2018: Learn Hard [DE, ES, ZH, EU / FLC: PL, KO]

[LunaMoonsilver]

Weekly Goals
Week Twelve Recap

Late update, I know (and no good excuse, I was being reallllllllly lazy yesterday) but I'm back. This week wasn't as good as last week in terms of studying but I still spent some time on languages most days. No massive breakthroughs this week, nothing amazing to report, just plugging away here.

(Oh, but I did go and see Pacific Rim: Uprising this evening so now I'm really ~feeling~ my Mandarin again but am not sure how I want to go about improving it yet.)

Deutsch

• Read 5% of Die Farben der Magie. - Done!
• Do 100 new sentences on Clozemaster. - Done!

Español

• LR two chapters of Los Juegos del Hambre. - Nope. Guaranteeing five minutes study per day is fine until it comes to more time-consuming goals like this one. I need to find a way to work this into my schedule better--because I really want to see if LRing is a method that will work well for me.

中文

• Do 250 new sentences on Clozemaster. - Nope. Did 169/250.

Euskara

• Do two Assimil lessons. - Nope. Did one, though!

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Okay, onto this week! We're coming up to the end of the month, so there's a lot I'd like to get out of the way. Also~ since presumably the new Super Challenge will be starting in May (right? right?!) then I kind of want to start with a fresh slate, so I want to get some reading done before that. Also, I have a couple of days off work this week (using up holidays before the new financial year starts, wooh!) so I'm gonna knuckle down. Why relax when you can spend time with your languages?

Week Thirteen: 26/03/2018-01/04/2018

Deutsch

• Finish Die Farben der Magie (22%).

Español

• LR two chapters

中文

• Do 250 new sentences on Clozemaster.

Euskara

• Do five Assimil lessons.

That should about do it. I'm going to look for another book to read after I've finished Die Farben der Magie too; it might be a Goosebumps book or two since I've just found the translations of those (and haven't read any horror in a while).

[LunaMoonsilver]

FLC: Week Five Recap
(21/03/2018-27/03/2018)

Honestly, I did very little studying this week. There were just too many days where I did nothing, which is really disappointing. My interest in Polish is fine at the moment, I just need to bring what I've learnt together so that I know I'm progressing. Mongolian is... hard. And I don't just mean the language; it's hard to keep my focus up when I feel like I'm not absorbing what I'm learning. I need to find a way to use the Peace Corps courses more effectively.

Polish | 32 mins (6.48hrs total)
I did a little work on DLI this week, as well as strengthening skills and learning new things on Duolingo. If I'm going to keep using Duolingo, I need to remember to keep up with the Memrise Polish Duolingo course, as otherwise I forget new vocabulary almost instantly.

Last Week's Goal:

• Do two DLI Basic Units - Nope. I worked on some of unit two, though. A lot of the beginning units have pronunciation drills, which are pretty time-consuming; luckily, Forvo seems to have most of the words I'm after to drill (and usually with different speakers), so I do feel like I'm getting a lot out of this course.

Next Week's Goals:

• Finish DLI Basic Unit Two, Start Unit Three.
• Learn two new units on Duolingo (present 1, negation).

Mongolian | 15 mins (2.97hrs total)
Pronunciation is as frustrating as it's always been, but it's not going to get better by me complaining about it. I want to finish using Peace Corps Basic Expressions and then kind of use it like Assimil; this means I need to gloss the sentences, because right now, I don't know what belongs where or how it's all put together. I should also start using Audacity more to slow the speakers down so that I can imitate their pronunciation a little better--more exposure to the language would also help.

Last Week's Goal:

• Do three tracks from Peace Corps Mongolian Basic Expressions - Nope, though this is frustrating because I thought I'd done it?
  Turned out I did one of the units on the last day of last week Two out of three isn't bad, though!

Next Week's Goal:

• Do three tracks from Peace Corps Mongolian Basic Expressions.
• Start glossing/working intensively with the first three tracks.

Ugh, that's it. I am 100% prepared not to give up on this challenge, I just need to get back into the groove of things a little bit. At the very least, I'm going to come back next week having spent more time on both languages!

[jaeger]

л

Yeah, what a weird sound. It feels similar to the German ch as in ich but wider (I don't know anything about linguistics). Feels like it would take some work to be able to put that into the context of a word. Luckily I'm not learning Mongolian!

[LunaMoonsilver]

л

Yeah, what a weird sound. It feels similar to the German ch as in ich but wider (I don't know anything about linguistics). Feels like it would take some work to be able to put that into the context of a word. Luckily I'm not learning Mongolian!

Yeah, it kind of is similar but is proving to be a pain haha. I hope that I'll get it eventually, but there does seem to be a wide variety in Mongolian pronunciation (as in any language, I suppose), so with luck, I'll find some way of pronouncing it that isn't so difficult for me!

[LunaMoonsilver]

Weekly Goals
Week Thirteen Recap

Wow, okay. First of all, I was doing so well this week. I'd actually started working on all my goals early (instead of studying hard at the weekend, as usually happens) and I was on track to finish everything--and then Good Friday hit and my weekend of 4am/5am work starts began and everything fell apart a tiny bit. Teach me to think just because I have to work over holiday weekends, doesn't mean I'll end up with any free time (or that I'll be able to focus without a nap!). Ah well.

But, the first quarter of 2018 is now over and so I wanted to take a look at how I'm progressing. I feel like my German is still pretty steady, though I know that my speaking skills are as terrible as they've ever been and I need some fine-tuning. Mandarin is also holding steady (at a much lower level); I don't want to lose this language completely but I'm still not sure what I want to do to improve it rn. My Spanish is improving, albeit slowly, as I try and read more and generally expose myself to more of the language--the Super Challenge will help me with this, though I know I need to back it up with at least a grammar book, if not a beginner/intermediate course. Basque is okay, but I should have known that Colloquial Basque would have annoyed me eventually and should have just tried to work harder on Assimil.

As the Super Challenge is coming up next month (I mean, even if it's not, I'm going to do it ), I want to lay some prep work in place for this--in the last two, I haven't completed the challenge for any language (not even for German! ) and for this one, I'd like to complete it with at least German and Spanish. (Mandarin is maybe a pipe dream, but I can give it a go.) This means I'll be setting monthly goals as well as weekly goals this month, with the weekly goals feeding into this plan. I hope this will work!

But let's look at last week's goals first.

Deutsch

• Finish Die Farben der Magie. - Done!

Español

• LR two chapters of Los Juegos del Hambre. - 1/2. I got the first chapter done so early and then forgot all about the second!

中文

• Do 250 new sentences on Clozemaster. - 91/250. Again, I started early (and I've got a lot of reviews to get done) but didn't finish.

Euskara

• Do five Assimil lessons. - 3/5. I'm still reviewing, so I should get onto new lessons this week.

---

Okay, I'll detail my monthly goals first, and then break down week fourteen's goals from there.

April Goals

Deutsch

• Read Das Licht der Phantasie.
• Do 600 Fluency Fast Track sentences (Clozemaster).

Español

• Finish L2/R2 LR of Los Juegos del Hambre.
• Finish L2/R1 LR of Los Juegos del Hambre.

中文

• Do 1,000 new sentences on Clozemaster.
• Start working through a graded reader (and learning the vocabulary with Anki).

Euskara

• Do 22 Assimil lessons (will take me to 25/50).

The goals for German, Spanish, and Mandarin, should help set me up nicely for the SC; for Basque, that will take me halfway through the Assimil book, which I hope will give me the enthusiasm to keep going. I have no intentions of dropping Basque, but it's easy to forget about it for days at a time.

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Week Fourteen: 02/04/2018-08/04/2018

Deutsch

• Read 20% of Das Licht der Phantasie. (I did 22% last week; no excuses!)
• Do 150 sentences on Clozemaster.

Español

• LR five chapters of Los Juegos del Hambre.

中文

• Do 250 sentences on Clozemaster.
• Choose a graded reader.

Euskara

• Do four Assimil lessons.

Yep, that's a lot more than I've been committing to, but it's time to kick it up a gear, I think. Plus, our clocks went forward at the end of March, so I've got a lot more energy to get stuff done after work, which makes a nice change. This coming weekend is going to be a no-study/very-little-study for me, however, as I'm going to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (finally! I've had the tickets for 18 months!), so am spending the weekend in London. Still, there'll be time to use CM, read, etc., so I should come back all optimistic and fulfilled on Monday.

Yep, I'm sure that's how it'll be.

[LunaMoonsilver]

FLC: Week Six Recap
(28/03/2018-03/04/2018)

Hoo boy, so you all remember that super-optimistic general language learning update from me earlier this week? Yeah, this one is not gonna be like that.

So, Polish is fine. I'm not spending as much time with it as I like, and I know the language is tricky, but I feel like I am learning, like I'm making progress every time I do put the hours in and that eventually, I'll get somewhere. Native materials look like they'll be reachable--perhaps not as quickly as if I was focusing all my time on Polish--but I know I can do this.

Mongolian is not the same. It's been six weeks and I'm not spending nearly enough time on it, it's taking monumental effort for me to sit down and study, and I'm not sure I even like it as much as I thought I did. Plus, every time I do hear it, I kind of just want to study Korean or Japanese instead, which I feel like will be more fun and more useful.

The thing is, I started out the FLC with Mongolian because it was a language I'd been interested in finding out more about (though I can't deny the lack of resources set up a challenge that I couldn't ignore) but now it seems like I may not have enough interest to keep us compatible.

That being said, I am not going down without a fight. Today is the start of my new FLC week and I'm going to try and dedicate myself to Mongolian for this week, hopefully getting another couple of hours in (I've studied like three hours total so far, which is disappointing but a testament to my lack of effort). If I feel like I'm getting somewhere, if my interest picks up, then I'll keep going. If I get to the end of this week and I've hit the hours but can't see my relationship with Mongolian going anywhere, I'm going to switch to Korean but on the same time frame as before (i.e., I'll still have to hit A2 by November, so I'll be behind by seven weeks). Korean was the other language I'd considered when I was first choosing languages for this challenge, but it has a lot of free resources I know of--however, I think it's difficult enough that there'll still be a huge challenge.

I think so, at least. Things could all be different next week, but I think this is where it's been headed since that first rush of the first couple of weeks wore off.

But, with that out of the way, it's not been an amazing week for either language, though I got a bit done.

Polish | 51 mins (7.33hrs total)
I didn't hit all my goals this week, but I did finish DLI Polish Basic Unit 2, as well as doing some work on Duolingo and started listening to Misja Kraków. If I can get through a few more DLI units, I know I'll have a good foundation; the drills are particularly helpful and worth doing the hunting around for audio. For Duolingo, I need to make sure I'm backing it up with the Memrise course because I am so bad at remembering the vocabulary!

Last Week's Goals:

• Finish DLI Basic Unit Two, Start Unit Three. - Done! Technically--I started some of the drills from unit three.
• Learn two new units on Duolingo (present 1, negation). - Nope; I've not quite done with present 1.

Next Week's Goals:

• Finish DLI Basic Unit Three.
• Finish Duolingo present 1, do Duolingo negation.

Mongolian | 10 mins (3.13hrs total)
So despite all my misgivings above, I used that (amazing) ten minutes pretty well; I finished one track of the Peace Corps Basic Expressions and started glossing the first--which was actually somewhat useful.

Last Week's Goals:

• Do three tracks from Peace Corps Mongolian Basic Expressions. - Nope, finished track seven.
• Start glossing/working intensively with the first three tracks. - Technically yes? I went through the first track (mostly different ways of saying hello/how are you) but none of the others.

Next Week's Goals:

• Spend two hours total learning Mongolian.

Ugh, yeah, okay, that's it for this week. I'll see how I feel throughout the week and either I'll come back next Wednesday feeling reinvigorated about learning Mongolian, or I'll be moving onto Korean... But Polish will still be there.

Do zobaczenia później!

[LunaMoonsilver]

Weekly Goals
Week Fourteen Recap

This week was... fine. Got some stuff done, didn't get some stuff done, had a great weekend watching the HP play in London (and going to the British Museum--I finally saw The Rosetta Stone!), and everything seems alright? I've started putting a little more work into Mandarin, which I'm glad of, but still need to up my game when it comes to Basque.

Deutsch

• Read 20% of Das Licht der Phantasie. - Done!
• Do 150 sentences on Clozemaster. - Done! (267/150)

Español

• LR five chapters of Los Juegos del Hambre. - No, 1/5. Need to get more of this done this week; I really want to be done with this book by the end of the month.

中文

• Do 250 sentences on Clozemaster. - Done! (281/250)
• Find a graded reader. - Done! I rediscovered the DLI Chinese Flamric reader (Vol. 4) on my computer, so I'm going to start working with that.

Euskara

• Do four Assimil lessons. - No, didn't do any. Will try again this week.

Additional Activities

• Watched one (20m) YouTube video in German.

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Week Fifteen: 09/04/2018-15/04/2018

Deutsch

• Read 20% of Das Licht der Phantasie.
• Do 150 sentences on Clozemaster.

Español

• LR five chapters of Los Juegos del Hambre.

中文

• Do 250 sentences on Clozemaster.
• Work through unit one of the graded reader.

Euskara

• Do five Assimil lessons.

Yeah, goals are looking a bit same-y right now, but that's not completely unexpected. I want to add more TV/videos in to improve listening (and just because I should; I'm not really watching good English TV right now so I'm really wasting a lot of time on it) and for this week, definitely, I'm going to try and focus my time on reaching those Spanish and Basque goals.

Also (a sidenote that I'll visit more on Wednesday), what has happened to Duolingo? I went on it today and they've added these 'Crown' levels and stuff... ugh. Time will tell if it's good or not but a lot of people are complaining on the discussion boards. Idk yet how I feel but hopefully a couple of days working on my Polish tree should give me a good idea.

[LunaMoonsilver]

FLC: Week Seven Update
(04/04/2018-10/04/2018)

Yeah, I dropped Mongolian.

I could not at all summon up the enthusiasm to study it this week, so I thought I'd spend a little time with Korean, see if I felt better about it--and I've ended up studying more Korean in the past two days than I studied Mongolian in seven weeks. It's a shame, but I learnt a little about Mongolian and found out it wasn't the language for me.

Korean is though; I'm really enjoying it. I've had little flirtations in the past with it (I think I looked over the first lesson of Integrated Korean a few years ago and did the first Pimsleur track around that time; I'd also done Alphabet I on Duolingo but can't remember when, so I just reset the whole thing), but nothing substantial, so aside from some general knowledge about the language, I'm pretty much starting from zero. I have watched a couple of dramas but with English subs and can't remember any language from those.

So far, my resources consist of: FSI Korean Basic (which has audio!!), Duolingo, Memrise, TTMIK, Lingodeer and access to various Korean dramas through Viki, which is free and legal, as far as I know anyway.

Also good news: dropping Mongolian has increased my drive to learn Polish by about a thousand percent. Very excited to be getting back into this challenge.

Polish | 143 mins (9.72hrs total)
Hit all my goals for this week and did a little more Duolingo work. That crown system they've introduced is fine for me for learning, but like a lot of people have been complaining about on the discussion boards, it doesn't show skill decay as well as it used to. That means I need to keep an eye on what I'm forgetting and go back to do it, which is kind of a pain. If I keep going at this pace, I might go back at each checkpoint and level the skills up, which should hold it off.

I'd also like to add more audio practice for Polish, as DLI Basic has no audio and the Duolingo audio is all computer-generated. I'm going to actually start LRing this week, as well as continuing to use the Misja Kraków podcast (it shouldn't take that long to work through, I don't think).

Last Week's Goals:

• Finish DLI Basic Unit Three. - Done!
• Finish Duolingo present 1, do Duolingo negation. - Done! Also did: possession, pronouns 1, present 2, family, colours.

Next Week's Goals:

• Finish DLI Basic Unit Four.
• Listen to two episodes of Misja Kraków.
• Duolingo: questions, present 3.
• LR one chapter of A Christmas Carol (L2/R2, L2/R1x2).

Korean | 205 minutes (3.42hrs total)
Yay, I'm just so excited to learn Korean! So far, my main resources have been apps, though I also used this YouTube video to learn Hangul. I'm going to start with the FSI course (supplemented with TTMIK and other resources) this week.

Next Week's Goals

• Do FSI Basic Unit One.
• Duolingo: alphabet 3, basics 1.
• Watch one episode of a drama.

Aaaaaaaaaaand that's it! Here's to this enthusiasm extending to next week!

[iguanamon]

Good job, LunaMoonsilver! I used a most of the DLI Haitian Creole Basic Course without audio. Fortunately HC is a very phonetic language and its pronunciation is quite regular. Once I learned how to pronounce it, my inner voice was enough. You are making good progress. Keep up the good work and good luck!

[LunaMoonsilver]

Good job, LunaMoonsilver! I used a most of the DLI Haitian Creole Basic Course without audio. Fortunately HC is a very phonetic language and its pronunciation is quite regular. Once I learned how to pronounce it, my inner voice was enough. You are making good progress. Keep up the good work and good luck!

Thanks, iguanamon! I'm hoping I'll have a similar experience with Polish and that the LRing/eventual extra listening will be enough to clear up any pronunciation errors I might have picked up. And I'm so glad to have switched to Korean now; I was worried for a minute there that I wasn't cut out for the challenge but sometimes there are languages we're just not compatible with. I'm back on the horse now, though--can't wait to see what progress I'll have made by November