Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

[Lawyer&Mom]

I totally remember that line, and it might be the best in all the recaps. Although I have an Orthodox friend who has seen and loved the show, when I was binging on the series I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it, so finding the blog was pretty great.

Such a great show. You have to somehow find Shtisel next. Might even be better.

[cjareck]

That's really helpful to know - thanks for the more realistic expectations. Since I'm only working on one language, I can probably go through it faster, but it might make sense to focus on a unit per week once I get a few units in.

I also presume that you can do it much quicker than I. But please do not determine the length of the lesson in advance. The goal is to be able to do all the drills quickly and without errors. It is "overlearning". If you master all of them, then go to the next lesson, and do not bother if it were two days, one week or one month. Also, try to play with dialogues by providing the utterances when they ask you to do it. I must say, that I put them aside since I wanted to prepare special Anki cards for learning dialogues. I did for Arabic, and it more or less works, so I will go back and put the dialogues from previous lessons into my decks.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 9) - 30 minutes
FSI (Unit 1) - 45 minutes
Clozemaster - 45 minutes
Anki - 30 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episode 7) - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~135 hours

Countdown: 78 days
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I'm going to re-listen to Pimsleur Lesson 9 today - I didn't feel like I was responding to the prompts very well yesterday. In fact, based on @cjareck's feedback regarding FSI, I think I'm going to be more open to over-learning some of the Pimsleur lessons as well (rather than always feeling like I need to move to the next lesson).

Hebrew is the first language I've learned on my own, so I expected to bump around a lot at the beginning. I'm finally starting to feel like I'm getting a more defined sense regarding how to approach learning. This has been a tremendously fun journey so far!

I was thinking about immediate goals this morning, and I'd really like to push myself to get to A2+/B1- by the New Year. I think finishing Pimsleur 2 & 3, 20-30 units of FSI, Anki/Clozemaster, and continued input via TV series and radio should get me pretty close. As of tomorrow, there are exactly 11 weeks until January 1, 2019 (on a side note, that's hard to believe - I can't believe we're so close to the end of the year already). I'm going to include a countdown in my daily recap to remind myself of the timeline.

[cjareck]

As of tomorrow, there are exactly 11 weeks until January 1, 2019 (on a side note, that's hard to believe - I can't believe we're so close to the end of the year already). I'm going to include a countdown in my daily recap to remind myself of the timeline.

I must admit that reading your log gives me motivation. I wish I could spend so much time on learning Hebrew as you. That is, however, impossible.
Nevertheless, I will also start counting down till the end of the year. I must think about a goal to achieve. It surely will not be so impressive as yours.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lessons 9 & 10) - 60 minutes
FSI (Unit 2) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 10 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episodes 8 & 9) - 60 minutes

Total study to date: ~138 hours

Countdown: 77 days
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Alright, 11 weeks until January 1, 2019!

I have quickly realized that my expectations for FSI schedule-wise were too aggressive. There is a lot of material to go through in each lesson, and if I truly take the instructions to heart about over-learning, then it's important that I not allow arbitrary timeframes to cause me to rush through the units. While I certainly don't want to put self-imposed limits on how fast I can learn, I'm also cognizant of the fact that this language-learning journey is more of a marathon than a sprint. Success in the long-term will depend on building strong foundations early on. Thus, moving forward, I will start a new unit once I feel like I've got the previous one firmly locked in.

As of tomorrow, there are exactly 11 weeks until January 1, 2019 (on a side note, that's hard to believe - I can't believe we're so close to the end of the year already). I'm going to include a countdown in my daily recap to remind myself of the timeline.

I must admit that reading your log gives me motivation. I wish I could spend so much time on learning Hebrew as you. That is, however, impossible.
Nevertheless, I will also start counting down till the end of the year. I must think about a goal to achieve. It surely will not be so impressive as yours.

Hah! And here I am thinking to myself, "Man, I wish I knew as many languages as cjareck!" It's all a matter of perspective. The important thing is that we continue to persistently work towards our goals and have a lot of fun along the way. We can commiserate in Hebrew next year when we're B2 about how we were weird enough to do all of FSI

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 11) - 30 minutes
FSI (Unit 2) - 40 minutes
Clozemaster - 20 minutes
Duolingo - 10 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episode 10) - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~140 hours

Countdown: 76 days
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I was reading @zenmonkey's log this morning and remembered that he's done a lot of work with tutors for his Hebrew. @cjareck, did you work with a tutor early on or did you just start doing the language exchanges recently?

I've read through a number of threads both on LLORG and HTLAL about the dynamics of tutoring. I've sort of had the personal expectation that I would start doing tutoring/language exchanges once I got closer to the B1 level, but I'm open to revising that timeline. Regardless of the exact timeframe, I definitely plan to work with someone as I've seen tremendous value in both my career and my other hobbies from having coaching. To me, the monetary investment is far outweighed by the savings in time, energy, and frustration.

[cjareck]

@cjareck, did you work with a tutor early on or did you just start doing the language exchanges recently?

I had one exchange, well not exactly exchange - my interlocutor was not interested in Polish but let me speak with him. I thought I was to shy to take private lessons. But I read somewhere that something opposite is the case - pride. One is too proud to show his weak points to a stranger. So I decided to be modest and to look for language partners. And I found them

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 12) - 30 minutes
FSI (Unit 2) - 60 minutes
Clozemaster - 20 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episode 11) - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~142.5 hours

Countdown: 75 days
----------------------

I stumbled across an old LLORG post that mentioned an article by Olle Kjellin discussing prosody/pronunciation acquisition. I found the neurophysiology explanations quite interesting, though I don't have enough experience in that field to know if everything he said was accurate.

Regardless, I downloaded Audacity yesterday so I could play around with some FSI/Pimsleur sentences. I think I'm going to try to pull one or two phrases from each FSI unit that strike me as generally useful conversational phrases and practice Kjellin's chorusing method with them. I'm planning to load them onto my phone so I can sneak them into hidden moments, particularly driving. Guess we'll see if it helps!

[MattNeilsen]

@cjareck I think I just found an incredible resource for us to use! Check out this site - it's an Israeli podcast with over 200 episodes about history, science and technology. But the best part is that every episode also comes with transcription! I see lots of episodes referring to military history so I think you'll like it

Damn, I can't wait to get closer to B1!

[cjareck]

I see lots of episodes referring to military history so I think you'll like it

You are incredible!!! The podcast on the top of the website (number 254) is about 188th Brigade in Yom Kippur war, which is the theme for my lecture during a conference 21st-22nd November. I, of course, have, the book they mention there, but this surely will help master the necessary vocabulary.