Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:01 am

28Nov22–30Nov22

French
28Nov22: I wrote a bit in my journal. I thought my writing didn't feel as "French" as it has in the past, if that makes sense. It's been a week or two since I did any listening or reading in French. I've got to get back to that!

29Nov22: I started listening to an episode of French Expat.

30Nov22: I continued working on Unit 3 of Édito. Lately, I've been wondering whether it's a good use of my time. I started using it because I wanted to improve my grammar and vocabulary (mainly the latter). However, I'm not a big fan of the grammar lessons in the book, and I'm not sure if it's the most efficient way to learn vocabulary. For now, I'm going to review grammar by using a book like Easy French Step-by-Step, and I'm going to change the way I use Édito so I don't spend as much time on each page.

Writing
28Nov22: I continued working on the contemporary fiction novella, still planning rather than writing. I decided the craft book I was reading, Getting into Character, is a waste of time. :lol: I still think I'll be ready to resume writing on Dec 1.

29Nov22: I'm tired of working on character development, so I set up my Scrivener file for the next draft. I think the first scene will remain mostly the same, but there's some more exposition I'd like to include.
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Re: November Results

Postby philomath » Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:07 am

November Results

French
[ ] Learn the rules for liaison.
(I know the main rules, but I didn't do the exercise I thought of. So I'm not counting this goal as completed.)
[X] Finish Unit 2 of Édito B1.
[ ] Finish Unit 3 of Édito B1.
(I only completed three pages or so. :|)
[X] Have at least two iTalki lessons.
[X] Finish reading Petite sœur.


Writing
[ ] Write a 20,000 word novella.
(No, I decided I needed to go back and re-plan some things. I'm going to start over on December 1.)
6 x

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Re: December Goals

Postby philomath » Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:57 pm

December Goals

Spanish
[ ] Practice speaking or writing at least four times.

French
[ ] Finish Unit 3 of Édito B1.
[ ] Finish Unit 4 of Édito B1.
[ ] Have at least eight iTalki lessons.
[ ] Start working through Easy French Step-by-Step.
[ ] Finish reading L'Étranger.

Esperanto
[ ] Complete Units 3–7 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto. (Revised because the study group is taking a break for the holidays! New goal is Units 3–6.)

Writing
[ ] Start drafting the contemporary fiction novella (again). Write at least 14,000 words.
Last edited by philomath on Wed Dec 21, 2022 5:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:18 am

01Dec22–03Dec22

French
01Dec22: I did two pages of Édito. Normally I read the exercises out loud, and today I wasn't feeling happy with my pronunciation. Then I remembered that Pimsleur has been e-mailing me about another month-long free trial. I ended up doing half of Pimsleur French III Lesson 1. I also wrote a little bit in my journal.

02Dec22: I watched three YouTube videos, for a total of 45 minutes.

03Dec22: I had a 30-minute lesson with Kevin. Once again, he gave me a lot of corrections. It was very helpful, but I wonder if there's a better middle-ground between no corrections and lots, because by the end of the lesson I felt a little disappointed in my speaking skills. It made me want to learn more though!

Kevin also showed me a resource that looks very helpful. I was going to post about it on the forum, but I did a search and saw it mentioned a few times already. It's called YouGlish, and it lets you search a word or phrase in YouTube videos. We were discussing the phrase "je m’attendais pas à ce que..." and found 55 examples!

Later, I wrote a paragraph about knitting and posted it on iTalki. I've started knitting again, and I like listening to podcasts or watching TV while I knit, so I'll probably make some good progress in the Super Challenge this month. :)

I also glanced through Chapters 1–4 of Easy French Step-by-Step and wrote down some example sentences that caught my eye. I wonder if I should go back to Kwiziq to learn grammar, but it was just so repetitive...

Italian
02Dec22: No, I'm not officially learning Italian right now! But I still follow the YouTube channel Learn Italian with Lucrezia, and I love her vlogs. I ended up watching a couple, using the Language Reactor add-on to highlight the words I didn't know. With Italian subtitles, it was very easy to understand her.

Writing
01Dec22: Day 1 of drafting the novella again! As before, I made a schedule using Pacemaker Planner. However, whereas last time I decided to write more on the weekends, this time I've decided to keep my word count goal the same on weekdays and weekends. So my goal is a measly 435 words per day. I think this will keep me from getting stressed, as well as make it possible to stop and think of fixes for any issues I notice while writing.

Anyway, today I wrote 442 words in 30 minutes. :)

02Dec22: I wrote 467 words in 18 minutes. I didn't suddenly become a much faster writer: I was rewriting the first chapter of the novella.

03Dec22: Today I was determined not to procrastinate, so I started writing at 10:45 AM. I wrote 202 words, and then it was time for my French lesson. Later, I wrote another 238 words. My total writing time was 1 hour.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Sat Dec 10, 2022 6:22 pm

04Dec22–09Dec22

French
04Dec22: I had a 30-minute lesson with Marylène. Today I felt really confident about my speaking skills, which was nice!

For the rest of the week, I listened to a few episodes of French Expat and continued reading L'Étranger. I'm eager to finish it so I can start reading another book. I have a huge to-read list in French now:
  • Voleuse by Lucie Bryon
  • Le problème avec Jane by Catherine Cusset
  • Je revenais des autres by Mélissa Da Costa
  • Les Douleurs fantômes by Mélissa Da Costa (which I bought in Barcelona without realizing it's the second book in a series)
  • L'Événement by Annie Ernaux
  • Les années by Annie Ernaux
  • Il nous restera ça by Virginie Grimaldi
  • Kiffe kiffe demain by Faïza Guène
  • L'Inconnue de la Seine by Guillaume Musso
  • Vingt mille lieues sous les mers by Jules Verne

Those are all the books I've bought, and then there are lots that I've saved on Goodreads but haven't purchased. Bref, j'ai trop de livres à lire !

Writing
On the 4th and 5th I managed to hit my word count goal, but after that I kept falling short. On the 8th I didn't write anything at all! The problem was two-fold: first, I reached a scene that I needed a bunch of changes compared to what I had planned, and second, I was too tired after work. Anyway, I'm not worried, because I have lots of time to catch up this month.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Wed Dec 14, 2022 5:21 am

10Dec22–13Dec22

French
10Dec22: I had a 30-minute lesson with Kevin. I learned some useful phrases, like "se passer de" and "Au temps pour moi."

After my lesson, I did the pronunciation exercise I thought of a couple months ago. First, I picked an episode of InnerFrench that I'd never listened to and downloaded the transcript. Then I annotated the first ten minutes of the transcript, marking all the cases where I thought liaison would occur. Finally, I listened to the podcast to see whether I was correct. Honestly, the exercise wasn't as useful as I thought it would be. I correctly identified all the cases of required liaison. Sometimes I had marked liaison where it didn't occur or vice versa, but those were instances of optional liaison (at least, according to the rules I found online). There are definitely some instances when I'm confused about liaison, but I didn't encounter them in this exercise.

Later, I also finished reading L'étranger! I rushed through the last chapter because I was eager to finish it.

11Dec22: I had a 45-minute lesson with Marylène. I also began reading Voleuse.

12Dec22: I watched a few YouTube videos and read the first 30 pages of L'événement. It took me a while because I looked up a bunch of words. I also wrote in my journal.

13Dec22: I did some more listening (French Expat and YouTube) and wrote in my journal.

Writing
I achieved my word count goal each day, and I wrote 3X my goal on the 13th! So far, I'm still rewriting the part that I wrote during November. It's nice to see that this second draft is better than the first.

Thoughts
I feel like I'm improving my French conversation skills, thanks to iTalki. I have another lesson booked for tomorrow! However, I haven't made any progress in Édito lately. I'm looking forward to the new AI6WC Challenge which starts tomorrow. :D

I'm also very behind on Esperanto. I want to catch up so I can attend the next study group meeting. Therefore I need to study Lessons 3–5 before Sunday.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby galaxyrocker » Wed Dec 14, 2022 9:54 pm

Since you use iTalki a lot, do you think there's a real benefit in paying for the lessons? My French speaking is by far my weakest aspect in French (well, maybe up there with writing), and I feel that maybe I should pay someone to practice with me who's trained at it, but I'm also not sure about how well it'd go. I need to get more natural with it and be able to construct sentences on the fly better, but I also don't want to put that pressure on a language exchange partner (plus, all the exchange events cost money here in Dublin). Would you say it's a good value proposition for the money if I wanted to focus on getting my speech/writing better?
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:58 am

galaxyrocker wrote:Since you use iTalki a lot, do you think there's a real benefit in paying for the lessons? My French speaking is by far my weakest aspect in French (well, maybe up there with writing), and I feel that maybe I should pay someone to practice with me who's trained at it, but I'm also not sure about how well it'd go. I need to get more natural with it and be able to construct sentences on the fly better, but I also don't want to put that pressure on a language exchange partner (plus, all the exchange events cost money here in Dublin). Would you say it's a good value proposition for the money if I wanted to focus on getting my speech/writing better?

I've never done a language exchange so I can't really compare them to paid lessons, but I've found iTalki lessons to be really useful! I look for teachers who offer conversation-based lessons rather than grammar lessons. With both Spanish and French, it took me a while to find teachers who were the right fit, but now I have two who are really helpful. Like you mentioned, I've always opted for paid teachers because I don't want to bother a language exchange partner by making too many mistakes. I'm also super introverted and teachers tend to be more prepared to lead the conversation/think of new topics. :lol: As for improving your writing—I've seen some iTalki teachers who offer writing-focused lessons, but I've never tried those.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby cito » Thu Dec 15, 2022 7:17 pm

philomath wrote:Later, I also finished reading L'étranger! I rushed through the last chapter because I was eager to finish it.


Great book and basically why I learned French! I'm going to start a reread on Jan 1st. I find the second half a little tough somethings though :lol:.
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Re: Amanda's 2022 Log: Spanish and French (and now, Esperanto!)

Postby philomath » Mon Dec 19, 2022 5:42 pm

14Dec22–18Dec22

Spanish
14Dec22: I listened to an episode of Hoy en El País.

French
14Dec22: I had a 30-minute lesson with Kevin. Once again, he gave me a ton of corrections. It was a little frustrating, but overall very helpful. After our lesson, I added a few examples to my French notebook and made some flashcards. Later, I continued reading L'événement. So far, I've been looking up all the words that I don't know. My favorite word today was "amonceler", from the sentence, "Les problèmes s'amoncellent."

16Dec22: Today I spent some time writing about a sad topic: the Boston Marathon bombing, which happened in 2013. I had to look up a lot of words, so it took me around an hour. Afterward, I didn't want to post it on iTalki, so I read the corresponding Wikipedia page in French. It was very helpful to see how I could have phrased things better. I also made some Anki cards.

17Dec22: I found a conversation topic generator and wrote an answer to one of the prompts.

18Dec22: I had a 45-minute lesson with Marylène. I had a lot of trouble with vocabulary this time. :( After the lesson, I spent some time writing about the same topics and making flashcards. I also read more of L'événement, this time without looking anything up.

I've been neglecting Édito this month, but I'm not sure if that's a problem. I feel like I'm making a lot of progress by taking so many iTalki lessons and supplementing them with lots of writing practice. Still, it would be nice to finish Édito sometime this century. :lol:

Esperanto
15Dec22: After a couple of weeks off, I finally got back to Esperanto. First I read through Units 1–2 of Teach Yourself, and then I did all of Unit 3.

Writing
14Dec22: I took the day off since I wrote so much the day before.

15Dec22: I had another great writing day: 1717 words! I've now surpassed where I left off in November. Hopefully the rest of the drafting process goes as smoothly. Part of me wants to try finishing the draft in December... but I also don't want to stress myself out again.

17Dec22: I only wrote 150 words, but I read a short story by Ernest Hemingway and an analysis of it. It made me want to write another short story sometime. :)

18Dec22: I waited until the last possible minute to work on my novella, but I ended up writing 598 words. I'll need to fix this scene in revisions because it turned out a bit boring.
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