I'm an incredibly lapsed language learner, and don't know how successful I'm going to be at restarting a language learning habit. But I'm hoping that this log will create enough internal pressure to actually stick with studying.
For now I'm going to try to update this once a week.
Fr:
Cette semaine, j'ai commencé à lire quelques livres pour le Super Challenge. J'ai presque 100 livres en français sur mes étagères (dont certaines que je n'ai même jamais ouverts, grâce à mon addiction à l'achat de livres bon marché) donc je ne manque pas de choses à lire ! Pour accroître mon confiance en mon niveau de compréhension j'ai décidé de commencer avec deux livres de jeunesse/ pour les ados.
Livre 1: Mousseline La Sérieuse par Sylvie Yvert (page 66/350)
Livre 2: L'inconnu du Donjon par E. Brissou-Pellen (page 43/199) [je l'ai acheté pour €0.50 en 2018 !]
Ce qui m'ennerve c'est le fait que maintenant je lis tellement l e n t e m e n t que j'ai commencé à penser que ce serait mieux de trouver des livres audio de ces titres. Mais j'espere que si je continue à lire en français, petit à petit je commencerai à lire d'un bon pas.
Sp:
I've felt too daunted to even begin the Output Challenge in Spanish. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to coax myself into doing this. In the last 5 years I've gone from being able to work in Spain and have (grammatically inaccurate) banter with colleagues to feeling nervous about writing "Hola, qué tal?"
This is not helped by the fact that I'm loathe to restart with the A2/ B1 stuff that would probably be really helpful. You know, like writing incredibly detailed instructions on how to not get lost on the way to somewhere, or an incredibly earnest and dreary piece about my life (antes de 2020, siempre había pensado que si tuviera el tiempo escribiría una novela policíaca... que inocente!) to try to remember grammar but I just... can't.
I think that after I've finished the first 2 French novels, I'll read something in Spanish which might boost my confidence..?
Zh: I've been trundling along, revising HSK 2 grammar with the HSK 2 app. I've started Chapter 2 of the HSK 3 course book, and am debating trying to find an iTalki teacher so I can try speaking. I'll probably chicken out as actually speaking to people is something I'm slowly falling out of the habit of doing during lockdown.
I also found a couple of basic Mandarin readers from the 90s' for sale for £1 so I bought them. I'm looking forward to practicing with reading material that's not on a screen or that I've not copied out from a screen with my wobbly handwriting. For some reason it's always easiest for me to engage with material when it's physically there.
I've started watching "Princess Weiyoung" on Netflix, and am up to episode 30. I can understand snatches of dialogue, and am looking forward to re-watching the whole series with Mandarin subtitles only to see how much I can comfortably understand. I know this is a ridiculous amount of TV to watch but as a terrifying lady once said: "the night is dark and full of... well it's not full at all, hence the binge-watching of Netflix".
No: This week I also decided to dabble in a bit of Norwegian as a friend sent me "Complete Norwegian", and 3(!) other TY language books last year, and I've been meaning to flirt through them at some point. Guess it's now or never? Anyway, jeg har lest den første og den andre kappitel. Norsk er søtt men jeg [know] ikke når jeg vil [continue] å laere det språket.
It's a definite ego boost after Mandarin though.
Here's to updating next week!
