Pinky's 2023 language log (mostly French & Japanese)

[Maengin]

Japanese

I have decided to switch from Tobira to Marugoto for now as I am finding Tobira just a bit too much. I think Tobira is designed for classroom use whereas Marugoto is designed for self-study. Hoping to go back to Tobira afterwards as it is a fantastic resource, but perhaps not the best for the complete beginner independent learner. I keep forgetting to update the Twitter for the 6-week challenge. I had forgotten I that I really don't like timing and logging study sessions .

Have you checked out Irodori also by Japan Foundation? Irodori is their newest version of Marugoto that focuses on listening and speaking exercise. Follows the same topics of Marugoto but imo, a better learning experience but only for people that don't need to understand everything at once and let's the textbook slowly teach you.

[Le Baron]

... and my plan is to read an article a day and note all the new vocabulary, read the article aloud, then try to write a very short summary of what I have read using some of the new words. This should be doable if I break these tasks up throughout the day (e.g. read the article and save new vocab before work, read aloud and make notes on lunch break, write summary after work). If this is too much (it might be), then I will work on an article over two days before choosing another one. There is a Reverso to Anki add-on but I am not sure if I want to go back to Ankiville at the moment. I might just keep a spreadsheet or Google Doc or something, I'm not sur

Apart from the Google spreadsheet, this is pretty much how I operate all the time when learning (I outlined it somewhere on here). I do incorporate Anki though, with extracted vocabularies, but they are small decks. They're also only used while I'm dissecting the particular article or book chapter or whatever. Plus the summary writing using a separate sheet with all the extracted and key words. I try this as a spoken exercise and a written exercise, expecting that the written one will be more detailed and structured. The end goal being two-fold; 1) To learn vocabulary through use and being forced to know the words I'm employing. 2) pushing myself to understand the structural elements for forming and linking sentences.

I know Reverso, but I've never really used it as a tool. I'll look at the video (though I'm not learning French). The ideas will surely be applicable elsewhere.

[pinkyslippers]

Have you checked out Irodori also by Japan Foundation? Irodori is their newest version of Marugoto that focuses on listening and speaking exercise. Follows the same topics of Marugoto but imo, a better learning experience but only for people that don't need to understand everything at once and let's the textbook slowly teach you.

I did not know about this, thank you so much for this information! Irodori looks like a really excellent resource and will complement Marugoto very nicely

I do incorporate Anki though, with extracted vocabularies, but they are small decks. They're also only used while I'm dissecting the particular article or book chapter or whatever. Plus the summary writing using a separate sheet with all the extracted and key words. I try this as a spoken exercise and a written exercise, expecting that the written one will be more detailed and structured. The end goal being two-fold; 1) To learn vocabulary through use and being forced to know the words I'm employing. 2) pushing myself to understand the structural elements for forming and linking sentences.

Thank you for the breakdown of how I might approach this in practice, I'm very interested in how others manage it. I did end up starting an Anki deck yesterday as this seemed the most efficient way of doing things, but I think the key will be to use it judiciously so I don't end up with a monster deck of very formal words and phrases I will never use.

❀❀❀ Thank you both for your comments ❀❀❀

[pinkyslippers]

I have downloaded the Reverso Context browser extension and my plan is to read an article a day and note all the new vocabulary, read the article aloud, then try to write a very short summary of what I have read using some of the new words. This should be doable if I break these tasks up throughout the day (e.g. read the article and save new vocab before work, read aloud and make notes on lunch break, write summary after work). If this is too much (it might be), then I will work on an article over two days before choosing another one. There is a Reverso to Anki add-on but I am not sure if I want to go back to Ankiville at the moment.

Just wanted to post a quick update on this idea. I looked around at a lot of resources (free and subscription) and settled on a subscription to L'Express magazine in the end. I'm reading an article a day and looking up the words in Reverso Context, and then adding selective sentences to a cloze-deletion Anki deck. I say selective because a) I do not want a monster deck because I know myself and I am not the sort of person who will spend upwards of 45 minutes per day running on an Anki hamster wheel; b) I don't need to know what I consider "specialist" terms (for example I looked up quinquennat but did not add it to my deck); and c) I can do well in the Anki app and then not be able to use or remember the word in real life, so I think the incorporation of the new words into summaries (written and spoken) is more important, at least for me, anyway.

I also started an Anki grammar deck as I keep stumbling on basics that I really should know by now (like pesky masculine and feminine countries and the prepositions that go with them).

So I am pretty happy right now with my French study plan. Not reading much at the moment as I have a horrible flare-up of blepharitis (bleurgh ) so one eye is very blurry and glasses don't help. I'm still spinning my wheels and not being consistent with Japanese and this is partly self-sabotage as my inner all-or-nothing perfectionist keeps telling me 'you're too old; it's too difficult; you're never going to get anywhere with it; what's the point?'. Logically, I can rebut all of these points but often, I don't. I just end up doing nothing at all. This is one of those situations when using the dialectic can be helpful, and I need to practice this more. Using and instead of but. I feel too old and too stupid to learn Japanese and I am going to spend 15 minutes on Marugoto anyway. Two opposite things can be true at the same time. This is going to sound a bit therapy-speak, but actually, this is a good opportunity for me to sit with these feelings and then just do the thing anyway.

Spanish is pretty minimal right now, but I am ok with that as sometimes it makes me feel a bit sad. Won't go into it here (I've probably already overshared above anyway ) but there is a beautiful word in Portuguese and Galician that has no direct translation in English: saudade. That's what I feel when I study Spanish, so at the moment I listen to a couple of podcasts and have one extremely businesslike longstanding language exchange per week, and that's absolutely fine with me. I really like the podcast Hoy en El País (I've recommended it on my log before) and listen to it purely for interest, it's gone beyond being a "language" thing for me and become a regular on my commute.

[stell]

This is one of those situations when using the dialectic can be helpful, and I need to practice this more. Using and instead of but. I feel too old and too stupid to learn Japanese and I am going to spend 15 minutes on Marugoto anyway. Two opposite things can be true at the same time. This is going to sound a bit therapy-speak, but actually, this is a good opportunity for me to sit with these feelings and then just do the thing anyway.

I love this: "Two opposite things can be true at the same time."

(Also, you are neither too old nor too stupid for anything. But I think you already know that! Signed: someone who feels both too old and too stupid at times, but who knows deep down she is neither old nor stupid.)

[pinkyslippers]

French
I’ve decided to do some review and study of grammar basics as I keep making silly errors which I really want to eliminate (or at least minimise as much as possible). This week I reviewed the futur simple. I got a few accents wrong but otherwise feel pretty okay with it.

Conjugaison progressive du français A2-B1: 1 / 16

Japanese
I finally took others’ advice (thank you fellow LLORGers) and signed up for Wanikani. I’m still using the free levels at the moment but it’s likely that I will subscribe once I complete these as I am really enjoying it so far, and the light-hearted ‘don’t take it quite so seriously’ tone and silly mnemonics are just what I needed after last week’s mini meltdown. This week I completed all the radicals and started on the first level of Kanji. I also spent some hours revising katakana as I realised I was still having trouble reading some of them ‘in the wild’ (or, in my Marugoto textbook to be more precise). I’m on level 23 of Renshuu and my Kao-chan is definitely looking less blob-like and has grown some stubby legs.

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Spanish
Some interesting grammar points came up in my language exchange this week: el dativo de interés and the pronombre de solidaridad in the sentence ‘el niño no te me come nada’. It came up as we were discussing Galician (I helped during the pandemic lockdown with a Castellano -> English translation of the title cards of 1925 silent movie La Casa de la Troya and became very interested in Galician culture and language as a result [find the movie here if you are interested – versions with German and Spanish cards are also available on the same channel]). My language exchange partner is from La Coruña and he was telling me that, apparently, the ‘solidarity pronoun’ is used a fair amount in Galician speech. There is no English equivalent, I guess the closest is the “…right?” that some American English speakers tag on to the end of sentences to invoke a sense of shared concern/agreement.

[pinkyslippers]

Quarter 1 review

I thought I would reflect a bit on my (lack of) progress and the amount of money I have spent on language learning in the first quarter of 2023. I don’t count the time I spend studying so I have no records of that, but I just try to be consistent overall and do something every day. My balance sheet is going to be pretty shocking, I think, but here goes.

French
I’ve been really consistent with French so far this year and I’m fairly satisfied with my progress. I purchased a subscription to L’Express magazine at the beginning of March, with one month free and a subsequent monthly charge of £9.90. I really like the magazine and I read an article a day with the Reverso Context browser extension (free). I put new vocab into Anki (free for the PC version) and I do my reviews every day. I’ve limited it to 10 new words and a maximum of 100 reviews per day. I also bought a bunch of DVDs on Amazon.fr (£56.18), some light novels (£15.98) and bought three months of Kwiziq (£38.21) which I instantly regretted as I have a ton of French grammar books already. I contacted Kwiziq to see if I could transfer the remaining Premium membership over to Spanish. I was expecting them to say no but actually they were super helpful and not only said that it was fine but apologised for how long it was taking to switch and gave me a free week of premium Spanish as well! So I was very happy with their customer service.

I’ve been reading consistently in French since the beginning of the year. I’m a pretty slow reader but I’m hoping that the more I read the more that will improve. I use Storygraph to track my progress and according to that I have finished two novels in French (784 pages in total). I am a bit behind my target of one French book a month but that’s ok. I don’t want it to start feeling like a chore. I’ve been watching series pretty consistently too (mainly Astrid and Raphaëlle and L’Art du Crime) but not intensively. I am intrigued about really ‘working with a series’, à la Iguanamon, but this requires some planning and commitment on my part and I’m not ready to do this yet.
I’ve started working through some of my grammar books too (I have a bunch of the Progressif/ve ones, bought years ago so not counted in this year’s expenses) and that is going pretty well so far.

Learning progress: Not bad at all, definite improvement in vocabulary and active recall and automaticity of verb conjugations. The daily L’Express article has been a game-changer for me. My listening skills are definitely improving too. Could I be creeping up to B2 level, I wonder? Although I’m not too fussed about CEFR levels, the thing is, at B2, all sorts of opportunities (to spend more money) might open up. The Institut Français runs courses on creative writing, and French cinema, and book clubs, for example, but they require a B2+ level.

Money spent: £120.27. Bad. Could have been worse, but… it’s still pretty bad.

Japanese
I’ve been mostly flailing (or is it floundering? Possibly both…) since the beginning of the year, but from reading other Japanese learners’ logs on here, I have learnt that it is quite normal to a) try out a lot of different resources and different approaches to learning at the beginning, and b) occasionally fall into a pit of existential despair about how hard Japanese is and how long it will take to be able to do anything vaguely meaningful in the language. This is how Q1 went for me:

A year’s subscription to LingoDeer (an “insomni-order”, what I call my middle of the night shopping on my phone of which I have no recollection the next day. Yes, I regret it and have only used LingoDeer sporadically since buying it): £70.99
A year’s membership (non-renewing) of Renshuu: £44.99 (also insomni-order but have got a lot of use out of this app, don’t regret it)
Tobira I Beginning Japanese textbook and workbook : £72.10
Flailed about with these for a while, got overwhelmed and also annoyed that they had no answer key anywhere and then found the workbook had an answer key PDF which I had to order in Japanese for 500 Yen with the help of Google Translate : £3.10 and annoying non-Sterling charge from bank £0.12

Had my first wallow in the slough of despond and bought Marugoto A1.1 books as a sort of life belt as they were so bright and shiny and hopeful looking (£56.34).
So, I was happy with Marugoto and Renshuu and did these consistently for probably 1.5 months, enough to learn hiragana and katakana and some basic vocabulary and phrases. But I suddenly started feeling like I wanted to learn more and make more progress and also learn more grammar (which is practically non-existent in Marugoto). Spent a lot of procrastination/dream time on Reddit and on here to look at what other people are doing/have done and decided to start WaniKani (I have spent nothing yet but the annual subscription cost is $89.99 and I am probably going to pay it) and also bought Genki I (the textbook, workbook and answer key, £71.08).

Learning progress: Lots of flailing, but I have learned hiragana and katakana, and some (very) basic grammar principles. I can say good morning, thank you, and give a bit of information to present myself. I had a wallow in the pit but then I got out and carried on. I’m still fascinated by the language and want to learn more.

Money spent: £318.72. Obscene, really. But there you go. It’s done now. Of course it is possible to learn a language without spending any money at all (see the splendid ‘Free and Legal’ challenge and all the excellent free resources listed on this site). Language learning is one of my only hobbies and I have money in the budget to splurge on it when I want to, but looking at this figure still makes me feel a bit icky. The good thing, however, is that I have now found a set of resources that I really like and will use. More on that in a bit.

Spanish
Well it’s all tumbleweed, dust, and decay over here . I’ve read nothing and watched virtually nothing in Spanish since the beginning of the year. I wanted to concentrate on boosting my French but recently I have noticed a big deterioration in my Spanish during my weekly language exchanges. In fact the cross-contamination from French into Spanish has been so significant it has even affected my pronunciation (and everybody knows that Spanish pronunciation is super simple).

Learning progress: No progress. At worst, I have deteriorated, or, at best, stagnated.

Money spent: £0 (the Kwiziq cost is counted under French as that is what it was originally purchased for).

Plans for Q2

French
The plan for Q2 is to carry on with my routine as it is working well.

• Daily L’Express article and Anki
• Read and watch TV shows and films
• Listen to podcasts (~ x3 per week)
• Finish Conjugaison Progressive A2-B1
• 1 x language exchange per week
• Do x 1 TV5 Monde exercise per week

Japanese
I can’t keep cycling through multiple resources as I will get nowhere, so some of them are going to be dormant for now. What I really want to do is try to get to the JLPT N5 level, which is roughly equivalent to CEFR A1, in order to start on graded readers and other fun stuff (I’m possibly deluding myself here but hope is everything!). So my main goals for the year (not just Q2) will be:

• Finish Genki 1 (with supplementary material from Tobira: Beginning Japanese 1)
• Complete up to and including level 16 of WaniKani (do reviews and lessons daily)
• Revise grammar points and vocab on Renshuu (a few times per week)

Those goals are possibly too ambitious to get done in a year but my challenge for Q2 is going to be to stick with those resources and tasks and really be consistent and see how much progress I can make.

Spanish
My Q2 goal for Spanish is to not lose any more! So my Q2 tasks are:

• Complete B2 level in Kwiziq
• Listen to ~x3 podcasts per week
• Read 2 x articles per week with Reverso Context browser extension
• Do x 1 GLOSS exercise per week (level 2+)
• 1 x language exchange per week

Possibly a bit over-ambitious but let's see how it goes

*Edited for spelling and grammar

[rdearman]

new vocab into Anki (free for the PC version)

It is free for every version except Apple.

[pinkyslippers]

I've been going through a phase of taking language level tests online. I had been thinking about perhaps doing the TCF (French) at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, just to get an objective assessment of my level. I decided to do some level tests online and found that these were actually a good way to put me off signing up for an exam

So first I went on the Alliance Française website and did their level test and it told me I was 'on the way to B2'. Okay, not bad.

Then I did the general level test on Apprendre TV5 and got B2 as well. Next, I tried the mock TCF exam on the TV5 Monde website.

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This told me I had level 'B', which was a bit vague, so I plugged my scores into this website, which claims to be able to convert them into what the TCF scores would be, and I got this:

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And this seemed like a wild overestimate of my level, so I decided to fork out £24 for the iTalki test. I had done this test years ago for Spanish but now you get 4 tests for the price so I think it is not bad value. The first bit is that weird thing when you have to listen and repeat and then ramble on for a bit about your 'ideal holiday' or whatever but I was so grumpy after the listen and repeat bit I don't think I gave my best performance here. When I log in to iTalki it says:

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But I am really confused about how they came up with this score because I got B1 for the speaking part and C1 for the grammar part. Surely 'upper intermediate' would be B2?

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I am not great at listening and repeating in any language and so I decided to use one of my iTalki tests to do it in English. It was an interesting experience, and I also struggled with listening and repeating on some of the longer sentences. It uses American English so the sentences were not language I would use every day (one of them was something like 'if the meeting were to go long we will have to reschedule'. It seemed odd phrasing to me. Go long? There was another odd one that was something like 'the outcomes were unexpected but then we found they were predictable' I can't remember exactly because, like I said, my memory is not great.).

I also did not know the answer to one of the grammar questions . It was something like, spot the error in the sentence: The student that you invited to dinner called to ask what time he should arrive. Is it 'that' which is the wrong bit of the sentence? Maybe it should be whom?

What was most interesting to me was how articulately I was able to ramble in the free-speaking sections (I got 'how would you improve your local market if you were the director?' and 'what should be the language of international business? Explain your reasoning'). I mean, duh, English is my native language so of course I can ramble on, even if I don't believe in what I am saying. What I realised, however, is that I cannot do this in French. And it's not merely a question of vocabulary - there's a sort of brain freeze thing that happens and I fall back into the 'bah, c'est très intéressant' mode. So doing all these tests has not been a total waste of time or money, I have something tangible to work on, namely, being able to speak in a more sophisticated manner off-the-cuff. Reading L'Express is definitely helping but I am also thinking about using an iTalki tutor to practise being able to speak publicly on more complex topics, offer a more nuanced opinion and give justification for it. Still thinking about it but wanted to get it all down in a post in the log. By the way, I am C2 in English, despite my dodgy grammar. Phew! And I still have two iTalki tests left which don't expire for another year

[pinkyslippers]

3-9 April

French

Read L'Express 7/7 days
Anki 6/7 days

Started reading Suite Française by Irene Némirovsky. I'm not very far into it yet, just finished the introduction. In parallel (in English) I'm reading Vichy France: Old guard and new order by Robert Paxton. I watched a lot of Parole de chat's videos on YouTube. I've been feeling a bit down lately and these made me laugh a lot. If you don't like cats it probably won't be your thing.



Japanese

Japanese is so greedy, really it could be a full-time job studying it. So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed climbing this mountain, it's going to be a long hard slog to the first basecamp I think.

Genki I - finished most of Lesson 1, just still need to do the writing section and the separate workbook exercises. I'm also using the ToKini Andy website alongside and they have a test section and if I get over 80% on that I am moving on to the next lesson, trusting that I will come across these concepts again in later lessons and not trying to get everything perfect before moving on.

WaniKani - I moved up to level 2 but am still reviewing all the vocabulary that got unlocked in level 1. At the moment I am only doing 5 lessons per day.

I have started a pre-made Anki deck for N5 Tobira vocabulary.

Spanish

Had one language exchange this week and really nothing else. I am going to try an iTalki lesson this week focused on reading and see how it goes and if I get along with the teacher. I had a look at Kwiziq but I realised I really need to refresh my memory. There's no point diving into the imperfect subjunctive if I can't remember some of the more basic stuff. So I am going to have a look through my grammar books and textbooks and see if there is anything that seems manageable and not an absolute slog to work through.