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With a new quarter commencing, this is a great time to sign up for the Academy. All of our courses are ongoing. Therefore, unlike a typical university seminar, the Academy courses are structured to easily accommodate new students at any point in time. More information about our current offerings can be found on the Academy website.
In particular, this Quarter is a great time to join:
[ NEW ] BEGINNER LEVEL FRENCH CIRCLE
Thursdays – 10 AM Chicago
For those just beginning to read French literature.
[ NEW TIME ] INTERMEDIATE FRENCH CIRCLE
Tuesdays – 2 PM Chicago
Starting with Montaigne's essays. |
Musings From The Professor's Desk
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Dear Readers,
I have always been partial to studying outdoors as much as possible. To this end, I have employed spaces as I found them: forest trails, bicycle paths, and sections of parks or campuses. While these locations can be pressed into service for kinesthetic learning and many of them serve this quite well, I have never found a space designed with this purpose in mind, or specifically reserved for this practice. As a result, paths and trails can be dangerous, and parks and campuses can become crowded and therefore distracting. I felt this acutely during my recent stay in New York City. We had rented an AirBnB directly opposite the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Prospect Park. I made maximum use of these wonderful urban green spaces by going into them daily at dawn and shadowing audiobooks in many languages for hours as I walked, stretched, exercised, and did yoga. This was all well and good at 6 AM, but impossible later in the day or evening as there were too many people doing too many other things.
This experience got me thinking, as I have in the past, of what an ideal Language Ground or a Study Garden might be like – that is, a space specifically designed and reserved for outdoor kinesthetic learning. First and foremost, there would be smooth and level trails for shadowing. Then there would be tables with benches or chairs where one could sit and write. There would be various installations or equipment for various types of exercises that, apart from walking, one can do while shadowing. There would be some protection from the elements at some of these stations, and the whole would be in nature, surrounded both by wild beauty and well-kept terrain.
Thinking about such a space, I realize that I could benefit more from one today than I could have in years past. With the kind of layout I just described, one should be able to write and use books outdoors as well, but the simple fact is that the best exercise for doing outdoors is shadowing. And as I wrote in the last newsletter, shadowing audiobooks has become a more and more important part of my practice as these become more and more available. Thus, I now go on a multi-hour hikes, shadowing sequences of language branches as I go, and to this end I press bicycle trails into service, though it would be nice to minimize the risks of accidents upon them.
When I returned to Minnesota, I realized that I did not just have to dream about this but am in a perfect position to start designing and using one right where I live as there is plenty of land around my home that I can clear for this. Indeed, I started doing so when I first moved in several years back, but stopped because of the enormity of the task. However, inspired by my experience in Brooklyn, since my return I have spent several hours each day doing yard work – mainly picking up fallen branches and cutting away undergrowth to make clear trails. The pine trees around my home are not natural wild woods, but were clearly planted as a plantation of some sort years back as they are in very straight lines. Thus, by clearing the space between rows, I have already obtained some fantastic dedicated shadowing lanes. I am currently conceptualizing what kind of table to put near the fire pit, and what other installations I can put out other than a stretching post and the chin-up bar that my sons put up already.
When studying and/or exercising outdoors, one is always at the mercy of the elements, and winter in northern Minnesota will all too soon likely put a stop to this. Weather-proofing the installation as much as possible will be an interesting challenge, and I do not imagine that my yard will be the final product of a Language Ground, but rather a testing ground itself for what a Study Garden can be like. If you do a search for “benefits of working and studying outdoors,” you will find multiple articles stressing the positive effects of doing this. Indeed, the University of Arizona Global Campus has a chart with specific numbers and percentages: natural energy boost – 20 minutes outdoors = 1 cup of coffee; problem-solving skills – walking outdoors makes you 60% more creative; stress reduction – cortisol drops 12% and relaxation increases 55%; improved mood – people feel 20% better after a walk outside; better health – significant time outdoors decreases early mortality risk by 12%. Given all of this, one wonders why Study Gardens are not commonplace!
Of course all these specific figures are open to scrutiny, but I have always enjoyed these types of effects as studying kinesthetically outdoors, and most specifically shadowing while both walking briskly and doing other forms of exercise, has always been a key component of my own language practice. Developing my own backyard as I am now doing should enable me to engage in this all the more.
I understand that kinesthetic learning is not for everyone. There are some for whom it is simply a poor match. However, given that it is the opposite of the norm, I think it is something that everyone should try to see if, just perhaps, it might be for you after all. Over the years, numerous people have told me that they were happily surprised to find that it worked well for them after I recommended that they try it, though they had not even conceived of doing this before. That may be the case for you, too.
For those whom kinesthetic learning does suit, specifically designed and dedicated Language Grounds or Study Gardens should be a godsend. Indeed, given such a space where one could concentrate upon languages for hours on end while simultaneously engaging in various physical activities, we can practice polyglottery and polyliteracy as a form of endurance sport, holistically combining both mental and physical engagement into a whole body activity. For those interested in trying this, I hope to be able to invite you to experience my Language Ground and Study Garden in the near future!
With best regards,
Alexander Arguelles
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Meet Lucas PreuthBA Philosophy, German Studies, Neuroscience. Low Saxon Activist. Prospective Germanistik PhD Candidate hoping to dedicate his life to the study and dissemination of Low Saxon literature and the lifelong pursuit of polyliteracy. Fluent in German and Low Saxon, currently studying Japanese, Turkish, and French.
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“On a late October night in 2019, I found myself scrolling once again through Professor Arguelles’ old HTLAL posts about his journey learning Russian. I had been overwhelmed by the day's prior events with my monolingual extended family in Germany and desperately needed to read and think in English; I found myself wondering if I would ever master another language the way he could.
Foreign languages were always a mystery to me. Although I had prior experience with foreign language instruction in high school French classes, I never excelled in it, and was experiencing similar issues with the German classes I had begun taking in college. When I discovered Professor Arguelles videos on Youtube and saw there was a community for people who demonstrated high levels of proficiency in multiple languages, I was astonished and wanted to learn more.
While there’s lots of information available online regarding foreign language instruction and polyglottery, I soon discovered that language learning techniques and methods were highly anecdotal and varied greatly, and oftentimes were abstruse or even conflictual. I sought to chart a path through this twisting labyrinth and began experimenting with the techniques presented by various polyglots, during which I found myself referring endlessly to old posts the Professor had made. These entries were like worn-down but solid wooden chests, each containing a compass pointing towards the end of the labyrinth.
When Professor Arguelles opened up his academy, I was delighted at the prospect of studying under him. Although self-study aided by the blog posts and videos made by the community allowed me to mature as a language learner, Professor Arguelles’ Language Academy has challenged me to more finely tune my language learning tools and has offered me invaluable knowledge towards the acquisition of foreign languages. I want to specifically highlight the Academy’s Path Of The Polyglot course, during which Professor Arguelles charts his own language learning journey and provides lectures regarding language learning techniques and experiences with foreign languages that have brought him success; in just under a year’s time in the course, my understanding of language learning has become more holistic and I feel more capable than ever to learn and master languages. Since joining the academy, I began relearning French, doubled down on the intensity of my Japanese studies, and even took on learning Turkish. There is no better place for the intensive study and internalization of foreign languages. With rigorous study at the Academy, together with the support of the friendly, welcoming, and like-minded community that can be found here, you'll find yourself babbling foreign tongues in no time.”
Additional student accounts can be found on the Academy website under Testimonials. |
October Book Recommendation
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This month I would like to recommend Umberto Eco’s Il Nome della Rosa (The Name of the Rose). I do so because this book has been foundational in my own life so that I often quote it and refer to it, expecting people to know what I am talking about. However, when I ask if people have read it, most often they have not. Set in a library, indeed in a scriptorium, this medieval murder mystery should be of interest to anyone interested in the Academy. A surprise bestseller in 1980, it is a challenging read, full of philosophical references, but it is well worth the effort. Indeed, this book has become so fundamental to me that I use audiobooks of it in various languages all the time. The film version of this book is also a classic, so if you do not know it yet, you might wish to start with that as it will certainly whet your appetite to read the whole work – first in translation, perhaps, but then of course in the Italian original. On that note, let me here announce that I hope to start an Italian reading and discussion circle next year, focused on Umberto Eco’s writings.
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October Video RecommendationShadowing outdoors was the very first video on my YT channel. |
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