Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Italian, and Ancient Greek

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Ancient Greek, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:19 pm

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working on the novel I'm writing, which has made me less motivated to study French. I'm okay with that because I'm really happy with the progress I've made on my novel, but I don't want to completely neglect French. This week I continued watching YouTube videos from the channel Christelle Lebailly Auteur, and I finally completed my goal of watching for 5 hours! This morning I measured my listening comprehension using the method I've described before, and my listening comprehension was 70%.

My next goal will be to read up to page 54 in Chanson douce. I've read the first 24 pages so far.

jackb wrote:Hi philomath!

I was looking for a place to post my writing for corrections and found Journaly (https://journaly.com.com). You can post writing for corrections and also correct other people's writing. I've used it a few times and the feedback is fairly quick. It looks to be fairly new so usage will fluctuate . Also if you're a Chrome user, there are grammar correction extensions (including Bon Patron) to help without the need to cut and paste to another website.

I hope this helps,

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm looking forward to trying it out. I've been missing getting writing corrections.
Last edited by philomath on Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Wed Feb 03, 2021 1:34 pm

I've been neglecting Anki lately, but yesterday I reviewed around 100 flashcards. This morning I reviewed another 70, and tonight I plan to review the remaining 40 or so. I want to study more French this week to prepare for my iTalki lesson on Saturday. Last night I also started to do Lesson 7 of Pimsleur, but I think I'm sick of Pimsleur for now. I don't think the lessons are helping me improve my pronunciation because the speech is so formal. It's nothing like how my iTalki teacher has been trying to get me to speak, so it seems counterproductive. Therefore I'm replacing my Pimsleur goal with a new goal: to review all of the notes in my French notebook and make Anki flashcards for the most useful words. I plan to get started on it after work today.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:54 pm

See the bottom of this post for an English translation.

Aujourd’hui j’ai eu une leçon avec mon prof de français. Je n’avais pas beaucoup étudié le français cette semaine, mais avant la leçon j’ai essayé de préparer un peu en écrivant sur ma semaine. En particulier, j’ai écrit sur le projet de compréhension orale que j’ai fait parce que je savais que mon prof trouverait ça très intéressant. Pendant la leçon, on a parlé sur beaucoup de sujets différents: sur mon progrès en français, sur ses chaînes YouTube, sur Amazon, etc. À la fin de la leçon, il m’a dit que c’est toujours un plaisir à parler avec moi et que ma prononciation et mon progrès en français sont très bons. Ça m’a rendu super contente.

J’ai seulement deux autres leçons avec mon prof. Après la dernière leçon, je ne vais pas acheter un autre package des leçons sur iTalki. Ses leçons sont chères et je dois arrêter d’avoir des leçons régulières quand je commence l’école doctorale. (Oui, je vais faire un doctorat ! J’ai été acceptée dans un programme à l’université où je suis allée pour mon baccalauréat. J’attends aussi des nouvelles des autres programmes.) Bref, je ne peux pas acheter un package avec dix autres leçons, mais je ne veux pas arrêter complètement mes leçons. Donc je vais acheter une leçon à la fois quand j’ai le temps.

En gros, c'était une journée très productive : j’ai eu une bonne leçon de français et j’ai beaucoup écrit. Après mon écriture ce matin et cette écriture je vais avoir écrit presque 500 mots aujourd’hui.

Translation:

Today I had a lesson with my French teacher. I hadn't studied French a lot this week, but before the lesson I tried to prepare a little by writing about my week. In particular, I wrote about the listening comprehension project I did because I knew my teacher would find it interesting. During the lesson, we talked about a lot of different subjects: about my progress in French, about his YouTube channels, about Amazon, etc. At the end of the lesson, he told me that it's always a pleasure to talk to me and that my pronunciation and my progress in French are very good. It made me really happy.

I only have two more lessons with my teacher. After the last lesson, I'm not going to buy another package of lessons on iTalki. His lessons are expensive and I have to stop having regular lessons when I start graduate school. (Yes, I'm going to get a PhD! I was accepted into a program at the university I attended for my bachelor's degree. I'm also waiting for news from other programs.) Anyway, I can't buy another package of ten lessons, but I don't want to stop my lessons completely. So I'm going to buy one lesson at a time whenever I can.

Overall, it was a very productive day: I had a good French lesson and I wrote a lot. After my writing this morning and this writing, I will have written almost 500 words today.
Last edited by philomath on Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Feb 07, 2021 5:55 pm

philomath wrote:(Oui, je vais faire un doctorat ! J’ai été acceptée dans un programme à l’université où je suis allée pour mon baccalauréat. J’attends aussi des nouvelles des autres programmes.)

Wow! Congratulations! In French, of course, or maybe not? Assuming you start in the fall, Covid-19 will be a thing of the past. Or one hopes!
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Sun Feb 07, 2021 7:36 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
philomath wrote:(Oui, je vais faire un doctorat ! J’ai été acceptée dans un programme à l’université où je suis allée pour mon baccalauréat. J’attends aussi des nouvelles des autres programmes.)

Wow! Congratulations! In French, of course, or maybe not? Assuming you start in the fall, Covid-19 will be a thing of the past. Or one hopes!

Thanks! :D Nope, it’ll be in chemical engineering. Unfortunately my career isn’t language-related at all, though I did consider applying to PhD programs in linguistics.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:06 pm

philomath wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:
philomath wrote:(Oui, je vais faire un doctorat ! J’ai été acceptée dans un programme à l’université où je suis allée pour mon baccalauréat. J’attends aussi des nouvelles des autres programmes.)

Wow! Congratulations! In French, of course, or maybe not? Assuming you start in the fall, Covid-19 will be a thing of the past. Or one hopes!

Thanks! :D Nope, it’ll be in chemical engineering. Unfortunately my career isn’t language-related at all, though I did consider applying to PhD programs in linguistics.
After I posted my message, I thought about your user name. Philomath does not really point to languages. ;)
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:38 am

I haven't been feeling motivated to study French lately, but today I completed my goal of reviewing my French notebook. I found a lot of interesting phrases that I had written down and then forgotten. I put some of them in Anki, but others didn't seem necessary to memorize.

Anyway, here are some stats on my different Anki decks, because I love stats. :D
  • French: 1015 flashcards (4.1% new, 1.9% young, 92.5% mature, 1.5% buried)
  • French iTalki lessons: 780 flashcards (5.9% young, 94% mature)
  • Spanish: 65 flashcards (100% mature)

Since I've been feeling so unmotivated lately, I'm not going to make a new goal yet. Instead I'll focus on finishing my other two goals.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:43 pm

Saturday
After I posted on Saturday, I actually ended up being pretty productive. I wrote 400 words in French about a book that I just read, and I watched an episode of Call My Agent (Dix pour cent). I usually use French subtitles when I watch the show, but there are still a lot of words I don't understand. I think I need to put more effort into learning vocabulary, and then hopefully I'll feel more comfortable turning subtitles off.

I also started studying Ancient Greek again. I don't plan on studying it very often, just once in a while when I have time. I reviewed Lesson 1, which is about the alphabet.

Sunday
On Sunday, I reviewed my Anki flashcards and did Lesson 2 of my Ancient Greek book. This lesson covered accentuation, punctuation, and parts of speech.

Monday
Today I took the day off work, so I had a French lesson in the morning. It went really well! I was able to speak about a bunch of different topics without hesitating often, and my teacher kept saying that my French is great. After the lesson, I wondered whether I could finish the writing goal that I set at the end of December. I had only written 1700 words out of 3000. So I started writing, and to my surprise I ended up writing an entire short story in French! I was really excited because I don't usually write short stories in English, much less in any other languages. In fact in the 10+ years I studied Spanish, I don't think I ever wrote a short story in it. It's definitely not well-written, but I had fun writing it. And it was 1300 words, which means I completed my writing goal. :D
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Ancient Greek, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Wed Mar 03, 2021 4:25 am

Today I finished my goal of reading pages 25-53 in Chanson douce. I listened to the audiobook at the same time, which helped me read faster. I paused every few sentences to look up words and make sure I understood what I read.

Now it's time to make some new goals!
  • Finish Season 1 (1 episode left) and watch Season 2 (6 episodes) of Call My Agent.
  • Review French grammar for 5 hours.
  • Edit the short story I wrote.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Ancient Greek, and Maybe German

Postby philomath » Sun Mar 14, 2021 5:02 am

This week I decided to try a new routine: Monday through Thursday I just reviewed my Anki flashcards, and Friday through Sunday I will work on my language goals. I'm trying this routine because I want to focus on my writing projects more. I don't have a real goal in mind for my French studies, whereas I really want to finish the novel I'm writing and start another one someday.

This morning I had my 34th lesson with my French teacher! This was the last lesson in the package I purchased on iTalki, so from now on I think I'll have lessons less frequently, perhaps once a month or once every six weeks. During my lesson, we talked about the short story I wrote in French, his Polish studies, and vaccines. At the end of the lesson he said that I speak very well: I'm able to correct myself when I make grammatical mistakes, I know a lot of useful phrases, etc. Earlier in our lesson I had mentioned my plans to learn German, and he said that my French level is good enough that I can start German if I want to. I'm nervous about losing my French if I start German too soon, but I did start thinking about how I will go about studying German:

  • First I will read about German pronunciation and word order.
  • Then I will use DeepL to learn my first sentences. I want to focus on being able to answer questions like "Why are you learning German?" "Have you ever been to Germany?" "What do you do for a living?" etc. By learning how to answer these questions, I hope to also get a grasp on some of the basic grammar of German.
  • I also want to spend some time doing grammar drills. I know German has noun declensions so I think I may want to tackle those directly instead of trying to figure them out as I go.
  • I don't want to wait too long to find an iTalki tutor, but I want to make sure I find someone who will teach me the way my French teacher has. I don't want to spend my lessons learning about grammar or how to speak too properly.
  • Eventually I’ll also start watching TV shows or YouTube videos in German as well.
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