Hi, SEers! Mae here on a cold February day. If you happen to live in the southern hemisphere and are enjoying beautiful temperate weather, please bottle some and send it up north! Winter doldrums aside, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at learning. Bear with me as I make the loop from point A to point B, because there’s a small hike in between.

Starting with Point A
For the last few years, I have—on and off—been trying to learn Spanish. Fortunately, there are numerous apps and products to help with language learning, and lately I’ve buckled down. One of the programs I looked into favors speaking Spanish words before learning to write them.

Think about it—when you were a baby, you formed words by mimicking what you heard. You learned to speak before you learned to write. And, herein, lies a problem for me, because…