JennW's Swedish log

[jennw]

I've been reading the boards here for a while and thought maybe it was a good time to start a log here for my own language learning. I have learned various languages in the past but for now I am mainly focused on Swedish for one reason: in October last year, my husband and I relocated to Sweden! This obviously gives me a very strong incentive to focus all my efforts on achieving a reasonable level in Swedish for now.
Obviously living in Sweden offers many advantages for my language learning, not least the easy access to native materials. At the moment, I am making a lot of use of Anki (I really like flashcards and studying them on my phone on the way to and from work seems to work for me). I attend SFI classes one evening a week and have just taken the reading/listening/writing tests to complete the C course - in case that means anything to anyone - so hopefully I'll find out soon if I've passed them, in which case I sit the speaking test too, or not, in which case I'll stay in the C class a bit longer. I read everything I can get my hands on - current favourites are the news from SVT's website and science textbooks from the school I work at. I'm trying to improve my listening skills so I've just graduated from Klartext's news podcast to "real" news podcasts (which I understand varying amounts of but usually not too much yet!) and I'm getting into TV4's online player and watching things like Sveriges Mästerkock.
I'll try to post here to say what I'm up to and how it's going. If anyone has any tips they would be warmly welcomed!

[Sooniye]

Welcome to the forum! And welcome to Sweden as well!

You seem to be very motivated and it seems it is paying off. I hope you will pass the tests! Good luck with your studies and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. I'm glad to help if I can.

[Elenia]

Välkommen, Jenn! Jag hoppas att du trivs bra här If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm very interested to follow your log and your journey! Lycka till!

[jennw]

Välkommen, Jenn! Jag hoppas att du trivs bra här If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm very interested to follow your log and your journey! Lycka till!

Tack så mycket! Jag gillar din logg och jag älskar dina mål - de är alltid intressanta men realistiska (inte "Läs tvåtusen böcker"!). Kanske försöker jag prova någonting likadan. Jag hoppas att du förstår min försök på svenska...!

[jennw]

Welcome to the forum! And welcome to Sweden as well!

You seem to be very motivated and it seems it is paying off. I hope you will pass the tests! Good luck with your studies and don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. I'm glad to help if I can.

Thank you for the kind welcome and it's so kind of you to offer to help. I'm really interested to follow your Croatian studies on your log too - it's definitely a language on my "to do" list!

[jennw]

OK, so to copy Elenia's style of goals, here is what I am aiming to do this week:
* Read intensively a section of Spektrum Kemi (probably about 4 pages)
* Read intensively 3 news articles
* Watch an episode of Sveriges Mästerkock or Halv Åtta Hos Mig
* Watch an episode of Vem Vet Mest
* Listen to one episode per weekday of P3 Nyheter på en minut
* Make a post on Lang-8

I'm also hoping I might be able to get to the library at some point this week so I can try and get a (fiction, probably crime-genre) book to try and read (extensively). I might also see if there's some kind of audio book I'd like to listen to on the way to work, but I'm not too sure what the selection will be like. If I have time on Thursday evening, I might also try and drop in to a language cafe I've heard about near my house - they meet once a week for a couple of hours to practise talking Swedish.

I had a really good SFI lesson this evening where we spent quite a lot of the time talking and discussing, which was great practise for me (of course I can read/study grammar/etc. at home so that's the main thing I want to get from a class I think). I also found out that I definitely passed the reading and listening parts of the test and I think I also passed the writing part (it's confusing because my normal teacher was off sick) so I'll be doing the speaking assessment next week Fingers crossed!

[Elenia]

Those look like a great set of goals I find weekly goals really great for focus and motivation (although I am no good at making sure all my goals are achievable). I hope they work out well for you!

Also, I'm pretty sure that I find your swedish much easier to read than mine have you been attending SFI classes since you moved? How have you found them?

Oh! And well done on your exams! Good luck with the speaking exam!

[jennw]

Those look like a great set of goals I find weekly goals really great for focus and motivation (although I am no good at making sure all my goals are achievable). I hope they work out well for you!

Also, I'm pretty sure that I find your swedish much easier to read than mine have you been attending SFI classes since you moved? How have you found them?

Oh! And well done on your exams! Good luck with the speaking exam!

Thanks for your kind words

I've been attending SFI classes for about 3 months now (with about a month off over Christmas). It's a bit difficult to say so far how they are going - I started off in the absolute beginners class ("God morgon", the alphabet, etc.) so I asked to move up as I had already been learning a bit and that was fine. Then we've had a few weeks when our teacher has been sick, so two classes were combined which didn't really give me a fair way to say how useful the lessons were! So I've only really had a couple of "proper" lessons in the C class, and my teacher seemed to think I was ready for the test to move up to the D class, which is mainly down to my self-study I think. So I'm kind of reserving judgement until I see if I can move into the D class and, if so, what it's like! I know there's a lot of local variation in the quality of the classes - I actually live near Gothenburg rather than actually in it and my commune is a bit smaller so there isn't really any choice in where you go to study, but I've heard mixed reports from work colleagues who have studied in different places. For now I'll count myself lucky that I'm getting free lessons in the local language, which I know is not something I would get in many places

Since I'm posting, here's a midweek update on the goals I've achieved:
* Read intensively 3 news articles:
From SVT news I read: one on Donald Trump vs Ted Cruz, one on Matt LeBlanc hosting Top Gear and one on the flu season. I also read a short one on profits at Astra Zeneca, which is situated very close to where I live.
* Watch an episode of Vem Vet Mest:
Done, and I managed to answer some of the questions correctly! I'm sure this will eventually help my knowledge of Sweden and Swedish popular culture...
* Listen to one episode per weekday of P3 Nyheter på en minut:
I'm managing two per day on the tram on the way to work. Though my comprehension is pretty low at the minute, hopefully this will improve over time.
* Make a post on Lang-8:
Extending my SFI lesson from Tuesday, I wrote about the differences between homes in Sweden and in the UK. Awaiting corrections now...

[jennw]

So here's the rest of my update on my goals for last week.
* Read intensively a section of Spektrum Kemi (probably about 4 pages) - achieved I've now finished chapter 1!
* Read intensively 3 news articles - achieved as noted before.
* Watch an episode of Sveriges Mästerkock or Halv Åtta Hos Mig - actually ended up watching an episode of Leifs Restaurang, which I'm going to count instead!
* Watch an episode of Vem Vet Mest - achieved as noted before.
* Listen to one episode per weekday of P3 Nyheter på en minut - achieved. I've managed to work in 2 a day plus a bit of Gothenburg news. Hoping my comprehension will improve over time.
* Make a post on Lang-8 - achieved. I received corrections from one person which are now in my Anki deck.

Goals for next week:
* Read intensively another section of Spektrum Kemi
* Read an average of at least 1 news article per day
* Watch an episode of Vem Vet Mest and aim for at least 3 correct answers before the contestants say them!
* Watch two episodes of cooking shows (probably Leifs Restaurang but my husband has expressed an interest in Sveriges Mästerkock so maybe we'll end up watching some of that together)
* Make a post on Lang-8
* Study a chapter of Rivstart B1/B2 (maybe from the textbook, maybe from the workbook - I'm just starting this so I'm not sure what's going to work best for me yet)
* Read at least 5 pages of one of the books I borrowed from the library (I went for a Jodi Picoult and a Kathy Reichs, both in translation, because I thought being familiar with the stories might help me with the language... I'll see how that pans out!)

More general language stuff I'm doing that I don't think I'll include in my weekly goals:
* Using Anki, mainly for vocab I find in my reading but also for corrections from lang-8
* Listening to news podcasts on my way to and from work
* SFI lessons

One thing I'd like to try doing here is keeping track of interesting words/phrases I find in Swedish. I am constantly pleasantly surprised by how many idioms, etc. translate literally between English and Swedish (e.g. taking something "med en nypa salt" and that you can "kasta in handduken"). I'll see which new ones I spot this week.