to abstain - sich enthalten

to open - öffnen

to hug - umarmen

to address - ansprechen

to abandon - verlassen

Cars – The First Step Towards The Future

Imagine a future where car cd players and radios are replaced entirely by a touch screen interface almost exactly like a modern day cell phone.  You will have wireless and/or broadband connectivity, which will allow you to make phone calls, to stream media (music, radio, video), or use GPS.  You will also be able to browse the internet, download mobile applications or even video games.  It will have voice activation software like Siri that will allow you to ask for directions or direct the computer to search and play a movie for your kids in the back seat.  Or if you arrive to a doctor’s appointment early you can hook up your xbox 360 dongle and play a couple rounds of Titanfall…(kickass, right!?)

Now that you know what I am getting at, take a moment to think about the possibilities.  What sort of car apps could be created for drivers and passengers? Maybe a news application that gives you an audio/visual dose of important news updates tailored for your exact commute?  Say you download this free app for your car, tell it you like football and have a 30 minute commute.  Bam! Now you have 30 minutes of Football news streamed to you in audio.  Don’t like football? Then maybe baking tips, cooking shows, animal planet, you name it.  I am going to get more into my ideas for new applications in another post later on, so be on the lookout.

Let’s take this a step further.  Now that you have a powerful computer hooked up to your car AND you have wireless connectivity, there are TONS of innovations that can take place.  As someone who is forced to commute a heck of a lot (2 hours a day, ugh), I would like to see something developed by a government agency that will “control” cars during high traffic times.  Let me quickly tell you what I mean.  First, you tell your car where you want to go.  Second, you start driving towards that destination.  Three, you hit major traffic!.  Four, this program takes over to navigate you through traffic in perfect time and unison with the other cars.  The majority of the reason why traffic jams occur is because of the human element, this would solve that problem.  Granted, this is a spitball idea, actually getting something like that to work and eliminate the major safety concerns is an entirely different thing altogether.

Well I have burnt your eyes enough with some of my hot air so I will leave you with a bullet point list 

of abstract ideas that pertain to this topic.

-facebook for your car, car has camera and is voice activated so you can say “take picture and post to facebook” – bam you just took a picture of a funny license plate or a traffic jam. (snapchat as well)

-track your commute.  Plug in locations and your car will do the rest and give you your driving statistics such as gas used most on which days, when the worst traffic times were, etc.

-car statistics – the modern car has a lot of sensors, put them to use to give you statistics about how your oil is doing, how your tire pressure is, how the motor is doing, temperatures, etc.

-friend gps – an application that tells you if one of your friends is driving near you, link with facebook or e-mail

-voice memo – voice activated.  An application that allows you to spitball your ideas and to start recording hands free, it can also transcribe the memo and e-mail it to you or someone else

-e-mail dictation – an app that will read you your e-mails while in the car or an app that you can dictate and send e-mails with

-music application like RDIO, I heart radio, Spotify, etc.

-the list could go on and on but you get the idea.  Think of all of the applications you have with your phone, think of them becoming entirely hands free and how to integrate them with a car.

I am definitely interested in hearing your ideas, so hit me up!

-Grover

Reading and Vocabulary

Reading in a Foreign Language and the role of Vocabulary

Reading novels and other texts in a foreign language is a must.  It will allow you to have a greater understanding of the proper use of verbs, conjunctions, adjectives and other parts of speech.  The one main difficulty with reading texts in a foreign language is that you will start off not having a large enough vocabulary.  It will be sluggish, cumbersome and in the end very boring to get through even a short passage.  It is not fun to read anything when you have to look up every other word for its definition and still have to guess as to the meaning and context of the sentences and paragraphs.  Something that should normally only take you an hour will end up taking you three hours.

The other unfortunate aspect to reading foreign language texts in this manner is that even though you are spending the time looking up the vocabulary you are ONLY looking it up in order to get through the sentence or text at the time.  You aren’t memorizing this new vocabulary and will most likely have to look it up again when you next come across it.  It is actually more beneficial to boost your vocabulary separate from reading.  The reasoning behind this is that you usually have to read a passage in a novel in order to be able to discuss it during class.  Therefore you aren’t really concentrating on learning the majority of the vocabulary but only a few key words that you have to use in order to explain the passage.  This is not an efficient way to learn new vocabulary nor is it an efficient method to reading the passage.

The best thing that you can do to make EVERYTHING easier when learning a language is to increase your vocabulary.  Let us take a look at the perspective of someone with a large vocabulary.  Every passage they read they have to look up less words and have a greater chance of understanding the major concepts without having to waste time looking up anything.  The same person can also describe what they read with greater ability because they have the necessary vocabulary to draw from.  They get through homework, papers and classroom discussions MUCH easier than the person who does not have a great vocabulary. 

After the first initial classes, focus is never on learning vocabulary but on working with grammar.  Such as reading, writing and discussing the language.  It is true that you have to learn new vocabulary when writing or discussing something new but usually the amount of time you have to focus on that passage or context is limited and you as an individual will not have a full hour to discuss the passage with your professor or teacher but will have all of maybe 5 minutes to discuss your thoughts.  This means that the information you ‘learned’ for that classroom will not truly be utilized and it will most likely be forgotten by the next lecture.  It will be forgotten because you will have to read the next passage and prepare a new set of vocabulary that rarely builds upon the first.

I would say that the best thing to do when learning a language is to learn and increase vocabulary separate and in addition to this normal scholastic process.  This is especially true if you focus on learning vocabulary that pertains to your class or lecture.  A larger vocabulary will make even learning grammar much easier because you will understand what your teacher is trying to say, you will understand any classroom media and be able to outperform other students when having a classroom discussion.

Do not under-estimate the importance of vocabulary.

-Grover

www.worldvocab.com