The thing that has pushed me back to more serious language study was one of the regular emails from Kwiziq. It wasn’t that the email said anything particularly interesting or encouraging, it’s more that I read it at the right time to go on and take a test, and it reminded me of what I want to achieve. This was coupled with the fact that the academic year is coming to an end, my exam level students have left, and the summer holidays are looming. And Netflix gave me a notification of the release Lupin series 2.
Having done a few Kwiziq tests, I remembered that I had hit a wall on something really simple: using the correct prepositions with cities, countries and regions. What happens is that I get it wrong on a test, so I review the facts, sort of get it, try again a few days later and still make the same mistakes. It’s a classic example of getting stymied by lack of confidence which causes me to second guess myself every time it comes up. This is compounded by the fact that examples don’t occur all that often in my reading and listening, and in any case receptively the meaning is always obvious without even knowing the rules. What I have done this week is that I’ve made rough notes on the rules, and reviewed them a few times when I’ve had a few minutes free. Next I’ll try to write out the rules on Word and make a visual chart of them. After a bit of review I’ll take another Kwiziq test and see how it goes. I’m also considering making an Anki set of sentences I get wrong on Kwiziq, but for these rules it may be best to make a set of cards of the most common examples and focus on learning the common uses rather than beat my head against the rules. I find sometimes when a rule has a limited number of applications it’s more useful to learn a dozen or so examples rather than the rules themselves.
Another problem is that my car only plays CDs and the CD burner on our laptop has stopped working. The result is that I was getting in to a listening rut on my drive-time, and by default I’ve just been listening to Radio 4. I like Radio 4, but that’s 60-75 minutes of listening practice lost per day! So this week I ordered a cheap external CD burner and downloaded a bunch of new InnerFrench podcasts to burn for my commute. Once again I can make mp3 CDs of podcasts and my recent audible purchases. I also bought some paper sleeves for my burned CDs because Audible only allows you to burn an audiobook once, and my CDs quickly become unplayable sitting around in my glove compartment.
So where does this leave me? Earlier in the week I did some lessons on Kwiziq and am considering a subscription for the summer. Tuesday evening I picked up my Kindle and continued with the French book I had been reading. I realized that I really wasn’t enjoying this book, and that was part of the reason I dropped my reading habit, so I’m going to drop it and look for something more engaging for now. Possibly I’ll return to my “go-to” for fun French reading: a Petit Nicolas book. Meanwhile, I’ve also spent a bit of time nosing around a few language learning blogs, looking for inspiration.
Currently, I have decided to focus on small steps, and to focus only on French for the next month or two. I want to focus on keeping it fun and interesting, which means mostly reading, listening and watching things that I enjoy. I also know I need to continue to shore up my foundations, for which I am planning using Kwiziq; it’s not super-fun but it is interesting enough to work on in regular small doses. I currently have about 6 free Kwizzes available, and there’s just a week left in the month so I’ll stay free for now, and if it goes well over the coming days I’ll consider subscribing for July.
This morning I found a related blog post, which I found helpful: “Fallen off the Language Learning Wagon? 9 Gentle Ways to Get Back to it” from http://joyoflanguages.com/learn-a-language-after-a-long-break/
I plan to read a bit every evening, or almost every evening. For listening, I’m starting with new InnerFrench podcasts on my commute. For watching I’ll begin with Lupin, in French with French subtitles. I may download the subtitle files and review the dialogues a bit more intensively and then rewatch without any subtitles. For grammar I’ll use Kwiziq and a bit of review of key examples.
My current plan in summary:
- Only French
- Read something fun (probably a Petit Nicolas book)
- Watch something fun (Lupin first, then maybe Apelle mon agent)
- Listen to podcasts or audiobooks on my morning commute, maybe on the way back as well
- Regularly practice a bit of grammar with Kwiziq, make some notes, learn some examples
That seems to me to be reasonable, interesting, achievable as well as effective. Only time will tell!