Cavesa's 2016 log

[Cavesa]

I don't have peas, just spinach. And frozen spinach doesn't have a form appropriate for this kind of use
Fortunately, my own diagnoses was correct. Today, the shoulder is as if it was new. Nothing keeps me from using it.

A fresh bit of experience: Don't mix up vocabulary. Especially the extremely important words. Such as "speichern" und "laden".

[Hundetier]

A fresh bit of experience: Don't mix up vocabulary. Especially the extremely important words. Such as "speichern" und "laden".

This is a quite useful hint .

Do you set your phone and computer to the languages you learn? I do so, my gadgets speak spanish now and so I have learnt some words yet. Also I am forced to read and think first before clicking on buttons - "speichern und laden" are quite exchangeable for me, but with "abrir y guardar" I tend to have fewer problems with mixing it up.

[Cavesa]

Finished the 9th book of the Sookie Stackhouse series, the transition from the French translation to the Spanish one was quite smooth. I had read this book in French (not the rest of the series) but forgot the plot mostly, so it was nice to reread it. And the vocab I look up is quite fun I am still getting acquitainted with readlang. SOmetimes, I add a falshcard just to see an interesting example sentence again, even though I know the word. And I think I'll pay the full version, as the ability to save a combination of words is cool.

I had a work phone call in English yesterday. I was horrible. I wish it was in French. Perhaps the man knew French, he wasn't a native English speaker, but some accents are quite similar to each other. And I couldn't tell from the name, I even messed it up as he had only put his email adress in the first contact email, he didn't sign it. And addresses like somethingthenamesomething@something.com are not that easy to decypher. Why do people do such things?

Other than that: had a great evening with my French classmates yesterday, I'll write more about it in the other log tomorrow. I am so horrible at buying Christmas presents and falling behind the plan even at this! Other than that: Just Duolingo. I trully thing I am just remembering some phrases, not trully mastering the underlying grammar in some cases. But it is better than nothing. And frustrating, as the strengthen-gold-not gold process is quite hard to keep up with

[Jar-Ptitsa]

Hi Tereza

I hope you had a nice Christmas.

[Cavesa]

Thanks, Vogeltje, I certainly did and hope you had a great Christmas too And everyone else!

Tons of French updates almost ready, will be finished tomorrow. This time, it is not an empty promise.

Brun Ugle's recent success is highly motivating. onwards with the GdUdE!

German: Duolingo is nice and comfortable, but obviously not working that much after a certain point. I've got some recommendations from Chung and some courses here with me, so it's time for real studying. After all, I am ready for my first book, there is no excuse for me to postpone the new huge weave of real studying any longer.

I should tie a few lose ends before the year ends.

I hope everyone is having a good end of the year.

[Cavesa]

Still not finished with the loose ends.

Finished a book, another part of the Sookie Stackhouse series in Spanish. That is the last bit to add to the SC this year.

How much I've got left is on page one of this log. English: I completed the challenge a thousand times by the amount of reading, but as only books count, I need to finish two textbooks to get rid of it. At least I've got more motivation to study The old French Advanced Super Challenge was finally finished months ago. Both Spanish and Italian are progressing very well, when it comes to the movie part. Books will be fast too, once I am back from France, but Italian is not much of a priority. German is still untouched. But I will break this curse Yeah, and I should log in the twitter account I almost forgot about and update the bot. I think that my romance challenge bot is not too useful as French is not worth counting anymore, so it is something like a Spanish bot with bits of French. The rest will be more important.

But I think I've balanced out my previous reading lazyness during the last few months. Counting just fiction now, I have read 1 book in English, 12 French books, 4 books in Spanish, 2 in Italian, and none in German. I started a few but wasn't ready.

Total: 19 books, that is not much, but not too bad either. I need to read much more in Spanish, if I want to get to the overall C1 level.

Ah, the movies and tv series. I spent almost 74 hours immersed in Italian and it worked like a miracle! A bit over 66 hours in Spanish, but I had already watched a lot before May 2016. Not counting French and English. And I have some series prepared for German, to tackle soon.

I am not gonna spend a lot of time planning until I'll have started my 2017 log.

[Cavesa]

Ouch, I didn't stick to that decision and I counted it all anyways. Over a 1000 pages to read and 11 hours to watch tv per week Impossible, I don't have that much time. I'd better read a bit during this weekend, before 2017 starts

Ah, no, no panic needed. I was accidentally counting with my personal crazy challenge, ufff... The official version is much smaller. I need to fit only the Spanish crazy version to 2017, as I need to improve a lot. That is already ok, not that much of it left. For Italian and German, the small 9000 minutes and 5000 pages version will suffice amply. The Crazy version is not supposed to fit within one SC timeframe. It is simply a goal after which I should definitely be pretty close to the C levels, based on my experience with French.

I really scared myself for a moment. When I was signing up, I didn't mean to replace my whole life with the Super Challenge.
5 hours of movies/series per week, that is not bad and it should really improve my German. 440 pages per week, that is a pleasure! And most of it in Spanish!

[Cavesa]

My plans to finish a few things till the end of 2016 failed. I got ill instead. Nothing serious, just lost my voice, got very tired, cough and so on. But still, I had no energy to study. So, today, I will. I am still not feeling that great but I am less tired. So, I was partying in bed with Heroes of Might and Magic and spent majority of the day asleep.

It's time to close this log. I'm almost scared to look back at page one and compare it with now.

Thanks to you all, reading and replying, for your support. It was very helpful. I am looking forward to meeting you in my 2017 log too, and in your logs. After all, there are a few people with who we invade each other's logs so much we are no longer sure which log belongs to whom And I love that!

Spanish
The most visible progress, I'd say.
SC:not bad, not great. I could have read more.
Progress bars and CCC: Yay! Of course I could have done more and of course I could have finished the GdUdEB on time (like one third is missing), but I completed a lot of stuff and learnt from it. I finally did the last lesson of the course I started the whole Spanish journey with ten years ago. I completed the second half of the Yellow book and four smaller workbooks. I had just a few talking opportunities and not too extensive, but it didn't go too bad, and I can sort of write.
I had plans to pass B2 DELE this year. I think I had a good chance, had I decided to do so. However, DELE B2 is useless to me,as I need a paper of good enough level to work in Spain in medicine, and I had no chance to go for DELE C1 in 2016.
Overall, I am quite content.

Italian
A pleasant surprise and a success. During just two months or so, I covered the basics well enough to get by as a tourist in Italy, paid for one Italki lesson (as I had planned to go to Italy for my Erasmus) and got a very surprised reaction that I had never talked with anyone else before and still could be understood everything. Yes, I have accent, yes I make mistakes, I still have huge problem with the double vs single consonant pronunciation. But I can be understood. I forgot a lot during the second half of the year, but it will come back really fast, I am sure of that. And my passive skills got really high. I can understand dubbed tv series comfortably (almost as comfortably as in my other langauges), I can read books without a huge problem (of course only some kinds of books for now). Italian brought me a lot of fun, I am falling more and more in love with the culture. A third romance language was definitely a good decision but I don't know whether I'll ever add a fourth one.

German
The cursed one. Really. A recent online test (the one made by a language school that placed me to a1 a few years ago) shows B1. My comprehension got better, I can follow a book, even though I look up a lot of words. I failed to finish any of the books I started, that will change now. I can more or less understand the news. I liked lingua.ly, but it doesn't exist anymore. I did two thirds of the Duolingo course, but it isn't helping anymore. I failed to finish any courses, the stuff in my progress bar garden wasn't touched at all in 2016! And I feel ashamed about it. There is one exception though. I finished the first goldlisting wave of Lernwortschatz Deutsch and I can already see some results. Overall, I failed.

lost fights
I had to abandon the Finnish project and any Swedish or Russian ideas for now.

maintenance
English: As you can see, not much of a change. I was recently horrible during a phone call, I really wish people with accents spoke other languages as my brain kept switching to French all the time (it could have been the native language of the person, even though there were more options).
French: Not much of an improvement despite the Erasmus. And no, the reactions "you have surely improved and just haven't noticed it" are not true, I was very good in September already, but I am failing to improve. I could do with more systematic work on accent with video, that could help, but I need to study as well and it feels a bit weird here. A few new words here and there, lots of unexpected situations solved. A big improvement in some of my social skills transfers to speaking too, such as not being that afraid of patients anymore (really, my home university sucks, most Erasmus have the same experience). Lots of fun with books and such stuff, I love being in the country. I made one good friend and some pleasant acquitances. It is too soon to talk about the whole experience.

The bottom line: a good year, but I was too lazy. This will change in 2017. See you in my new log.