Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. / The limits of my language are the limits of my world - Wittgenstein
I am new-ish to these forums. I used to frequent HTLAL years and years ago but it's been so long that I don't even remember what my username was. At the time I was studying Japanese and French steadily, but they have fallen by the wayside over the last few years. That has changed, so now I'm back and ready to start a new log.
Spanish - This is the main reason that my language learning slowed down. I have been in a long term relationship with a native Spanish-speaker and slowly working on my Spanish over the years. I've travelled successfully in areas where they do not speak English and I can communicate well with his family so my Spanish is definitely passable. Recently I realized that I've let myself plateau over the years. I never studied formally, learning mostly through exposure, so my grammar production can be quite horrific. I can't express complex thoughts because of never learning the subjunctive, for instance. (Commonly used verbs I can use correctly through exposure, like ser and saber, but I couldn't tell you the rules on conjugating any of them.) I've made it my goal for the next six months to really focus on my Spanish to reach a level of fluency that I can be proud of. I'd like to be able to watch any tv show without misunderstandings, for instance.
French - I used to be as advanced in French as I currently am in Spanish, but in the past few years I've had to suppress my French a bit. The language interference from French has led me to some embarassing moments. I've decided to put French on hold until I'm fluent enough in Spanish that my Spanish progress won't be hampered by studying French.
Japanese - I've been off and on again with Japanese for years and now I'm on again. I have a friend who wanted to trial run a tutoring curriculum in Japanese so I've been one of her test subjects, learning from scratch. I've found that Japanese pronunciation is similar enough to Spanish and its vocabulary different enough that it doesn't interfere with my Spanish. It only interferes time-wise, so I've been limiting my Japanese to about 10 minutes a day (longer on tutoring days) just so that I have daily exposure.
I've been working through the duolingo courses for various languages like Welsh when bored, but I'm not going to cover those here.
Since my current Spanish goal is to improve my listening, I've been working on listening to at least one podcast every day. When I'm low energy due to health issues, I just watch Spanish tv instead. Here's my ideal schedule:
1. Listen to an episode of Radio Ambulante or Espanol Automatico. Have a pen and paper in hand and jot down words I don't recognize.
2. Reflect on what I listened to, read my notes, look up words I don't know. If there's a general topic, such as "crime", I review word lists related to the topic so that I refresh my memory and find gaps in my vocabulary.
3. Repeat step 1!
4. Read the transcript. Turn any words I don't know into flashcards.
5. Listen to the same episode one last time.
15 minutes seems like the optimal chunk of time for each listen through. This means that I sometimes have to break the Radio Ambulante episodes into smaller pieces. They all have a commercial break halfway through, so I usually go up to the commercial break.
