Amanda's 2023 Log: Mostly French, Some Spanish and Esperanto

[philomath]

Happy New Year! This is my language log for 2023. The previous ones can be found below:

• 2018
• 2019
• 2020
• 2021
• 2022

This year, my focus is French. I really want to reach a more advanced level so I can pick up Greek in 2024. My goals are essentially to complete the Super Challenge and the Output Challenge:

[ ] : 13 / 116 Do 116 hours of listening practice (~10 hours/month).
[ ] : 190 / 3000 Do 50 hours of speaking practice (~4 hours/month). (These need to be recorded to count for the Output Challenge.)
[ ] : 374 / 3528 Read 3528 pages (294 pages/month).
[ ] : 2183 / 50000 Write 50,000 words (~4166 words/month).

I also want to maintain Spanish and continue learning Esperanto, but I'm not setting specific goals for those languages.

Last year, I also started using my language log to keep track of my writing projects, which helped me stay motivated. This year I really want to improve my writing:

[ ] : 2 / 16 Complete the exercises in Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint.
[ ] : 0 / 10 Complete the exercises in Steering the Craft.
[ ] : 0 / 3 Outline three projects and start writing one of them.

I'm a little worried that I'm being too ambitious this year, but I'll adjust my goals if needed.

As always, I welcome any comments on my log, including feedback on my language-learning methods!

Edit: I removed two of my writing goals. The first was to start doing the exercises in The 3 A.M. Epiphany, and the second was to write 100,000 words. Instead, I want to outline three projects and start writing one of them.

[philomath]

Goals for 01Jan23–08Jan23

French
[ ] : 130 / 150 Do 150 min of listening practice.
[X] : 60 / 60 Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
[ ] : 22 / 76 Read 76 pages.
[X] : 1114 / 1075 Write 1075 words.

Esperanto
[X] : 2 / 2 Finish Units 6–7 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto.

Writing
[X] : 6 / 6 Finish Chapter 1 of Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint (two exercises left) and do Chapter 2 (four exercises).

Comments
New year, new format for my language log! I used to post weekly goals in one of my previous logs, but I think I stopped because it stressed me out. Anyway, I'm going to try it again this year because I want to stay on top of my goals. I'll update the progress bars throughout the week, and I'll continue to write separate posts describing what I've been doing.

This week, my strategy for accomplishing my goals is to schedule everything in advance. I've already booked 1 hour and 30 minutes worth of iTalki lessons for French. This year, I'm counting my speaking time differently since I'm doing the Output Challenge. Instead of counting a 1-hour lesson as 1 hour of speaking, I'm going to estimate the time that I actually spent talking during the lesson. So my lessons for this week might count for 45 minutes of speaking, and then I just have to practice speaking for another 15 minutes on my own.

Doing enough listening and reading shouldn't be an issue since I can do those on my commute, so that just leaves writing in French. My plan is to use Édito for prompts. I blocked off four sessions on my calendar, so I just need to write 269 words each session.

I've also scheduled time for Esperanto and creative writing. My calendar actually doesn't look too crowded, even with all of these things planned! So we'll see how it goes.

[philomath]

01Jan23–08Jan23

French
01Jan23: I had a very productive day to start the year. First, I listened to an episode of Transfert about being bullied at school. I understood the gist of the episode, but there were a lot of important words that I missed. So I listened to the episode again while reading a transcript I created using Sonix.ai. I replayed some parts multiple times and stopped to look up words. I filled up two pages of my French notebook.

Later, I wrote about my week for 30 minutes and took notes on French grammar for 30 minutes.

02Jan23: I had a 30-minute lesson with Kevin. I recorded it and will count it as 15 minutes for the Output Challenge. I also wrote for 40 minutes and posted part of it on iTalki.

04Jan23: I listened to an episode of "French Expat" during my commute. I also read more of L'événement. Today a phrase that confused me was "rien moins que". Wiktionnaire gave two conflicting definitions:
1. (Vieilli) Nullement, pas du tout
2. (Plus courant) Tout à fait ; absolument
After pondering it for a while, I decided that Annie Ernaux meant definition #1.

08Jan23: I had a 60-minute lesson with Kevin (30 minutes for the Output Challenge). We spent most of the lesson discussing past relationships and how I met my current boyfriend. I got a lot of practice using the pluperfect. After our lesson, I recorded myself speaking for another 15 minutes and wrote 415 words on the same topic.

Esperanto
01Jan23: I did Unit 6 of Teach Yourself Esperanto. I really need to do a big review session sometime. I can understand the dialogues when I read them, but I don't think my active skills are very good.

08Jan23: I did Unit 7, but I rushed through it. Next week, I want to start reviewing the previous lessons. I keep feeling like I've fallen far behind.

Writing
04Jan23: I finished Chapter 1 of Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint.

05Jan23: I read Chapter 2 of CEV.

08Jan23: I did the exercises in Chapter 2. So far, I've been writing about the characters in the novella I just finished writing. It would be nice to do the exercises for some new characters, but I don't have any ideas. I need to set aside some time for brainstorming.

Comments
This week I had work for the first time in almost a month, so I was pretty tired. I ended up moving a lot of things around in my schedule, but I got a lot done!

[philomath]

Goals for 09Jan23–15Jan23

French
[X] : 150 / 150 Do 150 min of listening practice.
[ ] : 0 / 60 Do 1 hour of speaking practice.
[X] : 54 / 54 Finish reading L'événement (54 more pages).
[ ] : 185 / 1075 Write 1075 words.

Esperanto
[ ] : 0 / 1 Finish Unit 8 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto.
[X] : 4 / 4 Review Units 1–4.

Writing
[ ] : 0 / 1 Read Chapter 3 of Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint.
[ ] : 0 / 5 Do the exercises in Chapter 3.

Comments
I'm not too confident I'll achieve my goals this week. I have a lot of things to do at work, and I'm going away for one night over the weekend. I'm starting to wonder if I should divide my weeks into French Weeks and Writing Weeks, so I don't have to focus on too many things at once.

[jackb]

01Jan23: I did Unit 6 of Teach Yourself Esperanto. I really need to do a big review session sometime. I can understand the dialogues when I read them, but I don't think my active skills are very good.

08Jan23: I did Unit 7, but I rushed through it. Next week, I want to start reviewing the previous lessons. I keep feeling like I've fallen far behind.

I feel the same way and have from the beginning. The listening and speaking section at the end of the unit get me every time. I'm getting better every week, but it's hard to feel like I missed a prerequisite somewhere along the line.

[philomath]

09Jan23–13Jan23

One of my coworkers was out sick this week, so I had double the amount of work and it was terrible. As I result I wasn't very productive at night.

French
09Jan23: I continued reading L'événement during my commute. I had to stay at work until 7:30pm, so initially all I did after work was review my Anki cards. Then I got a second wind and did one of the writing exercises in Édito.

10Jan23: I reviewed my Anki cards during my commute. I finally cleared my backlog of new cards. Work was exhausting again, but when I got home I finished reading L'événement. I've now read 1643 pages for the Super Challenge!

11Jan23: I listened to an episode of InnerFrench and a part of an episode of PodcastScience.fm.

12Jan23: I listened to an episode of Transfert.

13Jan23: I started listening to the audiobook of Bonjour Tristesse, but I think I'd rather read the physical book.

Esperanto
10Jan23: I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to delete all of my Anki cards and start fresh. Next, I reviewed Unit 1 in Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto. First I skimmed through the chapter and made new flashcards for words that I had forgotten which seemed important. Then I did all the exercises. It was nice to see that I can remember the question words much better than when I started.

11Jan23: I reviewed Unit 2.

Comments
I definitely overdid it with my goals this year. I just really want to improve my French and my creative writing. In my last post, I mentioned working on either one or the other each week, but I don't think that's doable either. I may change my Output Challenge goal from the full challenge to a half challenge, but I haven't made that leap yet. However, I did decide to stop logging my progress for the AI6WC. I was excited to participate in it, but it's too difficult keeping track of my personal goals and all of these different challenges. I also decided to decrease my creative writing goals for the year. I want to have fun writing rather than pressure myself with some arbitrary word-count goal.

[philomath]

14Jan23–15Jan23

French
14Jan23: I wrote 114 words about going to the dentist.

15Jan23: I started reading Je revenais des autres. I bought the sequel when I was in Barcelona, not realizing that it was the second book in a series. The description sounded good, but I decided to stop reading after 40 pages. As a writer, I try not to bad-mouth other people's work, but... I have no idea how this book got such good reviews online.

Esperanto
14Jan23: I reviewed Units 3–4 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto. So far, the review is going well. I think Unit 5 is where my problems started.

Comments
This weekend I visited two bookstores in Brattleboro, Vermont. The first one, Everyone's Books, had a little section of language coursebooks, but I didn't find anything that interested me. The second store, Brattleboro Books, had a shelf of French literature, where I found La Chatte by Colette. I also discovered Esperanto for Americans by Stanley A. Klukowski, which was published in 1950. I really like Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto, but sometimes I can't resist buying a really old book.

[philomath]

Goals for 16Jan23–22Jan23

Esperanto
[X] : 3 / 3 Review Units 5–7 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto.
[ ] : 0 / 1 Finish Unit 8.

Writing
[ ] : 0 / 60 Brainstorm new ideas for at least an hour.
[ ] : 0 / 1 Read Chapter 3 of Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint.
[ ] : 0 / 5 Do the exercises in Chapter 3.

Comments
This week is going to be another busy one at work, especially because I have to cover my group's lab work over the weekend. For that reason, I decided to ignore French this week so I can focus on Esperanto and writing. Then the week after, I'll work mostly on French.

[philomath]

16Jan23–22Jan23

French
17Jan23: I listened to a 50-minute episode of French Expat.

19Jan23: I listened to the first 30 minutes of Podcast Science, but I had to stop because one of the speakers was so close to the mic that I could hear all her lip-smacking/saliva sounds. I guess that doesn’t bother some people, but I thought it was terrible! It’s a shame because the podcast episode was interesting. Later, I started reading L'Inconnue de la Seine by Guillaume Musso.

Esperanto
18Jan23: I had time before work, so I reviewed Unit 5 of Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto. The first time I did the unit, I was a little confused about the difference between the -em- and -ul- affixes. I think I get it better now.

Later, I reviewed Unit 6. I love food, but for some reason I have no patience for learning lists of food vocabulary. I think that's partly what made me want to review Units 1–7. However this time around, I still couldn't bring myself to memorize the words. I think I should at least write them all down so I can refer to them when doing the exercises in the book.

22Jan23: I reviewed Unit 7.

Writing
19Jan23: I finally dusted off my old sci-fi novel (figuratively—it's all in digital form) and started planning the next draft. The previous draft had some plot issues, and I had given up on fixing them for a while. Some time last year, I did an exercise where I came up with four questions related to the plot, wrote answers on index cards, and then scrambled them up. I came up with five new plots, some of them similar to the previous draft and some of them pretty different. But then I stopped there, paralyzed by the worry that I would make the wrong choice.

Anyway, last night I took a look at the first option and wrote down some notes about it. It's very similar to the last draft, but the plot makes more sense. Still, I'm intrigued by some of the other options I came up with, so I want to explore those too.

[philomath]

Goals for 23Jan23–29Jan23

French
[ ] : 40 / 230 Do 230 minutes of listening practice.
[ ] : 30 / 90 Do 1.5 hours of speaking practice.
[ ] : 263 / 2000 Write 2000 words.

Esperanto
[ ] : 0 / 1 Do Esperanto Unit 8.

Comments
I'm starting to feel like I'm doing too many things at once, which is odd because I didn't accomplish most of my goals last week. I'm going to be very busy this week because I'm going to a three-day training at work. However, I booked two French lessons for the weekend, so I want to at least prepare for those.