Fun Times at PILAT

I had a great two weeks at PILAT in Colorado. It was so encouraging to meet others who are at the same place in life as I am. I spent the evening playing games as chatting with them and during the day we were stretching our brains together. We spent lots of time doing phonetics drills. We learned how to sharpen our ears to hear foreign sounds and how to get our mouth and tongue to make the right shape to produce the sound. Here is a video of one of our instructors and some learners. It was take a few years ago, but you can get a feel for what I spent the week doing.

We also spent a lot of time learning some practical ways to learn a new language. To do this we actually began learning a language. My group learned Mandarin. At first I couldn't even hear a difference between the word for airport and church. But after a while my ears got pretty good at it. If our teacher said "Last night we took the bus to the park" I could put all of my picture flash cards in the right spot. It was pretty exciting to see myself begin to understand Mandarin. I am very encouraged and excited about using the skills I learned to learn my new language very soon! 

Here is a rap that a student made last year. He put all the different things we learned into his song.