Amanda's 2023 Log: Mostly French, Some Spanish and Esperanto

[Iversen]

went to a croissant-making class in French at the Alliance Française!

Brave you! I saw a documentary about a factory (somewhere in France) that made croissants, and they should be folded so that there was exactly 12 layers - and that was just one of the complications!

[jackb]

21Feb23: I decided to buy a physical copy of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto. I'm excited for it to come in the mail so I can take notes in it. I also want to buy some little sticky notes so I can bookmark useful parts!

I did the same thing in a couple of months ago and I'm glad I did. The formatting on the ebook was weird. I try not to buy too many books, but really prefer physical books for something like this. I've also gone away from post-its and use bookdarts exclusively. I feel like they help me pinpoint what I'm looking for without totally distracting me.

[philomath]

26Feb23–03Mar23

French
I continued reading L'inconnue de la Seine. I had taken a break from it in order to read a book in English (Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson). The mystery plot finally began to get interesting, but after a few days of reading I decided to give up. The characters and the writing quality were awful! As I’ve said before, life is too short to read terrible books. I will log the 204 pages that I read for the Super Challenge (around 47% of the book).

[philomath]

04Mar23–07Mar23

French
04Mar23: We had family staying with us this weekend, but I had some time with the apartment to myself, so I tried that site Quazel. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. It wasn't quite the same as having a real conversation because I was able to read the speech-to-text and edit it before submitting my response. I noticed that there was an option to receive grammar corrections, but it told me to use "nous" instead of "on". So I don't think I really trust it. But I might try it again!

Esperanto
04Mar23: I reviewed Units 4–5.

Notes
Lately, I haven't felt very motivated. It’s probably because I’ve been so busy at work. On 06Mar23 I left the office an hour later than usual, and then I logged onto my work computer at home and worked on stuff until it was time to sleep.

I made a list of different activities I can try for French, which might help me feel productive:
[ ] Shadowing a podcast such as French Expat to work on my pronunciation.
[ ] Reading an article from Slate France and writing a summary/response.

But I'm not sure when I'll do them. I really don't feel like doing anything after work lately. The other day I looked at my first post in this log, and it was disheartening to see how high my goals had been at the beginning of the year. I haven't worked on my writing projects in a while. At the same time, I'd like to improve my programming skills to help with some work projects (or maybe lead up to a career change).

Anyway, I'm going to London in less than two weeks, and I'm hoping I come back from that trip a bit more refreshed, with renewed motivation for my hobbies! We'll see.

[philomath]

08Mar23–12Mar23

French
09Mar23: I listened to an episode of French Expat. I’ve started logging my language-learning on Polylogger. It’s a lot more convenient than keeping a spreadsheet, like I used to.

12Mar23: I had a 1-hour lesson with Kevin. It was my first lesson in three weeks. I was disappointed with my pronunciation, but I managed to sneak in some impressive vocab (or at least he pretended to be impressed ). As I mentioned in my last post, I'd like to shadow a podcast episode sometime to work on my pronunciation.

[lichtrausch]

I had taken a break from it in order to read a book in English (Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson). The mystery plot finally began to get interesting, but after a few days of reading I decided to give up. The characters and the writing quality were awful! As I’ve said before, life is too short to read terrible books.

I feel your pain. I've been reading this book Accelerando which falls into the same category. I'm sticking to it though since it's the most often recommended novel about the Singularity and it does have some interesting ideas interspersed in it.

[philomath]

14Mar23

French
I got permission from my boss to work from home for the day. Even though I spent 12 hours working on the paper I'm writing, I still felt energized at the end of the day! Sometimes I wish I had a hybrid or remote job. Anyway, I finally got around to shadowing a podcast to work on my pronunciation. I started with Peak TV, but I didn't have a transcript, and it was too difficult to remember what to say and focus on pronouncing it right. So I ended up switching to InnerFrench since there's a transcript for each episode.

Shadowing a podcast is kind of tough. Sometimes I listened to a sentence first and then repeated after it; other times I said the sentence first and then listened to it to see whether I had messed up the pronunciation. And sometimes I played the audio and tried to speak out loud at the same time (which I guess is the true definition of "shadowing"?). The last method was very difficult though. I worked on the podcast for around 30 minutes, and at the end I felt better about my pronunciation. I'd like to try shadowing again sometime though.

[philomath]

15Mar23–18Mar23

Spanish
17Mar23: I listened to Hoy en El País for 20 minutes.

French
15Mar23: I listened to French Expat.

16Mar23: I listened to Transfert.

18Mar23: I had a 1-hour French lesson with Kevin. Lately I've been wondering, what if I came up with a rubric for scoring my speaking ability during French lessons? It would be a nice way to track my progress. I would just fill out the rubric myself, so it would be biased but better than nothing. I’ve have to think of what questions to include.

Tonight I'm leaving for London! I like writing about my trips in this log, so expect some posts even though this isn't really a language-focused trip. In fact, when we go to Paris, I've decided that I want to enjoy myself and not stress about speaking French as much as possible. I did pack two French books to read during the trip though: Les années by Annie Ernaux and La Chatte by Colette.

[tastyonions]

Enjoy your trip! I’d love to go to France again. Been about ten years for me.

[stell]

Safe and happy travels!

I also wanted to thank you for mentioning Polylogger. I started playing with it this week, and it seems like a useful tool for logging study sessions!