Friday, August 29, 2014

Every Day & Comfortable Confusion

Gabe Wyner has written a book and has a website and other tools to help people become 'Fluent Forever'. I am slowly making my way through the material each day targeting French to try and break me out of my monolingualism (my Afrikaans is too much in need of resuscitation to count). I am still very much in the confused state. Wyner came to language through his love for music (he is an Opera singer) and the approach using the door of sound and recall (recognising rather than memorising) fascinates me. While the tools are helpful, my impatient Rider has to be constantly reminded to breathe and be kind to my Elephant. Gaining comfort with confusion seems to be essential in picking up new skills. I also think regularity is important. I have been busy teaching two Yoga courses at the moment. One finishes today (Yoga 1) and another finished on Tuesday (Yoga 2). The Yoga 2 course was once a week. The Yoga 1 course for complete beginners has been every day for 4 days. Both courses had 4 installments. It is incredible seeing the difference in progress between the two classes. Elephants seem to have weak short term memories, but if you give them regular, kind attention guiding them through their confusion - they never forget. That's the theory - and if true, hopefully my Elephant will slowly make more sense of Wyner's video below.

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