Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

[Yuurei]

Haha, understandable Still, I think you'll improve fast since you have both German and English!

I think so, yeah. Still, Dutch is definitely only a side-project this year, so it's probably not gonna go quite as quickly as it would otherwise.

[Yuurei]

2015 in review
2015 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 hambre

French 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!

[Yuurei]

(Aaand another post. Gotta get that post count up somehow, after all )

Weekly Goals for Week 53 (2015) - All done \o/

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Read chapter 21 of Familia Romana

Spanish
*Finish reading En llamas (ch. 19-27)
*Watch Catching Fire
*Do lessons 4 & 5 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Duolingo every day
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

Other stuff I did:
French: I also watched 2 episodes of Merlin during French Night and 2 episodes of Gilmore Girls
Japanese: Ended up watching an extra ep of SPN
Spanish: Read the first 7 chapters of Sinsajo and played some Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (new game, yay!)

Notes: I had most of the week off so I had some extra time to spare \o/. Decided to finally make Spanish my official gaming language for the foreseeable future, with French being relegated to a fallback language. The one thing I had trouble with this last week was keeping up my Duolingo lessons. Most of the question types don't actually help me a lot with remembering the Dutch words actively, and now that I've progressed somewhat it expects me to (actively) know all kinds of words which I haven't really learned. That's a bit frustrating and not a lot of fun. And since Dutch is really just supposed to be a fun side-project this year, I've decided to move on to something else. Sooo, starting this week, I'll be doing one lesson of Assimil's Dutch with ease each week.

Weekly Goals for Week 1 (2016)

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Read chapter 22 of Familia Romana

Spanish
*Finish reading Sinsajo (ch. 8-28)
*Watch the first episode of Isabel
*Do lessons 6-8 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Do lesson 1 of Dutch with ease
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

(I'll probably write a post on my plans for 2016 some other time. I think I've monologued enough for one day XD)

[Elenia]

(Aaand another post. Gotta get that post count up somehow, after all )

Weekly Goals for Week 53 (2015) - All done \o/

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Read chapter 21 of Familia Romana

Spanish
*Finish reading En llamas (ch. 19-27)
*Watch Catching Fire
*Do lessons 4 & 5 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Duolingo every day
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

Other stuff I did:
French: I also watched 2 episodes of Merlin during French Night and 2 episodes of Gilmore Girls
Japanese: Ended up watching an extra ep of SPN
Spanish: Read the first 7 chapters of Sinsajo and played some Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (new game, yay!)

Notes: I had most of the week off so I had some extra time to spare \o/. Decided to finally make Spanish my official gaming language for the foreseeable future, with French being relegated to a fallback language. The one thing I had trouble with this last week was keeping up my Duolingo lessons. Most of the question types don't actually help me a lot with remembering the Dutch words actively, and now that I've progressed somewhat it expects me to (actively) know all kinds of words which I haven't really learned. That's a bit frustrating and not a lot of fun. And since Dutch is really just supposed to be a fun side-project this year, I've decided to move on to something else. Sooo, starting this week, I'll be doing one lesson of Assimil's Dutch with ease each week.

So much green, and you had time for extras! I'm jealous very well done

[Yuurei]

So much green, and you had time for extras! I'm jealous very well done

Thanks.
Though considering that I had 4 days off from work last week I didn't do all that much. Wanted to use the time to relax, meet some friends and *cough* play Zelda.

In other news, I'm somewhat late in working out my goals for the year and am still not sure how exactly I want to proceed this year (besides continuing with the weekly goals, since I am growing very fond of them!). All I know is that I want to make some solid progress in Latin and take my Spanish to the next level (especially the active side!).

So far, my rough plan looks like this:

Spanish:
*Work through Gramática de uso del español nivel B.
*Read 12 books.
*Watch/listen??? (to be determined)
*Speak/write??? (to be determined)

Latin:
*Finish Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana (incl. exercises)
*Read 7 readers (Julia, Fabulae Faciles, Puer Romanus, Varius Libellus, Ciceronis Filius, Pons tironum, First Latin Reader)
*Go through Assimil's Le Latin sans peine???

French (maintenance):
*Continue French Night
*Read 2 books

Dutch:
Nothing.
(I'm just dabbling in Dutch for fun, without any ambition or obligation. If I stop learning tomorrow, I will not feel guilty about it. Just kidding, I'd totally feel guilty, but I'm trying to convince myself that I shouldn't.)

Japanese (suspended):
Nothing.
(I'm trying to get away from the feeling that I need to do something for my Japanese. I would like to establish a pain-free, low-key & enjoyable maintenance routine and am working towards that goal with my weekly goals, but the last thing I want is to feel obligated to do Japanese, so no yearly goal.)

I'll think about it some more and will hopefully have a concrete plan by the end of the week.

[Yuurei]

This past week was not an ideal start into the new year, to say the least. I think I overdid it a bit with my reading goal there (about 300 pages), probably due to some left-over enthusiasm from my holidays. It was doable, but considering that my free time is rather limited these days (still getting used to that!), it was kind of stressful. Instead of being able to just relax with my book, I was always stressed out by the number of pages left and tried to read more quickly. Ah well, I have learned my lesson. Additionally, DHL has not managed to deliver my copy of Gramática de uso del español, which was supposed to arrive last Tuesday.

Buut, so much for the negative happenings. On the plus side, I did manage to complete my goals \o/ and I've been enjoying Isabel a lot! I ended up watching 5 episodes instead of just the one I had planned on - definitely a good sign. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Also, all those posts on how much you need to read to make significant progress made me look up my Spanish reading stats. According to listed page numbers, I've read 4983 pages. Of course, those numbers always include pages without actual text and appendix pages (*cough* Canción de hielo y fuego *cough*), so I expect the real number of pages to be somewhat lower (around 4700-4800, probably), but that means I should finally have reached that magical Super Challenge number after one more book~ (And then I'll just continue reading, naturally XD)

Weekly Goals for Week 1 (2016) - All done \o/

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Read chapter 22 23 of Familia Romana: I accidentally wrote 22, but 23 was actually due (and read!). We snuck in chapter 22 somewhere in between and I forgot to make a note of it. XD

Spanish
*Finish reading Sinsajo (ch. 8-28)
*Watch the first episode of Isabel
*Do lessons 6-8 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Do lesson 1 of Dutch with ease
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

Other stuff I did:
Spanish: Watched episodes 2-5 of Isabel.

---

Weekly Goals for Week 2 (2016)

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Re-read chapter 23 of Familia Romana

Spanish
*Start a new book!
*Watch episode 6 of Isabel
*Do lessons 9-10 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Do lesson 2 of Dutch with ease
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

[Elenia]

Weekly Goals for Week 2 (2016)

Latin
*Do Anki reviews every day
*Re-read chapter 23 of Familia Romana

Spanish
*Start a new book!
*Watch episode 6 of Isabel
*Do lessons 9-10 of Language Transfer

Dutch
*Do lesson 2 of Dutch with ease
*Watch an episode of MLP

Japanese
*Watch an episode of Supernatural

Well done for reaching your goals despite the routine change, and good luck with your goals for the new week!

[Yuurei]

Well done for reaching your goals despite the routine change, and good luck with your goals for the new week!

Thank you! \o/
(It was pure pride that kept me going in the end, I think. Unfortunately this kind of motivation only works occasionally )

Edit: Typo fixed.

[Elenia]

(It was pure pride that kept me going in the end, I think. Unfortunately this kind of motivation only work occasionally )

It almost never works for me XD

[Yuurei]

It is also about time I carve my goals for 2016 into stone. So without any further ado... *gets out stone tablet*

Language learning goals for 2016

Spanish [TAC]:
*Work through Gramática de uso del español nivel B.
*Read 12 books.
*Establish the habit of thinking in Spanish several times a week.

Latin:
*Finish Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana (incl. exercises) [chapters 24-35] (June 2016)
*Read 7 readers (e.g. Julia, Fabulae Faciles, Puer Romanus, Varius Libellus, Ciceronis Filius, Pons tironum, First Latin Reader)

French:
*Continue French Night
*Read 6 books [Updated April 4th, 2016]

I'll be tracking my (extensive) reading goals in my signature, everything else will merely crop up in my weekly goals when relevant.