WHO IS DUSTIN?

Hey, thanks for stopping by my website, TalkLikeAnAmerican.com. If you're here, you're probably wondering, who's Dustin? So let me tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in a state called South Dakota. That's the state with Mount Rushmore, the very famous mountain that contains President's Head's sculptures. And when I was really young, I moved to California with my mom and my dad, because my dad wanted to be a famous musician, (he's a great bass guitar player). He's still actively playing in bands. It was his dream to be a part of a successful band, something like Van Halen, Motley Crue, you know ... some kind of rock star band. And that's how I found myself in California. 

During that time, it was me, my mom, my dad, and my brother. My mom and dad eventually ended up having a falling out, or an argument. That was when my dad moved to back Ohio. This is where he was born. So I spent the rest of my life basically living in California until a couple years ago. I grew up in a city called Chino. It's kind of close to Los Angeles, about 30 minutes away. And I generally lived in the same area within about 15 minutes of this place for almost my entire life. I still have contact with all of my childhood friends. I'm very connected to the Los Angeles area, and everything about me is influenced by the culture and the environment.

Now I moved to Ohio. My dad's health was not great. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and we were really worried about him. But then we got good news, his cancer was cured. I didn't even know this was possible. I'm very hopeful about the future after this great news, and I hope that other people's family members will also have the same fortune of escaping death from cancer, at least for a little while.

So that's a little bit about my background and where I come from. I'm very LA. I speak English like a person straight out of LA area. And in my native language, when I speak with friends and family, I use a lot of slang, a lot of curse words, energy, and storytelling. It's really common for people California to get very animated when we speak English,  because it's really close to Hollywood, (where actors and famous comedians come from). They really influence the way we speak. When we tell jokes, we're very funny. We use a lot of energy and we have great delivery. These are the kinds of things that you can learn by speaking with me. You can see how well people from California control their emotions when they speak and use filler words that help guide the speed and tonality of what we're saying to give the correct message without using as many words.

Okay, so now you're probably wondering a little bit about me, not where I'm from or my history, but what do I like to do for fun? What are my hobbies? First, I can tell you my biggest hobby is hockey. I'm an athlete, first and foremost, and a nerdy gamer second. I love games like Pokemon Go, Final Fantasy, role-playing games, sports games, racing games like Gran Turismo 7, Red Dead Redemption, and if you can name it...I've probably played it or at least heard of it. When it comes to games, it's been a big part of my life and that's the way that I like to relax. Also, I play a lot of roller hockey. This is my all-time favorite sport. I also like ice hockey, which is just as good, but being from California, we don't really have a lot of ice skating rinks, so we generally play a lot of roller hockey. After Wayne Gretzky came to Los Angeles to play hockey for the LA Kings, hockey became a huge sport in my area.

I love movies and TV shows, but I don't watch them in my free time. I generally like to watch comedies, adventure films, and shows with great storytelling. My favorite movie is definitely going to be Forrest Gump. This is a classic for us in America. And as far as comedies are concerned, The Goods, Super Troopers, Dumb and Dumber, and Friday. These are some classic American films that really helped to shape the culture. I really like stand-up comedy as well. This also had a big influence in the way we speak. Dave Chappelle is my favorite comedian.

I also grew up reading The Lord of the Rings, before the movies ever came out. I've always been really interested reading. My favorite book is The Hobbit. I've also read the Harry Potter books. I've read a lot of the most important books that are not fantasy as well, (in my opinion). The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. These are some of my favorite books. I love Self-Help, Self-Improvement, and also like reading books about quantum physics, The Secret, and any book by Dr. Joe Dispenza or Sadhguru.

Language learning became another one of my hobbyies about 8 or 9 years ago, back in 2016, when I started to learn Spanish by watching Telemundo, (the news in Spanish). At first, I didn't understand anything, but over time, I started to slowly recognize words,  numbers, and I built a small vocabulary. This was my first approach to learning language. Since then, every language I've learned, I've tried a different approach. I've studied Portuguese on Duolingo, learned to read Hindi on Duolingo, practiced speaking with people from other countries. I've learned by watching movies, listening to music, trying to sing, using flashcards, and spaced repetition. I've studied memory champions, the brain, and tried to apply the most advanced techniques to my language learning process so I can craft the best approach to learning a new language as efficiently as possible. Currently, I don't even know how many languages I can speak. I can understand words in most languages a little bit, because there are a lot of similarities between languages. I speak Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Cambodian, some Japanese, English. I can also understand Italian and read some Arabic. Recently, I've been learning Polish with my students, passively by just absorbing new words and phrases I hear from day to day. This is my process for trying to adapt a new method for learning a new language. Trying different approaches and methods.  Each language you learn will strengthen all the other languages. I believe in using a scientific approach to language learning, that first maximizes efficiency by understand how the brain is absorbing the language, then using methods and ideas to make the process as fast and painless as possible.