French, Japanese and Who Knows What Else

[Sarafina]

I'm exhausted.

I have Biology IA to finish by Friday. I need to prepare and email basically 7 mini essays by tomorrow. and need to write my global politics speech now. And then submit my application to university. Then I have three Italki lessons. I now agreed to a bunch of exchanges on Skype this week because I am trying to get at least 5 hours of speaking French to someone a week. My French coursework needs to be finished before tonight.

Send help soon.

[DaveBee]

Send help soon.

Tea and [quiet] screaming prescribed.

[Sarafina]

Send help soon.

Tea and [quiet] screaming prescribed.

Honestly I've been drowning my sorrows with tea.

[Sarafina]

I just had a brief exchange in French.

I haven't spoken French for 3 weeks and it shows. I feel really insecure as I still struggle to speak exactly what I want to say. Although I can convey my points and be able to have a decent debate in French about a wide variety of issues- it's still riddled with mistakes and sometimes I take a while to respond.

In that exchange, I felt like my French was just embarrassingly basic and slow. Her English was so good and we're the same age. She said my French was good but I struggle to believe it. I have been getting compliments on my French in the last two months. But I don't know if it's because they have low expectations of foreigners speaking French or they're just being nice.

That being said I remember that at the start of 2017. I remember that practically no-one ever complimented my French and would instead say things like you'll get better with practice or at least you're making the effort to speak. Some would straight up roast my French or stick to English.

I'll suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

[Sarafina]

I messed up.

I've finished my English orals and I messed up a bit when analysing the poem. I was brooding over it a bit for some time at home. I log on to Italki to note when my next lesson is. And turns out I missed a lesson with my favourite Italki teacher. I feel awful. I've apologised so many times. I've never done something like this before.

Since I've started school, I've been so stressed out and I realise how much work I need to do to get at least 42 in the IB. I barely even sleep anymore.

[Sarafina]

I've just realised that PeterMollenburg and emk are two different people. In my mind they were interchangeable.

I don't know if how I managed to go on so long with that assumption. In my defence, they have lot of similarities: they are both Westerners who speak French at a high level (at least above B2); I don't know if they both have a partner who can French and they're both...Well that was a pretty poor defence on my part. I have no excuse for mixing them up

[Maiwenn]

Since I've started school, I've been so stressed out and I realise how much work I need to do to get at least 42 in the IB. I barely even sleep anymore.

Please make sure you get enough sleep. If your current extracurricular language learning schedule is adding to your stress rather than helping you with your coursework, you need to scale back and adjust your plans. Take care of yourself. Perhaps only do one hour of italki lessons rather trying to fit 5 hours of speaking, but make that hour count. Throughout the week, you can still engage in self-talk and other practice, but these can be smaller bites of time rather than chunks of one hour.

You've got a lot on your plate. It's okay to readjust your plans. Think long-term sustainability rather than short-term progress. One hour of one-on-one lessons will serve you far better than a few weeks of 5 hours speaking before getting burnt out.

Good luck. :)

[Sarafina]

Since I've started school, I've been so stressed out and I realise how much work I need to do to get at least 42 in the IB. I barely even sleep anymore.

Please make sure you get enough sleep. If your current extracurricular language learning schedule is adding to your stress rather than helping you with your coursework, you need to scale back and adjust your plans. Take care of yourself. Perhaps only do one hour of italki lessons rather trying to fit 5 hours of speaking, but make that hour count. Throughout the week, you can still engage in self-talk and other practice, but these can be smaller bites of time rather than chunks of one hour.

You've got a lot on your plate. It's okay to readjust your plans. Think long-term sustainability rather than short-term progress. One hour of one-on-one lessons will serve you far better than a few weeks of 5 hours speaking before getting burnt out.

Good luck.

Thank you. I needed to hear this.

The reason why I'm aiming for at least 5 hours of speaking is that I have a speaking exam at the end of February. Normally we're meant to have conversational class in school for at least once a week. Personally it think it should be at least three times. However for some reason/excuse they haven't been any conversational class at all. Something I am considering raising my concern with my form tutor.
So all the work has fallen on me to seek French oral practice on my own. If my teachers did their side of work, all I would have to do is maybe commit to one hour of one-one lessons and an hour long exchange with another native French speaker.

To be honest I've struggle to get 5 hours of speaking so I can only afford to pay for at least 1-2 Italki lesson a week and the rest are with decent language exchange partners I've found over the year.

After my French oral exam, I plan on committing to just doing at least one exchange a week and maybe the occasional Italki lesson.

[Sarafina]

It's a shame that I've barely spent any time at all since I've started this long on Japanese. Every time I want to study Japanese, I feel guilty as I could use that time to improve my French which I'm actually studying and will used as part of my entry to university. However I still manage to find time to browse and research random topics/go to on tumblr/watch the occasional movie.

If I was to stop all of that I could probably find at least one hour on weekdays and 2-3 hours of weekends worth of revision I can devote to learn Japanese. However I don't know how far I can get with that.

I struggle to appreciate trying to do something in 1 year at steady and reasonable pace than to achieve the same results in a shorter span of time but going at an intense pace.

I'm a go big or go home person.

[Sarafina]

I've been ill for the last couple of days. It's my birthday soon. I am going to spend it all by...finishing all my coursework.

Honestly by next week, I should have sorted out all my coursework and maybe just to tweak or iron out a few details. Then I can have the joy of just preparing for my exams.