Making use of “Hidden moments” 16 May 2007

Mark is an English language teacher in Taiwan who’s learning Chinese (Mandarin). Recently, he blogged about a good way he’s found for learning languages. See his post here.

The trick is to use those short periods of time you have everyday when you can’t do much anyway (such as when you’re travelling to school). I think his method can be easily adapted to learning English, at least here in Singapore.

1. Get a copy of a free newspaper, like Today.

2. Read an interesting article (just part of it if it’s long). Highlight the difficult words and put them on cards (flash cards), with the definitions on the back. Remember to include the English definitions too, if you want to use translations. You can put other information, like pronunciation, grammar, examples, etc., if you’ve got a good dictionary. Mark puts 5 words on each card, but it’s up to you how many you want to put on yours. You may not be able to squeeze much in if you’ve got a lot of information for each word.

3. The next day, bring your flashcard(s) out with you, so that you can use it for revision while travelling on the bus or MRT. Test yourself by only looking at the words and trying to remember their definitions. Then flip the card over to check if you’ve got it right.

4. When you get home, read the same article again (it should be easier now), and the rest of the article if you haven’t finished it.

• At times when you can’t read (e.g. when you’re walking, or doing housework, or travelling on the bus - personally, reading on the bus makes me feel sick), listen to mp3 recordings (e.g. podcasts) for English language learners, or just any English language recording (e.g. radio programmes) available on mp3. I think most of you will have a portable mp3 player. I’ve listed a few websites on this blog where you can download suitable recordings, and I will continue to blog about them as I find more.

Try it and let me know how it works for you!