Lesson Transcript

Intro

Becky: Welcome to a special Inner Circle Audio Lesson! I'm Becky and I'll be your host. My co-host today is the founder of InnovativeLanguage.com... Peter Galante!
Peter: Hi everyone! Peter here.
Becky: In this Inner Circle, we’re talking about how to write 1000 words of German
Peter: ...in a 5 Minutes a Day - The Daily Dose Diary
Becky: You’ll learn...
Peter: ...One, How I Used This Simple Tactic to Wow My Teacher
Becky: Two, The Language Learning Benefits of Writing
Peter: ...and Three, How You Can Apply it
Becky: ...All so you can master your target language and finally reach your goals!
Body
Peter: Listeners, welcome back.
Becky: Last time, you learned the benefits about speaking about someone else.
Peter: We covered how applying this tactic allows you to speak longer...
Becky: ...as you talk about things familiar to you and reuse vocabulary...
Peter: ...and practicing this tactic is a must...
Becky: ...all so you can speak more of your target language.
Peter: Becky, that was a great episode. Listeners, thank you for all of the responses.
Becky: I think so too, Peter. Alright, let's get into this month. Last month was good. How’d you do this time?
Peter: You know Becky, it’s always such a pleasure to come in knowing that I crushed my goal. On the flip side, it’s twice as painful coming in knowing I missed my goal.
Becky: Ah, I take that as a...
Peter: Yes, Becky, you can gloat, I missed my goal.
Becky: You had a good streak, though, you were on a roll.
Peter: Yes last time, I promised 17 minutes of German conversation....
Becky: Right.
Peter: And I managed to keep it in the teens. I actually came in at 13 minutes.
Becky: So what happened?
Peter: Well...this month I actually focused a bit more on writing. And while my conversation was only 13 minutes, it was actually at a much higher-level. High enough that I actually wowed my teacher.
Becky: Interesting. Well, with that, let’s get into today’s Inner Circle lesson
Peter: and you’ll learn how you can accomplish this following.
Becky: ...One, How You Can Use This Simple Tactic to Wow Your Teacher
Becky: Two, Learn The Language Benefits of Writing
Peter: ...and Three, How You Can Apply Them
Peter: And let’s get into the first part.
Becky: One: How You Can Use This Simple Tactic to Wow Your Teacher
Peter: Okay, as I mentioned, I didn’t hit my goal, but my teacher was wowed by our conversation..
Becky: Wowed that you didn’t hit your goal?
Peter: (laughs) So, snarky.
Becky: It’s my middle name.
Peter: It’s actually not a bad name. But, jumping back, as I mentioned the quality of the conversation was much, much higher.
Becky: Ah, okay, I get it.
Peter: We’ll tell you about that in just a moment, but first let’s look at the tactic
Becky: ..The Daily Dose App, right?
Peter: Right. Listeners, if you don’t already have the Daily Dose App, get it right now.
Becky: You can find a link to it the description.
Peter: Each day you get a mini-lesson
Becky: delivered right to your iphone, ipad, or android device. So how did you use this app to write in German this month?
Peter: Exactly, the app doesn’t allow you to write.. But what the app does is, each day of the week is a different theme. For example, Saturday is German Slang...
Becky: Tuesday is German Words of the Week….
Peter: So there are 7 themes for each day of the week.
Becky: And you would write about these topics?
Peter:...exactly. And Becky, handwrite.
Becky: No way, does that even happen any more?
Peter: It does, Becky. And we’ll talk a little bit about it later but it’s actually very effective.
Becky: Did you write in cursive?
Peter: Not in cursive, but for example, on the first of this month the topic was Johann Sebastian Bach
Becky: Ah, so you wrote a 1000 words about him in 5 minutes?
Peter: In German?
Becky: In German?
Peter: Well, about that 1,000 words.
Becky: Here we go...
Peter: In 5 minutes a day, I could only write 1 or 2 lines. So the 1,000 words is actually what I did for the month. But, Becky, each day I wrote 2 lines.
Becky: Okay. So something simple.
Peter: In principle, yes. It’s actually a little more complex. But let me give you that example. So going back to Johann Sebastian Bach. I wanted to write about him 2 sentences. But what I wanted to write took me time to research. I had to research the vocabulary, I had to research the grammar. And the sentences, “Bach was a great musician and composer. My favorite piece is the St Matthew Passion.”
Becky: Wow.
Peter: Again, it seems simple but if you think about it, there’s the past tense in there. There’s the vocabulary words – musician, composer — and I had to find the name of a Bach song.
Becky: I am impressed, I must say.
Peter: Yeah, you didn’t catch that
Becky: Genuine shock.
Peter: Yeah, I..
Becky: I have to say I’m really impressed because i didn’t know if... what you were going to write about Bach. I thought maybe it would just be “Bach was a musician from a long time ago,” I don’t know. I didn’t know you were goign to research and go deep into it. I’d be impressed too if I were your teacher.
Peter: Right? And what happened was, it took me quite a while to get the song on YouTube. So you actually had to do a lot of research into this.
Becky: And that’s culture. Yeah.
Peter: Which is such an important part of the language. So, this is a good transition to the second part:
Becky: Two, The Language Learning Benefits of Writing
Peter: And the point though is that this writing repetition on a daily basis allowed me to construct and write much more complex thoughts, like you just mentioned.
Becky: I see. I remember when I wrote things, I tended to remember them better.
Peter: Becky, many people argue this to be true. It’s actually how I learned Japanese kanji. I would write them out one by one.
Becky: So after hand writing them out, what did you do then?
Peter: Then, I would make the digital copy.
Becky: Oh, I see. OK. And you mentioned in a previous lesson that you would send these to your Premium PLUS tutor.
Peter: Exactly. So I did the research online. Then I’d handwrite the things out. Then I would make it digital. I would send to my teacher and the teacher would make the corrections.
Becky; I bet that’s where the first “wow” came in.
Peter: Exactly, Becky : “My favorite piece is the St. Matthew Passion” is a bit more advanced than “It’s sunny today.” The teacher wasn’t expecting that!
Becky: I’m sure she wasn’t!
Peter: And this is what Daily Dose does. It gives you incredible talking points and topics. I and what I did was, I simply expanded upon them through a self imposed writing exercise.
Becky: Okay. I know understand what your talking about when you said “wow” your teacher.
Peter: And Becky, you should have seen the reaction of my video tutor.
Becky: I can imagine.
Peter. So,Three, so how can our listeners apply this tactic?
Becky: Umm, I think first, they should get the daily dose App. Definitely.
Peter: Perfect starting point. Again, iPhone, iPad, any Android device, download the app and each day, you get a new topic.
Becky: I think next, you need to handwrite something based on that topic, as we said, when you write something down, you remember it better.
Peter: Again, there are cultural points, there are slang, there are many great tools out there to help you construct the concept. For me, I was using google translate in order to get the 2 sentences. After I got the 2 sentences...
Becky: You tried to make something deeper and interesting with it. And I think that’s a good point too.
Peter: Exactly.
Becky: “It is sunny today”... gets so boring.
Peter: There’s so much weather you could talk about.
Becky: Yes.
Peter: Then, after you write it by hand, you’re going to want to....
Becky: Type it into your computer. Make a digital copy.
Peter: And this is the first step in getting some type of assessment. The next step, I would send it to my Premium PLUS teacher and having a digital version, they could correct it.
Becky: And if you don’t have a Premium PLUS teacher. You can send it to a friend, you can post it online somewhere, share it, just getting it out there, get feedback.
Peter: And finally, when you have that perfect sentence, then you want to use it in a conversation and again, “my favorite piece is the St. Matthew Passion,” is much more interesting and deep than...
Becky: It is sunny today. For example.
Peter: So again, this month, I focused on this particular tactic and as an Inner Circle member, you have free access to the Daily Dose App. So go get that App right now...
Becky: And start your Daily Dose diary today. This all sounds really great, Peter. But I think, we do need to talk some goals.
Peter: Okay Becky, I’m at 13 minutes now, and my last goal was 17 minutes, so what if we go with 17 again because isn’t that how it goes, Becky? The second time's a charm!
Becky: Actually it’s third time’s the charm, Peter, because we’ll go with second time because I believe in you and your German ability.
Peter: Okay, so 17 minutes it is.
Becky: I think you can do it this time. What’s the deadline?
Peter: October 31st.
Becky: Got it. And listeners, have you ever kept a journal in a foreign language? Why don’t you send us a sentence or two!
Peter: Email us at inner dot circle at innovative language dot com.
Becky: And stay tuned for the next Inner Circle.

Outro

Becky: Well, that’s going to do it for this special Inner Circle lesson!
Peter: Bye everyone!
Becky: Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

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