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As long as you have access to the internet, you can access our website anytime, 24/7. It does not matter whether you access our website through a cable connection with your computer at home or in your office, with a tablet in a coffee shop, or with a smart-phone at the beach.
We all learn similarly and differently.
Therefore we organize our website along five ways of learning CHamoru; (1) using our online dictionary, (2) following general CHamoru lessons, (3) focused study of CHamoru grammar, (4) learning and practicing dialogues, and (5) studying examples of published CHamoru language in audio-visual media and in print. This structure of five distinct - but yet linked - ways of learning CHamoru provide you with the opportunity to customize and optimize your own unique way of learning CHamoru.
Dictionary
Our dictionary is an ongoing process of building an ever-growing online database of CHamoru words for English speakers. We pool multiple dictionary resources and provide them to you for your immediate use. If you want to know more than just the meaning of the word, you also are able to read how this word is used in single sentences, in various dialogues and in published media.
Lessons
25 CHamoru instructional lessons based on Donald Topping's textbook "Spoken CHamoru" are the core of our lessons. Each lesson contains a dialogue, grammar explanations, exercises and drills, as well as reviews and tests. You can listen to various native CHamoru speakers and playfully learn to speak the new words yourself and apply them in different sentences. As you move along the lessons at your own pace, you gradually move up the scale of CHamoru language skills levels, reaching level 10 when you successfully complete all 25 lessons. By then you will be able to carry a conversation with any CHamoru speaker. We continuously add other lessons which are authored by CHamoru language experts.
Grammar
Our grammar section describes the 'rules and regulations' of the CHamoru language. Whatever grammar topic you want to learn about, you can pick and choose from an ever growing range of topics; such as pronouns, verb forms, tenses, etc.. We use grammar resource from various authors and complement it with explanations and comments from our CHamoru teachers. This way of learning CHamoru is closely linked with all lessons, the dialogues, and learning CHamoru from the media.
Dialogues
Dialogues are the preferred way of learning CHamoru of many. All our dialogues have specific themes; such as conversations in the kitchen, at work, in a restaurant, etc. They are analyzed and explained sentence by sentence, can be listened to, and invite you to respond in your own words. The dialogues are linked with all other ways of learning CHamoru, especially with our dictionary and lessons.
Media
Seeing CHamoru words and texts in published books and public places, hearing radio commercials and announcements in CHamoru language, attending Catholic CHamoru masses and rosaries, etc. provide valuable opportunities for learning CHamoru. We carefully and continuously select examples from all forms of media and transform them into tools for learning CHamoru. For some learners, using simultaneously media examples with our dictionary and grammar topics generates a particularly effective way of learning CHamoru.
Join. Learn. Contribute.
As a registered member of LearningCHamoru.com, you have the opportunity to become part of an active learning community. You can tailor your learning to your specific needs, you can learn from others and others can learn from you. Let us know who you are, what works well for you, and what does not. Make suggestions for specific dialogues and CHamoru text examples that you want us to include in lessons. Or, you can volunteer for various other activities to develop and sustain LearningCHamoru.com. This way, your learning contributes to our learning.