French23Aug21: My first French day in two weeks! I began by listening to part of an episode of Transfert while I walked to the train. It was an episode I had listened to before, so it was easy to understand, but it was nice to see that my listening comprehension hadn't declined during my two-week break.
On my way home from work, I read Chapter 1 of
Les fiancés de l'hiver. Unlike with
Cien años de soledad, I gave myself permission to look up words. I might change that later, but it seemed important to understand the first chapter. I really like the book so far, but I'm reading it very slowly. It took me around an hour to read the first 20 pages.
24Aug21: I listened to another episode of Transfert. I also listened to the audiobook recording of Chapter 1 of
Les fiancés de l'hiver. I knew what was happening since I had already read the chapter, but I was surprised to find that I wasn't able to parse all of the words. I might try listening to the chapter again, this time while reading along.
German24Aug21: My throat was sore from talking a lot at work, so I didn't do FSI German or Pimsleur German. Instead I did the first two lessons from Mango Languages. I used to be a big fan of Mango, but I hadn't used it in a few years. I only remembered it because I saw it linked on the Boston Public Library's website. The first German lesson went over "Guten Morgen", "Guten Tag", etc. The second lesson went over how to say "Das Frühstück hier ist lecker, oder?" and variations of that. It was fun, so I think I'll do more of the lessons sometime.
So far, these are the resources I've tried for German:
- Clozemaster: Enjoying so far
- Coffee Break German: Got bored of it
- FSI German: Getting a little bit tired of it, but still planning to use it for now
- Mango Languages: Enjoying so far
- Nicos Weg: I like the videos, but the exercises after each one are too tedious
- Pimsleur: Love it!
I might be forgetting some.
Assorted observations and thoughtsI’m hoping this goes away as my reading ability increases, but with both Spanish and French I feel the need to mouth the words as I read. I think it’s because I worry that if I read too quickly, my “inner voice" will mess up the pronunciation. So an additional perk of wearing a mask during my commute is that I can mouth all of the words as I read without looking like a weirdo.
Also, I need to figure out a flashcard format that works better for me. Lately for Spanish I've been making flashcards using Anki's "Basic (and reversed card)" format. The front of the card has the word in Spanish and an example sentence, and the back of the card has the English translation. My rule for myself is that if I don't understand the word in Spanish
without reading the example sentence, I can't mark it as correct. But sometimes I accidentally read the example sentence. In any case, I feel like I'm not learning the words well enough. I could switch back to making cloze deletion cards, but what do I do about synonyms?