To begin with the focus of this log will to be twofold, however like origami, I expect to end up with more and more folds as the year goes on. Firstly, it's here that I will be recording my progress in the Output Challenge for French and I hope to parrot the formula that's given in one of the threads somewhere to get myself two lovely little progress bars for that. If anyone from the Old Forum (this is a rubbish reference to Star Wars 'Old Republic') is reading this, you may or may not remember the historical love-hate relationship I have had with French for years. This year I am determined to put an end to the nerves that have hindered my progress with it. To quote Adrian Goldsworthy or one of many other contemporary Roman military historians, I intend to tackle French like 'The Roman War Machine'. Or Astérix, the pint-sized Gaulish warrior who picked them all apart! At the start, although these conversations will certainly not be recorded for the Output Challenge, I'll probably overcome my nerves to speak in the pub. This is not my suggestion, but that of my lovely French friend.
Secondly, when I need a break from French or just because I feel like it, I will also be trying my hand at Japanese. I have been very leisurely messing around with Japanese for ages now but I still have no solid grounding in it and it's still just something I see as good fun. I intend to keep it that way, as I learn the odd bit of grammar or learn to write a cool-looking kanji (my favourite one so far is 亀, the kanji for 'turtle'), but I would like to step it up a little bit. I have learnt most of the words I know through looking them up in the dictionary just because I wanted to know the word and through looking up words I think I hear through anime and films. I am still very bad at it, but I don't care, it's fun!
My goals for French need to be quite light or I'll scare myself into giving up. I want to write 200 words of French per day, most of which will probably be put up on Lang-8 for correction. However in practice I will be writing a lot more than 50,000 words this year as I very often write in French to an English work colleague of mine who is also a very good friend, and another colleague and friend who is a British born English-French native. They never correct me unless I ask about something specific but this doesn't bother me. The big thing for me is to get my speaking going again. I worry though that my friends will assume that my speaking ability is as good as my ability to write. I have told them many times, but there is a discrepancy of previously untold magnitude.
So my goals for French are:
1. To write 200 words every day, not including email and text conversations with friends. Employing one of the rules imposed on us at school, each post must contain at least 5 new words. I imagine many of these will go up on Lang-8.
2. To learn at least 20 words every day. At the beginning I'm sure many of these will be words I knew years ago but due to my brain rusting, ones I can't use actively anymore.
3. To record myself speaking French for just over 8 minutes a day, which is according to my rubbish maths the amount needed per day to complete 50 hours of recording time in a year.
4. To do something, as yet unconfirmed, to listen to French every day. I hear my friends speak French every day at work but I understand everything they say so it's no challenge. I need to find something else. Reading can wait in terms of concrete goals, I know I'll read loads of Astérix this year just because I love it.
My goals for Japanese are going to be a lot more fun-based because I just enjoy it. Japanese is the first language I'm learning because I had an interest in the culture before gaining an interest in the language. So my goals this year are going to be a bit weird.
1. Learn a new bit of the grammar puzzle every day. Whether it's one aspect of the seemingly massive concept of Japanese conditional statements, or learning to use a new verb construction like the -tai form.
2. Find some more anime and/or manga to add to the growing collection.
3. Learn katakana properly. I can read hiragana with no problems at all, but I haven't practised katakana half as much.
4. Find more computer games to play in Japanese. I hope the February re-releases of Pokemon Red and Blue will have the options to play in different languages like the newer generations.
5. Find more sources of documentaries on different aspects of life in Japan.
I'm sure I'll add a few more later. Anyway that was the first post of my log for this year. I should mention by the way that I will be writing parts of this log in French from now on as has always been a bit of a tradition of mine; if you can, why not use every opportunity to practise?
Thanks for reading!
LanguageSponge
