5 Simple Ways To Beat Your Post-Vacation Blues

 Because coming back to reality can be harsh.

You’re back from vacation which means you’re likely feeling relaxed. But then the emails start to pile up, stress rises and suddenly it’s as though everything feels ho-hum again.

Sometimes those post-vacation blues serve a purpose: Experts say they may help you realize you need shake things up at home in order to feel satisfied. But if you’re happy with your home life, it might be more difficult to cope with those negative emotions once you get back.

So, how do you maintain the sunny outlook you had while you were away? Below are some tips for keeping the good vibes going after returning from a dreamy vacation:

1. Plan your next trip.

The happiest part of your vacation may not be the vacation itself, but the moments leading up to it. According to a 2010 study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality Of Life, just planning a trip can lead to increased feelings of happiness.

And if you’re itching to plan your trip during office hours, you’re not alone: An estimated 69 percent of vacations are researched at work, according to a poll by Travelzoo. Next time you hit the mid-afternoon slump, perhaps browse the web for your next travel destination. You just might perk up.

2. Re-create your favorite meal from your vacation.

Research suggests food and memory are intricately tied, which is why certain foods bring us straight back to childhood. The same could be argued for your last trip.

Make a night of it and whip up your favorite meal from your vacation. Or, if you want to take it a step further, look into perfecting a certain cuisine from your recently-visited location in a more longterm way. For example, if you loved the ramen in Japan or the handmade pasta in Italy, check out local cooking classes to perfect the skill of making it at home. Bonus: Studies show learning a new skill keeps your brain sharp.

3. Clean out your house.

Nothing proves living with less is possible like having to live out of a suitcase for a few days. Allow your vacation to motivate you to finally de-clutter ― and thus de-stress ― your life.

Take a look at your closet as though it’s your suitcase for a trip and keep only the necessities. What are the guidelines for making the cut? Try the Kondo method, which author Marie Kondo outlines in her best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up. The Japanese technique has you purge all the belongings that do not bring you joy. And doing so will help reframe your physical space along with your mental one, too.

4. Frame your favorite memories.

Once you’re home and settled back into routine, reserve some time to look through all the photographs you took on vacation. Pick the most meaningful moments from the trip and frame them for your home or share them on social media. Going back through photos and videos from your trip can evoke a sense of nostalgia, which research shows can enhance your mood.

5. Make time for relaxation.

In the same Applied Research in Quality Of Life happiness study, scientists also found that the people who were more joyful also reported feeling “very relaxed” on vacation.

It’s not always possible to find the money or the resources to escape your every day routine, but there are simple ways to have a blissed-out vacation vibe at home. A hot bath or shower is natural relaxer which may also reduce feelings of loneliness. Additionally, you can always go for a short walk, which research shows can lift boost your mood even when you least expect it.

And before you know it, the next trip will be underway.

Tomado de: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ways-to-beat-post-vacation-blues_n_5845dc80e4b028b32338d98a?guccounter=1

¡Que no te pase esto!

 

¡Que no te pase esto!

 

6 Ways to Manage Your Studies Over Christmas

 The Christmas holidays can be a blessing or a curse for a worn-out student.

On the one hand, acres of potential free time to get ahead with work, do some studying that isn’t just about the next exam coming up, or even catch up on some much-needed sleep. But on the other hand, a Christmas holiday – no matter how you celebrate it – is likely to come with a lot of exhausting obligations. If you celebrate a traditional Christmas, then there will be presents to buy, rooms to decorate, cooking to be done and a whole lot of relatives to catch up with. Even if you don’t celebrate a traditional Christmas but just have the time off, there will probably be family demands on your time that you’ll have to balance.
All that free time that you thought was stretching ahead of you can vanish very quickly between shopping trips, family visits and perhaps the occasional indulgent lie-in. There have been no shortage of students who have started the Christmas holidays with a large pile of library books and an even larger pile of good intentions, only to go back to school, college or university with the books unread and the good intentions unintentionally abandoned. With the best will in the world, few of us manage to do all the studying that we wish we could over Christmas; there’s just too much going on. And once Christmas itself is over and done with, there’s the celebrations for New Year’s Eve, which can be nearly as time-consuming.
In this article, we take a look at how you can plan your time and your studying to make the most of your Christmas break – so that you can catch up on your workload and have some festive fun as well.
 

1. Set a particular time for studying every day (and let your family know about it)

One of the reasons why it’s so tricky to study over Christmas holidays – say, compared to half term or Easter – is that the pattern of days for most people is much less predictable. There might be family dropping in unexpectedly (or unexpectedly to you, even if your parents knew about it), or other demands on your time, such as coming shopping at short notice, or meals out. When at other times of year it’s easier to just say no and hide yourself away in your room with your books, at Christmas there’s an additional sense of obligation to spend time with your family.

The best way to get around this is to pick a particular time of day to get on with some work, and to make sure your family knows about it. If there’s a family planner or something similar hanging up in the kitchen, make a note of your study hours every day. One advantage of this approach is that it means your family might help hold you to your intention to study, but more importantly, if they schedule visitors for those times, they can’t reasonably expect you to be available to spend time with them.
As for the time to pick, we recommend getting your studying out of the way in the morning, so that you have the rest of the day free. While it can be hard to motivate yourself to get to your books first thing, it’s even harder to do so later in the day, when you might be dragging yourself away from spending time with family and friends in front of a roaring fire. A couple of hours from 10am until midday is a realistic study period, and falls at the time of day when unexpected guests are least likely to show up at your door and require you to spend time with them.

2. Think about how you can adjust your studying to the circumstances

After your schedule being disrupted by family and friends, the next big hurdle to most people studying over Christmas is the particular circumstances of that time of year throwing your work into disarray. You might have planned on accessing the library, only to discover that it isn’t open on Bank Holidays, or – in some cases – you can’t make withdrawals at all between Christmas and New Year. Depending on where you live, snow might also be an impediment to library access. Similarly, if you’re home from university, you might find that the speedy wifi access you’re used to in Halls isn’t available at home, with multiple siblings putting demands on the bandwidth or a single dongle that needs to be shared around between several family members’ laptops.

The difficulties you might face aren’t just about access to study materials, whether in person in the library or online. If you have family members coming to stay, you might find yourself turfed out of your room to make way for an elderly granny or aunt, or that your usually peaceful study space is suddenly full of young cousins, nieces and nephews getting into arguments over toys or board games. Even if your family is mostly adults, having more people in the house can make it harder to concentrate than you might be used to.
The trick here is to consider how you can adjust your studying ahead of time. Do you need to get books out of the library early, or download lots of papers? Perhaps it’s a case of being prepared to pay for more data on your phone so you can have your own source of internet access. Or you might simply need to plan for work that can be done in a busy house – working through textbook exercises, for instance, can be better suited to an environment where you might be disturbed than something more involved like working on an essay.

3. Find somewhere else to study outside the house

Whether it’s slow wifi or your aunt’s dogs barking the house down, sometimes the best way to study over Christmas is to get out of the house. The idea of going somewhere else to study might seem quite strange if you’re still at school, but for most students it’s normal to take your laptop to a coffee shop or somewhere similar, and this can be a great way to get some work done undisturbed. It also helps section off that designated study time – it can be easier to carve out the time if you’re physically removing yourself from the distractions of home. You might be more tempted to let the deadline slip if you’re supposed to have started work by 10am, but if you need to be somewhere else to start work at that time, it can help you be more disciplined.

Where can you go? If you’re in a decent-sized town or city, there are bound to be cafés that will be happy to have you if you buy drinks at regular intervals (one an hour is usually fine). Look out for places that advertise their wifi and have prominent plug sockets, as that’s a good indicator that they’re happy to have people sitting there for some time working quietly. Avoid annoying the owners by choosing the smallest table you can fit on, and use non-leaky headphones if you’re going to be listening to music.
If a drink-per-hour at a café is a bit pricey for you, most towns will have an alternative that’s entirely free: your local library. You might well forget it’s there, but most local libraries will have a quiet study space, complete with the wifi and power source that you’ll need. Their collection of reference books might even furnish you with what you need, and you probably won’t even need to be a member to access any of it.

4. Don’t use studying as an excuse

Christmas can impose a lot of chores that you might not want to do, whether that’s sorting through old clothes, peeling potatoes for an army of relatives, or becoming an unpaid babysitter to their children. And if your family are particularly good at respecting your desire for peace and quiet during study time, it can be very tempting to try and get out of these responsibilities by citing your need to go and do some work for school or university.

It’s tempting, but it’s still ill-advised; it won’t take family members long to notice that you always seem to want to get back to your books when a dull shopping expedition through pre-Christmas crowds is on the cards, and their goodwill towards giving you the time you need isn’t likely to last once they’ve realised your using work as an excuse. This goes double if you claim that you’re studying but end up using the time as an opportunity to hide in your room instead of spending the time with your relatives. What might seem like a white lie now could be deeply irritating in a year’s time when you really do need the time to yourself to catch up on work, only for relatives to remind you that last year, you claim to be doing some advance reading for next year and were instead playing video games.

5. Be realistic about what you can achieve

You might have read the above recommendations about when to study – for instance, a couple of hours in the morning – and thought that that wasn’t really a lot of time. You might have plans to use this time off like study leave, and write a short essay every day, or get through three books in the week. But Christmas holidays do have a way of stealing time from you and it’s best to get more work done than you expected to than to come back to school or university with lots of things left undone that you were expecting to have finished by Boxing Day. This is doubly the case if you haven’t really worked over Christmas (or any other holiday) in the past, as you won’t have good habits to fall back on and your family might assume, regardless of what you say, that you will have a lot of free time.

You should probably assume that your average day over the Christmas holidays will be as busy as an average day at school or university, so think about what you can usually achieve in ‘homework’ time and allow roughly that amount of work per day. Of course, you should bring some surplus things to do – after all, you might end up snowed in and have a lot of opportunity to get work done. But you shouldn’t make plans to have a lot of work done by the time the new term starts, so you’re likely to end up disappointed.

6. Take the day itself off

If you do a proper, traditional family Christmas – whether those traditions are midnight Mass and all the relatives over, or focus more on pigs in blankets and Doctor Who – then there’s nothing that will make your family unhappier than saying you’re going to keep up your studying routine on Christmas Day itself. Studying from 10am to 12pm on Christmas Eve and then heading out for last-minute shopping and an evening with the neighbours is sociable; insisting on keeping to that schedule on Christmas Day is unfriendly at best.

You might have ideas of getting involved with the morning Christmas traditions, gathering under the tree and then having a Christmas lunch before sneaking off to get a couple of hours of work done. Our advice? Don’t bother trying. Aside from the fact that every difficulty of studying over the Christmas period is quadrupled on the day itself, if your family is trying to dissuade you from studying on the days leading up to Christmas, you can get a lot of mileage from saying, “of course, I won’t be doing any work on the day itself.” Then throw yourself into all the fun and tradition of it, and they might be more prepared to forgive you when you have to go back to your books on Boxing Day.

Tomado de: https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/6-ways-manage-studies-christmas/#aId=c2d38c67-3072-4c75-b00d-233b247765af

 

What is the best age to learn a language?

By Sophie Hardach

When it comes to learning a foreign language, we tend to think that children are the most adept. But that may not be the case – and there are added benefits to starting as an adult.

I

It’s a busy autumn morning at the Spanish Nursery, a bilingual nursery school in north London. Parents help their toddlers out of cycling helmets and jackets. Teachers greet the children with a cuddle and a chirpy “Buenos dias!”. In the playground, a little girl asks for her hair to be bunched up into a “coleta” (Spanish for ‘pigtail’), then rolls a ball and shouts “Catch!” in English.

“At this age, children don’t learn a language – they acquire it,” says the school’s director Carmen Rampersad. It seems to sum up the enviable effortlessness of the little polyglots around her. For many of the children, Spanish is a third or even fourth language. Mother tongues include Croatian, Hebrew, Korean and Dutch.

Compare this to the struggle of the average adult in a language class, and it would be easy to conclude that it’s best to start young.

But science offers a much more complex view of how our relationship with languages evolves over a lifetime – and there is much to encourage late beginners.

Broadly speaking, different life stages give us different advantages in language learning. As babies, we have a better ear for different sounds; as toddlers, we can pick up native accents with astonishing speed. As adults, we have longer attention spans and crucial skills like literacy that allow us to continually expand our vocabulary, even in our own language.

And a wealth of factors beyond ageing – like social circumstances, teaching methods, and even love and friendship – can affect how many languages we speak and how well.

“Not everything goes downhill with age,” says Antonella Sorace, a professor of developmental linguistics and director of the Bilingualism Matters Centre at the University of Edinburgh.

She gives the example of what is known as ‘explicit learning’: studying a language in a classroom with a teacher explaining the rules. “Young children are very bad at explicit learning, because they don’t have the cognitive control and the attention and memory capabilities,” Sorace says. “Adults are much better at that. So that can be something that improves with age.”

In a long-term study of almost Catalan-Spanish bilingual learners of English: the late starters acquired the new language faster than the younger starters

A study by researchers in Israel found, for example, that adults were better at grasping an artificial language rule and applying it to new words in a lab setting. The scientists compared three separate groups: 8-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and young adults. The adults scored higher than both younger groups, and the 12-year-olds also did better than the younger children.

This chimed with the results of a long-term study of almost 2,000 Catalan-Spanish bilingual learners of English: the late starters acquired the new language faster than the younger starters.

The researchers in Israel suggested that their older participants may have benefited from skills that come with maturity – like more advanced problem-solving strategies – and greater linguistic experience. In other words, older learners tend to already know quite a lot about themselves and the world and can use this knowledge to process new information. 

What young children excel at is learning implicitly: listening to native speakers and imitating them. But this type of learning requires a lot of time with native speakers. In 2016, the Bilingualism Matters Centre prepared an internal report on Mandarin lessons in primary schools for the Scottish government. They found that one hour a week of teaching did not make a meaningful difference to five-year-olds. But even just one additional half-hour, and the presence of a native speaker, helped the children grasp elements of Mandarin that are harder for adults, such as the tones.

Easy acquisition

We all start out as natural linguists.

 Infants already babble in their mother tongue

As babies, we can hear all of the 600 consonants and 200 vowels that make up the world’s languages. Within our first year, our brains begin to specialise, tuning into the sounds we hear most frequently. Infants already babble in their mother tongue. Even newborns cry with an accent, imitating the speech they heard while in the womb. This specialisation also means shedding the skills we do not need. Japanese babies can easily distinguish between ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds. Japanese adults tend to find this more difficult.

There is no question, Sorace says, that the early years are crucial for acquiring our own language. Studies of abandoned or isolated children have shown that if we do not learn human speech early on, we cannot easily make up for this later.

But here is the surprise: that cut-off is not the same for foreign language learning.

“The important thing to understand is that age co-varies with many other things,” says Danijela Trenkic, a psycholinguist at the University of York. Children’s lives are completely different from those of adults. So when we compare the language skills of children and adults, Trenkic says, “we’re not comparing like with like”.

She gives the example of a family moving to a new country. Typically, children will learn the language much faster than their parents. But that may be because they hear it constantly at school, while their parents might be working alone. The children may also feel a greater sense of urgency since mastering the language is crucial to their social survival: making friends, being accepted, fitting in. Their parents, on the other hand, are more likely to be able to socialise with people who understand them, such as fellow immigrants.

The emotional bond is what makes you better at language learning – Danijela Trenkic

“Creating the emotional bond is what makes you better at language learning, in my view,” says Trenkic.

Adults can of course also create that emotional bond, and not just through love or friendship with a native speaker. A 2013 study of British adults in an Italian beginners’ course found that those who stuck with it were helped by bonding with the other students and the teacher.

“If you find like-minded people, that makes it more likely that you’ll push on with a language, and that you’ll persevere,” Trenkic says. “And that really is the key. You need to spend years learning it. Unless there’s a social motivation for it, it’s really difficult to sustain.”

Even native speakers learn almost one new word a day in their own language until middle age

Earlier this year, a study at MIT based on an online quiz of nearly 670,000 people found that to achieve native-like knowledge of English grammar, it is best to start by about 10 years old, after which that ability declines. However, the study also showed that we can keep getting better at languages, including our own, over time. For example, we only fully master the grammar of our own language by about 30. This adds to a previous, separate online study that shows even native speakers learn almost one new word a day in their own language until middle age.

Trenkic points out that the MIT study analysed something extremely specific – the ability to pass for a native speaker in terms of grammatical accuracy. To the average language student, that may not be all that relevant.

“People sometimes ask, what is the biggest advantage of foreign languages? Will I earn more money? Will I be cleverer? Will I stay healthier? But actually, the biggest advantage of knowing foreign languages is being able to communicate with more people,” she says.

Trenkic herself is originally from Serbia. She only became fluent in English in her twenties, after she moved to the UK. She says she still makes grammatical mistakes, especially when she is tired or stressed. “Yet, despite all that – and this is crucial – I can do amazing things in English,” she later writes in an email. “I can enjoy the greatest literary works, I can produce meaningful and coherent texts of publishable quality.”

In fact, the MIT quiz classified her as a native English speaker.

At the Spanish Nursery, where the teachers are singing ‘Cumpleanos feliz’ and the book corner stocks The Gruffalo in Hebrew, the director herself turns out to be a late starter. Carmen Rampersad grew up in Romania and only really mastered English when she moved abroad in her twenties. Her children absorbed Spanish at nursery.

But perhaps the most adventurous linguist is her husband. Originally from Trinidad, he learned Romanian from her family, who live close to the border with Moldova.

“His Romanian is excellent,” she says. “He speaks it with a Moldavian accent. It’s hilarious.”

Tomado de: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181024-the-best-age-to-learn-a-foreign-language

¨HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0¨

¨HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0¨ 

THE NEW DEPARTMENT DEDICATED TO VIRTUAL EDUCATION

Current circumstances seem to limit us to the tasks that have been usually part of our daily lives, but contrarily to this, in the HOLLOWAY INSTITUTE has awakened the innovation of opportunities - Online. In this sector our student community can accesses from our learning as a competitive advantage through the virtual universe that is coming, that has arrived, that is here and to stay.

For this reason, it is possible from our new HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0 department, to undertake this cyberspace journey with the security and trust of a multidisciplinary team that supports a 100% effective methodology.

HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0 seeks to expand the possibilities within the framework of the creation of a pedagogical methodology which brings innovation and also integrates three tools on a virtual level:

The video-conferences, the virtual whiteboard and the presentation, these will guide, connect, encourage and structure activities done from the comfort of the home or the office, scenarios and spaces that are significant in today's society.

The nature of this present environment leads to the awakening of new social, economic, technological and educational incentives challenges, that cannot be underestimated, as they remain rooted in what is commonly traditionally. 

However, in these most complex circumstances that the world has presented, HOLLOWAY INSTITUTE has created a new department that leads the student community through the virtual route demanded today, achieving resounding success in the hands of professionals, while also prioritizing giving personalized guidance.

We are still here to make our students' lives easier and more practical, along with their constant professional growth, simply because, it is our job.

Finally, HOLLOWAY INSTITUTE invites the entire student community to retake their language classes with the certainty of an effective methodology, being in the hands of qualified experts, who guarantee results based on permanent technological research tasks, applied with pedagogical responsibility. With HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0 you will continue to encounter what has always captivated you about our institute: Excellence, quality and achievement of goals.

Even as times become more difficult, expectations and demands should continue to rise; as well as desires to fulfill business objectives, business and positive learning goals.

HOLLOWAY VIRTUAL 2.0 not only will accompany you in perfecting a language, but will also participate hand in hand with new technology adaptation to daily life, it will continue to develop and innovate the most effective and efficient ways of teaching languages.

6 BENEFITS OF THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM

If you are thinking of taking a course or studying online but you are not sure that this is the right option for you, read on. Here I explain what a virtual classroom is and what its benefits are.

A virtual classroom is an online learning environment, in other words it is a class that is received via the Internet and that creates an adequate space for communication and distance learning.

You can access this learning environment via software by having to download and run a file on your computer or via the web, which is the preferred option since you can access the portal from any device at any time.

In the virtual classroom you can connect with your classmates and tutors synchronously (live) or asynchronously in which you can review the contents at the time that is most convenient for you and from your workstation.

You will use educational technology applications such as video conferences, videos, presentations, readings, message boards, chats and forums, among others.

With virtual education you will eliminate many of the limitations that have prevented you from starting or continuing your education in traditional settings.

6 Benefits of the virtual classroom:

• There are no geographic barriers

The virtual classroom gives you access to a large number of educators and educational establishments around the world. You can access the best universities and a wide variety of careers not available in your geographic location.

Virtual education allows students to expose themselves and share with diverse cultures and overcome traditional communication, location, time and cost barriers.

• Save of time and money

You will be able to save time and money by not having to go to another place, pay for parking, the cost that the institution adds to the use of facilities and other physical services.

You will save money on material resources such as notebooks, sheets and prints as the material is available online. In short, you can do more with less.

• Sessions with audio and video

There are multiple advantages to receiving virtual classes and being able to have the learning material in different formats. One of the main advantages is that if you cannot attend live video conferences you can listen to the recording.

If you can participate live you will have the opportunity to interact with your classmates and tutor, exchange ideas and answer questions. By having audio and video recordings you have the option to listen to them as many times as necessary.

You will be able to know different learning tools which also allows you to be more motivated and maintain interest in the subject. If you have mobile internet you can listen to the recordings on the way to work or in free time.

• Differentiated and flexible learning

The virtual classroom is an excellent tool to differentiate teaching and thus facilitate the learning of diverse students.

I explain to you, the weakest students in some area can achieve more confidence and self-confidence as they can access the material as many times as necessary, help themselves with complementary material and have the support of the tutor and other colleagues who collaboratively support solving doubts and offering solutions.

For the most advanced student there is the possibility of extending their learning with complementary material and web tools.

In the virtual classroom you can personalize your education, actively participate and take ownership of your learning process, easily being aware of your own progress and thought processes. (metacognition).

A student in a virtual classroom can make as much progress as they want with the support of the tutor and peers. The tutor supports you to become a lifelong learner who builds his own learning.

• Continuous feedback

Tutors are available to give you continuous feedback about your doubts, your work and your performance.

In the virtual classroom, the tutor is available live during video conferences and almost all the time through email, chats or forums.

The online tutor will indicate how long or at what time he will be available to communicate with you. Technology favors group cohesion and peer support.

• Responsibility for learning

Technology favors the organization and classification of documents and their availability. You can access them 24/7 as many times as you want and they are easy to locate.

Classes include supplementary material and options of tools and suggestions with which you can extend your learning.

Students who have had problems with the organization of their learning can find in the virtual classroom new forms and tools that facilitate their style and preference, from games, video, audio and stories to traditional reading texts.

You can be more aware of your own learning process, your progress and your needs and be the one who decides how far you want to go.

The virtual classroom overcomes the barriers of time, distance and money, if you have a good internet service and want to continue your learning,

Do not wait more! there is a high probability that this will become your favorite learning modality.