My wife and I continue to wait for the birth of our son any day now. Meanwhile, It’s summer vacation and I continue to take language lessons in the Philippine language of Bisaya. My Bisaya lesson went well on Tuesday night. We usually start around 8:30 pm EST, which is 8:30 am Philippine time. Usually by this time I’m a little tired, but I look forward to my lesson as this is my time to learn. Bebe, my teacher, uses Skype and this works reasonable well. We turn off the video and this seems to help with the audio. A few time we will get disconnected, but we make the connection again and continue.

Our past lesson was about using Ig-unsa, and  there are four cases that need to be considered. Ig-unsa describes how one person is related to another. There are also 22 new vocabulary words to learn and some of them are challenging to remember. Word like kamagulangan, oldest child, and ginikanan, parents, and kinamanghuran, youngest child, are difficult for me to remember. I hope to get these words in my head in a few days now that I’m home during the day with some time to study.

To help me learn from my teacher, I downloaded and tested a new feature for Skype called Call Recorder.  I paid $14.95 and I think it will be worth it. I tried it out on a few other Skype calls and it works very well. This add-on to Skype will record both audio and video. I’ll use it for the first time with my next lesson with Bebe and then I will be able to review the lesson the next day with a cup of coffee (kape).

I am also thinking on just what is the best way to learn a foreign language over the internet. As you can see from the picture above, I have over 350 index cards with vocabulary words. I separate the verbs from all the others. I also separate out the newest words and I keep a stack of words to review that I have a hard time remembering. My goal is to keep reviewing all the past lessons and vocabulary words on a daily basis so I don’t forget them.

Something that has helped me greatly is rewriting my notes from the last lesson. Usually I do this the next day. I print out the Skype conservation and circle any grammar rules and write them down. Then I write out each example Bebe gave me and write them under the rule. I keep separate the different grammar rules on separate pieces of paper. I think this and using the audio recorder will help me with this language.

I’m at the point now that I need to set aside time each day to review or I’ll start to fall behind. The biggest obstacle so far is to find and listen to someone speaking the language. With the Recorder, I hope it helps.

Check July ’08, Dec ’08, and May ’09 for my other posts on learning Bisaya.