Antonio Graceffo on Inside Martial Arts TV

Inside Martial Arts TV just did a documentary/interview with Antonio Graceffo, tracing his eight year journey through Asia, studying martial arts and languages, moving from country to country and studying with master after master. The Odyssey began in Taiwan, led to the Shaolin Temple, in China, and then on to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao, Burma, Korea, and the Philippines. Along the way, Mr. Graceffo published five books, wrote for major magazines, made several movies, appeared on TV and radio shows, and created youtube videos, documenting his travel.

 

The interview gives some insight into Antonio’s web TV show, “Martial Arts Odyssey,” which now comprises more than 60 episodes, shot in twenty or more locations across Asia.

 

http://www.insidemartialarts.tv/video1.php

 

 

“I think Inside Martial Arts did a great job on this video, as they do on all of their stuff. They were one of the only media ever to cover Burmese Katchin martial arts, and that’s how we became acquainted.” Said Mr. Graceffo, AKA The Brooklyn Monk.

 

Antonio went on to say, “They made this Antonio guy seem so cool, I really wanted to meet him. But then, I have been a huge fan of Antonio Graceffo for years. The video made me want to tune in to Inside Martial Arts TV all of the time and also read a bunch of Antonio’s books.”

 

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the author of the book, “The Monk from Brooklyn” and the host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts Odyssey,” which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries.

 

See all of Antonio’s videos on his youtube channel, brooklynmonk1, send him a friend request or subscribe.

http://www.youtube.com/user/brooklynmonk1

 

His books are available on amazon.com

Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com

 

His website is www.speakingadventure.com

 

Join Antonio Graceffo on facebook.com

 

 

 

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Learning Language on Your Own or with an Informal Teacher

Taking an ALG Approach to Self-Study

By Antonio Graceffo

Many people who have read about the ALG Automatic Language Growth method of language acquisition. The program is listening based, and is currently being used at AUA school in Bangkok, under the direction of David Long. Since the vast majority of the world’s people can’t travel to Bangkok, students have asked if it is possible to learn by distance learning or self-study. To date, there are no specific ALG distance learning or self-study programs available. Hopefully there are some products coming out toward the end of 2009.

 

Some people have written in and asked if they could approximate the ALG experience by

watching tons and tons of hours of TV in Japanese or Chinese or a foreign language. The answer is yes, BUT only if you already have sufficient basis to understand 55 -70% of what you are hearing. If you are a complete beginner, it won’t work. The TV would just become more noise.

 

If you are a beginning student, one way of “artificially” increasing your comprehension level is to first watch a similar movie or show in English. This is what we often did while I was studying to be a translator. We would read a current news story in several international newspapers and compare them. Or, we would watch a movie or TV show in English, and then watch it in the target language. I do this in Taiwan too. I watch a lot of Disney movies, like “Mulan”, “The Incredibles”, or “Kung Fu Panda” in English and then in Chinese. Over a period of months, I go back and forth between English and Chinese, watching them over and over again.

 

The trick is to choose few enough materials that you get constructive levels of repetition. If you choose too few, you wind up hearing the same story too frequently. You will get bored and tune out. Your brain will stop “guessing.” And when you stop guessing, you stop learning. If you choose too many materials, then it will take too long before they repeat. So, you must find a balance. You be the judge. After you embark on a disciplined program of listening on a regular schedule, then you can occasionally shake things up by throwing a new movie or TV show into the mix.

 

Just as an unscientific rule of thumb, depending upon how many hours you are listening per day, maybe you want to repeat a particular movie once per month.

 

People have asked about using the ALG method to learn reading and writing, particularly in Asian languages, which employ different alphabets. When children learn to read their native tongue, they already know nearly all of the words in their reading book. They need to simply learn the reading. ALG would say that most students of foreign language begin reading and writing to early. Reading and writing should be begun only after students have sufficient language. They shouldn’t e struggling with the meanings of words and phrases while learning to negotiate an unfamiliar writing system. In the case of Thai, which has many unique sounds which sound similar to the western ear, how can you learn to read and write these sounds if you haven’t mastered hearing and saying them?

 

Learning to read and write too soon is one more way of fossilizing mistakes, taking flawed language and making it permanent.

 

When you reach a point that you are read to learn reading and writing, you will need to employ a traditional methodology in order to acquire the alphabet and how to actually read and write in say Japanese, Thai or Chinese. In an ALG classroom, the teachers often write Thai words on the board while they are teaching listening, so that by the time the students get to their reading and writing levels, they already have some passive knowledge of the alphabet and have made assumptions about how it works. Studying on your own, you may not have this benefit.

 

Once you can read, you can use Core Novel Method, which is how I learned German. You just read and read and read stories and books that you enjoy reading, without a dictionary, Or with only occasional dictionary support. Once again, chose materials you are already familiar with in English. And you can go back and forth between English and the target language. With reading, I would advise not reading the same book more than two or three times per year.

 

Again, you can’t use this method if you are a complete beginner.

 

If you are a complete beginner you can use both ALG and Core Novel type approaches with your traditional learning materials. In other words, you can listen to your CDs and tapes over and over and over again and read your learner texts over and over. The reason ALG would actually steer you away from this suggestion, however, is that ALG is about listening to real language, not synthetic language, designed for the class room. Stories and movies are good because lots of real life situations and language occur in them. Arguably the news or an interview show is best for ‘real” natural language. Interview shows in particular are largely unscripted, so more authentic. The disadvantage, of course, is that there are no pictures to help you understand. So, an interview show would be only slightly better than listening to radio.

 

What I did for Chinese was to find several series of materials and buy two sets at the same level. In other words, I bought a complete set of beginning level 1 material: textbook, workbook, character book, and CDs for both the “Far Eastern Chinese” series and the “Audio Visual Chinese” series. This way, I had more practice at each level. If you are working with your teacher, you can have him or her teach you from one series, while you use the other series for self study. Make an appointment with your teacher once a week or so to check the homework from the series you do on your own.

 

ALG shies away from books, homework and traditional teachers. So, I am not strict ALG. But I take a lot of concepts from ALG and apply them to my language teaching and learning. In ALG there is an exercise called “Cross Talk.” This is a cross-cultural or cross-lingual communication tool developed by David Long, the man who is carrying on Dr. Brown’s work. In cross talk, two people who do not share a common language sit together and communicate by drawing on a paper, while they each speak their own native tongue. The idea here is that the listener has the visual clues of the pictures, plus body language, facial expression and tone of voice to help him understand what he is hearing. For an English native speaker, there is also the assumption that nearly everyone in the world has some understanding of English. So, this will also aid the listener in understanding.

 

I have taken cross talk a step further and employed it as a language learning tool, which allows any man, woman or child, who is a native speaker to become your language teacher.

 

Living in Asia, you will hear again and again that a foreigner is hoping to learn Chinese or Japanese from his or her partner. Often the linguistic development in the couple reaches a point of frustration, rather quickly, and they just give up on learning. They generally choose communication over development, and settle on a lingua franca. More often than not, couples communicate in English. The local, Asian partner, has generally had years of school English, where the foreign partner may have had a few months, or as little as zero training in the local language. So, the couple communicates in English, and the foreign partner never learns the local language.

 

Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule. We all know numerous couples who communicate in the local language. But most of the exceptions occur in couples where the foreign partner already had sufficient language to allow for communication and growth. Again, this concept of “already having sufficient language” mirrors Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and the ALG concept that if the language is too far over the listener’s head, it just becomes noise.

 

If we took a random sampling of mixed relationships, foreign and local, we would find that the bulk of them communicate almost exclusively in English.

 

The other method many foreigners try to employ is the language exchange. They meet once or twice a week with a local friend and agree to speak an hour of English and an hour of the local language. The problem again is that the foreign partner is generally at a lower level than the local partner. What the foreign partner needs is a teacher. But the local doesn’t know how to teach. And since such a large percentage of the foreigners living in Asia are teachers, the local partner benefits from a free English language lesson with a real teacher. The foreign partners often get frustrated, complaining that their girl friend, boy friend, or language partner doesn’t know how to teach.

 

You give an hour of English to your partner. When it is his or her turn to give you an hour of Japanese, you actually wind up with ten minutes of Japanese, and fifty minutes of clumsy explanations in curious English. I often see pairs of people sitting in Starbucks, with a Taiwanese friend, who has no concept of teaching or grammar, explaining the Chinese language, in broken English, to a westerner. It is often clear from the face of the westerner that he or she doesn’t even understand the explanation, but he smiles and says “Thank you” out of politeness.

 

The foreigner then usually looks at returning to school to learn the language. But school has a number of draw backs, such as boredom, inconvenience, and expense. These are the exact reasons why the foreigner quit school in the first place. In the end, many westerners never acquire the language of their host country, although upon arrival, this is one of the most commonly stated reasons why someone chooses to live in Taiwan, Japan, or China.

 

To circumvent this difficulty of learning from informal teachers, I came up with the concept of Language Buddies. Similar to traditional language exchange, you meet with your partner one or ten or a hundred times per week.

 

If you want to use your traditional learning materials with your partner, who is a non-teacher, you can prepare all of your lessons in advance. Then have your native speaker partner simply read all of the lessons to you, including reading texts and grammar exercises. When he or she finishes, then it is your turn to read. It can be very frustrating to ask a non-teacher to explain the language to you, so just use your native partner as a reader and pronunciation checker. Also, as soon as you ask him or her to explain the language, he or she will generally answer in English, which will eat into your Japanese listening time. ALG, of course, strictly prohibits analyzing the language or asking about the language. ALG would also want you to stay away from traditional language learning materials because they are full of synthetic, rather than “real” language.

 

For a more ALG type of approach: You use the Cross Talk Method, to tell each other stories, while drawing on paper. When you hear words you don’t know, you just let them go. Don’t ask for a translation. You can ask questions using English, but urge your language partner to answer in the local language. This way in your one hour of Japanese, you are actually hearing one hour of Japanese.

 

You and your language partner could plan your themes in advance. This way, you will each be using similar vocabulary. For example, you could both tell a news story which is currently running in the papers, or you could retell the plot of the latest popular movie. You could tell your partner in advance what it is you will be telling, and then he or she could prepare by first reading the story in his or her native tongue or in English. And you could do the same. Find out what your partner is going to tell you, and you prepare yourself in English or Japanese in advance.

 

What if you are both fans of “Star Trek” or “The Sopranos”? You could each agree to watch the same episode, whether in your own language or in the language you are studying, and then you would go in and tell the story in English, using picture stories, inflection, and body language. Your partner would then tell you the same story in Japanese.

 

Or, you could just let it be up to the speaker what he or she tells on a given day. This way you add the real element of surprise. The beauty of this exercise is that you are each in complete control of the story, while speaking, and the listener is free to listen. More importantly, the learner is free to learn whatever he needs to, or whatever he can, on a given day. One of the reasons ALG doesn’t like textbooks is because the books decide what the learner learns. In ALG the learner decides what he will learn on a given day.

 

Departing from strict ALG concepts, I would suggest using a digital audio recorder or camera to capture the story. You could listen to it again in your spare time, as part of your daily listening exercises.

 

Antonio Graceffo is the author of the book, “The Monk from Brooklyn,” and is he host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts odyssey.” See his linguistics videos and seminars on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkFMewAsLfU&feature=channel_page

 

Contact Antonio Graceffo on facebook.com

Send him email Antonio@speakingadvdenture.com

 

Antonio,graceffo,Brooklyn,monk,martial,arts,linguistics,odyssey,

language,acquisition,ALG,theory,growth,automatic,brown,long,

david,marvin,Bangkok,Thailand,thai,Chinese,teaching,learning,

studying,linguist,TESOL,TEFL,ESL,English,Second,Foreign,

other,languages,krashen,phonics,show,tell

Learning Language on Your Own or with an Informal Teacher

Taking an ALG Approach to Self-Study

By Antonio Graceffo

 

Many people who have read about the ALG Automatic Language Growth method of language acquisition. The program is listening based, and is currently being used at AUA school in Bangkok, under the direction of David Long. Since the vast majority of the world’s people can’t travel to Bangkok, students have asked if it is possible to learn by distance learning or self-study. To date, there are no specific ALG distance learning or self-study programs available. Hopefully there are some products coming out toward the end of 2009.

 

Some people have written in and asked if they could approximate the ALG experience by

watching tons and tons of hours of TV in Japanese or Chinese or a foreign language. The answer is yes, BUT only if you already have sufficient basis to understand 55 -70% of what you are hearing. If you are a complete beginner, it won’t work. The TV would just become more noise.

 

If you are a beginning student, one way of “artificially” increasing your comprehension level is to first watch a similar movie or show in English. This is what we often did while I was studying to be a translator. We would read a current news story in several international newspapers and compare them. Or, we would watch a movie or TV show in English, and then watch it in the target language. I do this in Taiwan too. I watch a lot of Disney movies, like “Mulan”, “The Incredibles”, or “Kung Fu Panda” in English and then in Chinese. Over a period of months, I go back and forth between English and Chinese, watching them over and over again.

 

The trick is to choose few enough materials that you get constructive levels of repetition. If you choose too few, you wind up hearing the same story too frequently. You will get bored and tune out. Your brain will stop “guessing.” And when you stop guessing, you stop learning. If you choose too many materials, then it will take too long before they repeat. So, you must find a balance. You be the judge. After you embark on a disciplined program of listening on a regular schedule, then you can occasionally shake things up by throwing a new movie or TV show into the mix.

 

Just as an unscientific rule of thumb, depending upon how many hours you are listening per day, maybe you want to repeat a particular movie once per month.

 

People have asked about using the ALG method to learn reading and writing, particularly in Asian languages, which employ different alphabets. When children learn to read their native tongue, they already know nearly all of the words in their reading book. They need to simply learn the reading. ALG would say that most students of foreign language begin reading and writing to early. Reading and writing should be begun only after students have sufficient language. They shouldn’t e struggling with the meanings of words and phrases while learning to negotiate an unfamiliar writing system. In the case of Thai, which has many unique sounds which sound similar to the western ear, how can you learn to read and write these sounds if you haven’t mastered hearing and saying them?

 

Learning to read and write too soon is one more way of fossilizing mistakes, taking flawed language and making it permanent.

 

When you reach a point that you are read to learn reading and writing, you will need to employ a traditional methodology in order to acquire the alphabet and how to actually read and write in say Japanese, Thai or Chinese. In an ALG classroom, the teachers often write Thai words on the board while they are teaching listening, so that by the time the students get to their reading and writing levels, they already have some passive knowledge of the alphabet and have made assumptions about how it works. Studying on your own, you may not have this benefit.

 

Once you can read, you can use Core Novel Method, which is how I learned German. You just read and read and read stories and books that you enjoy reading, without a dictionary, Or with only occasional dictionary support. Once again, chose materials you are already familiar with in English. And you can go back and forth between English and the target language. With reading, I would advise not reading the same book more than two or three times per year.

 

Again, you can’t use this method if you are a complete beginner.

 

If you are a complete beginner you can use both ALG and Core Novel type approaches with your traditional learning materials. In other words, you can listen to your CDs and tapes over and over and over again and read your learner texts over and over. The reason ALG would actually steer you away from this suggestion, however, is that ALG is about listening to real language, not synthetic language, designed for the class room. Stories and movies are good because lots of real life situations and language occur in them. Arguably the news or an interview show is best for ‘real” natural language. Interview shows in particular are largely unscripted, so more authentic. The disadvantage, of course, is that there are no pictures to help you understand. So, an interview show would be only slightly better than listening to radio.

 

What I did for Chinese was to find several series of materials and buy two sets at the same level. In other words, I bought a complete set of beginning level 1 material: textbook, workbook, character book, and CDs for both the “Far Eastern Chinese” series and the “Audio Visual Chinese” series. This way, I had more practice at each level. If you are working with your teacher, you can have him or her teach you from one series, while you use the other series for self study. Make an appointment with your teacher once a week or so to check the homework from the series you do on your own.

 

ALG shies away from books, homework and traditional teachers. So, I am not strict ALG. But I take a lot of concepts from ALG and apply them to my language teaching and learning. In ALG there is an exercise called “Cross Talk.” This is a cross-cultural or cross-lingual communication tool developed by David Long, the man who is carrying on Dr. Brown’s work. In cross talk, two people who do not share a common language sit together and communicate by drawing on a paper, while they each speak their own native tongue. The idea here is that the listener has the visual clues of the pictures, plus body language, facial expression and tone of voice to help him understand what he is hearing. For an English native speaker, there is also the assumption that nearly everyone in the world has some understanding of English. So, this will also aid the listener in understanding.

 

I have taken cross talk a step further and employed it as a language learning tool, which allows any man, woman or child, who is a native speaker to become your language teacher.

 

Living in Asia, you will hear again and again that a foreigner is hoping to learn Chinese or Japanese from his or her partner. Often the linguistic development in the couple reaches a point of frustration, rather quickly, and they just give up on learning. They generally choose communication over development, and settle on a lingua franca. More often than not, couples communicate in English. The local, Asian partner, has generally had years of school English, where the foreign partner may have had a few months, or as little as zero training in the local language. So, the couple communicates in English, and the foreign partner never learns the local language.

 

Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule. We all know numerous couples who communicate in the local language. But most of the exceptions occur in couples where the foreign partner already had sufficient language to allow for communication and growth. Again, this concept of “already having sufficient language” mirrors Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis and the ALG concept that if the language is too far over the listener’s head, it just becomes noise.

 

If we took a random sampling of mixed relationships, foreign and local, we would find that the bulk of them communicate almost exclusively in English.

 

The other method many foreigners try to employ is the language exchange. They meet once or twice a week with a local friend and agree to speak an hour of English and an hour of the local language. The problem again is that the foreign partner is generally at a lower level than the local partner. What the foreign partner needs is a teacher. But the local doesn’t know how to teach. And since such a large percentage of the foreigners living in Asia are teachers, the local partner benefits from a free English language lesson with a real teacher. The foreign partners often get frustrated, complaining that their girl friend, boy friend, or language partner doesn’t know how to teach.

 

You give an hour of English to your partner. When it is his or her turn to give you an hour of Japanese, you actually wind up with ten minutes of Japanese, and fifty minutes of clumsy explanations in curious English. I often see pairs of people sitting in Starbucks, with a Taiwanese friend, who has no concept of teaching or grammar, explaining the Chinese language, in broken English, to a westerner. It is often clear from the face of the westerner that he or she doesn’t even understand the explanation, but he smiles and says “Thank you” out of politeness.

 

The foreigner then usually looks at returning to school to learn the language. But school has a number of draw backs, such as boredom, inconvenience, and expense. These are the exact reasons why the foreigner quit school in the first place. In the end, many westerners never acquire the language of their host country, although upon arrival, this is one of the most commonly stated reasons why someone chooses to live in Taiwan, Japan, or China.

 

To circumvent this difficulty of learning from informal teachers, I came up with the concept of Language Buddies. Similar to traditional language exchange, you meet with your partner one or ten or a hundred times per week.

 

If you want to use your traditional learning materials with your partner, who is a non-teacher, you can prepare all of your lessons in advance. Then have your native speaker partner simply read all of the lessons to you, including reading texts and grammar exercises. When he or she finishes, then it is your turn to read. It can be very frustrating to ask a non-teacher to explain the language to you, so just use your native partner as a reader and pronunciation checker. Also, as soon as you ask him or her to explain the language, he or she will generally answer in English, which will eat into your Japanese listening time. ALG, of course, strictly prohibits analyzing the language or asking about the language. ALG would also want you to stay away from traditional language learning materials because they are full of synthetic, rather than “real” language.

 

For a more ALG type of approach: You use the Cross Talk Method, to tell each other stories, while drawing on paper. When you hear words you don’t know, you just let them go. Don’t ask for a translation. You can ask questions using English, but urge your language partner to answer in the local language. This way in your one hour of Japanese, you are actually hearing one hour of Japanese.

 

You and your language partner could plan your themes in advance. This way, you will each be using similar vocabulary. For example, you could both tell a news story which is currently running in the papers, or you could retell the plot of the latest popular movie. You could tell your partner in advance what it is you will be telling, and then he or she could prepare by first reading the story in his or her native tongue or in English. And you could do the same. Find out what your partner is going to tell you, and you prepare yourself in English or Japanese in advance.

 

What if you are both fans of “Star Trek” or “The Sopranos”? You could each agree to watch the same episode, whether in your own language or in the language you are studying, and then you would go in and tell the story in English, using picture stories, inflection, and body language. Your partner would then tell you the same story in Japanese.

 

Or, you could just let it be up to the speaker what he or she tells on a given day. This way you add the real element of surprise. The beauty of this exercise is that you are each in complete control of the story, while speaking, and the listener is free to listen. More importantly, the learner is free to learn whatever he needs to, or whatever he can, on a given day. One of the reasons ALG doesn’t like textbooks is because the books decide what the learner learns. In ALG the learner decides what he will learn on a given day.

 

Departing from strict ALG concepts, I would suggest using a digital audio recorder or camera to capture the story. You could listen to it again in your spare time, as part of your daily listening exercises.

 

Antonio Graceffo is the author of the book, “The Monk from Brooklyn,” and is he host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts odyssey.” See his linguistics videos and seminars on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkFMewAsLfU&feature=channel_page

 

Contact Antonio Graceffo on facebook.com

Send him email Antonio@speakingadvdenture.com

 

Antonio,graceffo,Brooklyn,monk,martial,arts,linguistics,odyssey,

language,acquisition,ALG,theory,growth,automatic,brown,long,

david,marvin,Bangkok,Thailand,thai,Chinese,teaching,learning,

studying,linguist,TESOL,TEFL,ESL,English,Second,Foreign,

other,languages,krashen,phonics,show,tell

ALG Linguistic

 

 

Video Series New Video: ALG Linguistics (Part 1of 5)

Linguist and author, Antonio Graceffo, explains ALG, Automatic language Growth, a second language acquisition theory, developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, of the United States. The method is currently being used to teach, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, at AUA School in Bangkok, where David Long continues Dr. Brown’s research. Antonio took the concepts he learned, while studying under David Long, and applied them to teaching in Taiwan. This video was filmed at one of Antonio’s linguistics seminars at a university in Tainan, Taiwan. The participants learn to employ an ALG tool, called Cross Talk to communicate across barriers. In the video, you will hear people speaking Chinese, English, German, French, and Thai. See parts 1 through 5 on youtube Watch it fee on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEhFCbn8f1c ALG, Automatic language Growth, is a second language acquisition theory, developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, of the United States. The method is currently being used to teach, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, at AUA School in Bangkok, where David Long continues Dr. Brown’s research. Antonio took the concepts he learned, while studying under David Long, and applied them to teaching in Taiwan. This video was filmed at one of Antonio’s linguistics seminars at a university in Tainan, Taiwan. The participants learn to employ an ALG tool, called Cross Talk to communicate across barriers. In the video, you will hear people speaking Chinese, English, German, French, and Thai. ALG Linguistics (Part 2) Host Antonio Graceffo leads a group of students in Cross Talk, an ALG based communication tool, developed by David Long of AUA Bangkok, to help facilitate crosscultural and extra-linguistic communication. ALG, Automatic language Growth, is a second language acquisition theory, developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, of the United States. The method is currently being used to teach, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, at AUA School in Bangkok, where David Long continues Dr. Brown’s research. Antonio took the concepts he learned, while studying under David Long, and applied them to teaching in Taiwan. This video was filmed at one of Antonio’s linguistics seminars at a university in Tainan, Taiwan. The participants learn to employ an ALG tool, called Cross Talk to communicate across barriers. In the video, you will hear people speaking Chinese, English, German, French, and Thai. Watch it fee on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5uiVkMWfHc ALG Linguistics (Part 3) Demonstration Lesson Host Antonio Graceffo presents a sample of the ALG teaching method, which is employed at AUA school, Bangkok, Thailand. ALG requires students to listen to ALG, Automatic language Growth, is a second language acquisition theory, developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, of the United States. The method is currently being used to teach, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, at AUA School in Bangkok, where David Long continues Dr. Brown’s research. Antonio took the concepts he learned, while studying under David Long, and applied them to teaching in Taiwan. This video was filmed at one of Antonio’s linguistics seminars at a university in Tainan, Taiwan. The participants learn to employ an ALG tool, called Cross Talk to communicate across barriers. In the video, you will hear people speaking Chinese, English, German, French, and Thai. Watch it fee on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL9XXJwNqkI ALG Linguistics (Part 4) Comprehension Check Antonio Graceffo wraps up his German language presentation and check’s student comprehension. Students are amazed at how much the understood. Next, he invites students to come to the board and tell their own story in their own language: Chinese, Thai, and French. ALG, Automatic language Growth, is a second language acquisition theory, developed by Dr. J. Marvin Brown, of the United States. The method is currently being used to teach, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese, at AUA School in Bangkok, where David Long continues Dr. Brown’s research. Antonio took the concepts he learned, while studying under David Long, and applied them to teaching in Taiwan. This video was filmed at one of Antonio’s linguistics seminars at a university in Tainan, Taiwan. The participants learn to employ an ALG tool, called Cross Talk to communicate across barriers. In the video, you will hear people speaking Chinese, English, German, French, and Thai. Watch it fee on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqw3TN_44QI ALG Linguistics (Part 5) Lessons Learned One final Chinese language story, and then Antonio Graceffo leads students in a wrap up, drawing conclusions and talking about what they learned from the ALG method. They discus applications for classrooms and boardrooms. Watch it fee on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJaYSEcxvg In a recent round of interviews, networks and media sent Antonio the question via email and Antonio answered on camera. If you are interested in doing a similar interview, fire off the questions to Antonio. Antonio is looking for an opportunity to study for an MA/PHD in linguistics. Antonio Graceffo is the author of the book, “The Monk from Brooklyn,” and is he host of the web TV show, “Martial Arts odyssey.” Contact Antonio Graceffo on facebook.com Send him email Antonio@speakingadvdenture.com Antonio,graceffo,Brooklyn,monk,martial,arts,linguistics,odyssey,language,acquisition,ALG,theory,growth,automatic,brown,long,david,marvin,Bangkok,Thailand,thai,Chinese,teaching,learning,studying,linguist,TESOL,TEFL,ESL,English,Second,Foreign,other,languages,cross,ta

Interview on Language Mastery Web TV

 

 

Language Mastery, a website run by John Fotheringham did a TV interview with me and are now running it as a pod cast as well as running it on their website. It was nice to get some recognition for linguistics and not just martial arts. The link is below. You can check it out. He asked me about the secret to learning foreign languages and questions about my language acquisition theories.

Interview for Foreign Language Mastery. You can check it out here: http://l2mastery.com/featured-articles/antonio-graceffo

 

In other news, I am fine. Still teaching school in Taiwan, waiting to leave. Planning to go to Australia to film martial arts Odyssey for two months but also hoping to squeeze in some filming in Cambodia and Thailand.

 

Martial Arts Odyssey is doing really well. The viewership is growing, and I have been getting a lot more requests for these types of TV interviews. They send me questions by email and I answer on camera and mail the tapes to them. If you know anyone who might want to do an interview with me, please send them my way.

 

Here is a link to my page on youtube.com so you can see all of the newest episodes of Martial Arts Odyssey as well as my linguistics and travel videos.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/brooklynmonk1

A Tale of Two Merchants

Manufacturing Doesn’t Make Money, Sales Do

By Antonio Graceffo

 

A college business professor once dazzled his class by reducing the world’s myriad businesses to a single sentence: “All companies do one of two things; they make or sell a product or service.”

 

For years, I thought this guy was a genius, until I started working in the financial sector. I realized right away that services are products, so I could shorten his statement to “All companies do one of two things; they make or sell a product.”

 

With more experience, I realized he was completely wrong. The statement should read: “All companies sell a product.”

 

That’s it! Simple language. Companies sell products. Making products costs money. That’s why manufacturing is on the cost side of the balance sheet. Selling products makes money.

 

So many people around the world are pointing at the US right now, blaming the Americans for causing the world economic tsunami. They are specifically targeting the greed of American consumers, who used credit to by products, and blame the laziness of American workers, who don’t make products anymore.

 

While many people are saying the Americans are now receiving their due for their greed and laziness, it is important to point out that the allegedly good and hardworking countries are also suffering too. So, producing products is not insulation against economic downturn. Next, it should be noted that those countries that built their economies on manufacturing were largely making products for the US market. The greed and excessive credit use of American consumers produced the demand for those products and created employment in those foreign countries. Finally, if the Americans did go back into the manufacturing sector, this would eliminate the need for overseas factories, which would result in widespread unemployment in the very countries who are pointing their finger at the greedy, lazy Americans who buy too many products which they refuse to make themselves.

 

America has become the eternal middleman. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. The golden rule of business is: you must sell products to make money. You don’t have to make products to sell them.

 

When I was working at a large private bank in the US, the senior vice president told me a story about the bank’s first foray into real, brick and mortar, manufacturing business. The bank invested heavily in a soap powder factory in China. The bank sent monthly checks to the local manager, who sent back reports of how soap productions was going. This was in the early days of capitalism in China and the ability to earn wages drove the Chinese laborers to work twenty hour shifts, seven days per week, with no bathroom breaks. Soap production in this factory was higher than any similar project the bank had ever undertaken anywhere else in the world. Back in New York, the bankers were congratulating themselves on their great success. After a while, however, they noticed that there was one thing missing from the manager’s reports. There were no sales. So, a representative flew from New York and took a tour of the factory.

 

Sure enough, there was a huge, factory, which operated like a well-oiled machine. The workers were at their places, running three shifts, twenty-four hours per day, 365 days per year. Everything seemed to be in order. The New York banker noticed there was one massive building, the biggest building in the complex, which they hadn’t toured.

 

“What is in that building?” he asked.

“That’s where we store the soap after we make it.” Said the factory manager. He went on to explain that every few months they had to build a larger warehouse to accommodate the growing quantity of soap.

“But aren’t you selling the soap?” asked the banker.

“Yes, we want to sell the soap, but no one ever comes here to buy it.” Said the manager.

“What is your marketing plan?” asked the banker.

“We are willing to sell soap to anyone who comes to the factory.” Answered the manager.

 

An employee believes that his work, his labor, somehow generates an income. This has been his working experience his whole life. Somehow, punching that clock twice each day caused a check to appear at the end of the week. An owner realizes that work, labor, and manufacturing all cost money. Only sales bring money into the company.

 

My experience has been that the bulk of people are employees and always will be. They do their job because someone tells them to, and they have no idea where or how their salary is generated. This is the mentality that causes factory workers to protest the closure of a factory whose products no longer have a market, or of manufacturing sector employees pointing fingers at the people who bought the products they were producing and calling them greedy.

 

One of my largest clients in New York was a holocaust survivor. Let’s call him David. David was a Jew, born in Poland. His parents were killed when the Germans marched in and began rounding up Jews. His Christian neighbors took pity on the fourteen year old boy and hid him in a cave in the mountains. He spent a period of years, alone, starving in this cave. When the war ended, he was so weak and malnourished he could hardly walk. He went into the city looking for work, but no one would hire him because he looked so pathetic. He saw some men moving furniture and begged them to let him help. He tried to lift a single chair, but collapsed. The men handed him some bread and sent him on his way. The same thing happened again and again, with people handing him a little food and sending him away. He became slightly stronger and sometimes was able to work for an hour or two before getting fired.

 

One day when he was fired, the employer handed him a bottle of vodka as payment. Not knowing what to do with the vodka he inadvertently wound up selling it to an allied solider. It was the most money he had ever seen in his life.

 

He used the money to buy food. Then he worked as a laborer, and used his meager laborer wages to buy vodka, which he sold to soldiers at a profit at the end of each day. Very quickly, he saw that working as a laborer made no sense, as he could sell a single bottle of vodka at a profit in the morning, walk back to the distributor, buy more vodka and sell it again in the evening and make more money than he could laboring.

 

Still malnourished, he found the back and forth too physically demanding, walking to and from the distributor buying single bottles of vodka. He convinced the distributor to extend him credit, to give him a whole crate of vodka, which he would sell and return that evening to pay for. He used his small vodka profits from the previous day to pay a man with a donkey cart to carry the vodka for him.

 

When I met David, nearly fifty years later, I asked him to tell me about his assets. We were in his plush office on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper in New York City. He took me to a massive window and began pointing at buildings.

 

“I own that building. That building. That building…”

 

“Sorry, for a moment there, I thought you pointed at the Empire State Building.”

 

“Yes, I did.” He said, and moved on to the really important assets.

 

He kept pointing. At first I was trying to write the addresses down in his balance sheet, but realized the point of the story was simply that he was really, really rich and that on any given day, his wealth could be estimated in the billions, or maybe hundreds of millions, or zero and none of it mattered. He was alive. He was healthy. His children had attended the best American universities, and he had taught them to make money. His grandchildren were attending university, and they all did their internships in his many companies. And they had learned to make money. His wealth and his knowledge was an insulation: “Never Again!” he seemed to say. Never again, would he or any member of his family suffer the way he had.

 

That starving little boy in Poland, fifty years earlier, never made a bottle of vodka. He certainly didn’t pick up a hammer or pour cement in the construction of the New York skyline. But he created more jobs for more people than any laborer or craftsman ever did. I could spend a lifetime following the hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers whose wealth and prosperity was derived from working on one of David’s many projects.

 

And while David may not have been the one who taught me golden rule of business, he was the one who drove the message home. Sales, not manufacturing makes money.

 

All businesses in the world do one thing. They sell a product.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the host “Martial Arts Odyssey,” a web TV show which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries.

 

His books are available on amazon.com

Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com

 

Join him on facebook.com

His website is www.speakingadventure.com

 

This episode was edited by Antonio Garceffo and features the official Martial Arts Odyssey intro and outro by Andy To.

 

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Martial Arts Odyssey: OLD SCHOOL Taiwan (Parts 1 and 2) In

a small gym, in Tainan, Taiwan, Host Antonio Graceffo meets 62 year-old Chen Ging Hway a former champion of boxing and San Da (Chinese kickboxing). He teaches Antonio some old-school professional fighting and tells stories about the early days of Syo Bodji, free fighting, in Taiwan. Still active, Chen Ging Hway is an official in the Taiwanese Kudo association and trains Taiwanese fighters who go to competitions in Japan. Kudo is a new form of MMA from Japan which is sweeping Asia. Join Antonio on facebook Watch it for free on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCI0bbrh38 Martial Arts Odyssey: OLD SCHOOL Taiwan Part 2 Antonio helps train a young Taiwanese Tae Kwan Do practitioner who wants to fight San Da and MMA. Sixty-two year-old Chen Ging Hway a former champion of boxing and San Da (Chinese kickboxing) Teaches Antonio the painful wedge-hand strike that he used to use to lay his opponents out. Join Antonio on facebook Watch it for free on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp2FZRx3SXo Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the host “Martial Arts Odyssey,” a web TV show which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries. His books are available on amazon.com Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com Join him on facebook.com His website is www.speakingadventure.com This episode was edited by Antonio Garceffo and features the official Martial Arts Odyssey intro and outro by Andy To. muay,thai,kick,boxing,kickboxing,martial,arts,odyssey,Brooklyn,monk,brooklynmonk,Antonio,Graceffo,china,Chinese,san,da,Taiwan,ROC,mixed,traditional,CMA,TMA,grappling,striking,clasic

Martial Arts Odyssey: Master and Soldier

 

 

 

Calling attention to the genocide with a martial arts video

 

Martial Arts Odyssey: Master and Soldier

 

In the war zone of Burma, Antonio Graceffo meets Mater Kawn Zanie, a legendary, undisputed master of Lai Tai, Shan Kung Fu, a soldier with decades of combat experience who often goes out on patrols armed only with Shan double swords, and no gun. The Shan have been fighting a defense war against genocide and oppression for more than forty years. Mater Kawn Zanie a veteran of countless battles said he training kept him alive.

 

Join Antonio on facebook

 

Watch it for free on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg_R65F3mxw

 

 

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the host “Martial Arts Odyssey,” a web TV show which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries.

 

His books are available on amazon.com

Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com

 

Join him on facebook.com

His website is www.speakingadventure.com

 

This episode was edited by Antonio Garceffo and features the official Martial Arts Odyssey intro and outro by Andy To.

 

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Shan Medical Mission (Parts 1 and 2)

 

“In Shanland: Medical Mission (Parts 1 and 2),” the latest video in the series In Shanland, shot in the war zone of Burma, by Antonio Garceffo is now available on youtube.com

 

Antonio Graceffo accompanies a volunteer medical mission on a visit to SSA headquarters in Loi Tailang, where they render much needed medical aid to the war orphans and abandoned children. Hear “Steve” an aid worker, with nearly twenty years of Burma experience explain the conflict. “What these children need most is the one thing no one can give them right now, freedom for their country.” Steve goes on to say, “I don’t believe it is wrong for them to fight for their country, to even kill for their country, but …even in the act of killing, you can be motivated by love.” Steve applies his life philosophy to the children of the conflict, “The most powerful force, historically is not hate, and it’s not brutality, which this regime is known for, it’s love.”

 

Watch it for free on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO28ivXBD0Y

 

 

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the host “Martial Arts Odyssey,” a web TV show which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries.

 

His books are available on amazon.com

Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com

 

Join him on facebook.com

His website is www.speakingadventure.com

 

This episode was edited by Antonio Garceffo.

 

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In Shanland: At the Battle Front

by Antonio Garceffo Host, Antonio Gracefo, takes us to the front lines of the world’s longest running war. He explains the history of the conflict and how the genocide is being fueled by the drugs trade. He joins a patrol of Shan soldiers, sent out to prevent the SPDC from killing Shan families who are returning to their village after celebrating Shan children’s day. Meet two young war orphans, and a woman who had to abandon her four-year-old child when she fled her village. Now, nearly ten months pregnant, it seems her second child is afraid to be born. Watch it for free on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fiEUuqoWx4 Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. He is the host “Martial Arts Odyssey,” a web TV show which traces his ongoing journey through Asia, learning martial arts in various countries. His books are available on amazon.com Contact him: Antonio@speakingadventure.com Join him on facebook.com His website is www.speakingadventure.com This episode was edited by Antonio Garceffo. SSA,brooklyn,monk,brooklynmonk,Antonio,Graceffo,shan,state,army,tai,burma,Burmese,refugee,displaced,war,thai,Thailand,thai,shanland,junta,shanland,rebel