Summer 2018: Hopefully Plenty of Sunshine and Language Learning

[Sarafina]

Overview about my situation
I've finished my IB exams. If anyone does the IB, then you would understand why this is a time of celebration. I now have lots of free time. I have about 4 months of summer holidays- although I plan on getting a part time job and I have some other non-language related goals/plans but I still have so much time that I can devote to language learning.

I want to use this summer to experiment with different language strategies that I've encountered and to focus on areas of my French that I am not satisfied with.

Currently my French is probably around a B1 with a B2 in reading and my perception of my listening ability is constantly changing- it could be anything from a B1 to a (low) B2. I learnt bits and bobs of Japanese once upon a time- I still remember most of the hiragana and katakana and some random phrases there and there.

Reflections on my past language language experiences

I've been reading some articles and watching some podcasts by Olly Richards on language learning which I'm finding to be very helpful. https://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/ ... d-japanese
Anyways, the one thing that stuck out to me was how it's easy to study a language without having a concrete idea of why you are doing what you are doing and if what you are doing is even helpful for what you want to achieve. One thing that resonated with me of the importance of having a clear short-term goal that you really want to achieve/make you the most happiest to be able to do and spend majority of your time working towards it.
For example, if you want to improve your speaking then you can set the target of being able to have a decent conversation in your target language for at least one hour. So you spend most of time preparing for things that will be relevant for a conversation that you want to have and spend 3-5 hours a week speaking to native speaker in that language and study the stuff that you wanted to stay but couldn't. It's nerve-racking but you can see the progress in a skill that you really wanted to be decent at.

I did something similar to that with my French last year- my speaking improved dramatically. Sadly I've barely spoken any French this year (not counting the occasional exchanges there and there) and it's very obvious.

With Japanese and French, there is an abundance of resources so it's easy to waste time trying to go through all of them and getting burnt out and seeing no tangible results.

Although I didn't do as much as I could, nearly everyday for the last couple of months, I have spent some time regularly listening to something in French for x amount of time whether it may be a podcast or an episode of a TV series as well as reading something in French and I was able to build a habit (although over the last two weeks when I was having exams nearly everyday put a dent to that).

Now I truly realise that my skill in x aspect of the language is proportional to the time I spend practising that skill. Quelle surprise! Reading is my strongest skill... as I've spend more time reading stuff in French than I've spoken in French or listen stuff in French.

In my case, I used to complain about how I struggled with listening French but thanks to some wonderful advice I got on this site. I realised that I spent very little time listening to the language and if I didn't understand something I would get frustrated and avoid listening to French for a period of time and the cycle would continue. Since I've made an effort to try to consistently listen to something in French, my listening has improved tremendously.


Japanese
In my old log, I had some really ambitious goals for my Japanese. Although I love to be able to read Japanese literature such as Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata by the end of the summer, I don't know if I could achieve this unless I spent over 12 hours every day over the next 4 months intensely focusing on being able to read Japanese literature.

What could make me the most happy is to able to watch a Studio Ghibli film (and to a lesser extent an episode of Terrace House). I need to acquire a large enough vocabulary to understand the dialogue and to be able to understand it when spoken, and I need to spend a lot of time intensively listening to the audio. The time-frame I'm giving myself to 45 days.

Additionally, my brother is learning Japanese at school and it would be nice to renforce the things I've learnt by going through it with him.

Now that I have no school, I can devote 6-8 hours a day on average for language learning.

Resources I have and what I'm planning on doing with

1. I will be using Japanesepod101 to help to do systematically learn common vocabulary and help to create a decent foundation. This is based on Ari's Chinesepod method.
1) To listen to the dialogue with the transcription (less than 3 minutes)
2) To read the lesson notes and add the key phrases to Anki to review (less than 5 minutes)
3) To review on Anki those phrases (15-25 minutes)
4) To loop the dialogue section for about 10 minutes and shadowing it in order to internalise the dialogue
In total I will be spending 30-45 minutes on each lesson.
During the first two weeks, I want to go through 3-5 lessons each day and discuss some of the key things I've learnt with my brother. I plan on finishing all the episodes in Nihongo Dojo: Absolute Beginner by 24th-27th September. Hopefully by the time, I'm on 'Nihongo Dojo: Beginner' and 'The Path to Advanced Japanese', I should have developed a more efficient way to going through all the lessons. Ideally I have finished going through 200 episodes by the 3rd July.

2. Subs2rs deck of となりのトトロ (My Neighbour Totoro), Mushishi and Whisper of the Heart.
I want to focus on My Neighbour Totoro deck first as the vocabulary is a lot more simple and straightforward for the rest of May
Then focus on the Whisper of the Heart

I struggle with making my own subs2rs deck. I don't why it doesn't work for me. I want to make one of 'Only Yesterday' and 'The Secret World of Arrietty'.
Study time: To spend 1-3 hours working through it

3. Extensive listening with Terrace House, Haikyuu and other Studio Ghibli movies- which involves watching each episode/movie with English subtitles then with Japanese subtitles and without any subtitles. To add 25 unknown words to Anki. I want to have an activity that doesn't require intensive drilling of each word. I already enjoy these series so I can happily spend over 2 hours on this.

4. I want to finish going through https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-les ... n-lessons/ with my brother. Luckily it should take 72 minutes to complete. I should be finished by Sunday. With the amount of work I now have to spend on correcting fossilised pronunciation mistakes with my French (to be fair it wasn't really my fault but I could have remedied it by long time ago), I want to devote some time to Japanese phonetics. However I don't plan on spending more than 30 minutes on focusing solely on phonetics and pitch accent: https://community.wanikani.com/t/pitch- ... rner/18746

4. b) Potentially use Wasabi.jpn lessons as an extra resource to work with my brother on. But we shall see. Or maybe read Yotsuba together.
(30/05/18 This was taking time away from achieving my goal which involves near total focus on listening comprehension)

5. I have Japanese exchanges who I like talking to- to be completely honest we talk in mostly if not always in English but I use it as opportunity to ask questions about Japan, Japanese language and honestly to just have a chat. On Saturdays I want to practice the key dialogues that I've learnt with them to make my knowledge more active. I remember doing this a long time ago and it was really enjoyable and all the Japanese phrases that I remember are the ones that I practised with them.

French
I want to use this summer holidays to really work on my speaking and listening.

Speaking
Pronunciation/Phonetics/Intonation and all that fun
1. To work to fix my fossilised incorrect/unnatural pronunciation in some areas by working through Phonétique Progressive du Français (débutant). There's only 124 pages and 56 lessons. I want to power through this book as fast as possible. I want to go through 5-10 lessons per day. I will also be using https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... cR15l1ld60. (There's 484 videos. But I'd like to through at least 365 videos. Luckily there are less than 2 minutes long.) After I've finished all the lessons in the book, I'll use Golden Moustache for a source of shadowing.
Study time: 50-75 minutes

Getting comfortable with speaking
Ideally I want to have 3-5 hours of speaking in French. I've been able to do this for two weeks at a stretch but it's hard maintaining it week after week due to the availability of language exchanges. For now, I have two committed language exchange partners however one of them I find might be busy this month because of job related stuff and the other one is mostly reliable but she studies Medicine and that can be time-consuming.

I plan on getting a part-time job to help to pay to have 2-3 Italki lessons each week. I am going to be resuming my Italki lessons in June in the meanwhile I want to work on my pronunciation as much as possible.

1st- 24th September
To do a simultaneous interpretation challenge. I haven't decided yet how I'm going to structure this.

Listening
After having listened to a bunch of different podcasts, I'm sticking with https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/ ... -vous-leco. I don't know why I like listening to it so much.
I liked 'Noir is the New Black' but they haven't uploaded any new episodes.
I really liked the idea of Transfert by Slate.fr but I never really consistently listened to it as much. So I'm parking it on the beach for now. I like Frenchspin- I find it to be very accessible and a good confidence booster but it's so long.
But for now I'm sticking with Frenchspin and FranceCulture's 'Entendez-vous l'éco'

I've mentioned what TV series I will be/am watching in my previous log.

Steven Universe (I have 90 more episodes until I've finished with the series)
This is Us (I have 12 more episodes left to go). I should have finished this a while ago.
ATLA (I have 54 episodes left to go)
Le monde incroyable de Gumball (has 138 episodes in total so I have 135 left to go)

Les Revenants (16 episodes)
Le Bureau (30 episodes)
Breaking Bad (62 episodes)
Braquo (32 episodes)
Orange is the New Black in French (65 episodes)
Engrenages (64 episodes)
I don't know if I can finish all these series in 4 months. But it would be interesting to see how much I will end up watching.

I love movies. I want to finish all the films from the list of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I've already watched some of them. They're not going to be my main focus and I have no illusions that it will magically boost my listening comprehension. This is mostly for fun. There's about 70 in total.

Other Skills
I'm not going to be actively adding new words to Readlang. I have 5800 words stored in Readlang! To be fair, lot of them I already know but I just haven't deleted yet. I'm not going to be doing much reading. I want to complete all the exercises in my French grammar book before September. I've done quite a lot already. But the book is so massive.




5th July-5th August
Korean subs2rs challenge. Somehow I am going to learn to how to subs2rs. I am going to be using only 'The Heirs' (which is my guilty pleasure). It would be interesting to see how far I can get.

6th August- 6th September
Spanish Netflix Challenge which is just a glorified L-R method but instead of being audio books with bilingual text instead I'm going to be using Spanish TV series/movies on Netflix that have Spanish and English subtitles. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-realistic-t ... y-studying. Judith Meyer mentions a friend who was able to understand everything she read and anything the radio by doing the L-R method for 10 hours. She also says that 150 hours should be enough in understanding the spoken language of languages such as Spanish, French and Russian. I want to commit 3-5 hours each day.


I plan on using the rest of the September to make my skills in the rest of my languages more well-rounded. I don't know if I should use that time to do a different type of challenge with Persian- something that I can use to review a particular product/course. Unfortunately my library doesn't have many language resources such as Pimsleur, Michel Thomas (and they are too expensive for me to buy directly). Funny enough, my library has the Benny Lewis' Hacking Spanish or was it German. I am not too sure. If his 'Hacking Spanish' is available in my library then I might use it while doing my Spanish Netflix challenge.

Post-Summer Plans
-I don't know when to introduce Persian and Chinese
-At some point in the next 2-3 years I want to take the DALF C1

[Sarafina]

Japanese

I've finally figured out how to use audacity to generate MP3 files that I can use as accompanying audio for my cards on Anki. I want to create one for all the episodes on Japanesepod101. However breaking down the dialogue section into one line at a time for each card is not too time consuming now that I've figured it out but it still takes some time.

But at least while I'm doing it, I'm listening to the dialogue section over and over again. I want to use this weekend to make sure that I'm confident in my hiragana and katakana. I know most of it but there's probably a couple that may have slipped out my memory.

19/05/18- 20/05/18
In total it takes me about 10-15 minutes (to download the audio files from Japanesepod101, break it into x amount of sections, to add it to Anki with the correct text). I want to finish doing this for all 50 episodes in the Nihongo Dojo: Absolute Beginner pathway this week.
-This weekend, I want to finish going through
-I'm really enjoying going through My Neighbour Totoro. It's funny how many words I must have subconsciously picked up over the years. It's nice going through these lines with my Japanese exchange partners. It's very informative. I need to spend a total of 7 hour on it counting today and tomorrow.
-I'll probably end up going through the Japanese Pronunciation Lessons on the car or before I go to sleep. I need to go through 45 minutes of it by the end of today.

[Sarafina]

This weekend I was unbelievably busy. I barely had time to do anything. I was going to use Monday (today) to catch up with everything. But I overslept and I have to undo all my braids (there's a lot) by tonight (and I'm still not finished). I am trying to find a way to automatically add audio to my Anki deck which contains all the lines from Japanesepod101: Absolute Beginner set. At the moment doing it takes only 5-10 minutes now for each episode. I have 48 left. Which will take about 240-480 minutes to do which is still about 4-8 hours. I wanted to get everything finished by Sunday evening. I guess that plan has been throw out of the window.

When I'm reviewing the cards that I've made using the Japanesepod101 dialogue. I don't have a problem understanding the meaning when I hear the audio but I struggle recognising it purely on the text alone.

Report of the weekend
Barely anything was done. I managed to add only 2 episodes. I've spent about 10 minutes reviewing it.
I've been listening to some French podcasts.
Managed to find time to spend some reviewing My Neighbour Totoro
I reviewed some hiragana/katakana that I may have forgotten
I spent about 10 minutes on Wasabi’s Japanese Pronunciation Lessons

I managed to get something done. But it's not as much as I'd liked. I don't know whether I should drop shadowing the dialogue sections of the Japanesepod101.
The deadline is the 5th July for my Japanese experiment/project.

[Sarafina]

Sorry for basically disappearing. I underestimated how tired I would be after the IB. I needed a complete break from any type of learning before throwing myself into an intensive language challenge. Now I feel completely well rested.

I have 36 days until 5th July which is my deadline for my Japanese project. It isn't enough time but at least my listening comprehension will significant improve even if I may not achieve my goal.
One of the mistakes I made was trying to do everything at once. When reviewing the cards I was trying to memorise every single kanji that I encountered in my subs2srs deck. But it was exhausting. Now I have decided to focus solely on listening comprehension only. I wanted to do some serious work Japanese phonetics/pronunciation and pitch accent. But after the 5th July, I can do a shadowing/speaking pronunciation centred challenge. Then another challenge focusing on getting reading skills to a decent level.

It's disgraceful that I haven't converted all the Japanesepod101 episodes into my Anki yet. But I would say that I'll finish it today but with my track record I wouldn't hold my breath. I have also been suspending cards that are too long or too difficult or the audio isn't that clear of my subs2srs decks- operating on n+1 basis. This was the best decision I've made- I am able to go through more cards in the given 2 hours and I don't feel as frustrated. After I've gone through all the straightforward sentences then I'll unsuspend the card.

I haven't done much with French apart from listening to some podcasts there and there. I've started my 'French submissions for the Oscar' challenge by watching 120 battements par minute
without any subtitles. I've only watched 5-10 minutes of it but it isn't as difficult as I feared. It wasn't 100% comprehension (I would have been shocked if it was) but I understood a substantial amount to follow the plot.

My French language exchange partners are never available to talk. It's frustrating. Sometimes I feel annoyed that I just can't just reliable consistent French exchanges. My French exchange partner has a German exchange partner who they speak to for 1-2 hours everyday. Honestly where are these people and why can't I find them. I wish my level of Japanese was at least immediate because I have a Japanese exchange partner who is so enthusiastic and consistent but my level of Japanese is too low to have a decent conversation. Although I haven't spoken to her via video in a very long time. We mostly send messages to each other on Skype. I don't want to output too early and end up with fossilised mistakes.

I apologise for any typos/mistakes in advance.

I would appreciate any advice on how I should document my progress/process for my various challenges in a way that would have useful to other people.

[MamaPata]

Sorry for basically disappearing. I underestimated how tired I would be after the IB. I needed a complete break from any type of learning before throwing myself into an intensive language challenge. Now I feel completely well rested.

Very wise! I'm glad to hear it! This is your summer - enjoy it! You've earned a break.

[Sarafina]

I'm literally wrote an essay of a post. Now it's all disappeared. I'll try to sum up what I said.

The Japanese project is much harder than I anticipated and I'm not putting in the hours required. French is going really well. This week, I've spoke almost everyday in French with someone for at least one hour. I discussed how I realised that the key to consistent language exchanges is having a sheer quantity of language exchange partners. I want to focus on French and Japanese for the rest of summer. I can do language experiments while in my first year of uni as I would have access to more language learning resources. For Japanese, I want to work in sprints i.e. spend the first 4 weeks on listening/grammar, spend the 2-3 weeks working on pronunciation maybe via shadowing, spend 6 weeks on reading a lot of Japanese books etc.

[Xenops]

One of the mistakes I made was trying to do everything at once. When reviewing the cards I was trying to memorise every single kanji that I encountered in my subs2srs deck. But it was exhausting. Now I have decided to focus solely on listening comprehension only. I wanted to do some serious work Japanese phonetics/pronunciation and pitch accent. But after the 5th July, I can do a shadowing/speaking pronunciation centred challenge. Then another challenge focusing on getting reading skills to a decent level.

I know what you mean: I tried to use Japanese101 sentences on Anki with typing in the correct hiragana and having it autocorrect to the right kanji. It's a mess. I'll probably make a new deck where I'm not having to type anything, but focusing on the aural/oral aspects only.

I found this review of Japanese101 useful: http://www.nihongonobaka.com/japanesepod101-com-review/

[Sarafina]

I'm in Nigeria at the moment. It took a while to get internet up and working. Now the French site which had most series I planned on watching is now only available to members. I'm annoyed at the site and myself for not becoming a member. I'm trying to find another site but it's a challenge: they either have series that I don't want to watch, don't have the series I planned on watching, have the most annoying pop-ups and disturbing ads. I wrote an email to the other site practically begging to either become a member and if they plan on opening the site to non-members soon.

[Sarafina]

Wonders never cease. The site that I was lamenting that shut down for non-members has now reopened. Maybe my desperate emails helped. Although ironically I found another site which is pretty good which had French dub for shows that I loved as a kid. Honestly, my TV series lists is getting longer and longer as I am now watching Samouraï Jack and considering watching Kim Possible.

I mentioned before that I went to Nigeria and France. I spent about a week in each country. I wasn't sure how much detail I should describe my experiences. I'll try to limit to language-related aspects as much as possible.

Nigeria
It was nice hearing Yoruba spoken on a constant basis even on the streets. Yoruba is my heritage language. The last time I was in Nigeria, I was quite young. My grandparents have an 'househelp' that we could only communicate to speaking Yoruba. It's depressing how househelps are often mistreated in Nigeria (at least by Western standards) and how vulnerable they are being exploited and how too many of them (I suspect) are not even up to 18 years old.

At first I am hesitant to speak Yoruba at all but eventually boredom crept in and I was curious about her life. To my surprise, we were able to have a long conversation in Yoruba. Something I never thought possible. I always thought I had a passive understanding of Yoruba but nothing more.

She told me how she wants to be teacher and how she wants to go to school but her Dad said that she has to work first then she can go to school by the end of this year. I was in shock that she couldn't speak English at all even it's technically the official language of Nigeria. It's a shame that she's never been to school before but her brothers were allowed to go to school thus they can speak English. She's pretty hardworking. I asked how old she was but she said that she didn't even know. It wasn't all bleak. I had fun at times. It was nice overall. But I wish I could have helped her more. I don't know what to do besides being as nice as possible and trying include her in what I was doing and share my snacks with her.

I used to be so bitter on not being able to speak Yoruba fluently. In my parents' defence, they were advised to avoid speaking Yoruba to me so that it won't interfere with my English and that I would pick up Yoruba naturally from school. Except it seems like every middle-class Nigerian parent had the same idea. I will always be forever upset by that person who gave that advice. My cousins,who are born and raised in Nigeria their whole lives, still only have a basic knowledge of Yoruba because they go to boarding schools where English is the only person allowed. I've never meet a second-generation Nigerian in England who is completely fluent in Yoruba. It's a miracle that I even have any understanding of Yoruba considering that no-one hardly speaks Yoruba to me directly and I grew up strictly watching American cartoons and films. The only reason I have 99% comprehension of Yoruba is probably because I am very noisy and liked hearing gossip when I was little. The juiciest gossip were always said in Yoruba as people thought that the children wouldn't be able to understand it. But obviously that backfired in my case. People tend to shocked with how good my oral comprehension is.

There are times I tried to learn it but the resources available were rubbish and never went beyond the absolute basics. I already have an intuitive knowledge of Yoruba. I watch Yoruba movies fine without little problem and I am capable of communicating using Yoruba but it's not with the same fluidity and ease of a native speaker. A metaphor I like to use if that understanding Yoruba is like driving down a one-way tunnel (the direction of Yoruba to English). However when I want to translate from English to Yoruba, it can get messy just like how turning around a car in a one-way tunnel can be. It's possible but frustrating on everyone's behalf.

I think I just need speaking practice on a regular basis- I'm sure if I spoke in Yoruba for one hour 3-4 times a week. I would see considerable improvements. If I'm completely honest, I don't have many motivation or desire to subject myself that on a regular basis. I am happy with being able to eavesdrop subtly.

France
I did all the touristy things in Paris. I really enjoyed myself but I spoke very little French as I came with my Mum. I braced myself from rude Parisians who would destroy my confidence by switching to English and rolling my eyes when I spoke French. To my surprise, it didn't happen except once where the shopkeeper told me the directions to the toilet in English even though I asked for it in French.
Besides that one interaction, French people still continued to speak French to me even when I'm stammering to say a coherent sentence. I realised that my French is both better and worse than I thought. I was able to understand the news on the television of the hotel. But often I was lost when I was trying to listen to a group of French teenagers speaking to themselves. I was able to speak in French. But it could be better. My French studies are too inconsistent. I bought 6-8 books from France. I even bought two graphic novels which have gorgeous art styles.

Other
Japanese hasn't been going anywhere. I just get overwhelmed with it and impatient and I feel like I'm floundering around aimlessly. I discussed about how I think it might be better for me to work in sprints focusing at specific aspect of language that I want to improve in. I am still trying to figure how I should go about it without burning myself without an abundance of resources. Honestly, I haven't touched Japanese in three weeks so I'm back to the drawing board. I don't know how many weeks I should devote to each sprint and specific my goal should be.

French Stuff I liked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NeQPhwPME
C'est une vidéo intéressante. Dans la vidéo. le deux psychiatres discutent le thème principal et les paroles d'une chanson. La chanson s'appelle Julien par Damso.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-povoP-838
La chanson peut provoquer un sentiment de malaise parce que c'est le point de vue d'un pédophile. Je suis impressionnée par sa capacité à traiter des sujets tabous. De plus c'est écrit bien. Damso est l'un des meilleurs rappeurs francophones. Ses paroles sont lourdes. Cependant certains pensent que ses chansons sont trop grossiers et il est misogyne. J'ai un avis différent. Je peux écrire un essai sur Damso.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMMIKgf0bgc
DJ Erise feat. Aya Nakamura - Pourquoi tu forces
J'aime ce mélodie entraînante.

I'm been trying to find French Youtubers that are closer to my age. I want to able to sound more natural and understand better when French teens/young adults speak informal. Some of them are decent but sometimes I find their content to be tedious to watch for too long. There's only so much 'storytimes', (insert random) haul and reaction videos I can take. There have been some of videos that I sort of liked. But not enough that I watch all their videos.
The ones that I found to be most bearable:
Sulivan Gwed
(I wished I liked MademoiselleGloria https://www.youtube.com/user/MademoiseillexGloria and JusteJo (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWIajN ... Pi-Gs2l35A) videosmore as they would be most appropriate 'language parents' to shadow along to but I don't dislike their videos but I am not that into it either).

[Sarafina]

I'm going through AJATT's Table of Contents.

This post made me a little teary-eyed. http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... ding-mine/

I just found it to be so reassuring. I need to print this quote 'good advice is intended to make your life easier, not harder'.
Even though I know that language learning is fun and when I usually get myself into the rhythm it can be fun. Sometimes I use language-learning as a form of 'mental self-flagellation'- yet another thing I can use to beat myself. I think that's why I self-sabotage because if I was to actually get really good at French then I can't wallow around in self-pity on how much better my French could be.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... ble-games/
I tried making small winnable tasks. The only ones that were successful was during the later part of my IB was to listen to something in French and read 1-3 articles and reviewing my cards on Anki. I noticed a considerable improvement in my listening and reading. I know it works. But why can't I implement for the rest of the skills I want to master and up the intensity. I know I can't have great improvement without putting into great hours of time.

One thing I noticed that my most successful language related habits were ones that didn't require a time investment longer than 10 minutes. Most of time if I found it interesting then I would spend even more time i.e. read another articles or watch even more episodes etc.

I am trying to break all my daily goals by timeboxing it for 10-15 minutes. My current and failed daily goals e.g. read 50 pages of a French book a day hardly end up not being completed. Because when I'm tired I can talk myself out of reading 50 pages. But regardless of how tired I am, I can still spend 10 minutes and most of time I'll probably get into it and end spending longer than 10 minutes. On Habitica, I am changing my 'dailies' to incorporate it.