Amanda's 2019 Log: Spanish, Ancient Greek, and French

[philomath]

Thursday
Didn't do anything language-related.

Friday
- Watched 25 minutes of Elite.
- Made 3 Anki flashcards.
- Read 7 pages of El cuaderno de Maya. The part I'm on is sad.
- Wrote 5 sentences (64 words) and posted them on iTalki for corrections.

[yossarian]

You seem to be staying on track! I find if I try to do too many different tasks in one day I get burnt out, how are you finding it? My maximum is usually two, so I might try to do flashcards + TV one day and reading + grammar exercises another, but I find it's hard to maintain habits this way.

I really enjoyed Elite and visited my parents recently recently to find out that my 64 year old father had already watched it all completely of his volition "I certainly don't remember this much sex at school!"

[philomath]

You seem to be staying on track! I find if I try to do too many different tasks in one day I get burnt out, how are you finding it? My maximum is usually two, so I might try to do flashcards + TV one day and reading + grammar exercises another, but I find it's hard to maintain habits this way.

I really enjoyed Elite and visited my parents recently recently to find out that my 64 year old father had already watched it all completely of his volition "I certainly don't remember this much sex at school!"

Yep, I have been staying on track! (Mostly.) This new way of breaking down my weekly goals seems to really work for me.

I agree that doing too many tasks in one day is no good. I've been trying to do two tasks per day (speaking practice and making flashcards, for example), but sometimes I end up doing more than that. I did get sort of burnt out towards the end of this week though.

[philomath]

Goals for Week 13 (March 25-31):
Spanish
[X] Focus on a specific topic for this week's speaking and writing practice. The topic for this week will be: camping/hiking (inspired by my hiking trip yesterday--which taught me not to climb a mountain in the snow without proper boots )
[X] Post at least five sentences on iTalki, related to questions I have about Spanish grammar/phrases.
[X] Speaking: 30 minutes
[X] Vocab: 30 flashcards
[ ] Reading: 30 pages
[ ] Writing: 1,200 words

Somali
[ ] Listen to the second dialogue in Colloquial Somali, Lesson 1.
[ ] Learn how to form the general past tense.
[ ] Make flashcards.
[X] Review previous Anki flashcards.

Results:
Spanish
- Listening: 25 minutes
- Speaking: 30 minutes
- Vocab: 40 flashcards
- Reading: 25 pages
- Writing: 1067 words

Somali
I reviewed my Anki flashcards, but I didn't study Somali at all besides that.

I was a lot more productive with Spanish this week compared to previous weeks! I hope I can keep this going. Next week I want to try something different. I'm going to pick a news article, most likely from El País, and try to focus some of my studying around that. Mainly I'll make flashcards for all of the vocab I don't know and try to write a response or two to the article. We'll see how that goes.

I wonder if I should try to buy a textbook or exam prep book for Spanish? I just feel like it might help me focus my studying more. I'd like to expand my ability to speak and write about a number of different topics, and it's hard when I'm just making up a random topic to study each week. Still, I feel like I'm slowlyyy making progress.

Goals for Week 14 (April 1-7):
Spanish
[ ] Listening: 60 minutes
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Vocab: 60 flashcards
[ ] Writing: 1,200 words
[ ] Look for an iTalki tutor who seems good at helping intermediate learners move to an advanced level.
[ ] Look for a textbook for intermediate learners?
[ ] Read an El País article and study it in depth.

Somali
[ ] Listen to the second dialogue in Colloquial Somali, Lesson 1.
[ ] Learn how to form the general past tense.
[ ] Make flashcards.

[philomath]

Monday
- Bought Preparacion DELE B2. I don't have plans to take the DELE exam, but the practice problems in this book looked interesting.
- Did 2 minutes of speaking practice.
- Made 35 Anki flashcards. These were mostly cloze deletion cards for vocab words I'd written in my notebook last week, mostly words relating to hiking.
- Read an article from El País about the electricity rationing happening in Venezuela right now. I got the gist of the article but there were some parts I found unclear. I’m going to review it again tomorrow and maybe read some related articles when I can.

[philomath]

Goals for Week 14 (April 1-7):
Spanish
[X] Listening: 60 minutes
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Vocab: 60 flashcards
[ ] Writing: 1,200 words
[ ] Look for an iTalki tutor who seems good at helping intermediate learners move to an advanced level.
[X] Look for a textbook for intermediate learners?
[X] Read an El País article and study it in depth.

Somali
[ ] Listen to the second dialogue in Colloquial Somali, Lesson 1.
[ ] Learn how to form the general past tense.
[ ] Make flashcards.

I've been pretty busy finishing up all of my coursework before the semester ends! I can't believe I'm graduating from university in less than a month.

Results:
Spanish
- Watched TV in Spanish for 65 minutes. I finished Elite! I'm not sure what to watch next.
- Practiced speaking for only 6 minutes. I wasn't sure what to talk about.
- Made 35 Anki flashcards.
- Read 10 pages, including El cuaderno de Maya and an article from El País.
- Wrote 380 words: 60 about an article I read and 320 in my journal.
- Did not look for an iTalki tutor yet. I'm not sure if I want to start taking lessons again.
- Ordered a DELE B2 prep book!
- Read an article from El País about the electricity problems in Venezuela right now. However, the plan was to write a response to the article and I found that I didn't know what to write. I ended up just summarizing the article a little bit.

Somali
I didn't really study Somali at all, except I did research its morphology a little bit for my linguistics class! Somali grammar is complicated. Each of the seven noun declensions has a different way of forming plurals, and it looks like knowing the declension of a given noun is just a matter of memorization. Sounds like a good challenge!

Goals for Week 15 (April 8-14):
Spanish
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Grammar review: 45 minutes
[ ] Vocab: 30 flashcards
[ ] Writing: 900 words

Somali
[ ] Listen to the second dialogue in Colloquial Somali, Lesson 1.

I added grammar review to my Spanish goals because I feel like I've forgotten some important things, such as some uses of the subjunctive, and it would be helpful to review them again. I think the DELE B2 prep book I ordered may arrive in the mail soon! If so then I may start working through that too.

[philomath]

Adding another Spanish goal for this week:
[ ] Go through the first three episodes of Elite and make flashcards for unknown vocab.

The reason I'm adding this is because I would like to understand Spanish TV shows better, and I think the main thing getting in my way is a lack of vocab. I just don't know a lot of the slang words used in TV shows. Once I learn those, I can focus on improving my listening comprehension instead of getting stuck on all of the words I didn't understand. That's the hope at least.

I've downloaded the Spanish subtitles for Elite, so I'm just going to read through them and make flash cards for the words I don't know. Hopefully it won't take too long!

[philomath]

I sort of gave up on studying Spanish this week. I've been too busy finishing up my coursework: I have two final papers and a presentation related to my degree, as well as a final paper and a presentation for the linguistics course I'm taking. I've been doing a lot of research for the linguistics course, and I've found that Somali grammar is delightfully complicated: there are seven different noun declensions, each with a different way of forming plural words, and that's just the beginning of things. I hope to post some more about Somali in this log after I'm done with the semester.

Goals for Week 15 (April 8-14):
Spanish
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Grammar review: 45 minutes
[ ] Vocab: 30 flashcards
[ ] Writing: 900 words
Somali
[ ] Listen to the second dialogue in Colloquial Somali, Lesson 1.

Adding another Spanish goal for this week:
[ ] Go through the first three episodes of Elite and make flashcards for unknown vocab.

Results:
Spanish
- Speaking: 10 minutes
- Vocab: 8 flashcards
- Writing: 325 words

I didn't listen to the dialogue from Colloquial Somali yet, but I guess I sort of studied Somali this week, since I did a lot of research on it for my linguistics class. I'm not sure how much I'll actually study Somali after this semester though. I really like learning about the grammar, but I can't think of anything I'll actually do with the language. Lately I've been thinking about studying Ancient Greek again, since I love the Iliad so much. I might make that a little side project if I have time.

I plan on barely having any free time next week, so my goals will be pretty simple.

Goals for Week 16 (April 15-21):
Spanish
[ ] Vocab: Review Anki flashcards.
[ ] Reading: 20 pages.
[ ] Other: Start keeping a list of possible speaking topics.

Somali
[ ] Vocab: Review Anki flashcards.

[philomath]

I've been really busy with classes lately, so I haven't done anything language-related except for reading 5 pages of El cuaderno de Maya. Now it's time for some updates!
- After five years, I'm finally done with university! I'm very excited to graduate.
- My main focus for now will be Spanish. I'm going to continue what I've been doing, but I'm also going to start using a DELE B2 prep book. (Not planning to take the DELE, but I think using the prep book will make me more focused.)
- I'm dropping Somali for the foreseeable future. I liked learning about it during my linguistics class, but I don't have any reason to seriously study it.
- I will be picking up Ancient Greek again though. I know Ancient Greek has even less of a practical use than Somali, but I really love Ancient Greek literature. I'm going to be really busy this month though, so I'll probably study veryyy slowly.

Tomorrow I'm going to make some goals for May and for the upcoming week!

[MamaPata]

Congrats! How does it feel to be done?!?