedy is that reviewing/practicing class material takes all of 5min a day and would save hours and hours of having to repeat the same material a few months or years later because their ginosko is gone and their oida just never happened.

Taking a page from long term/short term memory discussions, the first review of material must take place the next day (24hrs). It the first 24hrs that are the most critical for memory retention. Next a few days later and then 1 week later, or thereabouts. But, nothing will beat review/practicing material everyday.