Languages vs Time

[aokoye]

Where to begin?! I started writing this nearly two weeks ago but just kept the tab open. A lot can happen in two weeks!

French
I took the Dialang reading test this morning and got the same result as I did on June 14th, B2. I'm not especially unhappy about this and I think it's pretty accurate honestly. I then took one of the B1 RFI tests which said, "vous êtes en cours d’acquisition du niveau B1". That's great all things considered because the last time I took what I'm assuming was one of their A2 tests, it said that I was working towards A2. That was also on June 14th. One level in 2 months of self study - I'm ok with that. Of course, that's not taking into account speaking and writing skills.

I'm very quickly falling into the "too many resources" hole with French (and Biblical Hebrew...more on that below).
Using/will use/am sporadically using:
Entre nous 3 (B1)
Compréhension orale B1 (on it's way to me - will get here tomorrow)
Way too many grammar books (I've semi successfully put a partial moratorium on more grammar books for French)
Vocabulaire en dialogues: niveau intermédiaire
Learn with Oliver (just old stuff)
Lingvist
Quizlet (for Entre Nous vocab)
Fun MOOC's Vivre en France - B1 (I need to drop this...among other things)
Vocabulaire essentiel du français A2 (I'm not really using this)
Duolingo
presumably some other things as well

What I need to pair my "am using" list down to:
Entre nous 3
Compréhension orale B1
Lingvist
Duolingo
Vocabulary review

I think my current thought is to not focus on grammar right now, including not doing the grammar focused exercises in Entre Nous. It seems as though when I focus on grammar for French, I have a tendency try to do too many things at once. Lingvist will stay because it doesn't take a lot of time, it's effective, and coming back to a bunch of reviews after not using it is hellish. Compréhension orale will stay because my listening comprehension in situations where there isn't visual context (including a transcript) needs a lot of work. Duolingo is nice because it means I can get at least a little bit of French in my day and I can do it on the streetcar very easily.

Outside of that, I've also been trying to make myself read news articles in French which has been great when I make the time to do it. I'm also a fan of watching French TV with subtitles. I think it's probably helping with my comprehension at this point.

Biblical Hebrew
So again with this too many resources:
The First Hebrew Primer
Routledge Introductory Course in Biblical Hebrew
The Guide to Loshon Hakodesh (just came today)

Turns out I like the Routledge more than the first Hebrew Primer and I so far can deal with using Anki for Hebrew in general (this was the case when I was learning Modern Hebrew a few years ago as well). There's a stronger emphasis on reading sections of the bible in the Routledge text which I like (more or less the whole point for me). There are also fewer grammar exercises which makes it easier to get through despite there being more vocabulary words. The audio resources aren't as good and I don't like that there isn't already an existing easy to import vocabulary list. That said, the companion site is very good and includes all of the vocab as well as downloadable audio, "flash cards" (by which they mean you can click on a word and the translation will show up), extra exercises, and pdf vocabulary lists (though not by chapter for some reason - alphabetical and by word type - yes). That said, it's easy enough to copy and paste from the flash cards and do some editing. It looks like they introduce around one thousand words. The answers aren't online, but they allow self learners to email and ask for them as well as the translations to various texts. I emailed, got an auto-reply from the original person (who is currently at a linguistics conference I wish I was at), and then someone else sent me the answers and translations within 24 hours of me sending the email. This would be a dream for Speakeasy in terms of responsiveness

Because I can't help myself/am impatient in unhelpful ways, I also bought The Guide to Loshon Hakodesh, by Nachman Marcuson, which came today. It's interesting because it's unapologetically religious which makes sense because it's based off of a course that was aimed at Orthodox Jews (I am not Orthodox - I wouldn't be writing this one a Saturday with the TV on in the background if I was...). It seems like the goal is to teach the 230 most commonly used words between this book and the second book in the series as well as a ton of grammar. There are more 259 vocabulary words in the textbook, though a small selection of those are ones they don't intend the learner memorize. The second book, which is all about verbs, likely has a number of other words as well.

This book was explicitly written for self study, which is nice. The answers are all in the back of the book. The appendix, as it were, is actually really well designed (he says having only thumbed through it). It's on tan colored paper which sets it apart from the rest of the book and for each chapter they've reprinted the exercise and then given the answers on the next page(s). Chapters 11-16 all involve translating considerably large chunks of the Torah into English with the help of a gloss in the margin. What's interesting with these exercises, is that in the answer section for them, there are extensive notes about grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and what some people think a section of the text means. The assumption here seems to be that the learner will be very active in their learning.

In think my general plan, in terms of Hebrew, is to do 2 chapters a week from the Routledge and one to two a week from the Marcuson text, depending on how much overlapping vocabulary there is. After I finish both books (if I finish both...or either book) then I might get the verb book and also just start translating texts from the bible.

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I also need to make myself daily to-do lists for language learning. And by "need" i mean, "want to try". I want to see if it will help me organize my time better.

[aokoye]

I did the first two chapters of The Guide to Loshon Hakodesh this evening because the first chapter was total review and it seems very interesting. I'll probably write a full review if I manage to finish the whole book (seems doable). My takeaways from having done everything in the first two chapters, reading the introduction to the book, and skimming through some of the later chapters.

Layout
For at least the first handful of chapters, if not the entirety of the book, chapters are organized in the following way:
Vocabulary
Grammar points, which are sequentially numbered through the whole of the book
Summary of all/large chunks of the grammar points that have been taught with the page numbers
Exercises

The book has no pictures and is all in black and white. I know some people really prefer this and it's significantly cheaper to publish book in this way. I personally prefer color. I could see it being especially useful in the case of endings.
With regards to vocabulary, there are typically between 12 and 18 new words introduced in each chapter - in some chapters there are also another handful of words that learners don't "have to" memorize (I think they say something along the lines of, "don't worry about memorizing these words"). Additionally all of the verbs are introduced in the masculine singular past tense. I find this somewhat interesting and I suspect it will help me remember them better than by only memorizing the root. If I do end up getting the second book, which apparently primarily focuses on roots, it'll be interesting to see what if anything changes. Having said all of this, the book introduces the past, present, and future tenses very quickly so it's not as if they're somehow assuming that the only verbs you'll see will be in the past tense masculine singular

Having said all of that about verbs, it seems like the big grammatical focus is on prepositions. It kind of impressive actually. I think the goal was, "how can we best aid students in learning all of the morphology". Mind you, the second book in this two book series (which apparently was meant to be a three book series with the last book on Rashi) is all about verbs so maybe the idea is book one: prepositions and other morphology related to nouns, book 2: verbs, verbs, and more verbs. In general - it seems as though the goal is to teach a very basic set of words and then most of the affixes with the idea that the knowledge of both of those things will get you through the bulk of the Torah.

Exercises
The vast majority of the exercises involve translating Hebrew to English. There's no fill in the blank from what I can tell - it's just a lot of translation. Sometimes (rarely) you're asked to explain why a word or phrase is translated the way it is, but the bulk of it is translating first sentences and individual words, then words and paragraphs, and finally an entire page (in the last two chapters) into English.

Other things
I'm forever reminded that this is ment for a very specific (and small) segment of the population. I'm also mildly intrigued by their choice of spelling of some words. I suspect their main target audience is adults and teens who are becoming a very specific strand of Orthodox with some of those people being born Jewish but who aren't "frum from birth", others who have converted but not in that strand, and others who are in the process of converting into that type of Orthodox Judaism. In short, ba'al teshuvah. That said, this seems like a very good book and if I finish it I'll probably want to get the second book. Additionally, even if there were another situation where I knew most or all of the words in a chapter from having studied from the Routledge book or any other book, there's no way I'd be able to do two chapters in one day assuming I want to really read the grammar sections. It's simply too much work.

Also the the script is not taught in this book. Not at all. The assumption is that you can read the script.

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So for now I think my plan is to flip around what I wrote in my most previous post. I'll try do two chapters of the Loshon Hakodesh book a week and one chapter of the Routledge a week. I think grammar wise this will make my life easier as I do like how grammar is taught in Loshon Hakodesh. That means this week I'll try to do chapter 5 of the Routledge and chapters 3 and 4 of Loshon Hakodesh.

[aokoye]

So I just took the placement test (WebCAPE) for my university's French class with the goal of getting into third year. The score range for being placed into 300 level (third year) is 400 - 500. My score? 515 . Clearly my studying has worked - I also sufficiently impressed my mom (who was already impressed with the stew that I made this evening). I need to go to the registration office tomorrow so I can register as a non-degree student. I tried to this evening, but while it was willing to take my money, my having already registered for 201 confused the system so it didn't actually change my status to whatever it needs to be changed to to allow me to unregister from 201 and register for 301.

Either way - I'm very pleased as this means that my "French deficiency" as I've started calling it, which is the one thing that would give people looking at my application for my prefered program some pause will be taken care of. Mind you, I already emailed with the head of this MA program with my plan, which at the time was taking 2nd year French the 2019/2020 school year and potentially doing an intensive French program the summer before the MA program and she thought it would be totally fine.

[aokoye]

I swear, this log should really be called "A Moving Target".

French
As I mentioned earlier this week, I placed easily into 3rd year French after taking the WebCAPE test this week. That hasn't changed. What I have decided is what to focus on between now and the first week of class (October 1st I want to say - yes, Oregon public universities and colleges start very late). I was talking to my therapist earlier this week and realized that my primary worries about French 301 are grammar and listening related. I also remembered that my preparation for taking university German classes again was working through one of my German grammar books and it was a very useful and successful exercise. For that reason my main goal is going to finish Practice Makes Perfect Complete French. The goal is going to be to average one chapter a day. If I don't manage to finish it then oh well, but the goal is to finish it.

In addition to grammar stuff, I will continue to use Lingvist, Duolingo, and Compréhension Orale 2 (B1). In order, the resources of most importance to me right now are:
Practice Makes Perfect
Compréhension Orale
Lingvist
Duolingo

I will also keep watching shows in French as I both enjoy it and it's useful. My current not super serious attempts at reading French articles every so often will also probably suffice. When push comes to shove though, the above list is what needs to take priority.

Hebrew
I finished chapter 4 or 16 of the Lashon Hakodesh book yesterday or the day before last. Like French, I have narrowed my goals. The new goal is to finish the book by Rosh Hashanah which starts the evening of Sept 29th. Symbolically that's a very nice goal for so many reasons and functionally it's useful as well. Given that I'm a quarter of the way through the book and started chapter 5 today, it should be totally doable. I can feel myself getting a little (very?) impatient, but one real way of curing myself of that is making myself push on. So far, these chapters are short enough that I'm able to do a chapter a day and 10 days is not a lot of time all things considered.
I think part of my frustration is that, in some ways, this moves slower than the Routledge. That said, this book is also shorter and I can do a chapter a day. I can't really easily manage a chapter a day of the Routledge, at least not when that means going through all of the vocab of that chapter in Anki and completing the chapter.
Given my impatience, doing the Routledge after I finish this book is probably a good plan.

[aokoye]

Changes - so many changes. Shocking I know

Well ok, changes and (hopefully) temporary bouts of demotivation. So the French medium term plan is the same - take third year French this year. I just got a job tutoring in the public school district here for their AVID program, so I'm hoping that it works out schedule wise. I'm a bit worried, but I think it should work out. I'll know more about my schedule next Friday (I have a fair amount flexibility).

I just got the textbook for the French class and I think I might actually like it. I'm a bit surprised, but at the same time I think it's because it still feels so new to me given that I've been studying French for less than a year. Lots of reading, the entire book is in French save for the vocabulary list, the topics actually seem interesting and relevant, etc. It was absurdly expensive, but that's no surprise.
I emailed with the professor to let her know that I'm not going to be in class on Monday because of Rosh Hashanah (because having the first day of classes on Rosh Hashanah totally makes sense...it's not like they didn't have decades of warning....) and she's going to send out the syllabus today because she'll also be celebrating Rosh Hashanah. She warned me that I will probably have to do some extra studying and spend some time her in office hours, but said that as a motivated student, this class should be doable. I'm going to start entering vocabulary that I don't know into Learn with Oliver today.

In terms of Hebrew, I haven't made much progress. That said, I started going to one of the synagogues near my house and will be taking their beginning Modern Hebrew course. I went to their adult Hebrew class Q&A earlier this week on a bit of a whim which ended up being a rather good idea. They have three levels of Modern Hebrew (outside of the "learning to decode" class) and I'm somewhere between the first and second levels. They also have various Biblical Hebrew classes but a. I have a schedule conflict and b. they will probably be too easy for me. I spoke with the teacher, and she said that it would be better if I started with the easier course and then if need be, I can move up to the second level. Both the first and second levels use the first Brandeis Modern Hebrew textbook and the third class uses the intermediate-advanced book book. I highly suspect I'll end up moving up a level. That said, if the other 3 people who were at the Q&A night are the only other people in the class, we'll likely move pretty quickly as two of them have extensive backgrounds in Hebrew, though with considerable amounts of time not doing any formal study or using it in everyday life (where "everyday life" can also include Judaic studies).
The teacher seems good - she apparently has a lot of experience teaching Hebrew to new immigrants in Israel (which is extremely different than teaching it outside of Israel), teaches some of the children's classes at this synagoge, has taught here for a number of years, and is apparently very insistent on heavy amounts of homework and outside practice which I appreciate. She said that one of the reasons she likes the textbooks that they use is because there are a lot of exercises within each chapter. I personally think this is great because one of my main issues with the last Hebrew class that I took is that I couldn't find enough exercises and apparently didn't think to just ask for more. It also found an Anki deck for the textbook so I started on that yesterday evening. The class doesn't start until October 29th, so I'm going to check the textbook out from my uni's library this morning if I remember on my way back from the coffee shop that I'm currently writing this at.

No real goals for this week which is probably for the better.

[aokoye]

This week has been a strange mix of good and bad, mostly good with some very pointed bad moments. I finished all of the training for the tutoring position that I got as well as all of the administration stuff including preliminary scheduling (letting my district supervisor know what schools and times I can tutor at) so that's a relief. I was able to easily fit things around both therapy and French classes! I also submitted everything to the University of Ottawa and am once my letter writers submit their letters, my application should be forwarded through to be assessed. Knock on wood, I'll hear back within a month and a half.

So far so good with French. I went to my professor's office hours this morning and we agreed that this is the correct level for me. I can understand everything, but speaking is my main issue. Thankfully, the entire class is in French - there's no English used (including in the book) except for the occasional email that our professor sends that she chooses to write in English instead of French. So far none of the students have opted to speak in English either, including when waiting for class to start. Needless to say, this is shaping up to be a good term, if not a good year given that I'll probably have the same people in my class through the year.

There's a fair amount of writing as well. We had a 15 line "paragraph" (I would never write a paragraph that long in real life) that was due today, have a 65 min writing task on Friday of next week during class, another one of those towards the end of the 10 week course and then 20 line paragraph as well. From what I can tell, the inclass compositions are not dissimilar to those done during language tests. We won't know the topic until the day of and we won't have access to books of any kind including dictionaries. The first one will be on something related to families, which is the topic of our first chapter, but there's a lot of latitude there. We'll revise them during the next class from what I can tell.

This will definitely prepare me for studying at University of Ottawa if I do end up getting in. The main thing I need to do, is make sure that I keep up with the vocabulary and try to get and the stay ahead. That means that this weekend's goal is to finish all of my homework for the week, which I think is probably doable.

[aokoye]

French is still going well and I'm still liking my class. It's a challenge for sure but it's good. There were a few times yesterday when I was like, "god I should know this!" and then a few people were like "this is so hard and I've been studying French for 6 years" (presumably some of those years were in high school if not middle and high school). I've been studying French for 10 months.

Yesterday we went over some grammar that we had studied on our own for homework which was really helpful and then we did this English -> French translation exercise which is what people were having a lot of trouble with. I think most of what I need to work on at the moment is conjugation sorts of things. That and I still have problems with the interrogative form. I'm going to spend a large chunk of today going over verbs on Conjuguemos which I remembered existed last night.

I will attempt to use Anki for vocabulary. We'll see how that works but I'm giving it a go.

[aokoye]

Week two of French class: done.

Like I think I said earlier, it's been a whirlwind because of High Holidays (my professor is in the same boat) and starting my new job, but hopefully things will start settling down. Today's class was devoted to our in class writing assignment. Up to three hand written pages (doubled spaced) on what the definition of a specific idea that was posed in our textbook was, how that differs from the typical american idea, and what our views are. We were given an hour and I used all of it and all of the pages and more or less all of the time. My organization was pretty terrible but otherwise things were okish. Given that this is the first time I've done something like this, I think it's ok. I was really worried going into it, but once I saw the prompt I took a breath of relief. I still have quite a lot of imposter syndrome with regards to this class (which is a first for me in a language class), but I'm hoping that will go away winter term.

We spend two weeks on each chapter of the textbook and the next two weeks are on chapter 2 of the textbook which is about gender roles - a topic I can talk a lot about in English and German My big goal for the weekend is putting all of the vocabulary in Anki. There's a lot of it and we have a vocabulary assignment due on Monday. Additionally, I have a regatta a few hours North of me this Sunday which will take up the majority of my day. So it really an assignment for today and tomorrow. Thankfully, all of the textbook exercises that we're assigned are due at the end of the two weeks. I'll try to do the ones relating directly to the vocabulary this weekend/Monday and then the rest of them done by the end of next week.

There's also a French speaking group that I want to go to put on by the local Alliance Francaise. It's every Saturday so I may wait until next week just because there's just so much going on for me right now.

[aokoye]

Dialang test results time likely the last that I'll do this calendar year for sake of not wanting to rely on (accidently) remembering the answers:
Reading: B2
Listening: B2

The reading stayed the same as it was the last time I took it on Aug 31st. Listening, on the other hand, went up a level from when I last took it in on June 28th. I wished that the reading had gone up but it's honestly not the end of the world. I'm very pleased about the listening though.

I spoke with my French teacher this afternoon after class and she's pleased with how I'm doing with my writing (among other things). She graded our first writing assignment and handed it back today and the feedback was useful. I'm also trying to speak up more and more in class. Slowly the imposter syndrome is being chipped away...slowly but surely. It's still a bit wild to me that I've made as much progress as I have since January when I first really started studying French. I suppose this is a testament to my ability to use well taught language classes (even with a subpar textbook which was the case in French 101-103 and would have been for 200 level as well) and build on them. The language class is at the core and provides the structure/scaffolding that I need and then I can build off of that in terms of what I do for my own enrichment.

To that end, reading Lianne's log inspired me to add Pimsleur to my tools. I'm starting from the beginning, because there's no real rush. If I get into the University of Ottawa (which is a massive motivator - the program is bilingual), I won't be there until late Aug/early Sept and I won't be asked to take any oral French tests (aural and reading, possibly). I also signed up for a MOOC about personal health that is in French on Fun-MOOC which started this week. It's a subject that is interesting and it'll help with my listening skills.

Honestly depending on how this school year goes, it might be worth thinking about taking the DELF B2 test (or another useful to me B2 test) this summer (or whenever it's offered after say May of 2020). I'll likely have done at least six 1 hour in-class writing assignments (with nothing other than a writing implement and paper), read a lot of factual texts, done a boat load of listening, and done a fair amount of speaking (we have discussions in class). That's on top of the homework (which includes more writing).

[aokoye]

I've been a bit less on top of things over the past week, but I spent some time yesterday evening pulling myself back on track and now I'm at least up to date with everything. I am thinking about burying the production cards for the next batch of vocabulary that I add because, while I find typing in answers helpful (I have it set to type in), my motivation falls off a cliff when I have to do that for any real amount of time. Also the one time when Anki really worked for me was when it was basic cards with just Hebrew - English. No typing, no real context, just very basic cards.

Other things of note, I'm great at dealing with very small chunks of spoken French from things like the radio, but anything longer and I have a hard time. It's the lack of other reference points that makes it hard. Right now I can think of two ways of intensive listening to remedy this.
1. Doing RFI exercises aimed at the A2 and then B1 levels.
2. Doing listening exercises from A2 and then B1 level textbooks.

I have access to a number of textbooks, their audio, and extra activities for them via having paid for a subscription to a publisher's online resources. That makes the second option easy. The other pro, is that the potential for me to be listening to something I don't have a lot of background knowledge about is high. RFI is great as well but it's easy too easy or too hard. I also consume enough news that I can answer some of the exercise questions without having listened to the audio. That said, I do like RFI.

I think what I might end up doing is trying to do the textbook thing for a week and then go with a week of RFI and see what I find more useful. I also need to do things like watch the news in French, but I think for intensive listening, it needs to be graded in difficulty. If anyone has any other suggestions I would love to hear them.