The Bee's Knees: Lianne starts the 20s with French and Italian

[Lianne]

French
May 2: nothing

May 3:
45 minutes watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (All the Way)

Italian
May 2:
10 minutes Duolingo
35 minutes watching Luna Nera (episode 3) (Italian audio, English subs)

May 3: nothing

I want the Super Challenge bot to be working! I'm making a good start on the films portion of both my challenges!

[Lianne]

French
May 4:
15 minutes Duolingo

May 5:
1 hour reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier #3: Chantage (36 pages)

Got back into my French book! I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter I'd left of in, and still I don't remember all the drama going on in this ridiculous teenager's life, but I think I'm getting back into it pretty well.

Kwiziq has a sale on! All of their plans are 20% off right now. It doesn't say when the sale is going to end, which is leaving me torn about when to pay for a month again. Right now isn't ideal. I'm being laid off (temporarily) at the end of the month, so the next few weeks I'm still working full time, albeit from home. I'm also doing the 6 Week Challenge in Italian. So I'd like to hold off but I worry the sale will suddenly end!

Italian
May 4: nothing

May 5:
30 minutes L-R: Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audiobook with Italian ebook, 18 pages (chapter 1)

L-R at such an early point is a lot, but I'm curious to see if I notice a benefit from it! From the start, I find that I can follow along fine. It feels fast, and the words run together, but as long as I stay focused I can always find my spot. The speed also limits how much I can notice words that I know or can figure out what they mean. We'll see how it feels as I progress through the book!

[IronMike]

Italian
May 5:
30 minutes L-R: Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audiobook with Italian ebook, 18 pages (chapter 1)

L-R at such an early point is a lot, but I'm curious to see if I notice a benefit from it! From the start, I find that I can follow along fine. It feels fast, and the words run together, but as long as I stay focused I can always find my spot. The speed also limits how much I can notice words that I know or can figure out what they mean. We'll see how it feels as I progress through the book!

I use an app called Speater to slow the speed down for my Russian audiobooks. I just can't keep up!

[Lianne]

Italian
May 5:
30 minutes L-R: Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audiobook with Italian ebook, 18 pages (chapter 1)

L-R at such an early point is a lot, but I'm curious to see if I notice a benefit from it! From the start, I find that I can follow along fine. It feels fast, and the words run together, but as long as I stay focused I can always find my spot. The speed also limits how much I can notice words that I know or can figure out what they mean. We'll see how it feels as I progress through the book!

I use an app called Speater to slow the speed down for my Russian audiobooks. I just can't keep up!

Come to think of it, I think the Overdrive app has that feature! (At least they definitely have speeding it up, so I would think they'd have both.) Today I just played it in my browser but maybe I'll try that next time.

[golyplot]

If you're looking for Italian shows, have you considered Monster Allergy? It's (legally) free on Youtube, and as a cartoon, it's a bit easier to understand than an adult show like Luna Nera would be.

[Lianne]

If you're looking for Italian shows, have you considered Monster Allergy? It's (legally) free on Youtube, and as a cartoon, it's a bit easier to understand than an adult show like Luna Nera would be.

Thanks! I am looking for Italian shows! Actually Luna Nera isn't as hard as one might think. I mean obviously I'm a total beginner so I couldn't understand it without the English subs or anything, but I find the speech surprisingly clear and not super fast. I catch a fair few words! Also, I'm mostly watching it because it's just a Netflix show I wanted to watch.

I will definitely add this one to my list, though! It sounds pretty clear, too. (I don't always find cartoons easier than adult shows. For example, I once tried watching Glitter Force in French, and could not understand it at all! It's the high-pitched voices!)

[Lianne]

Oops, went a while without updating, so now I'm dependent on my Super Challenge spreadsheet for updates. I also did little bits of Duolingo here and there, but not really enough to be of consequence so I won't worry about it.

French
May 6-9: nothing, apparently

May 10:
1 hour reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Chantage (35 pages)

May 11-16: nothing, apparently

Italian
May 6: nothing

May 7: (my birthday!)
30 minutes L-R, Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audio + Italian book (13 pages, chapter 2)

May 8:
40 minutes watching Luna Nera (Italian audio, English subs)

May 9:
40 minutes watching Luna Nera (Italian audio, English subs)

May 10-13: nothing

May 14:
35 minutes L-R, Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audio + Italian book (16 pages, chapter 3)

May 15-16: nothing

Super Challenge Progress
The spreadsheet made by jeffers is super helpful for seeing whether I'm on track for each portion of the Super Challenge! I love it! But sadly, it's always telling me that I'm already behind on reading. I have thought about aiming for a double challenge in French, but looking at my pace so far that doesn't seem likely. But who knows! Anyway, my current strategy is to look at the dashboard and work on whichever thing is further behind. At the moment, that's French reading, so that's what I'll probably do this evening. (Italian films are in the lead, interestingly! Of course that is easier since I'm only doing a half challenge for Italian.)

[jeffers]

Anyway, my current strategy is to look at the dashboard and work on whichever thing is further behind.

That's what I have been doing as well. I didn't realize that it could be used like that when I made the charts, but I'm finding it useful for directing me to what I should be studying.

[Lianne]

Some updates here and there...

French
May 17 - June 4: nothing

June 5:
45 minutes watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Once More With Feeling)
1 hour, 30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Chantage (49 pages)

June 6-7: nothing

June 8:
45 minutes watching Angel (The Quickening)

June 9-22: nothing

June 23:
50 minutes watching Marianne (French audio, French subs)

June 24 - July 4: nothing

June 5:
45 minutes watching Marianne (French audio, French subs)

June 6:
7 minutes Duolingo

Has anyone else watched Marianne on Netflix?? It's terrifying!! I went looking for different French shows to try out and found that there were a lot more than the last time I looked, and a lot of the new additions seem to be horror! Good thing I like horror lol but this show is a bit much even for me!

Italian
May 17 (maybe; I forgot to log it when I did it lol):
50 minutes watching Luna Nera (Italian audio, English subs) - last episode

May 18 - June 21: nothing

June 22:
55 minutes Pimsleur Italian 1, lessons 1 and 2 - I started over because it's been a while.
35 minutes L-R, Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audio + Italian book (15 pages, chapter 4)
36 minutes watching Peppa Pig, 2 episodes

June 23:
28 minutes Pimsleur Italian 1, lesson 3
18 minutes watching Peppa Pig, 1 episode

June 24 - July 6: nothing

[Lianne]

OK, I'm back.

My summer did not go well. Not just in terms of language learning but in terms of life. Anyway, in September I returned to work, though it looks very different, and now this week I'm working from home due to being quarantined. But overall right now I'd say I'm doing alright at this point. So I'm going to try to pull myself away from my binge-watching for long enough to get back into a little bit of language learning.

This is pretty much all I accomplished over the summer and up to this point:

French
Sept. 6:
50 minutes watching Marianne, episode 3 (French audio, French subs)

Oct. 4:
1 hour, 10 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Chantage (43 pages) (finished that book, finally)

Italian
unknown dates:
50 minutes watching Curon, episode 1 (Italian audio, English subs)
45 minutes watching Curon, episode 2 (Italian audio, English subs)

July 9:
some amount of time doing L-R, Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, Italian audio + Italian book (29 pages, chapter 5)

Unfortunately with the end of that Harry Potter event on Overdrive, they got rid of all the translations, so I can't continue with that one.

OK, now we're all caught up. That didn't take long lol. I want to start by easing myself back into some French. I watched some French TV today (waiting to log today's activities because I'm hoping to do more) and it was very hard to follow even with the subs. I think I'll get back into some easy stuff like Duolingo and Memrise, and soon start a new French book (though I have so many English books on the go right now that it's not really great timing for that). I also want to do some focused grammar work. The public library just shut down again, but I found out that through them I can get ebooks of a bunch of French grammar books like the Practice Makes Perfect ones and the Demystified books, etc. So that's an option.

Anywho, hopefully I'll be around a bit more! My Super Challenge is in trouble so I've got a lot of catching up to do!