my name is Nina. I am French. I can speak English even if it's not perfect and I am now trying to learn Irish. I was trained to be an English teacher (as a foreign language) and have been a teacher for 2 classes of high school students for 4 months then quit for some reasons. It is nice to become a teacher again, although this time I am both the teacher and the student.
As I learn Irish on my own, I try to use diverse resources so that I can learn both the pronunciation and the writing. Unfortunately, for now I don't have a structured plan, so I'll see where it leads me. In addition to learning the language, I am interested in Irish history.
- I tried Duolingo, as most beginners probably do, but I don't find it extremely effective and think it is a bit of a waste of time. I keep it mainly for some vocabulary, but that's it, although I don't hate it either. I think it can be a decent starting point as long as you know its limits and compensate with other resources.
- I bought the part 1 of Buntús Cainte although for now I haven't used it a lot, so I don't have an opinion yet. I do plan to use it though, I just don't want to get overwhelmed by rushing.
- I bought a textbook for children that could be useful too to practice the oral understanding and talking more easily and get used to the sounds. Grown-up TV shows are still overwhelming of course, even with subtitles.
- I watch Saol faoi Shráid a children TV show on TG4 with subtitles, first i try to understand the general meaning just as an introduction, then I translate the subtitles with a dictionnary and grammar book, and try to understand the way the sentence was built and add notes. Finally I rewatch the TV show and try to remember the way the sentence was built and to associate the audio with the subtitles. I also watch Bia Linn but there are only English subtitles, so I force myself to be more active in my listening
- I plan to read very simple children books and try find videos of someone reading the book to once again have the audio, then to translate it. I already did it with a very very simple book and I thought it was rather useful
- With all these resources, I add each new word and sentences in Anki, with the audio. I don't know if it's effective but I like to have a mix of words and sentences, so that I start getting used to the way sentences are built. I repeat each word while using Anki
For now my plan is just to catch up with what I've seen, as my first days were even more disorganized. And then I'll try to make a weekly schedule to be sure to stay focus, not waste my time and find a good balance between audio, writing, vocabulary and reviews.
