Matt Neilsen's Hebrew Log

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 17) - 30 minutes
FSI (Unit 3) - 20 minutes
Glossika - 15 minutes
Clozemaster - 15 minutes
Anki - 20 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episode 14) - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~153 hours

Countdown: 69 days
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I'm putting a note here to remind myself that I need to get back to doing dedicated vocabulary acquisition. Pimsleur, FSI, Glossika, and Clozemaster are all fun and I'm definitely getting more comfortable with the language, but even if I mastered each of those resources, I would still be left with a relatively small vocabulary. I need to make sure I'm spending at least 15-20 minutes each day building up vocab.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 18) - 30 minutes
Glossika - 20 minutes
Clozemaster - 20 minutes
Anki - 25 minutes
Srugim (Season 2, Episode 15) - 45 minutes
FSI (Unit 3) - 15 minutes

Total study to date: ~155.5 hours

Countdown: 68 days
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I've been slowly working my way through the "General Discussion" sub-forum, starting with the very first post and reading to the present. Man, there's so much gold in those old posts! I think the biggest advantage of reading all those posts is that certain themes come up over and over: Time on Task, Consistency, Diversity of Methods, Staying Balanced, Knowing Your Goal, etc.

As a monolingual learner, it's incredibly encouraging for me to know that my efforts WILL pay off - it's just a matter of putting in enough work. I obviously don't have that knowledge experientially (yet), but I can "borrow" from the examples of others who have already been there. I originally found HTLAL while trying to find "the best learning method", but in the process, I've developed a far richer understanding (and more nuanced, dare I say) of the language-learning game.

[MattNeilsen]

Here's an update for the last 4 days (good to be back!):

10/29/18

Yesterday's activity:

NOTHING! כלום

Total study to date: ~160.5 hours

Countdown: 64 days
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Yesterday was go-go-go from the time I got up until going to bed. I even forgot to do Clozemaster yesterday and lost my ~60 day streak.

10/28/18

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 21) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 10 minutes
Anki - 20 minutes
Glossika - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~160.5 hours

Countdown: 65 days
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I decided to stop using Glossika for the time being. As much as I like the format, there were too many errors and I don't have confidence that I'm learning correct translations. I sent my feedback to the Glossika team, so hopefully they'll get a native Hebrew speaker to check out the course and make revisions.

10/27/18

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 20) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 10 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes
Glossika - 15 minutes
Srugim (Season 3, Episode 1) - 30 minutes

Total study to date: ~159.5 hours

Countdown: 66 days
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I'm liking Glossika - the production practice (and additional listening practice) is really good. However, there are definitely errors in some of the sentences, and it bothers me that I'm catching them with an ~A1 level of experience. Maybe they aren't actually errors and I'm just not understanding some level of nuance.

10/26/18

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 19) - 30 minutes
Clozemaster - 10 minutes
Anki - 25 minutes
Glossika - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~158 hours

Countdown: 67 days
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Some days I feel like I'm drowning when I do the Pimsleur lesson, and then other days I almost feel like I'm getting a grasp on the language. I still don't think I'm a huge fan of the program, though I must admit that having to focus on the audio has definitely improved my pronunciation. That being said, I will not be sad when I'm done with the Pimsleur courses.

[MattNeilsen]

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 22) - 30 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~161.5 hours

Countdown: 62 days
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I sent some feedback earlier this week to the Glossika team about the Hebrew course, and I actually got a reply from Mike this morning. In short, he said the course is still in beta (apparently it was just released over the summer), and there should be a round of corrections coming through soon for both the translations + transcriptions, as well as additional content.

Unfortunately, that means I'm probably not going to keep using Glossika now that my 7-day trial has ended. I don't feel like being a guinea pig in the early stages of my learning, and while I really appreciate Mike's response, I'm not going to pay $30/mo for an incomplete course. However, I will definitely come back to it down the road if it's improved since I really like the concept of Glossika.

10/30/18

Yesterday's activity:

Pimsleur (Level 2, Lesson 22) - 30 minutes
Anki - 10 minutes

Total study to date: ~161 hours

Countdown: 63 days
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I'll pretty much be relying on Pimsleur/FSI and Anki to maintain my Hebrew for the next two weeks while life is busy with work/wedding planning. Goal is to do 1 hour per day.

[cjareck]

You have disappeared for a long time, but I hope for a big comeback soon

I started serious work on the podcast you once provided. I choose the one on 188th Brigade, and there is a problem. The guy says something and the text is slightly different. I presume it was corrected stylistically or something like that, but since I put the whole sentences into Anki, I have to options - to edit Audio or to edit Text. I find editing text much simpler, but a little annoying since my work is much slower.