Weekly update for the 2023 365 Day Challenge
2023/05/01Turkish 30 min- I finished unit 12, workbook,
The Delights of Learning Turkish. Among other things, this unit talked about prepositions of place. I’ve always found this topic tricky, not so much for the complex structure, but more because I struggled with memorizing all the different words as vocabulary. But reviewing them here has shown me that I’m now at least better at recognizing them.
- I started unit 13, coursebook,
The Delights of Learning Turkish.
It’s presenting conditional verb tenses and other ways of talking about hypothetical situations, something completely new for me.
- listening:
The Country Mouse and the City Mouse (about 10 min)
2023/05/02Turkish 30 min- vocabulary
- Working on unit 13, coursebook,
The Delights of Learning TurkishThis unit is much too long, piling on information about information regarding verb forms expressing conditions and wishes.
- I also looked up the forms of the conditional in
PONS Grammatik kurz und bündig Türkisch- listening:
The Nightingale (about 15 min)
- watching: 2 episodes
Un asunto privadoDutch- working on unit 3,
PONS Power-Sprachkurs Niederländisch für Fortgeschrittene A2-B1- listening: 1 h
Boy 72023/05/03Turkish 30 min- vocabulary
- I had a look at the conditional tenses in
Turkish Grammar in Practice, which made things so much clearer. I wrote 1 grammar flashcard.
- intensive reading: I started reading the third and last story,
Konstantin'in Kayıp Heykeli, in my graded reader by Circon.
- listening:
Sweet Porridge (about 10 min)
- watching: 1 episode
Un asunto privadoDutch- listening: 30 min
Boy 7- reading: I started a new novel,
Florence by Kiki van Dijk -> 3 chapters.
- I finished unit 3,
PONS Power-Sprachkurs Niederländisch für Fortgeschrittene A2-B1.
I really like this book. I like the layout, which looks nice and leaves a lot of space for notes, the topics, the vocabulary, the recordings and that it comes with solutions and transcriptions. The only thing that doesn’t convince me is the way it introduces (or rather doesn’t really introduce) grammar topics. It’s the second one of two books, so I first thought that maybe the topics it was treating were just a revision of things from the first volume. But I’m up to unit 3 now, and it is still very minimalistic with explanations and rules. I would like a bit more.
As you can see in the photo, I’ve also found some errors in the German parts, but that’s not a dealbreaker for me.
French- 1 little topic
Conjugaison progressive du français A2/B12023/05/04Turkish 30 min- I finished the topic “conditional tenses” in
Turkish Grammar in Practice, and wrote another grammar flashcard about it.
- intensive reading:
Konstantin'in Kayıp Heykeli- watching: I watched the last 2 epsisodes of
Un asunto privado. Things got a bit unrealistic towards the end, but overall I enjoyed the series. Now I’ll have to look for new content in Turkish.
Italian- 1 little topic
Grammatica pratica della lingua italiana2023/05/05Turkish 30 min- Working on unit 13, coursebook,
The Delights of Learning Turkish: I finished the explanation part and started with the exercise part. But I was completely lost with the exercises about conditional tenses. In the end, I decided I would do these exercises passively instead of actively. So I copied the first exercise by hand, including the verb forms from the answer key, translate them with google translate and started to analyse everything by going back to the explanations and identifying the forms. I haven’t finished that yet.
I just hated the whole thing so much that I was constantly stopping the clock and needed over an hour for the 30 minutes.
- Luckily my search for new content was more satisfying. I looked for series dubbed to Turkish on Amazon Prime, and one of the first ones shown was
A League of Their Own. So, that’s what I’m going for.
Dutch- reading: 2 chapters
FlorenceFrench- 3 little topics
Grammaire progressive du françaisItalian- 2 little topics
Hueber Italienisch Übungsbuch Grammatik A1-A22023/05/06Turkish 40 min- I went through my little vocabulary stack, and then I managed to go through exactly one of the exercises about the conditional the way I described yesterday.
2023/05/07Turkish 40 min- vocabulary
- working on the exercise part, unit 13, coursebook,
The Delights of Learning Turkish- I am still confused. According to
Turkish Grammar in Practice, conditional forms like “temizlerseniz” and “kazanırsak”, that include the aorist-marker, are possible and more probable than forms like “temizleseniz” and “kazansak”, which are used for improbable possibilities.
But the example sentences in
The Delights of Learning Turkish make it sound just the other way round.
Could anybody weigh in and give me their opinion?
I think I’ll work through the corresponding unit in the workbook and then just move on without worrying about it too much. In my experience, these things tend to resolve themselves later on during the learning process.
Dutch- listening: 1 h
Boy 7- 2 puzzles in
Nederlands oefenen - Taalpuzzles met 1000 basiswoordenI managed to change my booking for Amsterdam for the end of May to not only less days, but a nicer accommodation where I can definitely stay in and work all day, if necessary. I hope it won’t be. I mean, of course it’s not a good idea to go on a trip only a couple of days before the submission date of my project, but I’m committed to it now.
I’ll go dancing in the evenings, and I hope that I might manage to even see a bit of Amsterdam and speak some Dutch.
If anybody has any recommendations, I would like to visit a big nice bookshop, and I’m also interested in shops with retro/repro clothing (with brands like Collectif or Emmy design).
I am also up to meeting for a coffee, if anybody happened to be there (24th to 29th of May).