Amanda's 2024 Log: Spanish, French, and German

[philomath]

14Jul24–27Jul24

Spanish
After my trip to London, it took me a little while to get back to studying Spanish. One thing that helped was starting the in-person Spanish class I had signed up for. I’m in the advanced group, so the class is conversation-based and there are just two other students. During the first class, we talked about what we’d been doing this summer. Then we watched a short video about why people get songs stuck in their heads, and we talked about our relationship with music. For homework, we were supposed to read a story in Spanish and write a short essay on what AI will be like in ten years. I couldn't attend the second session, but I still did the homework and emailed my essay to the teacher.

I also had two iTalki lessons, one with Mafe and one with Carlos. For the lesson with Mafe, I had picked out an episode of Radio Ambulante to discuss. Our conversation was fun, but at the end Mafe recommended I review the imperfect subjunctive. That was a little disheartening because I have no problem using it when I write (as far as I know), but I still struggle with it during conversations. The lesson was Carlos was also fun; we discussed the opening ceremony of the Olympics, roller coasters, and watching movies with subtitles.

French
I have too much going on lately, so my only goal for French is to keep reviewing my Anki cards. However, I did go see the film Simple comme Sylvain at the MFA's French Film Festival. It was entertaining, and I liked hearing the québécois accents.

Writing
I haven't been writing as much as I want to lately. However, I did try something new: writing by hand instead of typing. I hadn't written fiction by hand since I was little. Once in a while I would try, but I didn't like the idea that someone could just pick up my notebook and read it. Plus, writing by hand is a lot slower. But last month my fiancé bought me a nice notebook for my birthday, and I decided to make it a fiction notebook. I only wrote a couple of pages in it so far, but it was a nice change to my usual writing routine.

[philomath]

28Jul24–11Aug24

Here's an update for the past two weeks. The second week I was visiting my fiancé's family in Florida, so I wasn't very productive.

Spanish
I had another in-person Spanish class, which was good for speaking practice. I also spent some time reviewing the subjunctive, using Routledge's A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish: Sixth Edition.

French
I had a 45-minute lesson with Kevin. Before the lesson, I spent around 25 minutes reviewing my Anki cards. I think that helped a lot because even though I hadn't spoken French in a month, I thought I spoke really well.

Writing
I blocked off one hour each weekend to work on writing, and I started a short story that I’d been thinking about for a while. I wrote the first few paragraphs by hand, which was fun until I got stuck. I like being able to edit when I write, which is hard when writing by hand.

Other Notes
I'm excited to say that I've picked up running after years of not liking it at all. First my fiancé got back into it, and I wanted to be able to run with him, so I downloaded the Nike Run Club app and started following their "Get Started" plan. It's been fun so far! I plan to run at least twice per week and then do some strength training on other days.

This coming week, I have the following goals:

• Spanish: In addition to the two iTalki lessons I've booked and the in-person class, I want to continue reviewing the uses of the subjunctive by taking notes from A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. I also want to start taking another DELE B2 practice exam.
• French: Review Anki cards.
• Writing: Try using my notebook for brainstorming, but my computer for drafting and revising. Work on the short story that I started.

[lichtrausch]

I'm excited to say that I've picked up running after years of not liking it at all. First my fiancé got back into it, and I wanted to be able to run with him, so I downloaded the Nike Run Club app and started following their "Get Started" plan. It's been fun so far! I plan to run at least twice per week and then do some strength training on other days.

Perhaps you've already been, but there's some wonderfully scenic running trails along the Charles River, and the atmosphere is great when the weather is decent and everybody comes out to exercise. I like running alongside BU down to Back Bay and then back up through Brookline. Recommended.

[M23]

28Jul24–11Aug24
This coming week, I have the following goals:

• Spanish: In addition to the two iTalki lessons I've booked and the in-person class, I want to continue reviewing the uses of the subjunctive by taking notes from A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. I also want to start taking another DELE B2 practice exam.

I don't know if you listen to the "No Hay Tos" podcast or not, but they recently did a podcast on the subjunctive tense and some of the thing that trigger it. If you want to listen to it the episode is call "Subjunctive Triggers | Relative Clauses" and here is a link to the website:

https://www.nohaytospodcast.com/

[philomath]

Perhaps you've already been, but there's some wonderfully scenic running trails along the Charles River, and the atmosphere is great when the weather is decent and everybody comes out to exercise. I like running alongside BU down to Back Bay and then back up through Brookline. Recommended.

I haven't yet, but I would like to try running along the Charles sometime! Lately I've been running around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.

[philomath]

I don't know if you listen to the "No Hay Tos" podcast or not, but they recently did a podcast on the subjunctive tense and some of the thing that trigger it. If you want to listen to it the episode is call "Subjunctive Triggers | Relative Clauses" and here is a link to the website:

https://www.nohaytospodcast.com/

Thanks, I listened to that episode this week and found it pretty helpful!

[philomath]

12Aug24–18Aug24

Spanish
Grammar: I listened to a couple episodes of No Hay Tos in which they discussed when to use the subjunctive. I also took some notes from one of my Spanish grammar books.

Speaking: I had a one-hour lesson with Carlos, which went okay. I wasn't happy with my accent, and after the lesson I started reading up on accent reduction techniques. I've never been a huge fan of Olle Kjellin's method, but someone mentioned it on the forum recently and it's probably worth another try.

I also had a 45-minute lesson with Mafe, which we spent discussing the Olympics. This time I felt better about my accent, so maybe I just needed to practice a bit.

Writing: I handwrote a couple of pages about my recent trip to Florida.

Other: I'd been planning to take the DELE B2 exam, but I did some research and now I think I want to take the SIELE exam? There are a few perks: 1) It looks easier to sign up for, 2) you can take it online, and 3) you don't have to pick a specific CEFR level to test at. There were lots of options for when to take the SIELE exam, so I'm going to wait a bit to sign up.

French
Nothing to report, except I listened to an episode of the podcast Amies.

German
I decided to delete my Anki deck (although I did export it first, so it's not gone for good). I no longer have a strong reason to learn German, and I didn't see the point in continuing to review my flashcards just for the sake of it. Maybe I will go back to German someday, maybe not.

Writing
My writing course is done! Overall I liked it, especially having the opportunity to get feedback on my short stories. However, I'm relieved to be able to focus on my writing projects now, without having to stress over writing assignments. Right now I'm working on a post-apocalyptic short story, and I have an idea for a fantasy novel that I would really like to brainstorm sometime.

[philomath]

19Aug24–25Aug24

Spanish
On the 22nd I had another in-person Spanish class. It was kind of boring; we each discussed one thing that we would consider overrated and one thing that is underrated, and then we looked at a list of idioms in Spanish. I'm not sure if I'll bother going to the final session of the class next week.

I was pretty busy for the rest of the week, and I have to work this weekend, but I did discover a new show to watch: Love is Blind Mexico. I don't watch reality TV very often, but I was very entertained by the first episode.

French
I listened to another episode of Amies, but I didn't do anything else with French. I haven't even been reviewing my Anki cards!

Writing
I've been slowly working on the dystopian short story. Very slowly—it's only 307 words long right now. This is a very slow pace for me, but I don't see the point in making myself rush. It would be nice to have another project that I could write a little faster though.

Other Projects
I've been doing a lot of career development activities, so I started two new courses on Udemy: one about Linux, and one on SQL and PostgreSQL. As of publishing this post, I've completed 6% of the first course and 4% of the second.

Thoughts
I'm pretty much done with my in-person Spanish class, and I already finished the writing course. It's really nice not having any more extra commitments. I think I might take a break from iTalki lessons for a while, too. Instead I'd like to practice speaking and writing on my own. My next post will be a list of goals for September.

[philomath]

Goals for September

Update: Deleted these goals (see the post from 16Sep24).

[philomath]

26Aug24–11Sep24

I've been very busy lately, as usual. I visited family the weekend of August 31 and had to work the following weekend. On top of that I started classes for my master's degree that are on Tuesday and Thursday nights, so I've been pretty busy during the week as well. The good news is that my class this semester is on database systems, so it's pretty interesting and will hopefully help me make the career change I've been dreaming of!

Spanish
Listening: I listened to some podcasts, mainly El Hilo and Quémese después de escuchar I also continued watching Love Is Blind: Mexico.

Speaking: I haven't done any speaking practice lately. I didn't book any iTalki lessons because my schedule has been so busy. Plus, I feel like my Spanish teachers rarely give me corrections, so there's not much benefit to speaking with them vs. speaking by myself. However, it's harder to motivate myself to practice speaking when I'm only speaking to myself.

Reading: I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude! I tried reading it a while ago, in Spanish, and stopped reading because I found it too boring. But now I'm listening to the audiobook in English while reading along in Spanish and I've been enjoying it a lot more. I also read an article from El País about the recent case of polio in Gaza. Finally, I also imported the Wikipedia page on "Calentamiento global" into LingQ and started reading it. I chose that Wikipedia page in particular because it seems to be a popular topic for exams.

Writing: I wrote a 200-word summary of the article from El País that I read.

Other: This week I learned that the word for video is "video" in Latin America but "vídeo" in Spain (i.e., the stress is on a different syllable). It's such a small difference, but I was surprised that I had never noticed it before.

Plans
I definitely want to do more speaking and writing practice during the rest of the month. If I'm not going to take iTalki lessons, I will at least block off some time on my calendar to practice speaking by myself. I also plan on writing during my commute, although typing on my phone isn't as comfortable as typing on a computer (or writing by hand).