Over the years I’ve come to take “differences” seriously. I take “complexity” seriously too, which makes sense…to me at least. At the same time, I’ve noticed that there are those who fear or even hate “differences” as well as “complexity.” I prefer conversations with them to be either already short or ultimately shortened.
Click on video to experience the digital transformation.
Since late February 2021 I’ve been a Community Teacher on an online platform called iTalki, a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai. You can visit my profile page by clicking on the following link: [CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY iTALKI PROFILE PAGE]
To date (4/14/21) I’ve completed around 75 online lessons with approximately 35 students. It’s conversation-based learning, so I target students who can already speak English at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency. Each “lesson” is about an hour. I currently charge $10 per lesson, although I may increase that once I reach 100 completed lessons. Some students purchase packages of 5 lessons at a slight discount.
The conversation topics are completely open ended. Occasionally, I pause the dialogue to provide feedback on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and expressive, interactive style. So far I’ve had students from Russia, Estonia, Korea, Japan, Brazil, Peru, China, and the list is growing. It’s a remarkably eye-opening and rewarding experience.
If you know anyone who might benefit from such a learning experience, please help them book their first iTalki lesson with me or any number of other qualified teachers. Thank you.
By the way, did I mention that I’m often blown away by folks who use our conversations as an opportunity teach this old dog new tricks? Yes, it happens; and that makes me the luckiest person on my cul-de-sac!
Click on image to enlarge
iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Procreate, reference photo
I stopped the external and internal noise long enough to hear this. Then everything started happening again.
UBrush Pro, Procreate, iColorama, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Emptiness
Without some sort of tranquilizing intervention, our inner dialogue will mimic the outer dialogue around us; after all, that’s how we acquire language in the first place and “develop” it subsequently. I see this too as related to mitote, which we’ve explored elsewhere here at portfoliolongo.com.
There’s inner mitote, and there’s outer mitote. We’re up to our ears in mitote. Look at what happens metastatically within the comments section on many posts, the countervailing avalanches of polarized opinions mistaken for fact.
What triggers them? How do we tame them? How do we work through them? How do we work around them?
This story begins in 1982…
Always – Every One of Them
I’ll elaborate on this over time.
The term “interview” suggests to me at least “seeing eye-to-eye.” It’s the “view” part of the word that does that for me. When Charlie Rose interviews guests, he looks at them, they look at him, and they talk to one another. They interact verbally. They up and interlocute. Rather than diagraming a sentence from one such interlocution, here I’m depicting a pause rectangularly.
portfoliolongo 