Michelle's 2022-24 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

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Michelle's 2022-24 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Jan 30, 2022 6:15 pm

Previous logs: 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

New year, new log, as usual. I was going to sum up where I am with each language currently, but honestly you could just read my first post in my 2021 log because little has changed since then. I spent more time in 2021 with French listening, so I'm a little stronger there than I was a year ago, and I did manage to do a little intensive kdrama work in 2021, although I don't know that it made a huge difference in my Korean knowledge. I'm still just kind of in the intermediate plateau for Spanish, French, and German, where I'm progressing but generally too slowly to really be aware of the progress, and I haven't spent enough time on Italian or Korean to break out of the beginner levels.

In previous years, I've organized my language learning with specific days devoted to each language, with goals of doing reading, listening, and grammar in the language on its day, plus some daily tasks, like Duolingo and Anki. This worked for me for awhile, but it's become harder to keep up with five languages. It was hard to ever feel really invested in what I was reading/watching jumping around like that, and a lot of the time I had trouble keeping up with plots. There are a number of books I read or things I watched last year where I really couldn't tell you a single thing that happened, and it wasn't because of comprehension issues — I think my attention was just too divided between everything, so I'd forget what had happened in the last chapter/episode by the time I started a new one. I was also trying to reach my goal of completing half Super Challenges in reading for French and German, so I neglected other languages/activities to achieve that.

This year, my plan is to be more focused so I don't spread myself so thin. I'd like to spend my time more on things I actually enjoy and less on things I feel obligated to do. Rather than rotating languages by day, I'm going to be rotating languages by activity. This may be a little complicated to explain, but it makes sense in my head. For grammar, I plan on devoting about 10-15 minutes of grammar work in each language, and then I'll move on to the next language. In the past, if I wasn't up for grammar on, say, Friday, then I wouldn't be doing any Italian grammar that week, since Friday was my Italian day. This way, instead of skipping Italian entirely because I missed Friday, I'll just pick it up again on Saturday. And if I'm feeling more in the mood to do grammar, then I can do both Italian and another language on Saturday. 10-15 minutes is a pretty manageable amount for me to do every day, but this plan is flexible enough so I can take days off and won't end up completely ignoring any language.

For TV, I plan on choosing one TV show for one language and work through the episodes with the Language Reactor extension rather than dividing my attention between multiple shows/languages. The way I use Language Reactor will differ by language, but my main goal is to wean myself off rewatching entire episodes with subtitles (this primarily goes for French and German). It got a bit tiring to watch everything in French and German twice, and at times I would rely too much on knowing I'd be rewatching the entire episode and not spend enough effort to understand the dialogue the first time through. What I've been doing this past week is to have TL subtitles on but use the option so they're obscured so I can't read them first time through; then, if there's anything in each line that I missed, I replay the line, this time mousing over the subtitle so I can read it. I'm only planning on tracking the time I spend watching the episode without subtitles, not any parts I rewind, which will hopefully also encourage me to try to focus on comprehension without subtitles without relying too much on rewinding. For Korean, I'm still not at a level where I can watch kdramas without subs (or even with Korean-only subs), so I plan on working through kdramas like I did last fall, probably only choosing a couple scenes per episode rather than doing an entire 70-minute episode line by line. I'm still not planning on doing any listening with Italian at the moment; honestly, I've been toying with leaving Italian at a beginner level and not pursuing it further, but I'm going to finish Duolingo and the grammar books I've already bought first and then make a decision. I'm also going to try not to feel obligated to finish an entire episode each day. If I only have the time to work through half an episode, then that's fine.

Part of my goal with working a little more intensively with TV this year is to give myself a break from reading. I don't want to completely abandon reading, but it did start getting tiring pushing myself to meet my reading goals in 2021. I also struggle with finding appropriate reading material, not so much in terms of level, but in terms of books that will interest me. I feel weird talking about reading as a burden because I'm actually a huge reader in English and always have been — I usually read 100+ books in English a year. But it's easy for me to find things I know I'll probably enjoy in English, and it takes a lot less time to figure out I'm not going to enjoy something. This has been harder with Spanish, French, and German. Right now, my goal is to finish Die Frau auf Nordstand, since I started it at the end of last year and don't want to leave it unfinished, and I like it well enough. I'm planning on roughly one chapter a day, which is usually about 10 pages. If I can't get reading in every day, that's fine. But when I've finished it, I think I might take a break from books for a few weeks and maybe just focus on intensive TV watching and newspaper articles for a bit while I look for something I think will interest me. When I do get back to books, I plan to approach it similarly to TV — choosing only one book in one language at a time, and doing as much reading as I'm in the mood for per day. I will make more of an effort to drop things I'm not enjoying early on rather than force myself to finish things.

Since I'm trying to focus on material I enjoy this year, I'm taking a break from Anki. I'm a little worried about things sticking in Korean without using Anki, but it'll always be there if I change my mind. I'm going to keep up with Duolingo for Italian and Spanish because I enjoy it and think it's decent practice. I'm close to the end of the Italian tree, and once I've completed it, I will probably go back to the French tree and do the units they've added since I last completed it. I also plan on tracking hours spent on each language per month rather than per week; I don't think the weekly data is as informative. If I don't do any Korean one week, that's not the end of the world, but if I spend an entire month doing no Korean, that's another thing. I created a spreadsheet to track everything I did last year, but it was geared towards me making weekly updates, and it didn't work as well if I didn't feel like updating one week, or if I wanted to update a day late. I've made a new spreadsheet for 2022 which will give me more flexibility, although my goal is still weekly updates. But sometimes I just don't have anything to say, and posting does take time. I'll sit down to write an update and intend to take like 10 minutes and suddenly an hour has gone by, and I'm not sure how that happens, but I don't always have the time for that. I'm also probably only going to list what I actually did in each post and not the things I skipped each week to make things easier on me and to make my posts more concise (obviously something I struggle with! Perhaps that's why it takes me so long to write a post).

Anyways, we'll see how this goes! I'd really like to keep language learning a bit more consistent this year, even if I'm not devoting all my time to it. I already started doing some work this week with these plans in mind which has gone well, but I'll reserve that for a separate post. But hopefully this will continue to work for me. If not, well, back to the drawing board, I suppose!
Last edited by brokenrecord on Sat Mar 16, 2024 6:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Jan 30, 2022 7:00 pm

January 27-29:
Spanish:
-Duolingo: 935->940 crowns
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: 3.11-3.13
-La cocinera de Castamar: episodes 1.01-1.04

French:
-PMP French Verbs: 15.3-15.5

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapters 13-14

Italian:
-Duolingo: 273 -> 275 crowns

No Korean last week, but I should get some grammar in this week. As I mentioned in the last post of my 2021 log, I had been missing Spanish, so I was excited to start off 2022 with a new Spanish show. La cocinera de Castamar (The Cook of Castamar) is on Netflix and has 12 episodes, around an hour each. It's a historical romance show and can be a bit melodramatic at times, but it's a genre I enjoy, and I've been liking it a lot so far. Making myself actually focus on the episodes and not spreading them out over many weeks is probably helping that. I've been relying on rewinding lines to watch them again with subtitles a little more than I'd like, so I'm going to try to cut that down a bit, or maybe even rewind them to listen to them again without subtitles a few times before I let myself look at the subtitles. My Spanish is a little rusty, but still at the point that I should be able to follow the plot without subtitles, and there have been a few times when I've rewinded a line and then realized what was said before it played for the second time – I just needed an extra beat to process it. But so far this new plan has been working for me. I started mid-week, so we'll see how my first full week goes!
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Feb 06, 2022 8:11 pm

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 940 -> 954 crowns
-La cocinera de Castamar: 1.05-1.12
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: 4.01-4.04

French:
-PMP French Verbs: 15.06-15.08

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapters 15-19
-Grammatik aktiv A1-B1: lessons 57-58

Korean:
-Talk to Me in Korean: 6.09
-Korean Grammar in Use Beginning: 5.07-5.08

Italian:
-Duolingo: 275 -> 278 crowns
-PMP Italian Verbs: 4.07-4.09

First full week of my new routine went pretty well. There were a couple days where I didn't really have time/focus to do everything so I skipped reading and/or grammar and/or TV, but I still feel like I got a good amount done. I ended up enjoying La cocinera de Castamar a lot — I mean, it's the kind of show where you know what to expect going in, and it's not the most brilliant show I've ever seen or anything, but I found it entertaining enough to keep me engaged. I was able to stop myself from rewinding lines as much as I got further into the season, and my comprehension was pretty solid by the end with the exception of like one character who just had a more challenging voice/accent for me to understand.

Anyways, since I've finished a Spanish show, I'm now moving on to French. I had been wanting to continue with Le bureau des légendes, but to watch that, I have to borrow it from the library and then I only have 2 weeks to finish it, so I want to wait until I'm sure I have 2 weeks to devote to getting through it, and right now I'm a bit busy and also spending a fair amount of my free time watching the Olympics. So instead, I think I'll return to Le meilleur pâtissier. I got through three episodes of the most recent season last fall but then took my break, so I can pick up where I left off. Since it's on Youtube, it looks like I can try using Language Reactor (I think the subtitles might be automatically generated, so they may not be the best, but I can give it a shot). The episodes are 2 hours long and I believe I have 10 left, so I may decide just to watch part of the season and save the rest for later. Since it's not a narrative show, I'm not really worried with losing the thread of the plot, obviously. Otherwise, this week should look pretty similar to last week.

Finally, since January is over, here's how I spent my time on languages last month (really just the last week of the month):

Spanish: 8.2 hours (listening: 7.4; grammar: 0.2; Duolingo: 0.5)
French: 0.4 hours (all grammar)
German: 0.9 hours (reading: 0.6; grammar: 0.3)
Korean: 0.3 hours (all grammar)
Italian: 0.6 hours (all Duolingo)
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Mar 06, 2022 3:06 pm

February 6-March 5

Spanish
-Duolingo: 954 -> 980 crowns

French:
-Le meilleur pâtissier (season 10): episode 4

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapter 20

Korean:
-TTMIK: lesson 6.10

Italian:
-Duolingo: 278 -> 290 crowns

Fell off posting for about a month, in part because of difficulties accessing the site the few times I came to update, but more because I fell off on doing language stuff for awhile. At the beginning of February, I had to decide whether to renew my current lease or not, and I had been thinking of looking for a condo for a few years now, so I started that process, and it kind of took over my life. I pretty much only had the attention span to watch sports or rewatch movies I'd already seen a million times. But now I've had an offer accepted, and there's not a ton for me to do but wait for closing in a few weeks, so I'm hoping I can get back to doing language stuff now. I did manage to keep up Duolingo for a couple weeks during that time but otherwise didn't get a ton done. I'd like to at least keep up with grammar if things get hectic again because my goal is only 10-15 minutes a day, which should be manageable. I just struggle when I have one thing completely consuming my brain to do anything but think about that one thing. Hopefully I have no other major life changes in the near future!

Anyways, since another month has gone by, here is my hourly break-down for February. Actually still slightly better than January, but considering I only started doing language work the last week of January, that's not saying much.

Spanish: 6 hours (listening: 3.5; grammar: 0.2; Duolingo: 0.2)
French: 2.3 hours (listening: 2.0; grammar: 0.3)
German: 0.9 hours (reading: 0.5; grammar: 0.4)
Korean: 0.5 hours (all grammar)
Italian: 3.8 hours (Duolingo: 3.6; grammar: 0.2)
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Mar 20, 2022 3:21 pm

March 6-19

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 980->991 crowns

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapter 21

Korean:
-Intensive study of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha scenes: episodes 1.01-1.08

Italian:
-Duolingo: 290-297 crowns

Well, I managed to get back to doing Duolingo pretty consistently, but I'm still struggling to do reading and grammar. I half considered using Duolingo for all my languages because for all its flaws, it's the one method I'm finding easiest to manage to do these days. But I think two languages on Duolingo is the max I can handle right now — anything more, and I think I'd get sick of it. Although I am still thinking about using it for Korean. I know Duolingo isn't the best for Korean, but I figure it might be okay if I'm just using it for practice and acquiring vocab rather than for actually trying to learn grammar.

Part of why I started considering Duolingo for Korean was because I started watching Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha this week. I hadn't watched a kdrama in awhile and was in the mood, so it was more for entertainment than for language learning, although it serves both purposes. I'm watching full episodes with simultaneous Korean and English subtitles, and then after I've finished it, I typically choose 1-2 scenes and go through with them with the Language Reactor extension. When I go through the scene(s), I have it set up so only the Korean shows and the English is obscured, and the scene will pause after each line. I try to understand as much as I can just from the Korean first, then look at the translations for unknown words, and then the full English translation. I'm trying not to spend more than 15 minutes on each episode to keep it from feeling too burdensome. I'm not adding anything to Anki or copying down unknown words/sentences or anything like that, so it's probably not the most efficient method, which was part of why I was thinking I need to add something else back for Korean, whether it's Duolingo or reading short stories/articles or Anki again or something else. In general, I want to spend more time on languages than I have been, but when I actually think about sitting down and doing something, I'm always like, "Not now, maybe later," and then later never comes. But I'll keep trying and maybe I'll succeed in doing a little bit more this week.

After I'm done with Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, I think I'm going to finally move to Le bureau season 3 since I have a good two-week stretch where I can borrow the DVD from the library and finish the season before they're due back in 2 weeks. After that, maybe I'll find something to watch in German, since I haven't done any listening practice in German this year.
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Apr 03, 2022 1:14 pm

March 20-April 2

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 991 -> 1010 crowns

French:
-Le bureau des légendes: episodes 3.01-3.02 (2x, w/ & w/o EN subs), 3.03 (1x, w/o EN subs)

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapters 22-23

Korean:
-Intensive study of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha scenes: episodes 1.09-1.12
-Korean Grammar In Use Beginning: lessons 5.09-5.10
-Duolingo: 0 -> 24 crowns

Italian:
-Pratice Makes Perfect Italian Verbs: exercises 5.01-5.03
-Duolingo: 297 -> 302 crowns

I've had a lot going on personally in the past 2 weeks (nothing major/serious, just a lot of minor issues adding up), so my language learning hasn't been as consistent as I'd like, but I've managed to get in some work when I've had the time and inclination, and I feel fairly satisfied with what I've gotten done. I would really like to make some more time for German in the near future, though, and I'd really like to finish Die Frau auf Nordstrand sooner rather than later, but at my current pace of approximately one chapter a week, that'll be challenging. I had also hoped to be further along with Le bureau des légendes at this point since the DVDs are due back at the library this week, but luckily the library has 2 copies and there's no one on the waitlist right now, so I should be able to keep them for at least a couple more weeks. Hopefully I can get moving a bit faster with the rest of the season. I also haven't quite managed to finish Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, which I had wanted to do before starting Le bureau des légendes, but I'm in less of a rush there.

I did end up deciding to add Korean to my Duolingo rotation. Italian and Spanish are my priorities, but when I feel in the mood and not too overloaded with other stuff, I've been doing some Korean as well. It looks like I've done a lot so far, but a lot of the early crowns were just making it through the lessons on 한글. Now that I'm through those, I'll be progressing more slowly. So far it's essentially all been review, but I did pick up one new word (입구), so at least that's something.

In addition to adding Duolingo Korean, this week I started learning Hiragana on Duolingo (in the characters tab, not the tree). I have no plans on adding Japanese to my list of languages anytime soon, but it is a language I'd be interested in at least exploring at some point in my life. I'm not tracking my time, and I'm not even committing to learning all the characters or moving on to Katakana; there's a decent chance I'll get bored and stop before I make it through everything. But right now I'm finding it fun, so I figure, why not keep it up for as long as I feel like it. Then in a couple years or so, when I'll maybe have the time to explore Japanese, I'll have some familiarity with the writing system.

Anyways, next weekend I'll have family visiting, so I imagine this week may not be the most productive, and I'll probably go another two weeks before I post another update, but hopefully I'll be able to keep up a little consistency.

Finally, since March is over, here's the time I spent on languages in March:
Spanish: 2.1 hours (all Duolingo)
French: 4.2 hours (all listening)
German: 0.3 hours (all reading)
Korean: 2.7 hours (intensive kdrama scenes: 1.9; grammar: 0.1; Duolingo: 0.7)
Italian: 2.6 hours (Duolingo: 2.5; grammar: 0.1)
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:25 pm

April 3-16

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 1010 -> 1034 crowns
-Practice Makes Perfect Intermediate Spanish Grammar: units 4.05-4.09, 5.01-5.04

French:
-Le bureau des légendes: episodes 3.03 (1x, w/ EN subs), 3.04-3.10 (2x, w/ & w/o EN subs), 4.01 (1x, w/o EN subs)
-Practice Makes Perfect French Verbs: 15.09-15.12, R1-4

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapters 24-34
-Grammatik aktiv A1-B1: units 59-60

Korean:
-Intensive study of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha scenes: episodes 1.13-1.16
-Korean Grammar In Use Beginning: lessons 6.01-6.02
-TTMIK: lessons 6.11-6.12
-Duolingo: 24 -> 37 crowns
-Anki: My Sentence Deck: 5 days
-Memrise: TTMIK: 5 days
-children's news articles: 5 articles
-Korean Stories for Language Learners: 5 stories

Italian:
-Pratice Makes Perfect Italian Verbs: exercises 5.04-5.05
-Duolingo: 303 -> 310 crowns

Despite having family visiting for a few days and my normal routine getting interrupted, I've had a very productive 2 weeks. I've already spent almost double the time on languages in April than in any other month this year.

I'm still learning Hiragana on Duolingo. I'm through the main section and Dakuon and am now on to the Combo section. My interest in learning Japanese hasn't waned yet, and I'm actually starting to think about adding Japanese sooner than originally planned. I had been thinking a few years down the line, but now I'm thinking… maybe the start of next year? I know I've struggled plenty in keeping up with 5 languages, so adding a 6th probably sounds insane, and maybe it is. But as I've said before, languages are just a hobby for me, I have no actual need for any of them in my day-to-day life, and part of my struggle the past couple years has just been having other hobbies and interests that I've felt more motivated to pursue. So I don't see the harm in pursuing Japanese if I feel motivated. If I decide it's too much to take on and drop it, it's not like any harm will have been done. Part of my interest in languages is just getting to see how they work and learning the basics, so even if I only get to a beginner's level, I won't feel like my time has been wasted. The language learning process is a large part of the fun for me.

All that being said, I'd still like to be a little further along in Korean before I start Japanese (and I'd like to finally finish the Duolingo Italian tree just so I can move on to other resources with Italian, or possibly drop it for a bit, I haven't decided yet), so as you can see, I ended up adding a few resources in Korean. I'm still using Duolingo for practice, although my pace has dropped off a bit. I think it's pretty good for my purposes but probably would've driven me crazy if I'd been trying to learn Korean from scratch using it. I know these kinds of complaints about Duolingo are common, and generally I think I have a more positive view towards it than a lot of people do, but I do have to question why the word for cornea (각막) is introduced in one of the very first units, before greetings or basic verb conjugations; it's not even like it's an English loan word.

My ultimate goal with Korean is to be able to watch kdramas without subtitles, and the biggest obstacle for me at the moment is that my vocab is too limited. I tried reading some new articles written for children at this site, but the sentences are a bit long, and I was looking up nearly every word, which got tiring. So I decided to stop using that site for now and returned to Korean Stories for Language Learners, which is definitely easier for me to understand. There are vocab lists after every story which I usually read through first, and then read through the story to see them in context. Even without the vocab lists, I generally recognize more of the vocab in the stories than in the news articles. I've also been taking a break from SRS for a few months, but I decided it's time to get back to it. If my goal is to acquire vocab, I think it's going to take too long if all I'm doing is getting exposed to new vocab through kdramas and short stories. So I started up my Anki deck for Korean sentences again. I'm just going through reviews at the moment, which I've capped at 50 per day. This is a deck I created pretty early on when I started Korean, so there are a lot of sentences that are just too simple to keep at this point, like "어머니가 목요일에 갔어요" ("My mother went on Thursday"). So I've been making an effort to finally suspend the cards that are too basic, but that does add a little extra time when going through the deck each day, since cards suspended don't count against the review cap. I haven't been adding sentences yet, but I will once I've made it through the review backlog. I also started up the Memrise deck for the TTMIK level I'm on, and I started using the Drops app. I didn't track Drops these past 2 weeks because I wasn't sure I'd be continuing with it, but I like it pretty well, so I think I'll keep using it and will start tracking it this week.

Finally, I finished Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, and while I haven't started a new kdrama yet, I'm thinking when I choose a new one, I might try going through every single scene intensively the first time through rather than just choosing 1-2 scenes per episode to go through after I've already completed the episode. This might end up being too tedious and time-consuming, but I figure even if I can only get through one episode, it'll still help.

I finished season 3 of Le bureau des légendes this week and immediately jumped to season 4. I had been planning on another break from the show and from French listening, but by the end of season 3, I was eager to find out what would happen next, and the DVDs were available at the library, so I decided not to wait. I do want to get some German listening in this year at some point, but I also don't really have any shows I'm eager to check out, so continuing with Le bureau des légendes is easier. I'm also close to finishing Die Frau auf Nordstrand, and then I'll probably pick something in Spanish to read, so I've been thinking at that point, I may switch from the Duolingo Spanish tree to the German tree just so I can get some kind of regular German practice in, beyond Grammatik aktiv.

Anyways, I've obviously feeling very motivated about languages the past couple weeks, and I know based on my history that it won't last, but I'm trying to take advantage of it while I can. Hopefully this week will continue in that vein!
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun Apr 24, 2022 1:04 pm

April 17-23

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 1034 -> 1047 crowns
-Practice Makes Perfect Intermediate Spanish Grammar: units 5.05-5.06

French:
-Le bureau des légendes: episodes 4.01 (1x, w/ EN subs), 4.02-4.04 (2x, w/ & w/o EN subs), 4.05 (1x, w/o EN subs)

German:
-Die Frau auf Nordstrand: chapters 35-37
-Wolkenschloss: chapters 1-5

Korean:
-Intensive study of Business Proposal scenes: episode 1.01
-Korean Grammar In Use Beginning: lessons 7.01-7.03
-Duolingo: 37 -> 38 crowns
-Anki: My Sentence Deck: 7 days
-Memrise: TTMIK: 7 days
-Drops: 7 days
-Korean Stories for Language Learners: 2 stories

Italian:
-Pratice Makes Perfect Italian Verbs: exercises 5.06-5.08
-Duolingo: 310 -> 312 crowns

Continuing to be very productive, although I haven't been doing grammar as consistently as I'd like. I'm spending a lot of time on French listening and intensive work with kdramas, though, so it balances out.

I finished Die Frau auf Nordstrand this week, which is a decent book in a decent series, but I don't feel invested enough in to continue with. Maybe I'll return to it someday, but I could tell the last book was less of a challenge for me than previous books in the series, so it feels like a good time to move on. I had planned on jumping to Spanish next, but after going through my options and figuring out what appealed to me the most, I chose Cantoras, which should be available from the library by the end of April (I say should because my library did away with late fees when Covid started, and a lot of people now view the due date as a suggestion more than a rule). So I got on the waitlist for that and decided just to continue with German reading for a bit while I wait. I ended up choosing to start Wolkenschloss. I don't know if it was the best selection — I had been hoping to find something which would be short so I could be done with it by the time Cantoras becomes available, but I struggled to find anything that appealed to me at the moment. It's a YA book, so I was hoping it would be a somewhat quick read, but it's fairly long, and I'm still getting used to the author's writing, so I don't think I'll be able to finish it before Cantoras becomes available, but we'll see. I can always pick it back up afterwards.

I started my plan to go through a kdrama line by line with Language Reactor and work through each subtitle in Korean before translating it into English and comparing it to the English subtitle. This project felt a bit intimidating before starting it , but I've been enjoying the process so far. I may still get bored of it at some point, but I've been finding Business Proposal fun. I also managed to finish working through my Anki sentence backlog this week, so I've started adding sentences from Business Proposal. I'm not adding everything unknown – I'm limiting myself to sentences with only one unknown word, and specifically words that I think would be useful to know. I think I added around 4-5 cards for the first episode.

I'm still working through Hiragana with Duolingo, but at a bit of a slower pace than I had been before. My focus has been more on Le bureau des légendes and Business Proposal (the first episode took almost 2 hours to get through, and I've also gotten through ~75% of the second episode but haven't finished it yet). But there's certainly no rush to get through the Hiragana and Katakana or start learning Japanese in earnest, so I'm happy to continue at a leisurely pace with that for now.
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brokenrecord
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Posts: 196
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Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), French (low intermediate), German (low intermediate), Korean (beginner), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 68#p202925
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun May 01, 2022 5:07 pm

April 24-30

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 1047 -> 1057 crowns

French:
-Le bureau des légendes: episode 4.05 (1x, w/ EN subs)
-PMP French Verbs: exercises R5-R6

German:
-Wolkenschloss: chapters 6-12
-Grammatik aktiv A1-B1: lesson 61

Korean:
-Intensive study of Business Proposal scenes: episodes 1.02-1.12
-Korean Grammar In Use Beginning: lessons 7.04-7.06
-TTMIK: lesson 6.13
-Duolingo: 38 -> 40 crowns
-Anki: My Sentence Deck: 7 days
-Memrise: TTMIK: 7 days
-Drops: 7 days
-Korean Stories for Language Learners: 2 stories

Italian:
-Duolingo: 312 -> 316 crowns

Well, I had been a little worried I'd end up finding it tedious to go through entire kdrama episodes line by line with Language Reactor rather than choosing just a few scenes after I had already watched the episode, but that clearly didn't turn out to be the case, because I pretty much raced through the rest of Business Proposal this week. It helped that I really enjoyed the show a lot — it's a romantic comedy that doesn't take itself too seriously, and the fact that it was 12 episodes rather than the standard 16 prevented it from dragging too much at the end or adding a ton of unnecessary drama, which I have found in other kdramas. I think I struggled more when I was choosing just a few scenes to go back through per episode because by the time I finished an episode of a kdrama I was enjoying, I'd just want to jump straight to the next episode, and also trying to choose the best scenes to go through a second time was hard at times. Going through the entire episode line by line seems to work better for me. I also picked up my pace a bit from the first episode, and by the end of the season, it was taking me around 90 minutes to get through a 60-minute episode rather than a full 2 hours, which really isn't that much longer than the total time it would take me to watch an entire episode and then rewatch a couple scenes intensively.

I was pretty picky with what sentences I added to Anki from the show and ended up adding roughly 31 cards, which is less than 3 cards per episode. However, I also picked up a couple words that were used frequently due to the content of the show that I hadn't tried to acquire via Anki, such as 연구원 (researcher), and even a grammar structure I don't remember seeing before (~는 바람에, indicating a negative result or consequence). I feel like the speed I could read the Korean subtitles increased as I went through the episodes, and there were more lines where I could figure out what was said, or at least the general idea, before I looked at the translation. So overall I think this was a successful experiment, even though it's probably not the most efficient way to acquire vocab/grammar, and I'm planning on continuing with another show next, although I haven't decided which one yet.

Right now I'm really feeling motivated about Korean and feel like prioritizing it over everything else and making a real push to improve it. I've been thinking of adding a textbook to work through in addition to KGIU, which probably isn't the best idea — I have a bunch of workbooks in other languages that I haven't worked through yet because I would buy a bunch at once and then not have the time to work through all of them, and I made a rule that I would only buy a new one in a language if I had completed all the other ones I already owned in that language. But while I like KGIU a lot, it's not really meant to be gone through as a textbook like I've been using it. I don't plan on stopping doing that, but I think adding a textbook back like I was using before with Integrated Korean would be beneficial. I don't really want to continue with Integrated Korean, though, because while I did like the beginner levels, I don't think it's the best choice for self-study, and I was starting to get annoyed by the number of exercises in the workbook that were open answer, so I couldn't correct them myself, and those only increase in the intermediate levels. They also stop providing answers for the listening exercises in the intermediate books for some reason. I've been debating between Master Korean, Vitamin Korean, and Ewha Korean. I think Master Korean looks best, but level 2-1 (which I think is around where I would be) doesn't have any kind of online preview, and it's pretty much impossible for me to tell what grammar it covers. There's also no ebook available, and while I generally prefer physical copies, shipping costs like $38, which is twice as much as the textbook itself, and it's a lot to spend when I'm not even sure what it covers. For some reason level 2-2 is available as an ebook and does have the table of contents online, and I'm familiar with at least some of the grammar it covers, so I think I may just go with that. But I'm also tempted to add Vitamin Korean 2 to make sure I'm covering any potential gaps (even though I will also be going through KGIU and TTMIK plus whatever I pick up from kdramas, so I should have all my bases covered). I feel like there's a good chance if I get both, I'll end up giving up one or the other soon enough, and it may be overkill to do both, but the ebooks are both under $10, so at least I wouldn't be wasting a ton of money. If I do go forward with this, my goal would be to do a little grammar work every day rather than just 1-2 days a week, like I've been doing now with KGIU. I'm also probably going to stop using Duolingo for Korean now that I'm getting a lot of exposure and practice elsewhere.

I've obviously been super focused on Korean this week, so I took a bit of a break from Le bureau des légendes. I have the DVDs from the library, but no one is on the waitlist, so I was able to extend how long I'm borrowing it, which meant I felt less pressure to make my way through the rest of the season as quickly as possible. Hopefully I can get back to it this week.

I also managed to get Cantoras from the library this week, so I've started that, although I haven't finished the first chapter yet. I had said I'd take a break from Wolkenschloss when I got Cantoras, but I think I'm going to try to read both. My reading speed for Wolkenschloss has picked up now that I'm a little further in the book, and I don't think it'll be too hard to read both at the same time. My priority will be Cantoras, but if I have the time and feel in the mood, I'll incorporate Wolkenschloss as well. Since I'll still be doing some reading in German, I'll probably stick to Duolingo Spanish rather than switching to German.

Anyways, I've been doing a lot and am planning on adding even more to that, which is probably a recipe for burning out sooner or later. I'm feeling motivated right now, though, so I'm going to lean in to that motivation for as long as it lasts, but try to not be too frustrated with myself if I start feeling like spending my time on other things.

Monthly totals for April:
Spanish: 3.8 hours (Duolingo: 3.1; grammar: 0.5; reading: 0.3)
French: 12.0 hours (listening: 11.1; grammar: 0.9)
German: 6.4 hours (reading: 5.7; grammar: 0.7)
Korean: 33.8 hours (intensive kdrama scenes: 22.7; SRS: 4.6; Duolingo: 3.2; reading: 2.1; grammar: 1.2)
Italian: 4.3 hours (Duolingo: 3.9; grammar: 0.4)

Definitely by far my most productive month this year — even without all the Korean work I've been doing, my total for the other four languages is almost twice as much as any previous month.
Last edited by brokenrecord on Sat Aug 06, 2022 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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brokenrecord
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Posts: 196
Joined: Thu May 05, 2016 11:09 pm
Location: Michigan, USA
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), French (low intermediate), German (low intermediate), Korean (beginner), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 68#p202925
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Re: Michelle's 2022 Log (Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Italian)

Postby brokenrecord » Sun May 08, 2022 1:26 pm

May 1-7

Spanish:
-Duolingo: 1057 -> 1070 crowns
-Cantoras: chapters 1-3
-PMP Intermediate Spanish Grammar: exercises 5.07-5.08

French:
-Le bureau des légendes: episodes 4.05 (1x, w/EN subs), 4.06-4.07 (2x, w/ & w/o EN subs), and 4.08 (1x, w/o subs)
-Practice Makes Perfect French Verbs: exercises R7-R9

German:
-Wolkenschloss: chapters 13-14
-Grammatik aktiv A1-B1: lesson 62

Korean:
-Anki: My Sentence Deck: 7 days
-Memrise: TTMIK: 7 days
-Drops: 7 days
-Korean Grammar In Use Beginning: lessons 8.01-8.02, 9.01-9.03, 10.01-10.02
-TTMIK: lesson 6.14
-Master Korean 2-2: unit 6.01
-Vitamin Korean 2: unit 1.01
-Korean Stories for Language Learners: 1 story
-Intensive work with Vincenzo scenes: episodes 1.01-1.06

Italian:
-Duolingo: 316 -> 318 crowns
-Practice Makes Perfect Italian Verbs: exercises 5.09-5.10


I continued to be pretty productive this week, primarily focused on Korean. As I mentioned I was thinking about last week, I bought the ebooks for both Master Korean 2-2 and Vitamin Korean 2. I've also started doing 1 lesson in KGIU per day since each lesson only takes me about 5 minutes to go through and do the exercises, so it's a minimal time commitment. Doing KGIU is my priority, and then afterwards, if I have time and feel like it, I've been doing Master Korean and Vitamin Korean, alternating between the two each time I finish a subsection. I'm liking both so far; Vitamin Korean definitely has more familiar content for me so far, but nothing that feels too boring to go through again. I struggle a ton with the listening exercises in both which isn't too surprising because despite all the work I've done with kdramas, I've been focused on understanding the subtitles rather than connecting the subtitles with what's being said. At some point in the future when I actually can understand 95% of the subtitles without needing to look up every other word I'll make more of a concerted effort to improve my listening, but it's not a priority now. But hopefully the listening exercises will help a little in the meantime.

I've decreased the amount of stories I've been reading from Korean Stories for Language Learners, mainly because I've gotten to a point in the book where the stories are much longer, so it takes me longer to get through them, and I've also been getting a ton of exposure to Korean through the work I've been doing with kdramas, so I don't feel as much need to try to absorb as much vocab as possible through the stories.

After finishing Business Proposal last weekend, I moved on to Vincenzo this week. The first half of the first episode was a bit of a struggle for me to get through, and I was starting to think I'd need to pick something else (especially since it's longer than a typical kdrama, at 20 episodes, and each episode is roughly 80 minutes), but somewhere in the middle of the first episode the tone and plot shifted from set-up to what the show is really about, and I ended up really loving it. The episodes are taking me much longer to get through than for Business Proposal (nearly 2.5 hours per episode), so even though I've been spending a good amount of my free time watching it, I'm not even halfway through the season. I've picked up a fair amount of law-related vocab, and I've been recognizing words that I had added from other kdramas to my Anki sentence deck, so I feel like I'm progressing on the vocab front, but I still have a long way to go.

Apart from Korean, I've been making my way through Cantoras, which I've been enjoying and hasn't been too challenging as of yet. I've been reading Wolkenschloss as well when I have time, but there were a few days this week where I just had too much else going on and didn't have the mental energy for it. I'm also still making my way through Le bureau des légendes and will hopefully finish season 4 this week. After that, I'll probably take another break from the show before I continue with season 5. I also finally finished the Hiragana section on Duolingo this week, and I've moved on to Katakana.

Anyways, this week I have some events at work going on and plus some personal stuff to deal with outside of work, so while I'd like to keep up this amount of productivity, I'm not sure I'll be able to. Korean will continue to be my priority, and hopefully I can still get a fair amount done.
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