2015 in review2015 was a year of ups and downs for me - both in regard to language learning and in general. Most of my language learning 'problems' during the year (i.e. inconsistence, lack of motivation, etc.) can be traced back to more general 'life problems,' so to speak, and so it's difficult to judge what I could (or should) have done differently. My life's pretty much back on track now though, and I'm confident my language learning life will be as well.
The only language I made any significant progress in was
Spanish, where I decided to plunge head-first into real literature and found myself pleasantly surprised by managing to get along quite well. XD
Books read in Spanish in 2015:
*Canción de hielo y fuego 1: Juego de tronos
*Canción de hielo y fuego 2: Choque de reyes
*Ramsés 1: El hijo de la luz
*Canción de hielo y fuego 3: Tormenta de espadas
*La extraña odisea: confesiones de un filólogo clásico
*Los juegos del hambre 1: Los juegos del hambre
*Los juegos del hambre 2: En llamas
Things watched in Spanish in 2015:*
Batman: Year 1*2 episodes of
Juego de tronos*3 episodes of
El ministerio del tiempo*4 seasons (= 88 episodes) of
Grimm*4 episodes of
Grey's Anatomy*
Los juegos del hambreFrench was pretty much business as usual last year: weekly French night with (usually) 2 TV show episodes (this year featured some
Arrow,
Firefly and the first 3 seasons of
Merlin) and a bit of French gaming (though I didn't game a lot all year). Just enough to maintain my French, but nothing more. I didn't manage to make my by now traditional yearly trip to France though, unfortunately. But, well, these things happen.
I used to love
Japanese passionately. But those times are gone. For the past few years, I've been drawn back and forth, falling for the sunk cost fallacy and a sense of nostalgia, I suppose, and 2015 was no different in that respect, but I think I'm finally, finally ready to move on.
I've been having an on again off again relationship with
Latin ever since I gained an interest in it back in 2007. It had been in an off state for the past, er, 2-3 years when I decided to pick it back up with my study buddy at the end of September 2015. Since then we've been meeting 2-3 times a week, every week, to read through LLPSI and do the accompanying exercises together. Additionally I've been reviewing the vocab and forms in Anki. I'm definitely happy with the progress we've been making and am optimistic that I'll keep up Latin for good now. (The switch from more traditional learning to the reading approach certainly helps there!)
And that's that for 2015. It was not an ideal year, but the fact that I made some progress despite the chaos in my life makes me very happy. And towards the end there, things started to go a lot better and I hope that 2016 will be a good, language-filled year!