Ani's 2018 Log

[Ani]

...especially when it's -15F/-26C (and that had warmed up a ton!! From -40F/C)

We've been moaning about a cold spell here, but crikey! You've got the real thing.

(There was a radio drama a while back where a man added icefish DNA to himself to adapt to temperature like yours. You could get your children working on that for their biology homework )

Thats a great idea! I'll get my little mad scientists right on it. Hehe. -25F and colder really is just fricken painful



So I'm still *Loving* kwiziq. I think I'm going to cancel my one month membership to sign up with the three month plan. The pricing options are kinda crummy. Huge discount for longer plans, but you can't really know if you want a longer plan until you've tried it and possibly paid a lot more. I don't know. I understand, but I don't like it anyway.
I think I should be able to finish the material within three months. Maybe less than that. Honestly it's embarrassing how many issues this has found for me even in the A0 level : blush :. The conjugation for s'appeler can bite me. My phone suggested vous vous appellez so I cheated and changed my answer so I wouldn't have to see that question again... Only to realize my phone can't spell any better than I can.

I should probably search the forum but I'm feeling lazy and I'm going to get back to kwiziq so I'll just ask here... Has anyone done the Red Kalinka online vidéo course ? I like the graded readers and I was thinking about trying the videos... When I have free time :-/

PSA: Netflix has Petit Llama! The voices are nice in French and it's also in Mandarin, Spanish and German. I have a deep love for Petit Llama so I'll pretty excited to watch the with my kiddos

Edit: So kwiziq totally has a feature in your account settings to upgrade your package, with an auto refund of higher priced package and everything so that was super easy and took about 11 seconds...
There is also a writing practice feature they send out with translation prompt cards and correct answers shown for self scoring. It's pretty fancy and I think it will be helpful. They have one per CEFR level and I think they come out each weekend.

[Ani]

Still kwiziqing.... Log is getting boring.. I spent 2h trying to convince the A0 level to convert to 100% but it wouldn't go. The closer I got, the less percentage I gained per correct quiz (of 10 questions). It got to the point that I was gaining 0.02%. I got as high as 99.93% but then I mistyped something and dropped back to 98%. I worked my way up a bunch of times but that's a LOT of flawless kwizzes needed if you are gaining two tenths of a percent and I'm just not interested in typing out "je viens de" , "j'habite à" over and over.. so, more sensibly I started using the notebook feature properly and grabbed some verb topics that I actually get tripped up on and started quizzing them together in my notebook. It is so helpful working that way.
Also the sentences get better in the higher levels, for example:
Nous les zombies, nous mangeons les cerveaux humains.
And questions like "How would you say 'Harry smells like poo."?
Edit: wait I just got the A0 foundations award at the same time as the A1 bronze. Maybe there is some time/maturity factor or you need to work on other areas before it clicks over.

Oh and I did actually make an attempt at recording myself reading a story line I said I would.... But I dunno if I'm going to post it. I'm such a chicken lol. It's not that bad actually, speaking of the language, but like all recordings of myself I think my voice sounds super weird lol. I can't be the only person who is weirded out by the sound of their recorded voice.

And also I wanna learn Icelandic. This is not a new desire but gets re-triggered every time I a.) See a post by Soffía b.) Get an email from WOW airlines or c.) Read Norse mythology to the kids... On and d.) Watch Sense8 (little blush there because I think I've watched it like 6 times). Today was none of the above but I was googling quotes in French kind of randomly because I didn't know what to write in my journal today and I stumbled across a website/company in France that hand makes and sells like.. Viking jewelry. It's super cool. I might have to buy myself some.. and also learn Icelandic. Because ...

[Elenia]

I want to learn Icelandic too! I understand your desire so very well!

[Fortheo]

I'm intrigued by this kwiziq site that you keep mentioning. Do you have to slog through a lot of easier work before it's able to gauge your weak areas?

I like the idea of a site that can find the grammar concepts that I struggle with and then drill me on those concepts, but I don't want to spend hours going through quizzes on beginner's material before it can make those calculations. Obviously I'd need to do some quizzes for it to judge my competencies, but I don't want to go through a whole beginner's course again just to prove I'm not a beginner.

[MamaPata]

I'm intrigued by this kwiziq site that you keep mentioning. Do you have to slog through a lot of easier work before it's able to gauge your weak areas?

I like the idea of a site that can find the grammar concepts that I struggle with and then drill me on those concepts, but I don't want to spend hours going through quizzes on beginner's material before it can make those calculations. Obviously I'd need to do some quizzes for it to judge my competencies, but I don't want to go through a whole beginner's course again just to prove I'm not a beginner.

No, it lets you start with a sort of placement test, based on the grammar categories. For me that raised a lot of beginner stuff I've never really solidified (prepositions and location, for example). But there's nothing to make you go through all of it, as far as I remember.

[Ani]

I'm intrigued by this kwiziq site that you keep mentioning. Do you have to slog through a lot of easier work before it's able to gauge your weak areas?

I like the idea of a site that can find the grammar concepts that I struggle with and then drill me on those concepts, but I don't want to spend hours going through quizzes on beginner's material before it can make those calculations. Obviously I'd need to do some quizzes for it to judge my competencies, but I don't want to go through a whole beginner's course again just to prove I'm not a beginner.

No, it lets you start with a sort of placement test, based on the grammar categories. For me that raised a lot of beginner stuff I've never really solidified (prepositions and location, for example). But there's nothing to make you go through all of it, as far as I remember.

Yup you start with a CEFR level test that I think was around 65 questions. After that it recommends a level and starts giving you material based on what you got wrong or didn't answer. After the test you also have the option of ignoring its recommendation and working on material by CEFR level A0-C1, or browsing by grammar topic, and adding them to a 'notebook', where you have quick access to the topics to study or get tested on. No slog involved unless you make a bunch of sloppy errors and then have to answer a bunch of the same type of questions to prove you know the material. I recommend not taking the level test while you are doing 6 other things.:-/
I'm dividing my time between stuff I actually need to work on in the B and C levels, and filling in the lower levels because I want the awards

[Elsa Maria]

Ani, I have been thinking about doing the Red Kalinka course. I did a search on this forum, and only found reference to the readers. The readers look kind of fun. If you decide to do the course, please post about it. And if I decide to to it, I will post about it.

You talked about cartoons a ways back on your log. Do you like Miffy/Nijntje? She has a great YouTube channel in Russian. I love Miffy/Nijnte:)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdoOs ... jreload=10

I also like Yuri Norstein. I have watched Ёжик в тумане several times.

[Ani]

Ani, I have been thinking about doing the Red Kalinka course. I did a search on this forum, and only found reference to the readers. The readers look kind of fun. If you decide to do the course, please post about it. And if I decide to to it, I will post about it.

You talked about cartoons a ways back on your log. Do you like Miffy/Nijntje? She has a great YouTube channel in Russian. I love Miffy/Nijnte:)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdoOs ... jreload=10

I also like Yuri Norstein. I have watched Ёжик в тумане several times.

Thanks for the link! I've never seen Miffy but I think I could love it
I will def keep you posted if I try the Red Kalinka course. Probably not until this summer, realistically.


So I went a little nuts today and learned 50 words of Icelandic.. I decided I can't keep going with Russian if I feel like I'm sentenced to avoid dabbling and side languages until I'm competent in it. I resisted dabbling as much as I could while learning French. I'm pretty happy with French lately although I still have goals and want to keep polishing it.. but really I just want to have fun with languages again. I want to fool around and make a mess and quit when I feel like it. I mostly want permission to quit whenever it floats my boat. I am giving myself now until the end of March to play with Icelandic and see how far I can get. Not in crazy obsessive fashion but just for plain joy.


I'm going to keep watching cartoons in Russian because I like them. I'm going to keep reading for pleasure in French because I like that. I'm going to keep doing Kwiziq but maybe no more than 20 kwizes a day. I got to #30 on the leader board in less than a week, starting more than 10 days late on the month. I might have slightly over done it.

"For the joy" is going to be my mantra for the month. So much in my life is not joyful at the moment. That's not really a complaint, and nothing is terribly wrong. It is just.. hard. Kids and homeschool and moving around and hours in the car, cold weather and endless cooking and cleaning. I need more fun and less being responsible. At least in my very limited free time


Also.. haiku challenge.. need I say more? Who's in?

[Ani]

I watched The Oath in Icelandic today, just to hear the language. I was going for about 15 minutes and I started getting really impressed at how well I was understanding. I thought for a minute that my 50 something words+ English were just the key to catapult me to an intermediate level... I was wondering if it was just my particular giftedness, or if I had a new system that would make me famous...

Turns out do have a new system... It's called "the English subtiles are on, dummy, cause you can't speak a word of this language" hehe. I think I'll market it ')

The phonetics on first impression seem much more challenging with Icelandic vs Russian, but I have been learning words faster and I'm definitely seeing that shared origin with English which is nice. Surprisingly, I've even been able to spell them which I can never manage in French. This is only day 3 though so I suppose more may be revealed over the next month.

Chinese New Year is over and my business was busy today, plus I have a teething baby and DH is out of town. Not much else got done...

[Elenia]

Turns out do have a new system... It's called "the English subtiles are on, dummy, cause you can't speak a word of this language" hehe. I think I'll market it ')

That's my favourite system! You see results so fast! You forget so easily that you don't actually speak the language!