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

[philomath]

12Sep24–16Sep24

Spanish
I did a little bit of writing, 334 words about what I did over the weekend (apple-picking and running a 5k). I'd like to continue writing more often, but overall setting goals for September made me feel stressed, not motivated. Life is just too busy right now for extra deadlines and obligations. So I deleted the goals for September and I will try to think of other ways to make progress without making myself stressed.

French
On Sunday I had a 45-minute lesson with Kevin. Before the lesson, I spent 30 minutes reviewing my Anki cards, saying each one out loud. I think that helped a lot because during the lesson my pronunciation wasn't too rusty, despite it being my first French lesson in six weeks. I did have some trouble remembering words, but overall I thought I did pretty well.

Future Plans
My parents invited me to go to Italy with them at the end of December. Naturally I want to review Italian, even though we'll be going with a tour group so everyone will probably speak English the whole time. I'm just not sure when I should start it. I'm tempted to start Assimil's Italian with Ease, but I don't think I'd be able to give it my full attention. I should probably just start with Pimsleur in November.

[philomath]

17Sep24–02Oct24

Haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I've been busy with career stuff and went to my friends' wedding last weekend, which required some traveling. On Monday I had the day off from work, so I had a Spanish lesson with Carlos. Before the lesson, I practiced speaking by myself for ~10 minutes and got a bit frustrated with my speaking level. I kept second-guessing whether what I was saying was grammatically correct. The actual lesson with Carlos went well though. We talked about weddings, apple picking, and the prices of fruit at the grocery store.

I don't feel like I've been making any progress with Spanish lately, but I'm too busy to have regular iTalki lessons. So I'd like to focus on writing in Spanish instead. I've been experimenting with ChatGPT, asking it to give me questions to write about. It works well for articles too. For example, I gave ChatGPT the headline and subheadline of an article I read in El País:

“¡Menudas pintas!”: discutir con tu hijo adolescente por su corte de pelo, ¿vale la pena? Un nuevo ‘look’ puede generar tensiones, pero siempre es más útil dialogar sobre la importancia de las decisiones personales”.

ChatGPT then gave me a list of questions, like these:

¿Qué significado crees que tiene para un adolescente adoptar un nuevo ‘look’?
¿Hasta qué punto los padres deberían intervenir en las decisiones personales de estilo de sus hijos?
¿Cómo crees que puedes apoyar a tu hijo en su proceso de definir su identidad personal?

The problem with this strategy is that I've been generating questions much faster than I've been answering them. But hopefully if I write every day I'll make progress. I've been having ChatGPT correct most of my writing, but I will probably start posting on iTalki as well.

[philomath]

03Oct24–15Oct24

I haven't been able to focus on language-learning lately. In the past, I've temporarily dropped my language studies in order to focus on schoolwork, writing projects, or other priorities. Now I think it's time to put languages aside so I can focus on my career more. I will return to languages once I A) accomplish the career move I want to do or B) take some more time off work (like in December, although I'll also be traveling).

I'm not going to completely drop languages though. I want to continue easier activities like listening to podcasts, reading books and articles, and reviewing my Anki cards. But the larger goals, like passing the SIELE exam or taking a certain number of iTalki lessons each month, will have to go. Anyway, I'd like to keep this log going because I enjoy posting here. I also think it would be fun to write about my career development activities. (Mods, please let me know if that's not allowed.) So here is an update of what I've been doing over the past couple of weeks:

Spanish
Reading: I read a couple of articles from El País. I also started reading Toda la verdad de mis mentiras by Elísabet Benavent. This was one of the books I found in Foyles during my last trip to London. The author has written some other books that were turned into Netflix series, but this book caught my attention. I'm only around 30 pages in, and so far it's a contemporary fiction novel about a woman who is secretly in love with her best friend. The narrator's tone is very conversational, which is great for learning, but the plot is pretty boring so far.

Writing
I've also been in a writing rut lately. I think I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to write stories that would be publication-quality eventually, and it kind of took the fun out of writing. Also, I was working on a lot of stories that involved complex world-building, and I was getting too stuck on the world-building details. I'd like to do a bit of a reset and work on a project that's easier. That is, if I can get back into a creative mindset at all.

Career
I'm trying to switch into a career in data analytics or data science, and there are a lot of skills I can learn, so I've been working on a lot of things at once (probably too many at once).

Databases: I'm currently taking a course on database systems for my master's degree. I'm probably not going to write much about it in this log, but it is pretty interesting and it's been a great way to learn SQL.

An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in Python (ISLP): I started going through this textbook a while ago and finally downloaded it on my iPad so I can annotate it more easily. I'm almost done with Chapter 2. The end of the chapter discusses classification, so I started reading about Naive Bayes classifiers and K-means classifiers and then I got distracted and started doing a classification tutorial in Kaggle, which was pretty cool.

Tableau: I've been wanting to get experience with either Power BI or Tableau for visualizing data. I might be able to work on a project involving Power BI at my current job, so I decided to check out Tableau. This week, I made an account on Tableau Public and started doing their tutorial.

[philomath]

16Oct24–28Oct24

Spanish
Pronunciation: I did Pimsleur Spanish III, Lessons 1-3. I don't think Pimsleur is very helpful for intermediate and advanced speakers, but it makes me feel productive, and it's kind of relaxing in a weird way.

Reading: I continued reading Toda la verdad de mis mentiras. I've now read over 400 pages.

Writing: On the 16th, I wrote a 79 words, pretending that I was writing an email. It was a response to a real email that I had received earlier, in English, and for some reason I started wondering how I would reply in Spanish. It was a good opportunity to review different email greetings and closings in Spanish. Afterward, I asked ChatGPT to correct my grammar, and I made flashcards for some of the grammar points.

Career
Databases: I got an opportunity to write SQL queries for my job, which was a fun side project! They were much more complicated than the ones I've had to write for my database course. Then I made a dashboard for viewing some of our experimental data, which my boss said was very useful. Tomorrow is the midterm exam for the database systems course I'm taking, so I also spent a lot of time studying for that. Hopefully it goes well!

Kaggle: I finished all of the lessons in Kaggle's Introduction to Machine Learning course, except for the final lesson, which involves entering one of their coding competitions. I'm excited to try it, but it looks like there's another competition which is recommended for beginners. So I will probably work on that one first.

[philomath]

29Oct24–12Nov24

Spanish
I listened to a few podcast episodes and finished reading Toda la verdad de mis mentiras.

French
I practiced speaking to myself in French a couple of times. I haven't had a lesson in a while, but I'd like to think my speaking level hasn't deteriorated too much.

Italian
I’m going to Italy with my family at the end of December, so I started doing Pimsleur Italian I. I’ve completed the first seven lessons so far. Italian pronunciation is definitely easier than French, but I do have some pronunciation questions/concerns:

• How exactly is 'io' pronounced? Wiktionary says /ˈi.o/, but it seems like in quicker speech it would become something more like /jo/. I know io is often omitted in Italian, but still.
• How to pronounce consecutive vowels like in these examples: "ma io", "lei è"?
• Geminate consonants. Maybe I should practice with minimal pairs to make sure I hear the difference.

Writing
Lately I've been too busy to feel creative, but I have a couple of days off from work coming up and it would be nice to set aside time to brainstorm new stories. I started reading a sci-fi novel recently which made me want to work on my old "failed" project...

Career
I've been busy with the database course for my master's degree, but I also spent some more time learning Tableau.

[philomath]

13Nov24–23Nov24

Spanish
I listened to several podcast episodes, mainly from El hilo and No es el fin del mundo. I also did two lessons of Pimsleur Spanish III. I find that Pimsleur is nice after a long break from speaking Spanish, when my pronunciation is a bit rusty. I also started reviewing my Anki cards again.

My fiancé and I are leaving for Barcelona tonight and I'm trying not to feel disappointed that I haven't studied Spanish much recently. I would like to enjoy the trip and not try to make it too language-focused. I thought it might be helpful to list out some of my goals for the trip:

• Explore some areas of the city that I didn't visit before, like Gràcia.
• Eavesdrop on native conversations and take note on what phrases people use for everyday tasks like ordering coffee.
• Take photos with my new film camera and get the film developed before leaving.
• Buy some books in Spanish and French (because there's a nice French bookstore there too).
• Learn enough about Catalan to be able to pronounce street names.

Career
I've been incredibly busy recently, first with an assignment for my databases course and then with a job opportunity that involved a data analytics exercise as part of the interview process. It's an exciting opportunity so I hope my responses were satisfactory!

[philomath]

Just got back from Barcelona! It was a great trip, even though it was pretty short. We did a lot of walking, mostly around El Born, the Gothic Quarter, and L'Eixample, but we also made some excursions to Barceloneta and Gràcia. We learned more about Spanish history through a historical walking tour and a visit to the Museu d'Història de Barcelona. We also tried a lot of good restaurants, including a Calabrian sandwich shop called Compà and a vegan ramen restaurant called Umami Plant Based.

Looking at my goals for the trip, I think it was definitely a success:

• Explore some areas of the city that I didn't visit before, like Gràcia: Success! We went to Gràcia twice and visited some cool shops, including a tinned fish store called Entre Latas.
• Eavesdrop on native conversations and take note on what phrases people use for everyday tasks like ordering coffee. Partial success. It was a little hard to eavesdrop since I was with my fiancé.
• Take photos with my new film camera and get the film developed before leaving. Success! I was a little nervous about bringing film through airport security, but the TSA employees agreed to hand-inspect the film. There was a film lab in L'Eixample which had a dropbox where people could leave film for the lab to develop, so I dropped mine off on our last day. I'm excited to see the results whenever they email them to me!
• Buy some books in Spanish and French (because there's a nice French bookstore there too). Partial success. We had a lot of activities planned so I didn't have much time to browse for books. I appreciated the language section at Casa del Llibre, but I didn't buy anything. I did buy a book at the French bookstore though: Capital et Idéologie en bande dessinée: D'après le livre de Thomas Piketty.
• Learn enough about Catalan to be able to pronounce street names. Kind of? I learned how to pronounce some words, like caixa and L'Eixample, but I was not very confident about my pronunciation overall. I would like to learn more Catalan, but not enough to buy Le Catalan sans peine. Maybe I will look for some less intensive books though...

As for speaking Spanish during my trip, I think it went very well! In the past I would put too much pressure on myself to speak my target languages when traveling, so this time I tried to relax. I would say around half of my interactions were in English, and the other half were in Spanish. Sometimes it was easier to use English, especially since I was with my fiancé who doesn't speak Spanish (although he learned some words during the trip). However, my interactions in Spanish went smoothly and almost no one switched to English, which was nice! These were some of the interactions that stood out to me:

• Our first night in Barcelona, we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I hadn't spoken Spanish very much at that point in the trip, but the waitress didn't seem very confident in English, which gave me the courage to order our drinks and food in Spanish.
• A woman stopped us and asked for directions in Spanish, so I pulled up the map on my phone and we pointed her in the right direction. My end of the conversation was mostly pointing and saying "Sí, sí" but I was glad I could help!
• At the Calabrian sandwich shop, I placed our sandwich orders in Spanish. When the sandwiches were ready, the woman behind the counter said something in English. But then she said "Oh, hablas español" as if she had forgotten, and she switched back to Spanish for the rest of the conversation. That made me feel good, like I had passed some sort of speaking test.
• We went to a bakery and I couldn't remember how to order a plain croissant, as opposed to one with a filling. I ended up ordering a "croissant regular" and the woman said "A plain croissant?" So when I was paying, I asked "¿Cómo se dice 'plain croissant' en español?" She looked a little surprised but replied nicely "un croissant normal". That was a positive experience because usually I feel too shy to ask questions like that. If she had been busy helping other customers I wouldn't have, but it seemed like a good moment.
• And a bonus interaction: when we went to Llibreria Jaimes, I spoke to the cashier in French!

After the trip, I feel very motivated to keep improving my Spanish. But I'm still busy with career stuff and I should really brush up on Italian to prepare for my family trip next month, so I'll have to think about my priorities...

[DaveAgain]

Writing
Lately I've been too busy to feel creative, but I have a couple of days off from work coming up and it would be nice to set aside time to brainstorm new stories. I started reading a sci-fi novel recently which made me want to work on my old "failed" project...

Arte.tv have a programme you might like, Twist: Écrire un roman, comment faire ?

Comment écrire un roman et comment en faire son métier ? Jonas Jonasson, Caroline Wahl, Iris Wolff et Matias Riikonen sont des auteurs à succès. Entre processus d’écriture et défis personnels liés à la genèse de leurs productions, ces professionnels du best-seller évoquent leur travail et livrent quelques conseils.

[philomath]

28Nov24–13Dec24

I've been very busy with career-related goals and schoolwork, but things are finally starting to calm down. One big change to my daily routine is that I've started driving to work instead of taking public transportation. I'm not sure how I feel about this change because although it's saving me a lot of time every day, it also means that I can't spend that time reading or studying my Anki cards like I used to. I'll have to fit those activities somewhere else in my schedule. Instead, I've been doing Pimsleur lessons while I drive. My commute is around 25 minutes without traffic, 50+ minutes with traffic, so I can hypothetically do 2-4 Pimsleur lessons per day. I'm interested to see how this affects my language-learning (or how soon I get tired of doing Pimsleur lessons).

Italian
Thanks to my new commuting routine, I've managed to finish the first 22 lessons of Pimsleur Italian I. It's fun so far, but now that my work is winding down for the year, I'm ready to add some more resources! I already own Assimil's Italian with Ease, but I've never succeeded in finishing an Assimil book. I'll have to experiment with different ways of using it.

Career
I'm almost done with work for the year, since my office closes for the holidays, and I just have one more week of my master's course for this semester. The other exciting news is that I finished the third stage of interviewing for a job that I'm really excited about. I really really really hope I get the job. I should find out in the next couple of weeks or so.

[tastyonions]

You'll have Italian on lock with your Spanish and French. Should be a fun project.