Tumlare's Log (Mostly but not entirely Swedish)

[Tumlare]

Hi everyone! I am very excited to participate in this forum. Reading everyone's logs has been inspiring. Here's a little overview of what I am working on/hope to work on in the near future:

Swedish: I moved to Sweden a little over two years ago for my husband's work. My current level is around a B2, with reading and listening better than speaking and writing. If I didn't live here I would be very happy with my current skill level: I can watch native content (with subtitles), read fiction and non fiction books for adults, and I can express myself fairly well in conversation (well, when I am not suffering from acute shyness and social anxiety...) But since I live here I don't really have the luxury of stepping my foot off the breaks and allowing myself to slowly improve in the language.

My goal is to hit a solid C1 this year in each skill, and to add a little incentive/external validation I am planning on taking the SWEDEX B2/C1 exam. I noticed that I was progressing slower than I would have liked the past six months so I am hoping that signing up for an exam will light a fire under me--as well as give me a better idea of my actual proficiency in the language. I haven't picked a date yet--probably some time this summer.

One of my biggest issues is that I have a strong American accent which prompts people to switch to English immediately as soon as I begin to speak. I would love to hear any advice on how to reduce my accent. Another thing I am working on actively is the transition to consuming media without subtitles... It was a humbling experience re-watching an episode of a TV show were I understood 95% of the dialogue (with subtitles) 6 months ago--and now (without subtitles) I could only understand maybe 50%.

Other Languages Since this is an introductory post I thought I would briefly touch on the languages I have studied in the past as well as ones I hope to study in the future. This year I would like to start/return to learning other languages aside from just improving my Swedish. However, I am mindful of spreading myself too thin so anything aside from Swedish will have to be approached very casually (30 minutes a day max).

German: This is the main contender for my non-Swedish language learning this year. We visited Germany for the first time in December and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. I spent two weeks going through the beginner audiobook Complete German by Paul Noble beforehand and found it both useful and fun, if a little slow. Since we have plans to go to Austria this summer (and possibly return to Germany as part of the same trip) I would like to work on learning a little more German.

Danish: I live in Southern Sweden and visit Denmark a few times a year. I can read some Danish thanks to my knowledge of Swedish but listening is a completely different beast. I'm not sure when I will tackle this--it would be very useful to be able to understand spoken Danish but it isn't as exciting as learning a completely new language so I'm not very motivated to put in the effort right now. But someday!

Japanese: I took a semester of Japanese during college but I have forgotten almost all of it. Last year I started getting the itch to revisit it. I would love to visit Japan someday and to learn at least a little Japanese before I go, but any such trip is a few years off. My current plan is to try and pick it back up again in 2025.

Romance languages: I have a strong desire to learn Romance languages but I cannot decide between the big 4 (sorry Romanian, I just haven't had any contact with you). Every time I think about studying one I feel pulled in the direction of another so I end up studying none of them. I studied French for 3 years in high school and there is a part of me that would like to revisit it to see how quickly I could relearn it. Even though the American school system is notoriously bad at teaching foreign languages, I'd like to think I did learn something during that time so I wouldn't be starting completely from scratch. I was studying Spanish (A1-A2) when my husband got the job here in Sweden, and if I was still living in the US I would be studying Spanish no question--but for some reason I don't feel as much of a draw to Spanish now that I am in Europe... even though I have visited Spain twice and would happily return. I fell in love with Portugal and Italy and would love to learn their languages too. Too much overthinking instead of actually progressing on one of them! At this point I am leaning towards trying a comparative approach with a focus on passive skills (reading, listening) at some in determinant point in the future.

[Tumlare]

Things I did this week in Swedish:

Anki Last year I made a big push to get through the premade 8000+ most common swedish words anki deck (saw my last new card on December 30!). I ended up with around suspended 300 leech cards at the end of that effort. I've reset those cards to new and am going through them 5 per day (in addition to keeping up with reviewing the rest of the deck). I keep procrastinating on creating my own deck with words I come across in books and whatnot.

Listening This week I managed to listen to 7 and a half hours of podcasts. I'm a bit of a history nerd so I've been going through the P3 Historia Podcast archives. I've managed to make it through the backlog from 2017 and 2018. My comprehension is around 90-95%, but I often find my mind wandering instead of focusing on the podcast. This is a problem with English language podcasts as well so I think it's a me problem and not a comprehension problem.

Reading I set a goal to read 12 books this year (adult fiction and non-fiction). Last year I had the same goal but fell short of reaching it. In the end I managed to read 7 and a half books totaling 3062 pages. This year I am already running behind! With January ending in a few days I am just over halfway through the first novel I picked out (En djupfryst man i gula byxor |A frozen man in yellow pants). It's slow going in part because I am looking up every word I don't understand or am not 100% sure of and because I am not really enjoying the book. It's the author's first book and it shows.

Textbooks I worked through the first part of the second lesson in the vocabulary workbook Avancera Ord. The focus of the book is words of Germanic origin with prefixes that tend to confuse learners of Swedish. Words like 'införa' and 'utföra' and 'utgöra' or the zillion words that begin with 'för'-- all of which look like someone made a set of fridge magnets from 20 prefixes and roots and shuffled them together randomly to create words. My leech cards from the 8000+ word Anki deck are primarily words of this type so I am happy to have found this book. The book is split into 20 lessons covering 25 words each with reviews every few lessons. The words are grouped by frequency instead of alphabetically which helps avoid confusion from similarly-spelled words.

Speaking / Class This week my conversation class started up again. Once a week I meet with a tutor and another student. We have a conversation for 25-30 minutes while the teacher silently takes notes. After the conversation the teacher corrects the mistakes she noticed, primarily grammar issues, pronunciation, and word choice. I get along well with the other student and our conversations cover a lot of ground over a variety of subjects--it's great practice! We hadn't had a class since the beginning of December and I felt soooo rusty in my speaking but the teacher thought we did well so maybe I hadn't regressed as much as I feared.

Writing Absolutely nothing. This is definitely my greatest weakness and I want to improve... but I really hate writing (in any language!) and that makes it so difficult to begin. Ugh.

[Tumlare]

So far it has been one of those weeks where I have spent more time agonizing about my methods and researching language learning best practices than actually studying. This stemmed from a problem I was having with reading. I've cycled through a few different reading strategies (intensive reading, reading the English translation in parallel, extensive reading, intensive for the first 30-50 pages than extensive for the remainder) but I had internalized the idea that intensive reading from cover to cover was the gold standard--and when I tried something different I felt like I wasn't working as hard as I should have. For example, in December I read a translated Stephen King book while on vacation without looking up a single word and I understood almost everything. It wasn't as natural or as quick as reading in my native English but it was close. This should have felt like a big milestone, and it did somewhat, but I still beat myself up over all the words and phrases I didn't look up as I was reading it. As if they were lost to me forever. So I tried to switch back to intensive reading.

The problem is that intensive reading takes too much time! I have a goal of reading at least one novel per month this year and it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to finish January's book before the end of the month. Even though I understood ~98% of the words on most pages I was still spending a considerable amount of time looking up the unknown words, and when the author described a new scene the number of unknown words per page increased markedly, exacerbating the issue. It was taking me about an hour to read 10 pages, which meant that the entire 300 page book would have taken 30 hours to complete. Maybe this pace would have been tolerable if I was enjoying the book but I was not. I desperately wanted to move on to the next one. However I was stuck in the mindset that anything less than perfection (i.e. understanding every single word) was unacceptable. Typing this out it seems so silly and yet...

That brings me to this week, when I spent a few days reading old threads on these forums discussing the relative merits of intensive versus extensive reading. In addition I watched a couple lectures from researchers that had been uploaded to youtube which discussed the benefits of extensive reading. After all that I think I have managed to break myself out of the "reading that isn't intensive is a waste of time" mindset. I finished the last half of the book without looking up more than a dozen words and guess what? The world didn't end. But that book finally did!

So this month I am trying an experiment inspired by Tastyonions's 10 weeks 1000 word challenge: Every weekday I will add 20 new words to an Anki deck. 5 of these will come from the Avancera Ord workbook and 1 will be a phrasal verb (Swedish has so many!) but the other 14 can come from anywhere. If I am drawing them from February's novel I will only read intensively until I have found the requisite number of words but beyond that I will only look up words as I read that are strictly necessary to understand the plot. I did this today and found that not only was this method of reading faster, it was more enjoyable. And since I was capturing some number of new words I was able to keep the perfection monster at bay. We'll see how this goes for the rest of the month.

[tastyonions]

Nice, cool to see someone else inspired to take up the 1000 word idea. Good luck with your Swedish.

[Tumlare]

Swedish update for week 5:

Reading: I finished reading January's book and started in on February's: Under stjärorna i Paris (Under the Stars in Paris). Extensive reading is working quite well. I can follow along with everything even if I miss some details, and I managed to get 20% of the way through the book in 3 days in the limited time I have set aside for reading.

Listening: I listened to 5 and a half episodes from the P3 Historia podcast. Additionally, I watched the first broadcast of Melodifestivalen on Saturday. This is the competition show to select Sweden's entry into Eurovision. As a big Eurovision fan I have been looking forward to Mello for months. This Saturday's entries were a little lackluster in my opinion but I did notice a huge increase in my ability to understand the chit-chat in the live broadcast compared to last year so overall it was a good night. Can't wait for next week!

Speaking: Second week of my conversation course. I have noticed that people seem less likely to switch to English when I order coffee or do other errands--progress! I would like to incorporate some shadowing next week to work on my accent more.

Writing: Nothing yet, but I have a writing assignment for my conversation course that is due next week so I will be forced to do something at least.

Vocabulary: I kept up with my anki reviews from the premade deck and created a new deck for the 1000 word challenge. I entered in my first 40 words over the weekend. I hope to keep this up next week.

Other languages:

I am still interested in learning another language slowly on the side and have narrowed it down to either German or French. One of my biggest hobbies is playing computer games. Why not do so in another language? Alas, most games do not have Swedish localization. The game I play most often has voice and text localization in Japanese, French, and German. I know I don't have enough time right now to make a meaningful (re)entry into Japanese so I have narrowed my choice to either French or German. I am going to Austria this summer so my brain says German--but my heart says French.

I went to the library to see what resources were available. Annoyingly the entry level textbooks for both German and French were checked out. Maybe I'll have settled on a language before the books are returned.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Additionally, I watched the first broadcast of Melodifestivalen on Saturday.

That makes two of us. (Have you watched any of the Swedish shows previous years?)

[Tumlare]

Additionally, I watched the first broadcast of Melodifestivalen on Saturday.

That makes two of us. (Have you watched any of the Swedish shows previous years?)

Yup! This is my third year watching Melodifestivalen and I think it will be my fourth year watching the Swedish broadcast of Eurovision.

[DaveAgain]

Speaking: Second week of my conversation course. I have noticed that people seem less likely to switch to English when I order coffee or do other errands--progress! I would like to incorporate some shadowing next week to work on my accent more.

You could consider singing lessons too.

[Tumlare]

Swedish update week 6:

I decided to format this update a little differently, focusing on what went well and what needs improvement.

Wins:

• I actually did some writing in Swedish this week! I wrote a short story for my conversation class. It ended up clocking in at two pages and 1144 words which is the longest piece of Swedish writing I have done to date. It took me something like 5 hours on Sunday but I'm glad I managed to get through it.
  
• This has been my first full week of deploying my new strategy of extensive reading interspersed with short, intensive work and so far it seems to be working. I am able to read faster at any rate--I'm already 2/3 of the way through the book and the month isn't even half over yet!
  
• On the listening front I got through 5 episodes of the P3 Historia podcast, watched episode 6 of Historien om Sverige and watched week two of Melodifestivalen. (I thought the songs were better this week).
  
• I started a second Swedish class. This one meets for an hour and a half once a week and has a heavy conversation focus. More speaking practice is always good!

Needs improvement:

• Anki. I continued my February goal of writing down 20 unknown words per day. Unfortunately I fell behind adding them to Anki. It just took one busy day where I didn't get through all of the 20 words and then--suddenly, as if by magic--it's the end of the week and I have a backlog of 4 days worth of words that need to be added. I'm not sure if I should just buckle down and create the 80 cards all on one day or if I should pause hunting down new words until I add in this backlog at my original 20 words a day pace. Or if I should use a different method of vocabulary review altogether.
  
• Grammar. It has been awhile since I've done any grammar practice and I feel as though I need to review some concepts including the finer details from the Rivstart B2/C1 workbook. I have the Form i Fokus C workbook to go through, I just need to actually sit down and do it.
  
• Irregular verbs. I need to drill these more to solidify my hold on them.

Speaking: Second week of my conversation course. I have noticed that people seem less likely to switch to English when I order coffee or do other errands--progress! I would like to incorporate some shadowing next week to work on my accent more.

You could consider singing lessons too.

This is a tempting idea. I have always wanted to learn how to sing and Swedish does have a pitch accent...

[Tumlare]

Swedish update week 7:

A few notable things happened this week. First, I finished the book I was reading for February (Under stjärnorna i Paris-- Under the stars in Paris) halfway through the month. I'm not particularly fond of its genre (a feel good novel of the 'high powered career woman moves to a foreign city and finds love and fulfillment' type) and the plot was extremely predictable but it was easy to read and I learned quite a few new words and phrases. Second, I finished listening to the 2019 archives of the P3 Historia podcast. Only 104 episodes left to go through (plus all the new episodes they release this year). I should manage this sometime before the end of July or August. Finally, I got the feedback on my writing assignment (a fairy tale retold in a modern setting). The teacher really enjoyed both my premise and writing style. (That praise took the sting out of looking at the 8000 grammar corrections I received. )

I have been thinking this week about routines and habits. I have several language learning activities that I am consistent with. I listen to a podcast episode while I cook and clean, I read my book while I drink coffee, I do anki reviews whenever I have downtime and my phone available, I practice speaking on Thursdays when I have my two classes. However, despite having an abundance of free time and a desire to do other activities such as shadowing, writing, adding words to anki, focused grammar work, etc I just can't bring myself to start the activity. I think the difference is that the first group of activities are tied to specific places and times whereas the second group is just stuff I want to do but have no set time or prompt to trigger the behavior. This week I would like to get more intentional about my schedule and see if I can find a good time/place/prompt for those activities.

The booksellers in Sweden have a big book sale this time of year and I picked up a few titles. Glassmannen is a sequel to a book I read a couple months ago that I've been dying to read but didn't want to pay hardcover prices for. I also picked up Döda kvinnor förlåter inte which I heard about through Jeff_linqvist's log here on the forum, Tänk om...2, a translation of 'What if...2' by the author of the XKCD comic, and a couple nature guides (tree and bird identification).