Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

[Elenia]

I, fairly obviously, vote Finnish

[Brun Ugle]

I, fairly obviously, vote Finnish

Will you be joining me?

[Elenia]

I, fairly obviously, vote Finnish

Will you be joining me?

Unfortunately, I don't think I will. It's unwise for me to join a challenge when my time is so limited, because it will be to the detriment of my other languages and other commitments and hobbies.

(Hey, did you see that? Just then, I sounded like a real adult!)

[Brun Ugle]

When you get asked out on a date and your first thought is, "I hope this doesn't turn into anything because a relationship would seriously cut into my language learning time."

And your second thought is a more hopeful, "Wait! What if he likes languages too?"

Well, I had coffee with him and he seems nice enough, but when I tested him by mentioning that I was studying Spanish, he didn't really react, so I guess he's not a fellow language nerd. I thought I'd scared him away when I started talking about my imaginary cats, but apparently not because he just sent a message to ask if I'd like to have pizza tomorrow. Only the second date and he's already up to pizza! This guy moves fast! And yeah, this could cut into my language time. But the good thing is that he lives in my building, so it's not like it's far to go to see each other and I could easily leave at any time if I'm in his apartment and get bored. The bad thing is that he lives in my building, so he could come up to my apartment, and my imaginary maid has really been slacking lately.

And now, something actually language-related. I've decided to make the leap and start taking regular, probably weekly, tutoring sessions on Skype through Italki. At the moment I have one tutor that I'm going to use. I've talked to him before, so I already know him. He is just a tutor, so we just chat. I'm considering possibly finding a professional teacher as well and alternating between them. I'll be starting with the tutor I already know. He's great to talk to and he is happy to go on and on discussing just about anything, but he isn't a professional teacher, so I should probably be prepared to organize things myself as far as knowing what to talk about and how to prepare for it. So, I wondered if any of you have any advice as to how to use these sessions and how to prepare for them.

The current state of my Spanish is that I have pretty good comprehension, but my production skills are weak. I know the basic grammar well, but I sometimes mess it up when trying to speak due to nervousness or to my brain struggling to focus on too many things at once. My vocabulary probably needs a good bit of work, especially my active vocabulary. I struggle to find words when speaking, though sometimes when I look them up, I find I already knew them, or thought I did.

So, what would you guys do with a weekly tutoring session and how would you prepare for it? My first session is on Saturday, so I don't have a lot of time to prepare for that one, but in the future, I hope to make good use of these sessions.

[Brun Ugle]

I, fairly obviously, vote Finnish

Will you be joining me?

Unfortunately, I don't think I will. It's unwise for me to join a challenge when my time is so limited, because it will be to the detriment of my other languages and other commitments and hobbies.

(Hey, did you see that? Just then, I sounded like a real adult!)

How did a responsible adult get on this forum? I thought we had standards!

[MamaPata]

So, what would you guys do with a weekly tutoring session and how would you prepare for it? My first session is on Saturday, so I don't have a lot of time to prepare for that one, but in the future, I hope to make good use of these sessions.

For my Russian lessons, I tend to try and do some Russian beforehand, to minimise the chances of speaking in French or Spanish (with mixed success). Afterwards, I add any new words to a memrise course. It's not a very advanced or productive system. I am more and more getting grammar corrections, rather than vocabulary and I haven't quite figured out what the best thing to do with that is. I may make a notebook of my grammar errors, and keep and eye on it to see if the same things come up. Good luck with it! I'll look forward to hearing how you manage it - I could do with some tips.

Good luck with the dates! (Pizza is always a good choice. Shows promise)

[kraemder]

So, what would you guys do with a weekly tutoring session and how would you prepare for it? My first session is on Saturday, so I don't have a lot of time to prepare for that one, but in the future, I hope to make good use of these sessions.

For my Russian lessons, I tend to try and do some Russian beforehand, to minimise the chances of speaking in French or Spanish (with mixed success). Afterwards, I add any new words to a memrise course. It's not a very advanced or productive system. I am more and more getting grammar corrections, rather than vocabulary and I haven't quite figured out what the best thing to do with that is. I may make a notebook of my grammar errors, and keep and eye on it to see if the same things come up. Good luck with it! I'll look forward to hearing how you manage it - I could do with some tips.

Good luck with the dates! (Pizza is always a good choice. Shows promise)

I get a lot of grammar corrections on lang-8 and I do absolutely nothing with them. Rarely, if it's something I plan on using in conversation again in the near future, then I will try to memorize it but I don't SRS it or go back and review it. Which makes me think... just write comments on my lang-8 journal and don't bother correcting please. Sure I look at it but I will just make the same mistake again anyway.

Regarding sleeping.. I have my own issues. I got some over the counter sleep pills at the local pharmacy and was surprised how much they helped. I started using them almost every day. I checked Amazon comments and saw others did the same and had no issues. Then about six months ago I decided maybe my sleep quality wasn't as good since it wasn't as natural. I stopped using them and it was just like before I used them... no additional trouble sleeping just the same troubles I had before. If you haven't tried over the counter I think it's worth a shot. I do think I'm more rested if I can sleep properly without them but it's nice having them there just in case. I find that if I discipline myself to go to bed at the same time every night I'm not really that bad at sleeping but rather not disciplined. If I've been busy that day, I'm selfish and want to squeeze a little more me time into the evening.

[Ani]

The title of your log just made me burst out laughing. I don't know if it is a recent change or I am oblivious..

To prepare for tutoring sessions, I wrote out a list of conversational questions to ask and I wrote my own side of discussion topics I expected to talk about. This gave me time to look up vocabulary and any constructions that would be nice to use. We never followed my imaginary plan but it was a big help none the less. Sometimes I would come up with language questions in the process that I did want to be sure to ask, but not very often (because Google is easy). I prepped for about 3 hours per session if I could fit it in. I saw a huge jump in my ability after just 5-6 sessions like that.

I found it really helpful for the tutor to type new vocabulary words for me so that I'd get the spelling correct and wouldn't forget what we'd talked about, so sometimes I'd ask for that.

[Brun Ugle]

What with one thing and another, I didn’t get a lot done this week. There hardly seems to be a point in writing an update. It’s also been a week of cancellations. My Skype lesson got canceled twice and my pizza date also got canceled, or postponed anyway. This week, the 6WC will start and I’ve decided to take a couple of days off from language studies before it starts to take care of some other stuff. So, I probably won’t get a lot done in the coming week either, at least not in the first half of the week.

Mini rant/
I’ve been thinking a bit about introversion and how annoying it is when people say “just stop being shy.” I’m not especially shy. I actually like people and can be very social, but I’m an introvert and being social comes with a high price. For example, I had two conversations this past week, one on Sunday after which I had hallucinations that evening, and the one with my neighbor after which I could hardly stay awake for about three hours and had suicidal feelings and stabbing pains in my whole body in the evening. Of course, those reactions are a little extreme, and fortunately I don’t usually have such bad reactions. Those conversations were both a little stressful for different reasons, but even a perfectly casual and enjoyable conversation usually results in exhaustion for hours afterwards where I just sit staring uselessly at the wall or dozing on the couch. This is the main reason I tend to wait so long to start speaking my languages and to do so little of it. To me, telling an introvert to stop being so shy is a bit like telling someone who’s allergic to nuts to stop being such a picky eater. /End rant.


Spanish
I did one lesson in FSI, but no GLOSS. I also didn’t write nearly as much as I’d planned to do and only recorded about 30 minutes of speaking. And, as already mentioned, my Skype lesson got canceled twice. I did read a lot of news though, following Iguanamon’s various links. I also did a bit of Memrise, but that doesn’t seem to be so good for my shoulder, so I have to limit myself.

I’m having trouble with recording myself. I’ve been using Windows Live Movie Maker because that is what is on my computer, but it has a tendency to just stop and I can’t figure out why. It’s rather frustrating. Maybe it’s just that my computer is getting old. But if someone has a suggestion for a better program (preferably free or cheap) for recording video or even just voice, let me know. I tried using my iPad and that worked, but I don’t really get good sound.

Esperanto
I listened to a couple of kern.punkto podcasts last Sunday, but since then, all I’ve done is Duolingo. I still haven’t managed to get the whole tree gold again.

German
I reviewed another FSI lesson. They do make more sense the second time around at least, but I still think there must be a better resource for me. I had planned to do another GLOSS lesson, but never got around to it. I very nearly finished my Miss Marple book, but not quite. I only have one or two chapters though, so I’ll probably finish it later today when I take a break from other stuff. For some reason Duolingo in German is more fun than Esperanto right now. I think maybe it’s because the sentences are mostly shorter, so it goes faster. Plus, there are speaking exercises which also go fast.

Japanese
I reviewed two more chapters and a few more kanji, but nothing really exciting to report here. I should be watching a movie for the East Asia Group, but I haven’t done it yet.

Finnish
Five chapters in Assimil passive and active, and nothing else. Not only is the Finnish getting harder, so is the German base language. Sometimes I can’t understand some of the sentences in the dialogues in either language.

[arthaey]

To me, telling an introvert to stop being so shy is a bit like telling someone who’s allergic to nuts to stop being such a picky eater.

WORD. High-fives of solidarity, my fellow introvert.