French Reading I like the duolingo stories, actually they are mini stories, short, funny, and vivid with dubbing. There is a novel named Djinn, written by a famous French writer, but for the convenience of French learner. And I also begin to read a difficult but interesting book, Fragments d'un Discours Amoureux. For several days, I am still on the first page, I read it very slowly, by comparing the English and Chinese editions.

About Chinese Meausre Word The measure word would create a shape image in your mind about the subject. Chinese language is generally believed to be image-associated, not logic-associated , so it is important to have a right measure word used, if the measure word were inappropriate, Chinese people would be at lost when hearing it, although they can definitely understand it. I don't know if I've made my point clear, English is not mother tongue, and that's just my personal idea about the measure word.

Where does the concept "here" or "this" come from? Culture is such a big subject that I don't know where to begin and where to end, but there's one thing that I'd like to mention here: self-consciousness. When a baby was born, he didn't have any self-consciousness until he was getting to about one year old. Before that, he was living as an endless ocean, there's no border and no separation between him and the world. When self-consciousness appears, the paradise falls apart, the culture is introduced to the baby. Yeah, this is little Johnson, and that is mom... It's an unnoticeable step that gets everything complicated and pushes an organism to become an individual, who begins to seek endlessly for something vague and unknown. Well, does what I've said above has any relation with language? I think it's obvious. If there's no separation, where does the concept "here" or "this" come from?

About the Chinese Character "了“ When I were doing my translation from English to Chinese, I've encountered many situations where I would ponder for a while for whether I should put "了" into a sentence or not. It's not easy for me to decide which is better somtimes. There are some subtle emphasis when "了" is there.

Mindset To change the mindset is quite difficult for many reasons. Let me take it from another viewpoint, it's a kind of flexibility that allows us to adapt to another mindset. This means we need to look at our deep beliefs that are unconsciously acquired in our long history of lives, in other words, we need to be aware of what we have taken for granted.

Do you think that font of this app is too small?

English and Chinese These mistakes are nothing but basic, how could we persistently make these mistakes after so many years of being washed by that language? Let's dig into it a bit deeper. Apparently, it's due to the different language rules, you know, there's no such thing in Chinese, where you don't have to change the formation of the verb when the subject noun is a single third-person one. We won't make such mistakes if the situation is been awared, that means, we usually make them in an unconscious fasion. So ultimately, it's the different mindset or culture background that stirs up the different response. For a Chinese, it feels remote for the necessarity to maintain the grammar consistency between a subject and its state or action.

Speaking or writing in a foreign language Speaking or writing in a foreign language could often be overwhelming, that's why people prefer to learning in a passive way, vocabulary reciting, reading, listening, doing exercises etc., for many many years. Lots of mistakes would be made in that process, and for an adult, that's unbearably awkward. So remaining in comfort zone is their choice, whether consciously or unconsciously. Surely, there are many aspects that we should take care of when we speak or write, but don't ask yourself for too much, maybe we could isolate one specific aspect that you want to improve in one period, and then focus on it, not paying too much attention to other aspects, this would largely reduce the overwhelming pressure that freaks you out. And there's nothing to be embarrassed for making mistakes, for either you could consciously neglect them, or you could make use of them as a reminder that tells you where your weakness lies.

About the book: Ultralearning: The chapter: Directness The author have criticized the traditional way of learning, mostly in school system which have been there for two hundreds of years,but also in personal approach. He points out that the transfer of learning in traditional way have largely been a failure, hence directness is promoted as a remedy for that and as a principal for ultra learner. He also gives several very practical suggestions about how to apply this principal.