↳ 05.20.19.

20|01|2021

some old gcse chemistry notes written on goodnotes on my ipad! this was the first time i ever used it and i remember being so pleased with how they turned out!

Day 51 of My Winter Studying Challenge!

❄️ 20th January - Do you do any winter sports?  ❄️

not really because i don’t really do many sports anyway and my country isn’t exactly suited to winter sports 

7.12.19 // these pictures are from earlier in this week when I was writing an essay on David Hume’s case against miracles. Seeing as I just made a post about how I write essays, here are the pictures of me frantically worrying about this one in particular (tap for better quality idk tumblr does this to me)

Linguistics and Language Podcasts

Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me know!

Linguistics

Lingthusiasm A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne (that’s me!). Main episodes every third Thursday of every month, with a second bonus episode on Patreon. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Talk the Talk Every week Daniel, Ben, and Kylie cover the news in linguistics and tackle a particular topic.

The Vocal Fries Every episode Carrie Gillon & Megan Figueroa tackle linguistic discrimination in relation to a particular group. (Transcripts for some episodes)

En Clair A podcast about forensic linguistics from Dr Claire Hardaker at Lancaster University. Episodes released monthly, with a range of topics from criminal cases to literary fraud. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Accentricity From Sadie Durkacz Ryan, a lecturer in sociolinguistics at Glasgow University. Season one has six episodes.

Field Notes Martha Tsutsui Billins interviews linguists about their linguistic fieldwork.

Language

The Allusionist Stories about language and the people who use it, from Helen Zaltzman (Transcripts for all episodes) (my review)

Grammar Girl Episodes are rarely longer than 15 minutes, but they’re full of tips about English grammar and style for professional writing, and more! (Transcripts for all episodes).

The World in Words From PRI, The World in Words has been delivering wonderful interview-drive stories about language and life since 2008.

Conlangery Particularly for those with an interest in constructed languages, they also have episodes that focus on specific natural languages, or linguistic phenomena. 

Subtext a podcast about the linguistics of online dating.

Canguro English a podcast about language for people learning languages.

English

History of English Meticulously researched, professionally produced and engaging content on the history of English. I have already reviewed it three times (episodes 1-4, episodes 5-79, bonus episodes).

Lexicon Valley Hosted by John McWhorter, with a focus on English.

That’s What They Say Every week linguist Anne Curzan joins Rebecca Kruth on Michigan public radio for a five minute piece on a quirk of English language.

A Way With Words A talk-back format show on the history of English words, cryptic crosswords and slang.

Dictionaries

Word For Word From Macquarie dictionary, with a focus on Australian English.

Fiat Lex A podcast about making dictionaries from Kory Stamper & Steve Kleinedler.

Words/etymology

Word Bomb Hosts Pippa Johnstone and Karina Palmitesta explore one explosive word per week, using particular words for a deep dive into linguistic and social issues.

Words for Granted In each episode Ray Belli explores the history of a common English word in around fifteen minutes.

Very Bad Words A podcast about swearing and our cultural relationship to it.

Lexitecture Ryan, a Canadian, and Amy, a Scot share their chosen word each episode.

Wordy Wordpecker Short weekly episodes from Rachel Lopez, charting the stories of English words.

Animology Vegan blogger Colleen Patrick Goudreau uses her love of animals as a starting point for exploring animal-related etymologies.

Translation

Speaking of Translation A monthly podcast from Eve Bodeux & Corinne McKay.

LangFM Stories of people from the world of language, including interpreters, translators, dialect coaches and many more.

Troublesome Terps The podcast about the things that keep interpreters up at night.

Back catalogues and Odds & Ends

There are also a number of podcasts that have only a few episodes, are no longer being made, or are very academic in their focus:

Language Creation Society Podcast (8 episodes, 2009-2011)

Given Names (four part radio series from 2015, all about names. My review)

Speculative Grammarian Podcast (from the magazine of the same name, about 50 episodes from Dec 2009-Jan 2017)

Linguistics Podcast (on YouTube, around 20 episodes in 2013 introducing basic linguistic concepts)

Evolving English: Linguistics at the Library (8 episodes 2018), from the British Library.

How Brands are Build (season 1 of this show focuses on brand naming)

The Endless Knot is not strictly a language podcast, but they often include word histories, fans of the Lingthusiasm colour episode may find their colour series particularly interesting

Word of Mouth (BBC 4, also available as a podcast)

LingLab (very occasionally updated podcast from graduate students in the Sociolinguistics program at NC State University)

Silly Linguistics (ad hoc episode posting, but episode 7 is an interview with Kevin Stroud for History of English fans)

WACC Podcast (guest lectures at Warwick Applied Linguistics)

Sage Language and Linguistics

Let’s Talk Talk

Queer Linguistics has a couple of episodes, with a bit of classroom vibe

GradLings An occasionally-updated podcast for linguistics students at any stage of study, to share their stories and experiences. 

This is a completely revised listing from March 2019, with some sporadic updates. I’m always excited to be able to add more podcasts to the list, so if you know of any linguistics/language podcasts not here, please let me know! (I usually wait until a show has at least 3 episodes before I add it to the list)

saturday, march 6 • a february recap & march setup

my march bullet journal spread was inspired by my recent feb-cover-up situation 👀 because i’m actually quite liking the additional pOP! of color that i can add into my bujo with the random construction paper i have lying around uwu but ya dis an overview of my spreads that i made in a 10pm-dimly-lit-tired-trance last weekend hAHaha

also im not sure of where to take photos now in my new apt (i miss my old room’s lighting during golden hour ft. the nice flowy curtains), but i’ll figure it out this is small potatoes u know what i’m sayin’

7.12.19 // these pictures are from earlier in this week when I was writing an essay on David Hume’s case against miracles. Seeing as I just made a post about how I write essays, here are the pictures of me frantically worrying about this one in particular (tap for better quality idk tumblr does this to me)

What essay topics do you recommend to write in a foreign language for beginners? Give me at least one if you’re bored to make a list please ❤️

Hi i think i saw the ask you sent to @nabasynth (thanks for thinking of me ella! <3) and i was going to reply but i’ll just answer here! 

So i’ve based most of this on my experience with GCSE languages and the questions and topics we did. i don’t know what language you are learning so i’ve tried to keep it relatively general and I’ve kept all the questions in English. i’ve also tried to put them in a rough order of difficulty so you can progress in complexity.

Ok, so basically I’ve listed a bunch of questions that you could answer in full sentences that were part of the essays I did. In my experience, they are really good ways to learn vocab and sentence structures. I’ve tried to put different tense in and questions that ask for opinions because it is really important that you learn to do include various tenses and opinions in all essays.

1. Family

How many people are in your family? What are their names? Where do they live? What do they look like?

Do you get on with your parents? What do you argue about?

Do you have brothers or sisters? Do you get on with them?

Who is your best friend? What does he/she look like? What do like to do together? 

What qualities must a good friend have?

What did you do with your friend last weekend? 

What will you do with your friend next weekend? 

What do you think about marriage? Do you want to get married in the future?

2. Where you live

Where do you live? What do you like about where you live? What do you dislike about where you live? 

Describe your house. What are the positives and negatives of your house?

What would your dream house be like?

What are the positives and negatives of living in a city?

What are the positives and negatives of living in the countryside?

What did you do last weekend in your town?

Where would you like to live in the future and why?

What would your ideal city be like?

3. Freetime (Sport, Music, Films, TV, Food)

What is your favourite thing to do in your free time?

When you were younger, what was your favourite thing to do in your free time?

Do you enjoy playing sport? What is your favourite sport? What do you do to keep fit/healthy? What is your least favourite sport? What are the benefits of playing sport?

Do you like listening to music? What is your favourite type of music? What is your least favourite type of music? Who is your favourite singer/band? Why do you like them? Have you ever been to a concert? Who would you like to see at a concert? Do you play any instruments?

Do you enjoy watching films? What is your favourite type of film? What is your least favourite type of film? What is your favourite film? What is it about? Why do you like it? Who is your favourite actor/actress? Why do you like them? Do you enjoy going to the cinema? 

Do you enjoy watching TV? What is your favourite type of TV programme? What is your least favourite type of TV programme? What is your favourite TV programme? What is it about? Why do you like it? When do you watch TV?

What is your favourite food? What is your least favourite food? Do you like cooking? Do you like going to restaurants? Describe the last time you went to a restaurant? 

4. School

Where do you go to school? Describe your school? Do you like your school? What are the positives of your school? What are the negatives of your school?

Do you wear a school uniform? If yes, describe it? Do you like it? What are the positives and negatives of school uniforms? What would your ideal school uniform be?

Describe your normal school day. What time do you wake up? What lessons do you have? What do you do at lunch? Do you like your school routine?

What subjects do you learn? What is your favourite subject and why? What is your least favourite subject and why?

Next year, what will you learn/study? 

What qualities must a good teacher have? 

Do you think that it is important to have school rules? What is the most important rule? What is the least important rule? 

What problems do students face? 

What would you do to improve your school? What would you do to improve the school day?

5. Future Plans and Career

Do you want to go to university? What would you like to study at university?

What job would you like to do when you are older? What is your dream job? Why do you want to do this job? 

Would you like to work abroad? Why or why not?

Would you like to work in an office? Why or why not?

Have you had any work experience or done an internship? What did you have to do? Did you enjoy it? What were the pros and cons? Would you like to do that job in the future? If you haven’t, what would you like to do?

6. Social Media and the Internet

Do you have a mobile phone? How often do you use it? What do you use it for? What is your favourite thing to do on your phone? What are the pros and cons of having a phone?

How often do you use the internet? What do you use it for? What did you use it for last night? 

What are the positives of the internet?

What are the negatives of the internet?

What should you do in order to stay safe?

Do you think that the internet is a good thing? Why or why not? 

Are you on social media? What do you use social media for? What are the positives of social media? What are the negatives of social media? What are the dangers of social media? 

7. Vacations

Are vacations important to you? Why or why not?

Where do you usually go on vacation? Who do you go with? How do you travel there? What do you do there? Do you like it there?

What is your favourite type of vacation?

Is it better to travel by plane or by car?

Where did you go on your last vacation? Who did you go with? How did you travel there? What did you do on vacation? Did you like it there? Did you buy any souvenirs?

Where will you go on your next vacation? Why are you going to go there? Have you been there before? Who will you go with? What will you do there?

Where would you go on your dream vacation? Why would you go there? Have you been there before? Who would you go with? What would you do there? 

8. Social Issues and the Environment

What do you think of vegetarianism? 

What do you think of poverty? What are the reasons for poverty? What are some ways you can help people in poverty? Have you ever donated/helped out at a charity? 

Is the environment important to you? Why or why not? 

What are the problems facing the environment? What is the biggest problem?

What do you do in order to help the environment? What have you recently done? 

What could you do in order to be more environmentally friendly?

Is your town environmentally friendly? What could it do better?

I hope this is helpful to you or anyone else who wants to practice to writing in their target language! To put it into an essay format you could choose a few of these questions that go together. Make sure you put opinions and different tenses in your essays.

If anyone else has anything else to add, feel free to comment! <3

JULY 19 / 2019 

me: hey bud u have a lot of work to do 

also me: its fine i can watch netflix

me later: *gets stressed over the work i ignored*

me: :0 

And what about japanese? Can you recommend some accounts that study japanese?

I know there are a lot of great accounts that are learning Japanese, but I’m not familiar with a lot of them, since I’ve never studied it myself! 

@jibunstudies has a lot of great Japanese masterposts, and I think that @gloomstudy was learning Japanese at one point, but I don’t know if she still is! 

Please feel free to recommend any other blogs that study Japanese! 

i recently got asked how i get such bright lighting for my posts and i thought it would be a good opportunity to tell you all how i edit my pictures! i’ve recently changed how i edit my pictures and it works so well so why not share! it was inspired by how one of my favourite studygram accounts (tasneemstudying) edits her pictures! check out her account and she has a highlight on her profile where it shows how she edits her pictures!

if you have anymore questions, feel free to send me an ask! and make sure to check out my masterpost with all my other advice!

General

i use the app snapseed

in the past i’ve used VSCO but i’e found that you can do a lot more with snapseed and the pictures always turn out better

i wouldn’t necessarily recommend using filters or presets for editing because in my experience every photo needs to be edited differently

for example, i always edit each photo individually 

try to get as much natural lighting as possible 

i know it can be difficult in winter so i would recommend that when you have decent lighting, take as many pictures as possible when it is good

take multiple pictures of the same notes/set up but from different angles so you have options when editing

1. Curve Function

open the snapseed app

insert the picture that you want to edit

crop/rotate etc. if needed

use the curve function to change the lighting and make it brighter (this is particularly useful in winter when lighting isn’t as good)

you just need to play around with it until you are happy with it

2. Decrease Saturation

next go to the tune image tool

scroll to saturation

reduce the saturation completely to -100

it should be black and white now

3. Return Saturation to Certain Areas

this is perhaps the confusing bit but it’s very important:

return to the main screen

in the top right hand corner, click the button with the layered squares and the arrow

then click view edits

this will take you to the point shown in the lefthand picture

tap on the ‘tune image’

click on the paintbrush option

then click the invert button and the mask button

this should get you to the point shown in the righthand picture

this means that the paper and handwriting in black will be very defined and not have their colour distorted by any editing

but at the same time you can erase the low saturation to make colourful parts of the notes stand out

make sure the brush setting is at zero

start going over the areas with colour

the red will go away and the colour will no longer be black and white

make sure to zoom in close so you can get really close the the edges of the coloured areas

do this for all areas of colour

if you make a mistake, you can simply increase the brush setting to 100, paint over the area with the mistake and this will make it unsaturated again

4. Increase Brightness

then return to the tools menu and click on the ‘selective’ tool

select a spot that you want to brighten and tap to add the spot

swipe left and right to change the brightness

you are probably going to want to increase the brightness, particularly of the background

add more selective points wherever needed and repeat with the brightness

if you want to change the extent of the selective effect do a pinching movement

5. Add the Watermark

return to the tools page

click on the text tool

type in your watermark or name

choose the font and colour

place on your photo

6. Save!

save your picture!

and you are done

✨✨✨

Here are some more tips from my answer to an ask about how to take studyblr pictures

✨✨✨

my masterpost | my studygram | ask me anything

[click images for high quality]

[transcript under the cut]

Other advice posts that may be of interest:

How To Stop Procrastinating

How To Study When You Really Don’t Want To

Unusual Study Tips

How To Do Uni Readings

Active Revision Tips

How to Focus in Online Classes

Keep reading