[Offer critique only when you understand: 1) is it for you?; 2) under what conditions was it created?; 3) who is your audience? 4) what are your goals?. Important not to misalign by simply sharing whether you ’like’ it, or by complaining that “your seafood is bad because I don’t like seafood”.]
[Do it only once, not in multiple rounds. Consider salary reductions instead (also only once), accompanied by lower labor expectations. Be very direct without trying to lighten the mood. Management signed up for this.]
[Teaching a language vertically is quickly tedious. Nobody makes a sentence from only prepositions. Better to tie together various concepts to enable creating simple expressions.]
[Teach common words after the necessary knowledge to understand them, not at the beginning.]
As language methods often completely ignore the language of instruction, they tend to have an irritating habit of describing absolutely everything a language does. Learners are often forced to spend too much time trying to make heads or tails of grammatical descriptions provided to them for a new language, without ever realising that the target language functions in the same way as the base language, or indeed realising it when it’s too late and the knowledge can do little to spare the learner any effort. What’s worse, is that superfluous descriptions run the risk of becoming mental debris that the learner is unsure how to apply. They may lurk in the shadows and raise their ugly heads later on, interfering with other thought processes (often in fascinating ways, mind!).
In short, we don’t need to describe everything the target language does, and what should remain unsaid will have much to do with the structure of the language of instruction. To describe certain things in the target language which are indeed the same in the base language (without a particular reason for doing so) would serve to make our learner feel less in control than they would have with less information. We will avoid burdening our learners with irrelevant observations they’re not sure what to do with, and in this way we also cue that what we do tell our learners is important.
[We often already know, without realizing that we know.]
When it comes to importing vocabulary, we are almost always using the vocabulary for something other than learning a word. When Complete Spanish opens with -al words, it is not so we can learn legal, normal and metal, but so that we can begin dissecting what vowels sound and look like in Spanish, whilst raising the learner’s consciousness of word stress, too. In the same course, when we access verbs through the pattern ‘cancelation - cancelar, we do so to highlight the infinitive and its function, to then begin establishing the infinitive as a launchpad for building other tenses. The vocabulary conversion itself is secondary to these goals. Our learner will be taken aback by all the free words, of course, but our own focus as writers is elsewhere!
What are the messages that only I could write? What are the experiences and stories that only I could share? What can be seen only from where I’m standing?
[What we label ‘visionary’ from the past was often an effort to center needs of the marginalized. At that time, as the privileged were unserved in ways similar those at the margins, making an app or internet product was an example of ‘building those with special needs improves it for everyone’. But it isn’t visionary any longer when privileged people do it because they’re already marginalized. The ‘data-driven’ development popular today tends to favour majorities, and thus consistently results in bland, incrementalist ideas not serving the marginalized.]
[‘Do it for yourself’ fell out of fashion because white cis men weren’t getting visionary ideas that way. The potential is still there if the doer is a marginalized voice.]
We gotta get over this idea that we’re being mensches by handing over our stolen power to unworthy or inexperienced charity cases. No. Marginalized people out-qualify mainstream existing leadership on injecting vision because only their perspectives can deliver a visionary product in an industry already optimized for mainstream perspectives.
[NEDERA: Notice when emotionally activated; Experince the emotion; Differentiate by finding the words that best describe what you’re feeling; Express by speaking it out loud; Resonate by allowing any body changes as a result; Resolve through crying; Act and update to create any boundaries needed around what provoked you.]
[By focusing promotion less on a specific product and more on compelling future outcomes, you can become a go to point for the larger activity or lifestyle and be perfectly positioned to point towards what your business offers: for example, Lululemon selling yoga, the ACME Saddle company selling horseback riding, designer brands selling desirability, Nike selling success…]
[When offering something people have no references for, or that they don’t know they want, copy needs to be framed not in terms of simply features but outcomes that speak to where the customer is. Doing a better job providing what customers want goes hand-in-hand with communicating that as well as possible. It’s imperative to eliminate every little thing that could get in the way of a fluid experience, because the person using this already has too much to deal with and now they have to learn your random piece of software.]
[No points for features if they don’t squarely address the larger purpose.]
Every bit of grace, refinement, and thoughtfulness on our part will pull people along. Every petty irritation will stop them and give the impression that it is not worth it.
Injuries we experience are a reminder of what strangers may be carrying when they avoid things, and how we can be more mindful or compassionate when confronted with people who seem like or say that “they can’t”.