Elsa Maria's 2017 Log (Danish, Russian)

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Elsa Maria
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Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:20 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Intermediate Danish.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6009
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Elsa Maria's 2017 Log (Danish, Russian)

Postby Elsa Maria » Sun Jan 22, 2017 2:12 pm

While I am admittedly late to the New Year's party, at least it is still January :)

Below, I have copy/pasted my 2017 goals from the resolutions thread:

GENERAL
Become a regular (as opposed to sporadic) participant on this forum. I find that to be very motivating! And people are nice here :)
Start a new log and post at least weekly.

DANISH
Right now, my focus is on reading and writing. I have a mental block about writing, and it is high time I overcome it.

RUSSIAN
I am an absolute beginner. No real goals yet, but I resolve to start learning Russian.

ESL
Become and ESL (English as a second language) volunteer tutor in my community. I have already been to the information session, and I will attend the training sessions in January. I expect to begin tutoring in February.

--
I posted the goals on January 16, and now I have updates:

GENERAL:
Log started. Ta-da!

DANISH:
I read Danish every single day. Still working on the writing courage. Although I did write a little bit this week. I even posted two sentences on a Danish friend's FB page. Which meant that Danish people who don't know me were going to read it. Scary. Baby steps!

RUSSIAN:
Having fun learning to decode and write in cursive.

ESL
I went to my first training session. The most interesting part for me was how to teach English to an absolute beginner with whom you share no common language. This was very enlightening and energizing - all of my previous ESL tutoring has been with people who wanted to move from intermediate to advanced, or could speak but not write.
Last edited by Elsa Maria on Sun Jan 22, 2017 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Elsa Maria
Blue Belt
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:20 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Intermediate Danish.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6009
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Contact:

Re: Elsa Maria's 2017 Log (Danish, Russian)

Postby Elsa Maria » Sun Jan 22, 2017 2:19 pm

Reserved
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User avatar
Elsa Maria
Blue Belt
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:20 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Intermediate Danish.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6009
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Contact:

Re: Elsa Maria's 2017 Log (Danish, Russian)

Postby Elsa Maria » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:55 pm

We are on a break this week from homeschooling. My child is away on an adventure, and I am enjoying my quiet break by working on Danish and Russian. I've done an OK job with Danish this year, Russian fell by the wayside after a strong start.

Russian for me this week is FSI, daily cursive practice, and Yuri Norstein animations on Youtube.
I spent today and yesterday going through FSI Lesson One. Ready for Lesson Two tomorrow.

For Danish, I am reading Den Lille Prins and watching Matador. I started Matador a long time ago, and never finished it. :oops: Hopefully, I will finish this week. I am also committed to working daily in my grammar workbook.
Last edited by Elsa Maria on Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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User avatar
Elsa Maria
Blue Belt
Posts: 510
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 5:20 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Intermediate Danish.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6009
x 1275
Contact:

Re: Elsa Maria's 2017 Log (Danish, Russian)

Postby Elsa Maria » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:37 pm

All in all, I had a reasonably productive week last week. But it sure did not go as planned! FSI Russian was a total bust for me. I really wanted to like it, but kept being thrown off by not having the bits and pieces that are supposed to be supplied by the instructor. I was just too frustrated. I have enough homeschooling experience to know not to stick with a curriculum that doesn't work for me.

I own two textbooks, The New Penguin Russian Course and Nina Potapova's Learning Russian. I have done the early lessons in both of them, and I think I could like both of them. But I am going to have to find some audio. I'm not sure yet if I will start Duolingo or something else.

My biggest accomplishment last week was on Memrise. I had around 200 words to review for the 500 Most Common Danish Verbs course. I have cleared all the reviews and have mastered over 400 of the verbs. I only managed two watch two episodes of Matador - I had forgotten how long they are! But I also watched some other stuff on Youtube, and listened to some audiobooks.

I also reviewed some Latin to see if I am still interested. Well, I am. I have to shake off the Latin cobwebs, and I am working on that.

I also played around with some tech. I tried out LingQ and attempted to figure out Learning With Texts. I didn't like LingQ and couldn't figure out LWT. But I don't really like reading on a screen unless it is my Kindle so I think I'll let that go for now.

But I had a WIN with the ATracker app:
http://www.wonderapps.se/ATracker/
I love love love it. It was easy to set up, and it only takes a single touch to start or stop an activity. I set it up to give me a very fine-grained look at my foreign language study time.
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