A New Year’s Resolution to Learn a New Language

Written by Emma Rath


Danny Glover,repparttar famous American actor, once said that his new year’s resolution was to learn French, because everyone he wants to speak with in West Africa speaks French. If you would like your fun new year’s resolution to be to learn a new language, then there are quite a few different ways you can go about it.

Perhaps you’ve been wanting to learnrepparttar 115985 language of your Grandmother. Perhaps you would benefit from learning an official language or unofficial second language of your country, such as French in Canada or Spanish in USA. Or Greek in Melbourne Australia! Apparentlyrepparttar 115986 second largest Greek-speaking city inrepparttar 115987 world after Athens, in terms of number of people who speak Greek, is Melbourne Australia! Or perhaps you feel like learning something that feels exotic like Japanese or Swahili. One Saturday in November 2004,repparttar 115988 national Canadian newspaperrepparttar 115989 “The Globe and Mail” put its entire front page in Chinese, explaining that withrepparttar 115990 globalization of jobs, Chinese will probably be a necessary business language ofrepparttar 115991 future.

A fun way to start learning a new language, especially if you’re not a disciplined type of student, is to enrol in a language course. You meet other people in your class who haverepparttar 115992 same language interest as you which is fun in itself, you’re being taught by a real teacher, andrepparttar 115993 once a week schedule ofrepparttar 115994 classes means that you are practising your new language regularly and steadily. Local community centers offer these courses. Colleges, private language institutes and continuing education programs at university offer them. You may be lucky enough to have cultural organizations nearby that offer language courses. For instance, a local immigrant organization in my town offers courses in Swahili, a language spoken in many east African countries. Downtown, a cultural organization funded by France called Alliance Française, offers French courses. A nearby Saturday Chinese school offers courses in Mandarin Chinese for both adults and children, and it’s quite encouraging to see Cantonese-speaking adults there having as much trouble pronouncing Mandarin asrepparttar 115995 non-Chinese adults!

If you can’t get away to a class, then there are lots of language courses you can study at home: books, audio cassettes, video cassettes, DVDs, music, interactive computer software, and online courses onrepparttar 115996 Internet. Your local library probably has language learning resources that you can borrow, if you don’t want to start offrepparttar 115997 year withrepparttar 115998 expense of buying these materials. When studying on your own in this way, try to devote 10 minutes every day to a bit of study or revision, instead of doing 1 hour one day but then not findingrepparttar 115999 time to look at it again for a couple of months. With 10 minutes of study each day, you probably won’t feel like you are making progress becauserepparttar 116000 progress is so gradual. However,repparttar 116001 progress will also be steady, and in 3 months time when you look back on how much you have learned, you’ll probably impress yourself.

To get you started learning your new language inrepparttar 116002 next 5 minutes, here are some links to free online courses

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages - Onrepparttar 116003 BBC website, you will find free online courses for French, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. And also for Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Irish and English, and links to British Sign Language.

http://www.word2word.com/course.html - The Word2Word website contains links to free language courses all overrepparttar 116004 Internet. As of January 2005, it has links for 114 languages, from Abenaki, Albanian and Arabic, to Urdu, Vietnamese and Xhosa. In all, there are 288 links to online courses. So whether you want to learn Cree, Croatian or Korean, hopefully you’ll find a free course forrepparttar 116005 language you want here.

A great way to learn and practise another language is “language immersion” – being surrounded by people who speak that language and you having to get things done in that language environment. A holiday in a foreign country is a very interesting and fun “language immersion” opportunity. People amaze themselves, speaking words in a foreign tongue that they didn’t realize they knew, when they have to function in a foreign language environment. Closer to home, local immigrant community events may be able to provide you with a language immersion environment withoutrepparttar 116006 expense of travel.

My Japanese teacher told us that if you understand more than 5% of what is being said in a foreign language, then you are not atrepparttar 116007 optimum level for learningrepparttar 116008 maximum amount possible of that foreign language. If you understand more than 5% of what is going on in your class, go up a level he said! If 95% seems gooblety-gook to you, then that’s perfect he said! Take heart. It means you are soaking up as much of that foreign language as is humanly possible!

Electric RC Airplanes

Written by Andre McFayden


Inrepparttar recent past, almost all rc airplanes were powered by small internal combustion engines, using liquid fuels. Models powered by electric motors were few and far between. The electric rc airplane is now becoming much more common, especially in models designed for beginning pilots.

Electric power advantages include reliability, convenience, low noise, low vibration, and lack of fuel residue (clean).  The disadvantage of early systems was low power. However recent electric airplane motors, combined with advanced batteries, have increasedrepparttar 115983 performance of electric rc airplanes dramatically.   Inrepparttar 115984 more common Brushed motors, current switching is done using sliding contacts known as brushes. The contacts get hot and wear out over time. In Brushless motors,repparttar 115985 switching happens electronically using a special voltage regulator (speed controller). This second type of motor and its controller are more expensive to make. Its advantages are no maintenance and higher performance.

There are three main types of batteries in use for electric airplane motors.  These are Nickel Cadmium (NiCad), Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Lithium Polymer (LiPo). LiPo batteries are lighter for a given application, but tend to be more expensive than NiCad or NiMH. 

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