A Busy Month and Russian Begins

I just returned from a performance in Toronto on Saturday which, to me, was one of my most complete performances to date.  I didn't do everything technically perfectly, but I was able to get my voice to do what I wanted it to to portray the character I was playing.  I was doing a "New Opera" workshop with Tapestry Opera and met a lot of talented and was impressed with how relevant contemporary opera has made the art form.  The topics ranged from drug use to family relations through divorce and just about everything in between.  One of the wonderful things about doing contemporary opera in your native tongue is the immediacy of the music and text.  The entire audience seemed to relate literally to every scene.  This workshop gave me a new appreciation for contemporary opera and I look forward to delving into this repertoire more in the future.

Immediately following my time in Toronto, I went to Indianapolis for an audition and am now preparing to go back down to NYC for another audition.  I also have to make a video recording for another audition and am continuing to work on new repertoire for next season.  Upcoming, I will be performing at a benefit concert and also performing my annual recital at my church in Rochester.  This year's theme for my recital is Spirituals and Contemporary American Song, somewhat keeping in the theme from my time at Toronto.

After a month of debate and thinking I have decided to continue forward with my language learning, instead of cycling back around.  This past weekend I began my Russian studies.  I am starting with Michel Thomas, which is a great introduction into the language.  I also have started listening to some Russian talk radio using my TuneIn radio app on my phone when I am in areas that have wi-fi (work).  In March I plan to start using LingQ to get some more input and begin learning words and familiarizing myself with structure.

I decided to continue forward because I have started looking at Russian repertoire in my singing and I have found that I sing better when I understand the language I am singing in, even if it is at a basic level.  I do need to go back and bring my other languages up to their next respective level, but I feel that getting a basic working knowledge of Russian is more important than bringing my other languages to higher levels of fluency at this point.  I will keep you all updated as I move forward.

Halfway Through!

I am about halfway through my Kickstarter campaign at this point and I have reached 34% of my goal!  This is great news!  The unfortunate news is that I seem to have stagnated in my fund raising.  For this reason, I am starting my blog post this month with a plea to my readership; please consider helping me reach my goal.  If everyone can simply pledge $10 I will easily make my goal in time.  That is the price of only 2 lattes!  So, please help me attain my goal!

Click here to jump to my Kickstarter page!

In other news, I have a benefit event for the Cadenza Workshop that I am singing at the Saturday in Buffalo, NY.  On this program I am singing one aria and one duet with the program director, which is slightly intimidating.  I have prepared well, but I am going through some vocal difficulties which may be due to allergies.  Regardless I will do my best and give it my all.

A couple of weeks after this event, I have a recital on June 29 back home in Rochester.  This was originally going to be a fund raiser, but due to some conflicts that is no longer the case; the recital will function as a thank you to all those who have donated to my Kickstarter, which ends the night prior to the recital.  CD's will be available of this recital and can be reserved by donating $25 to the Kickstarter campaign.

Immediately following the holiday in July, I will begin my two programs for this summer.  I am a little overwhelmed with the amount of music I have had to learn, but I feel like I am in a good place and will be well prepared by the time I get to my first program on July 7.

Spanish is coming along slowly; I am attempting to get more consistent about working on the language including listening to a Spanish Pandora station.  I am not sure how much this actively helps me, but it does reinforce the things I do know when I am consciously paying attention to them.  I have noticed that I am beginning to understand more spoken and written word in Spanish, and I give LingQ all the credit for enabling that to happen.  For such a simple, and somewhat controversial system, it really does produce measurable results in language learning in a relatively short amount of time.  I suggest everyone check it out!

Thank you to all of you who have donated thus far to my Kickstarter campaign!  Your support is much appreciated.  Again I beg everyone else to please pledge to enable me to get my singing career off the ground, $10 from everyone will make my goal achievable.

3 MONTH CHALLENGE!

Those of you who read other language blogs probably know about Benny and his "Three Month Challenges."  This is my first attempt at a three month challenge and it will be an intensive focus on Spanish.  Spanish is my language for this year anyway, but I have a good motivation for the next three months (OK, really 11 weeks, but it's close enough).  For the July 4th holiday, I will be spending time with my wife's best friend and family.  Her husband is from El Salvador, and they live in a city where Spanish is nearly the primary language.  I figure I will use this opportunity and present myself with a challenge to prepare me for the trip.  My plan is to upgrade my Spanish from where it is now, about B1, to C1 level in the next 11 weeks.  How will I do this?

It is going to require me to up my learning pace and take myself out of my comfort zone.  I am going to need to use Spanish as much as possible in the next three months and make my environment a Spanish language zone.  I have already begun to do this by switching my iPhone and computer over to Spanish.  The second step for me is to change my audio input from English to Spanish.  I can easily do this through my TuneIn radio app while I am at work, but I face some challenges in the car because there is no full-time Spanish radio station in my city.  I also have Spotify, so if you have any good Spanish language music to recommend, please do!  I am also going to raise my work output on LingQ to at least four pomodoros a day, which equates to about two hours of reading and listening daily.  Realistically, I only study five days a week, but by increasing the aforementioned areas of my life, I should be able to expose my self to Spanish approximately nine hours a day.  This is a good start, but I'm not done.  I also need to add more speaking to my weekly routine, so I will attempt to speak with people who I know speak Spanish more regularly and force myself to stay in Spanish even when I am struggling.  If I do all of these things, I believe I can reach my goal.

Musically, I have a busy month.  I am currently in rehearsal for two different shows that I am in.  After that I am hoping to attend a summer program which should put me on the right path to finding more work next audition season.  I have had some exciting things happening in my voice and I feel myself growing in confidence every time I perform.

2012 in Review, and a Look Ahead!

I have decided this year to go down to one post per month here.  This way, my posts should be of a little more substance.  This post is going to be my year in review post, with a brief update on this year, as well.

This past year has been one of great growth vocally.  I have become completely comfortable in the tenor tessitura, although the high notes do still give me some trouble in performance, due to nerves.  I have built a reliable Ab and A natural in the last year, and I am working currently on solidifying my Bb and working towards the B natural.  Every day I feel things becoming more and more comfortable and I am beginning to identify with my tenor voice.  The fruits of this year have represented themselves through my first contracted role, a comprimario role which I will be singing in March with Rochester Lyric Opera.

This summer I will be moving out of the Rochester area in search of more opportunities for both me and my wife.  In preparation for this move, I will be planning and performing a recital in the late spring or early summer.  I have not yet decided what the repertoire will be, but I am leaning towards a mixed program of predominantly French and German repertoire, with some Italian thrown in to pay tribute to the area of Rochester I live in, which is practically all Italian.

My year of German was ultimately a success, too.  I did not get to the level that I was hoping to in the language, but I do feel comfortable in basic day-to-day conversation and feel that I would be able to get around the country were I to go there tomorrow.

This was my first language I had studied without any prior knowledge, and I feel that my method worked very well.  I have found that it is difficult for me to keep up my studies as consistently as is necessary to really achieve fluency in a year.  This is in part due to my schedule and the fact that most of my studying was happening while I was at work between the hours of three and five in the morning.  A number of times, it was too difficult to stay awake while studying at this time of day, and this ultimately led me to days and weeks where I would not study.  I also found that I do not need to invest in the products I was investing in to learn a language.  I am convinced that I can achieve my desired level in a language simply by using LingQ and speaking with anyone I come across who happens to speak my target language.  This combination of input and output simultaneously has been extremely useful to me and I believe this is how I will approach the rest of my language studies.

This year, my mission is to reactivate and improve my Spanish language skills.  I studied Spanish for three years in high school and was fairly comfortable speaking with my friend from the Dominican my first years of college.  I have since not really used the language much.  While my Spanish is still passable because of my Italian and English, I would like to become more comfortable in the language so that I may use it to my advantage in the day job market.

My goal for this year is to learn 8,000 words of Spanish on LingQ and reach a high-intermediate level in the language.  In following the 1.6 ratio I have discussed before, this would translate to about 5,000 word families known.  In order to give a better idea of this level, the average native English speaker knows approximately 17,000 word families; so this will get me about a third of the way to native fluency, and should make me very comfortable in the language, assuming I speak as much as I should with friends and at meetups, etc.

This is going to be a very challenging year for me, but I look forward to it.  I anticipate a lot of growth this year, both in my language abilities and in my singing and performing.

Nearing the end of the year of German!

As I move through the midway point of December, I have successfully increased my intensity with my German studies.  I am up over 3300 words known at this point, and may have a shot at 4000 by the end of the month if I can keep up the pace.  I find German flowing through my brain a little bit easier and I am thinking about trying to get to one of the last meetups for the German group here in town to test my level.  

My singing has had ups and downs this month.  I sang for a number of events at church that ranged from going really well to me struggling with similar issues that I did in my auditions.  I am currently succumbing to the cold that generally marks the end of the holiday season and, with the exception of a family funeral I am singing tomorrow, have placed myself on vocal rest so that I can make it through the Christmas mass schedule next week.  My final blog post of the year will be a review of the last year and a preview to the coming year's plans.  Have a blessed Christmas!

Persistance means progress

I'm a week late in writing this because I have been busy preparing for auditions and my wedding.  I currently am dealing with being frustrated with my singing, which is always a great place to be in a month before auditions.  I realized however after comparing clips from practice sessions a month ago to more current sessions that I have indeed made considerable progress in the last month.  In discussing this with JRL when I last saw him, he made mention that I probably get frustrated because I get to a plateau of sorts after about a month of work on my own.  Upon my comparison I can say that this is unequivocally the case.  It is not that I cease to improve, but that the work becomes more difficult as I reach a higher level in my singing.  I feel well-prepared going into this audition season and am very excited about the prospect of finally get out and singing again!

I have been doing well with my German as of late as well.  I have progressed well into the active wave of Assimil and am making better progress in LingQ as time goes on.  I still have a lot of work to do to reach my goal in LingQ of knowing at least 7,000 words by the end of December, but if I can continue on the trajectory I am currently on, I think I will make it.  I have found a challenge in the active wave of Assimil that I also ran into with French.  As the lessons progress I seem to get more and more things incorrect.  I figure that this is not a big deal, since for me the more important thing is the input and output, not the exactness of my answers.  I'm learning even in making corrections to what I originally write.  I see now the value some people find in going back and doing the active wave multiple times, although I would worry that at some point it becomes a thoughtless exercise rather than an active process.  Perhaps with ample time in between repetitions this can be avoided.

First roles!

Tonight I sang through my first two roles as a tenor.  Overall I did fairly well, I had some issues in Rinuccio but I made it through, survived as it were.  I discovered some challenges that I was already vaugely aware of, and I found some things to be very pleased with.  I did record my Rinuccio and I may try to take out some of the more encouraging clips to post for your listening, ahem, pleasure.  Next I have to begin looking at some programs to audition for and also start learning two more roles, in case I get asked to sing them in the next year:  Il Duca and Tamino.  These two roles are challenging in different ways and it will be interesting learning them both somewhat simultaneously.  Also, I have to learn one more aria for my audition package and work very hard to make everything considerably more comfortable before I actually get to auditions.

German is coming along well.  I am now coming into a more comfortable place and find myself able to think in German fairly aptly.  I am about a week away from beginning the active phase of Assimil and am slowly building my passive vocabulary the LingQ.  My next task is to start engaging in more German conversation and try to activate some of the passive vocabulary that I have gained.  I think that I now can focus a little bit more on German since these roles are over.

Language Leap!

I am a little over a quarter of the way through my German year and I have made a considerable leap in my ability to express myself in the last couple of weeks.  I had a similar thing occur in French last year, where all of sudden the language began to flow from me with a lot less hindrance.  There are obviously still holes in my vocabulary, however I have discovered that I can now carry on conversations beyond mere greetings and niceties.  I'm not exactly sure what the turning point was for me and I wish I had kept a better catalog of hours spent working in the language so that I could possibly start to formulate a theory on the relationship between time and achievement.  My estimate is about five hours of Michel Thomas, eight hours of Assimil and 10 hours on LingQ.  So that is really only about 23 hours, not including time spent talking to myself and others, time spent watching movies and listening to the radio.  Truthfully though, this is a very small amount of time and I wish I had more time to devote to learning the language.  If I could devote this much time into my week instead of over the last three and a half months I can only imagine how strong my German would be come December 31, 2012!  Unfortunately I do not have four hours a day to devote to language learning so I have to do the best I can with the time I have.  I imagine that I will be able to add German to my list of spoken languages by August; then I would like to amp up my workload to really achieve fluency by the end of the year.

I have been having some struggles lately with my voice.  These challenges are things of my own doing, but they are very annoying nonetheless.  It is especially frustrating because I had such a great lesson a couple of months ago and I feel like I have done the two steps forward, one step back thing in the last couple of weeks.  I am beginning to pull myself out of these issues, but it appears that it is going to take me longer to recover from than it did to fall into.  There are some positives though, I still have built my strength up some as I am now able to sing a fairly consistent A4 ever without warming up (I don't do this often).  Overall it is important to continue to look at the positive movements that are happening and use those to get through the troublesome times.

Adapting the Learning Process

I am getting back in the swing of things somewhat with German over the past couple of weeks.  I have been really good about doing my Michel Thomas, however I have not touched Assimil in over a month.  I think that I have subconsciously decided that I will move on to Assimil after I have finished the MT.  In truth this is probably a good thing because it will give me something to do the second half of the year in addition to LingQ.  I am currently debating whether to go back to the beginning of Assimil, or just pick up where I left off.  In my split second decision making process I just went through I will pick up where I left off.  The last two weeks have been particularly good for my LingQ work.

It never ceases to amaze me the way that we continue to adapt and evolve the longer we work on a specific task.  In the case of LingQ I have just recently modified my approach and find that I am getting a lot more out of the program this way.  Before, I went through a three step cycle which was laid out this way:

1.) Listen without reading

2.) Read without listening

3.) Listen and read simultaneously

This way served me well and I thought that this way I could train my listening separate from my reading and visa-versa.  I recently though began listening and reading all three times through a passage and have found that my comprehension overall has grown markedly.  This should not surprise me since the creator of LingQ, Steve Kaufmann, says that you should never read without listening, nor should you listen without reading in the early stages.  The more surprising thing to me is that my brain spontaneously decided to try this approach seemingly out of the blue.  I am currently creeping in on 1500 words known, which is well behind my goal, but I am still happy with progress of any kind.

Vocally, I have had a similar epiphany in the last week.  It has been about a month since my last lesson with JRL and I decided one day last week to listen to the recording of my lesson.  At first I did not really think I was going to gain much other than some reinforcement of the things I was already doing.  After going through the recording I was amazed at some of the things that I had let slip in the last month.  My practice the rest of the week was great and I felt like I made some very big steps forward, all because I listened to a recording of my lesson.  

This was a big time for me in learning how to better learn.  Sometimes progress may come in different areas than you expect, however it will ultimately lead you to your end goal.

Big Progress!

I had my first lesson in quite a while this past Friday with Jean-Ronald LaFond.  My lesson this time around was one of discovery and great advancement for my part.  During the course of the lesson I felt myself singing in a way I never had before and I liked it.  It was a great experience for me and we even talked about me doing auditions in the fall if I can get a few more things to line up vocally.  Since I've been home, I have continued to work with the new concepts I was given and can employ them fairly well in my vocalises (at least I think I do), however I am struggling to put these things through into my repertoire work.  This is especially frustrating since I was singing so well at my lesson.  I chalk up my difficulties to the fact that I am not in front of JRL receiving guidance as I am singing.  I will ultimately figure out how to incorporate and synthesize these concepts into my singing and know that if I continue with the work ethic I have been developping that I will be fine.

Linguistically, however, is a different story.  I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time.  This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study.  I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study.  This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop.  Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings.  Again my mantra is, as always:  Slow and steady wins the race.

Back from the abyss

I had a rough week last week in German.  I was very busy at work and very tired when I wasn't busy, so I was not able to do much.  Life is a little bit easier this week though and I have got back into my routine, thankfully.  The advantage with French was that I had a base in the language prior to my intensive work.  While I am not progress at the same rate in German, I do still have somewhat of a base in the language due to being a native English speaker.  There are a vast number of German words which change pronunciation from English very predictably, which makes learning those words vastly easier than a language that doesn't share common roots.

In general, it is said that the more languages you know the easier it is to learn more.  I see this more and more as I progress through languages.  Not only do your methods of learning become more efficient, but the shared vocabulary among the world's languages provides a wonderful base to springboard off of.

I just barely crossed over the 1,000 word mark on LingQ and hope to add about 500 words to that total this week.  The difficult thing about LingQ at this point in my learning is that there are so many words I don't know that I get easily frustrated at how long it takes to get through one story, so I end up only doing one story a day, which does not help my word count.

In other news, I am finally going to get down for a lesson on the 17th of this month.  It has been a long while since my last lesson and I am anxious to see how my progress measures up.  I find myself often frustrated that I am not progressing at a faster pace, but constantly have to remind myself that quality takes time and that if I trust the process it will work for me.  There have been great steps forward in the last few weeks with certain "problem" arias falling into place and feeling comfortable as well as new arias beginning to show signs of growth as well.  Hopefully this will continue into my lesson and I can continue to grow towards being YAP audition ready in the fall, which is my goal.

Two weeks in... Impatience

I am just over two weeks in to my German studies, and thus far am pretty much on track.  I am a little behind on my LingQ work, about 300 words, but I am not terribly worried about it, I figure it will all come out in the wash at the end.  As I mentioned before this is the first language I am learning on my own, completely from scratch.  I have noticed that I have the tendency to get slightly impatient with my learning curve, chastising myself for not being able to say more.  Then I remind myself that I am only two weeks in and have another eleven and a half months to go, thusly I should not worry.  I can already have some basic conversations and text messages with my German speaking friends.

One thing I have discovered about going at this completely on my own is that it is a little overwhelming at first knowing absolutely nothing and just throwing yourself in the deep end.  I am slowly picking up more and more things every day and I am near 1,000 known words on LingQ.  Overall I am comfortable with where I am and feel like I am on a good pace at this point.

I have not written anything about my vocal journey in a while.  The fact is that I do not have much to report.  I continue to progress towards my goal of being able to sing tenor repertoire comfortably and convincingly.  I was supposed to have a lesson yesterday, however those plans fell through, so I now am looking forward to February and my next potential lesson.  There have been some important milestones in my singing though in my time between lessons.  The most important one being that more of my top notes have begun to show glimpses of themselves to me when singing.  I am still struggling with endurance however.  I sense that this will be a very important year for my singing career, one way or the other.

Der Plan

As we have started a new year, I have already put in two days of study on my new language for the year, German.  I figure I would outline my basic plan for the year with regards to my acquisition of German.

Resources:
     German with Michel Thomas
     German with Ease by Assimil
     German on LingQ

In general, my goal is to spend ten hours a week studying German over the course of the next year.  As I do not study on my days off from work, that equates to 2 hours a day, 5 days a week.  I will go through one lesson/track per working day with MT and Assimil.  On LingQ, I plan to add approximately 100 known words to my vocabulary every working day.  This is a little bit slower of a pace than I would like on LingQ, but I think it is the best plan for the amount of time I have available to devote to this study.  As I go along I will have to read more and more material to acquire 100 new known words, so ultimately my exposure will grow exponentially as I become more accustomed to the language.

On the side, I plan to watch a German movie every month and listen to some German radio programming every week.  Also, I am going to start praying the Rosary in German and hopefully I will get to the point where I can spontaneously pray in German by the end of the year.  I also have a number of friends and acquaintances who speak German, so I will be practicing my spoken German from a very early stage, as soon as I start to know some more relevant material than:  Der Tee ist kalt.

Based on my previous work in French, I anticipate that I will get to a pretty comfortable place with German by the summer, at which point I will have finished both MT and Assimil.  The rest of my year in German will be spent focusing on listening comprehension and vocabulary building through LingQ.

German does present me with some challenges, the most striking one being that I have practically no previous coursework or study of the language outside of the one month I studied it last year.  With both French and Italian I had taken actual classes prior to my self-study, so I had a little bit of a head-start.  I am excited to see how I do with my first completely self-taught language and hope to be able to use this working plan as model for my future languages.

End of September/Beginning of October

It has been a bit since I last wrote here.  Some good things have happened on both the language and singing fronts, as well as some discouraging things.  In my language work I have begun reading Les Fables de la Fontaine which are mostly on my level.  I find that the hard thing with reading is that though I know the words I'm reading, I often miss the actual context of the story.  I figure that this is similar to listening comprehension and the practice will ultimately make things clearer as well as fill in the holes in my vocabulary.  I have unfortunately been rather lax in my other forms of study.  I have recently picked back up on Michel Thomas, but as of yet have not gotten back into my Assimil work in about two weeks.  I have every intention of working on it again tonight though!

In other news, I feel that I am to the point now where I can actually begin to call myself a tenor.  For the last month and a half or so I have been working on the Duke's arias from Rigoletto by Verdi.  These arias have stretched me and almost forced my voice to work in a different way than it has in the past.  In the last couple of days my Bb4 has really come into its own and the B4 is not far behind.  I am looking forward to the few weeks, during which time I am hoping to have a few lessons, some coachings and even participate in a recital (my first as a tenor)!

The only discouraging part of my singing life currently has been this week.  My voice has been feeling different this week and certain things that were relatively secure before are not this week, while other things that were not present before are now starting to present themselves.  I assume that this is just some of the growing pains in the process and am not terribly worried by them though.  I'm hoping to get back into being slightly more regular with my updates here, but with the holidays quickly approaching we'll see what the reality of that is.

Mid-September Update

Je pense que je vais ecrire un post en français.  Cette semaine etais un peu agaçant pour moi parce que moi et ma fiancée sommes malades.  Parce que-là, je n'avait pas pratiqué.  Je n'aime pas perdre les temps et je ne peux pas attendre commencer encore.

En autre information, je commence ecouter de la radio française.  Le meilleur problem pour moi est l'audition; je peux lire et parle, mais je ne peux pas bien ecouter.  Etrange, non?  Maintenant, j'ecoute à France info de Paris.  J'espere que je peux amèliorer mon compréhension à l'audition devant l'année finit.


*I welcome any corrections, as always.  An English translation is below for those who would prefer not to read French.


I think that I will write a post in French.  This week has been a little annoying for me because me and my fiancée are sick.  Because of this, I have not practiced.  I do not like losing the time and I cannot wait to start again.

In other news, I am beginning to listen to French radio.  The biggest problem for me is listening; I can read and write, but I cannot listen well.  Strange, no?  Currently, I am listening to France info from Paris.  I hope that I can improve my listening comprehension before the end of the year.

It Is the Process That Is Important

I have halted my Arabic studies for the time being.  I burned myself out right around the 60 day mark.  Even though I am burned out on Arabic, I am still very excited to get back to Italian, and I may even start working on Italian again earlier than I had prescribed.

Vocally things are going very well.  Singing above the staff gets easier and easier as the weeks go by.

Methodology Minute


In all skill areas there are generally different methods which are touted by different people, all claiming that theirs is the best and/or only way to learn.  These beliefs can, and often do, lead to arguments or at the very least heated discussions.  I am going to fly in the face of these people today and say that at the beginning of one's study, any method will work.  Until a person reaches a level where they need to begin to refine their skill the act of doing something will achieve results.  If we are discussing this in terms of language study, there are hundreds of books, CDs and software programs available targeted at beginners.  Any of these will give the learner an insight into the language of choice and any one will get them to at least an upper beginner level of use in the language.

At the beginning of studies, the most important thing is exposure to the language.  Once the learner has a strong grasp of the basics of the language, then they can begin to direct their studies toward their particular weaknesses.  A person does not know what their weaknesses are until they can at least use the language somewhat.  Personally, I have used different resources to begin my studies on every language I have worked on.  What I have come away with is that as long as I have something to look through and study I have progressed to a similar point in every single language.  So my advice is to find inexpensive resources at first for your language studies, once you understand what your weaknesses are, then you can begin to delve into the wealth of strategies that abound for language acquisition.

This also can be applied to other skill areas as well.  In most skills, the basics are the same across the board so learn the basics the least expensive way possible.  Then it will be possible for you to refine your skills with the best resources available later on.

الهربة - الأسبوع 2

This week was a good week and a somewhat frustrating week all in one.  It started out really well, but the last few days I have not studied as much as I would have liked.  I have valid reasons for this, however it is still annoying after putting in so much consistent time to have a skid of any degree.  Despite this, I had a realization last night - I believe that I may be able to eclipse my initial goal for Arabic by the end of this first month.  This is great, but requires me to come up with a new set of goals for the additional two months I have to work on this language.  Luckily, I discovered these checklists which outline very specifically what is contained in each respective level and I will use them to set my short and long term goals for each language.  I am using the CEFR guidelines because they are more universal.

I do not have much to say about my vocal progress.  There were two observations this week:

1.)  I vocalized a full voiced B-flat in my exercises that felt like it was a part of my voice.

2.)  I have noticed a generally more heady feel to my singing, however upon checking I still have chest resonance throughout most of my range (including increased resonance in the lower range).

Methodology Minute


There are many people who are very input focused when it comes to learning a language who are very successful.  I'm not saying that I am necessarily one of them, however I do feel that native input is important.  In our current society, this exposure to native input is easier than it has ever been.

The internet provides a language learner all of the possibilities to immerse him/herself in a language as a vacation does all within the comfort of his/her own home.  A particular site that I have been using for almost a year now which is fabulous is RadioTime.  As the name suggests, this site provides access to radio stations all over the world in just about any language that radio is produced.  Additionally, RadioTime has an app which I use on my Palm Pre when I am driving, so that I can listen to as much native radio programming as possible.

Second, just this morning I discovered wwiTV which provides T.V. programming from around the world.  I have not really used it much yet, but am looking forward to it very much.

Finally, there is the wonder that is Skype.  With Skype it is possible to video chat with people from around the world thus giving a language learner ample opportunities to practice their conversational skills.

There are numerous other resources on the internet for language learners as well including forums for language learners, language lessons, and opportunities for practice.  As with everything else in life, the internet has revolutionized the way we can approach learning languages so that we might be more efficient and better exposed.