The e-mail we get from our customers is often brilliant. For example:

“My husband did not watch the instructional video at first and was spending a long time on each question, acting like he was supposed to know them after one viewing and feeling “stupid” for not getting it right away.

Even after watching the instructions twice, I noticed he was still reluctant to let go of this learning style.

I’ve noticed in my teaching (math, mostly) that many people have had this style beaten into them and they enforce it on themselves now:

Receive information ==> regurgitate information ==> get punished for not getting it right.”

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A couple of Harvard psychologists were sitting around playing with their iPhones when one of them had this idea. “I wonder if we could write an iPhone app that would ask people at random times what they are doing, what they are thinking, and how they are feeling?”

Well, they wrote the app, got several thousand people to use it, and the result was … the happiest people in the world are having sex.

Ninety percent of them were intensely focused on what they were doing … perhaps the rest of them were thinking about paying their bills.

The big surprise to the Harvard psychologists was that people are always happier when they are focused intently on what they are doing.

When your mind wanders, it usually leads to unhappiness.

How Language Students Can Use This

If you want to be happy while you are studying a language, simply focus intently on it. When your mind wanders — and it will — just take a deep breath and pull your attention back to what you are studying.

Don’t fight your wandering mind; just gently notice it and pull your attention back to your language study.

The New York Times wrote about it. You can read an excerpt by clicking on (more…) below.

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This article from the University of Guelph proves something I’ve known for a long time.

Language learning pays!  It’s a good reason to learn Canadian French or your favorite language.

Brent

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Bilingual employees earn more than their unilingual counterparts even if they aren’t using their language skills on the job, according to a new University of Guelph study.

Economics professors Louis Christofides and Robert Swidinsky examined the earnings of Canadians and compared the difference in wages between bilingual and unilingual employees as well as bilingual employees who are required to speak a second language on the job.

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