The psychology of language learning apps: Motivation, memory & the mind

1. The three Ms of foreign languages: motivation, memory, and the mind. -

2. Intrinsic motivation comes from within; it’s borne out of personal interest (such as
loving anime).
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside; it’s a response to our desire to achieve
some sort of unrelated goal (such as getting a raise at work).a
3. We can to take advantage of spaced repetition or to take advantage of what is
known as context-dependent learning. For instance, if you’re studying Spanish
vocabulary, do so (to the extent that you can) in the same place, at the same time
of day, and with the same materials.
4. Knowing two (or more) sets of vocabulary expands our ability to remember things
in general, bilinguals are better at inhibiting distractions, and show enhanced
multitasking skills, Indeed, bilinguals have been shown to have a lower risk of
developing Alzheimer’s than monolinguals.

Living in the present moment – Wake up! (Shaykh Hamza Yusuf)

1. Prayer is entering into the presence and the reason that you say “Allahu Ekber” is
you are pushing this world away from you and putting it behind you and you are
entering into a state of presence with your Lord. And then you speak directly with
God.
2. When he lived with the bedouin in Mauritania, one of the things that really
floored him about some of the saalihin amongst them. One lady, very dear to
him , she was the wife of his teacher, and she died few years ago. Meryem bint
Kuibah. And he wrote a piece about her called another mother of believers.
Meryem asked him when he first arrived there in 1994, if he had a family, and he
said yes, and she asked for their names. He counted names of mother father, 2
brothers and 4 sisterrs. He left, and there were 10 years before he went back. And
when he first saw her after 10 years she asked how are each of his family
members by their names. He realized she wasn’t just asking to chat, she wanted to
know their names and she internalized their names. And 10 years later she could
recall names that she never heard in her life. Because theyre not an arabic names.
He was stunned. But she was a present human being, she did dhikr all the time.
Walking in the footsteps of Prophets – Hamza yusuf
 1. It is a physical journey with a metaphysical destination. It’s a physical journey but
the destiny is the House of God and God does not have a house in which He
dwells. So He put a house there as a symbol of visiting God and you are a guest of
God. And He put a rock there which He called the right hand of God, that you can
go and kiss in same way, if you visit a king you would kiss a right hand of king. So
the rock is a symbolic. One of the tthings about going to Mecca is suddenly all
these things that you have heard about are rreal. You are walking in the footsteps
of prophet Abraham, and his grestest son Muhammed, pbh. And that is a part
what the hajj is. Than the gift of visiting the Prophet pbh, he is there, you can go
visit him. There is no other prophet on the planet that anybody can go visit with
any certainty. And he according to hadith actually returns greeting so this a real
visit with a response and for people who have been there and been in the right
state, they know what they tasted there. Because you can go in different state-
there are the people who go in there and donot see anything, and the others who
arewading in light, there are many different visits to Medina.
What love is and how it works . yusuf Hamza
1. When you love, you struggle, you sacrifice for one you love. There is no love
whent its only me. Love is like a Medžnun and Lejla. Its not the places, it’s the
beloved.
2. There are 10 levels of love.
1. The heart becomes connected or attached to the beloved - attachment
2. Where you begin to start looking for the beloved
3. Falling in love
4. Haram- punishment, desire to be with them all the time
5. Pure love- a true love, the purpose of a male and female coming together, Alla.
h put a pure love between them. It’s the love when the man wont divorce his
wife when she gets sick, or when she is no longer beautiful. Women have
adeeper capacity for love. The Prophet said: I was made to love women.
Parfume dissipates its own self for others- that’s connestion betweent parfume
and women.. it diffusees and it gives to others. That’s the quality of women
that the prophet loved, it was that sacriface that comes so natural to a woman
and men find so difficult and that’s why we learn it best from our mothers. And
that’s why the prophet said: paradise is under the feets of mothers. Allah says:
I have derived the womb (I split the womb) from my name Er-Rahman. Man
don’t have wombs, Allah gave it to women, it means the space in the center of
a woman that’s the source of Mercy in the world, our first abode. That’s
mercy. It exspands for the needs of others. That’s why the prophet is rahmeten
 lil alemin, cause he expended for the needs of others. Its love when there is
beauty, and whrn the beauty goes the love is still there.
6. When the heart is surrounded by this, it encompasses the heart.
7. A mind that begins to surround the tree and eventually kills the tree IŠK- total
constriction
8. High degree of love where there is a type of servitude that goes with it
9. Complete slave to the beloved
10. God took me as a halil just as he took ibrahim as a halil- prophet
So the prophet becomes habibullah because it contains all of these, but hes also
halilullah, halil is highest level of love, it completely permeates every cells of your
body. Its permeated your entire soul and that’s how much love that you have and
that is the love that aalah has for the propher and the prophet has for Allah. Allah
loves the prophet completely, and the prophet loves Allah completely. Prophet
said: You will not enter paradise until you believe and you will not believe until
you love one another.
Love for others – Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad
1. According to Abdal Hakim love for others ultimately depend on relationship
between the soul and the self and then the self and other selves. Its empathy nor
duty . it’s a mistery, it’s the hardest thing to define.
2. Abdal hakim related to out affinity for other human beings the famous sound
hadith of Aiša, r.a., : “The spirits are marshaled armies those which knew each
other are at ease with each other, and those which did not know each other differ
from each other.” And its talking about the world before. We were together, we
were society.
3. The very first muslims who represent the origin of the Ummah were the slaves,
the women, the people who were discarded and discounted – because of the
mercy that the prophet pbh reflects coming to an absolute, aristocratic, racist, a
caste system, a tribal system, he goes to those people to the weak, to the poor,
and theyre the ones who he brings in, because they can see the love that’s iin his
heart. And that’s the origin of the ummeh.
4. The simbolic beginnings of islam , which is the well of zemzem is that love
between the mother and her child, everything about that story is about the one
who is as it were despised, she is kind of slave girl, shes kind of out of it in the eyes
of the conventional tribal world, she turns out to me the one upon whom the
divine love and chosen this will descend, shes the matriiarch of islam.
When he said that we are “Hagerene” he meant that we are with the despised the
oppressed that ethnivally impure the female with a slave girl, with all of that
 that’s where we bwlong and this is ehy the most of our theme the weak are so
fundamental in the quran. And segment is ismail a.s. his name means Allah heard,
and from him come the stock that will be the final matrix for the final prophet and
the final story, and this matual love and this mazual mercy that is the ummah .

Muhammed, a.s. description of his appearance- Hamza yusuf

1. He was very Awe-inspiring when you saw him, he was monumental, grand In
nature, his face was like a moon on lailatul Badr that had a light coming out of it
like the moon on lailetul Badr, he was taller than a moderate build but not
exceedingly tall, but he was of a middle stature inclining towards heights, because
everything about him was middle, even his physical description, his colour was a
middle colour, he wasn’t hasty white and wasn’t black, he was a colour like what
we call a harvest moon and his hair was neither straight nor curly, it was wavy, it
was middle. He didn’t speak slow, and didn’t speak fast he speaked in a moderate
tone. His hair never went passed the lobs of his ears if he allowed it to go long, or
just above the shoulders. He had a large forehead. His eyebrows were full and
there was a slight space between them. And he had a vein on his forehead, that if
he got upset, they could see the vein. He had a beautiful nose. His eyes were very
dark, his pronanciation was perfect, his neck was like a gazells neck. His stomach
and his chest were equal. His shoulders were broad. He had a light hair on his
stomach, but not on his chests. He had large full hands. When he walked he
walked softly, when he looked to somebody, he moved his entire body obh. To
give full attention to that person. His presence with his lord was so intence, he
smiled, he always looked at people and smiled, he laughed at things. He never
spoke about anything that was unnecessary, he had long periods of silence. He
had soft and gentle caracter, he was not harsh. He never hot upset for himself,
nor did he ever seek any redress for a wrong done to him. He didn’t point with his
finger , he pointed with a whole hand. If he spoke he would put his right thumb
into his left palm.
Abdal Hakim Murad on Mawlid
1. What it means to muslims is one of the many ways that we seek out and celebrate
of recognizing and giving thanks for Allahs blessings. Its an obligation to celebrate
the blessings that Allah has showered upon us. is a foundamentional way of
expresing our gratitude to Allah for rescuing us from the mess that humanity
regulary gets itself into it.
2. The purpose of mawlid cannot be different from the single purpose which
underlines every other institution that is accepted by the on amount of islam,
which is to turn us from the self and towards the Lord, if something doesn’t do
that its not worth doing it. The mawlid is required because it’s a demonstrably
effective way of melting hearts of recconecting people with the sira of bringing
about a genuine sense of connectedness with prophet and the early generations
and reminding us of this great blessing that Allah is conferred upon humanity and
upon this zmmah through his sending.
3. It’s a lot easier draawing people ito the circle of the dean on the basis of the
mawlid. For example you can say to people next week we arre going to celebrate a
birthday of the founder of our religion they immediately figure that out and they’ll
come . the one of the principal doors through which people have entered islam
has been through the mawlid. It softens peoples hearts, and gives them perhaps
the only opportunity they’ll ever have to learn about the prophet. It’s the best and
the most attractive point of entry to the religion.

4. Patience and gratitude through the mawlid: more gratitude is the basis of its Sabr
and šukr are the basis of faith, they're the same thing if you have šukr to Allah and
sabr in the face of misfortunes that is iman, iman has noother definition. if you're
going to walk around upset with one problem rather than giving thanks for the
many blessings that Allah is giving you-something is wrong with your iman, this is
the crisis of the Muslims today.
5. -we can reclaim the Adamic perfection which we once lost, that we can be true
representatives of the qualities on earth that's why he's good news because he
shows we can become better than what we ordinarily are, even in the midst of
jahiliya and darkness and ignorance.
6. -we like to get together and revive this tradition of singing sometimes victorian
melody sometimes even Elizabethan melodies, in order to maintain this this
beautiful Islamic tradition is a very effective way of getting the message across in a
non-confrontational way to ears that othervise would not.
Rhetoric - Two speeches by Malcolm X
1. the first video is about black discrimination that is well known to all of us and
Malcolm in his own way encourages people not to be ashamed of what they are
and what God has given them.
the second video touches on the same topic as the first from the perspective of
Islam, in a way that talks about Islam, what religion he has accepted, that in Islam
everyone is equal and there is no difference between people except in deeds
2. he starts with a general speech about what the problem is in the community, then
addresses in a way that everyone who listens understands that it concerns him,
points his fingers at the parts of the body he is talking about, facial expressions,
attitude, eloquence