Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

[philomath]

Cette semaine j'ai étudié un peu le français. Hier, j'ai regardé une vidéo en français sur YouTube et j'ai révisé mes flashcards. Je suis très contente parce que demain est mon dernier jour du travail cette année. J'aurai 23 jours de vacances. Pendant ces vacances je veux surtout écrire mon roman, mais bien sûr que je veux aussi étudier beaucoup le français. Je n'ai pas de buts sauf qu'étudier le français pendant au moins une heure chaque jour. J'espère améliorer beaucoup mon français.

[philomath]

Ces deux dernières semaines, je ne dois pas aller au travail. Je suis très contente parce que j’ai beaucoup de temps libre maintenant pour étudier le français et écrire mon roman. Cependant, c’est difficile d’être productive quand j’ai autant de temps. La semaine dernière, j’ai essayé d’écrire pendant le matin et étudier le français pendant l’après-midi. Mais au lieu de cela, j’ai passé chaque matin à naviguer sur l’Internet, donc je n’ai pas commencé à écrire jusqu’à l’après-midi. Ensuite l'écriture m’a pris plus de temps que prévu. Chaque soir, je n’avais pas de motivation, ou je me sentais trop fatiguée pour étudier le français. Pour aggraver les choses, j’ai dû reporter ma leçon avec mon prof de français. Normalement nos leçons m’aident à me motiver parce que je veux être préparée. Puisque je n’ai pas de leçon, je n’ai pas étudié le français la semaine dernière sauf que réviser mes flashcards.

De toute façon, cette semaine je suis déterminée à étudier plus le français. Cet après-midi, j’ai commencé à écrire mon livre, mais pour quelque raison j’avais plus envie d’étudier le français. La semaine dernière, j’aurais quand même écrit, mais aujourd’hui j’ai décidé de suivre mon instinct et étudier le français. Maintenant je suis très contente. Il vaut parfois mieux changer sa routine que suivre le même calendrier.

[philomath]

Wow, 2020 is almost over. For my last post in this log, I want to go over my goals for 2020 and summarize my language learning journey this year.

Here were my goals for Spanish:

1. Listening: I want to improve my comprehension of shows that have fast dialogue and use a lot of slang, such as La casa de papel and Elite.
2. Speaking: I want to improve my conversation skills, especially when it comes to asking questions to further the discussion and making small talk in general. I also want to improve my ability to talk about more complex topics, so I'll need to increase my active vocabulary a lot.
3. Reading: I'm very happy with my reading skills right now, but I would like to start reading a wider range of sources, such as blogs and magazines for native speakers.
4. Writing: I want to practice writing about more complex topics. It would also be nice to try writing formal essays in Spanish.

I didn't end up doing a lot of Spanish this year, aside from reading two Harry Potter books. I'm okay with that though, because I think taking a break from Spanish helped me make much more progress in French.

Here were my goals for French:

1. Finish Colloquial French.
2. Finish Pimsleur French I. (Maybe do Pimsleur French II as well?)
3. Finish going through an introductory grammar book such as Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar.
4. Have at least two French lessons per month until I feel confident switching to from formal tutoring to language exchanges.
5. Start enjoying native materials on a daily basis.

I quickly realized that I didn't like Colloquial French, so I never finished it. Nor did I finish Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar. Before I began studying French, I was a big fan of using textbooks for language learning. When starting a language, I'd choose one textbook, work on it until I became bored, and then switch to another one. However, with French, I think my iTalki lessons played a big role in my realization that I don't need textbooks to learn a language. After ditching Colloquial French and Practice Makes Perfect, I started learning the grammar and vocab that were most relevant to my needs, which helped me learn French much faster than I thought I would. So I think not finishing those textbooks was actually less of a failure and more of a success.

I did, however, finish Pimsleur French I, and I think that really helped me develop decent pronunciation. I also had 26 (!) lessons with my iTalki teacher, averaging over 2 lessons per month. Finally, I did start enjoying native materials, although not on a "daily basis" as my goal stated. Although a lot of my listening practice involved the InnerFrench podcast, which is not aimed at native speakers, I enjoyed a couple different Netflix series for native speakers and read Le Petit Prince.

Here is a link to my new language log for 2021. Happy New Year!