Diary of a Flake: ZH, ES, DE

[linguology]

So, some background: I've been drawn to languages ever since I was a kid, and I've dabbled in pretty much every language out there at one point or another. I managed to get a Bachelor's degree in German, although even at my best I would never have dared to label myself "fluent" in the language. A few years ago I moved to China, with the grand goal of learning Mandarin, and...while I can make myself understood most of the time, it's been a struggle to keep my motivation up, for a variety of reasons. I'm moving back to the US in a few months only barely better than I started. I played with the idea of simply giving it up entirely - and, who knows, I still might down the line - but I've decided to keep plugging away at it for the foreseeable future.

I do, however, need to figure out some manageable goals, if not an actual schedule. For at least the next few weeks, I'm going to be using this log as diagnostic to take a look at what I'm actually doing and how I can improve. My current language goals are:

Mandarin: Since I don't see myself coming back to China long-term for a while, if ever, I'm going to take some of the pressure off myself and just focus on getting better than I was before, without a concrete level-related goal. If it takes me 20 years to get good, so be it. I'm working through a textbook (I think New Practical) with an italki teacher, and I'm going to try to spend a lot more time working on my listening and (to an extent) reading. I really need to find a language exchange partner for more casual conversation practice, as well.

Spanish: This will probably be the language I put the most tangible effort into for the rest of this year. Right now I'm working on reviewing what I learned from the year's worth I took in college. I have a couple of textbooks that I'm not finding particularly enthralling, so I'll be experimenting with different sources for grammar. For reading I've been making my way through Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners, aiming at one chapter per day, as well as Harry Potter (that one will definitely take a while). I've also been experimenting with italki community tutors to practice speaking (which is basically always my weakest skill, since I'm shy as anything).

German: The one I'm putting the least amount of effort into for now. If I can come up with the time I'd like to work my way up to C1 by mid-2020-early 2021, but that's pretty up in the air. At the moment I'd mostly just like to polish the rust off my current level, mostly focusing on reading and listening. Right now I'm working my way through Die Herren von Winterfell.

[linguology]

First week of actively tracking successfully completed!

Mandarin
As much as I intended this first month or so to be a guilt-free assessment of my habits, I still feel a little guilty for how little time I've spent on Mandarin. Most of my Chinese study time this week was spent watching Peppa Pig on Netflix, since that's the most relaxing way to tell myself I'm "practicing my Chinese" after a stressful day at work. I managed to spend a least a few minutes a day going over an article or two on The Chairman's Bao in the mornings to improve my vocab and character recognition speed (and, to a lesser extent, my listening). I've also started reviewing New Practical Chinese Reader 1 to fill in some vocabulary and structures that might have fallen through the gaps. I did have a session with a conversation partner last Sunday, I would say about 90% of that in Chinese - though, to be fair, he did most of the talking.

Weekly Total: 5 hours, 19 minutes

Spanish
I ended up spending more time on Spanish this week than either of the others. Spanish has kind of become my "happy place" language - I actively look forward to spending time with the language, where Chinese feels more like an obligation at this point. My biggest problem in terms of Spanish at this point is that my study is incredibly unfocused, and I'm wondering if I should find an decent intermediate textbook just to give myself a little more structure. I'm working my way through the verb conjugations with the help of websites like Conjuguemos and Study Spanish (plus a few supplementary YouTube videos), and I've had a couple sessions (of various quality) with community tutors on italki. Apart from that, I've worked my way through a few more chapters of Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners, which I'm not exactly loving, as well as the first chapter of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. I've also been watching two episodes a day of the LA dub of Steven Universe, as well as the occasional episode of La casa de las flores with Spanish subs.

Weekly Total: 9 hours, 52 minutes

German
Not a whole heck of a lot to report. I managed to read about three chapters of Die Herren von Winterfell. The prologue was fairly slow going, but it sped up considerably after that. I probably average about 5 words per chapter into Anki, though I'm not including less useful things like the specific type of leather that Weymar Rois' gloves are made from. I also rewatched the first two episodes of Dark on Netflix, as well as the first episode of How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) - the second of which is not exactly my cup of tea, content-wise, but I'll probably end up finishing it at some point since it's so short.

Weekly Total: 3 hrs, 12 minutes

[linguology]

This past week was kind of a mess. I managed to get comparatively little done this week with any of my languages, but especially Spanish. I’d love to have a good excuse, but in reality it was just mental and emotional laziness. I know that with Spanish especially I really need to find a better balance of study vs “fun” time, but it’s just so much easier to motivate myself to watch cartoons for half an hour than sit down and work on grammar.

Mandarin
Surprisingly the language I got the most time with this week – though that’s not saying much. I had a lesson with my italki teacher on Thursday evening, which counted for a good hour (my lessons with her are always 100% in Chinese). I still have yet to go through the notes she sent me, but I plan to do that today. I’m still plugging through on my review of the first volume of New Practical Chinese Reader at a fairly quick pace, though I expect to slow down once I hit the second volume.

Apart from that, I’m still watching Peppa Pig (did I mention how much easier it is to watch cartoons than study grammar?) and the occasional Chairman’s Bao article. Yesterday I also started reading a Chinese Breeze reader I’ve had sitting unread in my Kindle app for a while, which is going a lot more smoothly than I expected.

Weekly Total: 5 hrs, 22 minutes

Spanish
Still primarily watching Steven Universe and keeping up with my Anki reviews. I forced my way through another chapter of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal, but it’s incredibly slow going. I started reading El dador de recuerdos (The Giver), which is a lot easier to get through, so I’m considering putting off Harry Potter until I’ve finished with this one and see if it’s any easier for me by then.

Like I said above, I’ve been deeply slacking with any legitimate study this week. Drilled preterit conjugations a little bit on Conjuguemos, but I haven’t learned anything new in a while. Though I haven’t opened it yet, I have managed to get my hands on Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar, which will hopefully give me a little bit of a boost.

Weekly Total: 4 hrs, 34 minutes

German
Not a whole lot to report. Read another two chapters of Die Herren von Winterfell. My plan is to make this book my default lunch-break activity, so I can get through it a little bit faster. Also watched another episode of HTSDO and two more episodes of Dark (I really wanted to finish rewatching the first season this week so I could start the second, but clearly it wasn’t meant to be…I’m only through episode 1x04 at this point). I find Dark a lot easier to understand than HTSDO, though that could just be because I've watched it before.

Weekly Total: 2 hrs, 29 minutes