Week 2 Review: 25/06/20- 01/07/20Duolingo- 2 hours and 24 minutes- 2 main sections completed, 45 lessons completed (plus 3 practice/ review lessons,) first half of set 2 of the stories section (5 stories) completed, earned 733 XP
Coffee Break Podcasts- 3 hours and 1 minute- 7 episodes
Take Off In German- 1 hour and 44 minutes- Introduction completed, Pronunciation section completed, Unit 1 completed (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, Test and Summary,) Unit 2 in progress (2.1, 2.2, 2.3 completed)
Overall- 7 hours and 9 minutes (just over 1 hour and 1 minute a day on average)I was aiming to spend an hour a day studying or at least average an hour a day over the course of the week. I missed one day of studying and didn't hit my daily target every day, however I still averaged just over an hour a day.
The main aim of the past week was to make a good start with the Take Off In German course and really get a feel for it. I feel I achieved that to an extent. I expected that to lower my time spent with Duolingo, which it did, but I still wanted to listen to an episode of the Coffee Break podcast each day. I missed a day studying but I caught up on the "missed" episode, so I still averaged an episode a day over the week.
I'm happy with what I've achieved this week but I want to push on further during the week ahead. I want to spend more time with the Take Off In German course and continue to aim to listen to a Coffee Break episode each day. I also want to continue to keep in touch with Duolingo each day as well. The time spent with Duolingo will probably drop further though as I aim to spend more time with the Take Off In German course. This doesn't concern me though, as I want it to be something that runs in the background to compliment my main studies rather than being a main resource.
After picking up on my issues with my listening skills (see my post from earlier today,) I am planning on introducing another resource this week- the "Nicos Weg" series from
https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview. My initial plan is to listen to each episode without any subtitles and then look at re-watching the episode in question straight away with the German subtitles turned on. I think I'll benefit most approaching it this way. By having no subtitles at first, I'm hoping it will help train my ear and allow me to focus just on listening (when subtitles are on, I find myself reading ahead rather than really concentrating on listening.) I'll then use the subtitles afterwards, to help me out with the listening and to help me get used to using subtitles again.
I work a lot better by setting myself goals, so I'm going to be bold now and say I aim to increase my studying time by 50% this week, up from an average of an hour a day to an hour and a half a day. It's going to be tough, but I want to challenge myself, and to be honest if I want to meet my targets this week then I'm going to need that extra time