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

[philomath]

Goals for Week 8 (February 18-24):
[X]Listening: 2 hours
[ ] Speaking: 45 minutes
[ ] Reading: 20 pages
[ ] Writing: 750 words

I was a little bit more productive this week!

Results:
- Listening: 2 hours
- Speaking: 29 minutes
- Reading: 6 pages
- Writing: 455 words

Although I did some writing in Spanish, it just consisted of writing in my journal rather than following the writing plan I made. Even though I like writing in Spanish, it's very hard for me to sit down and start doing it, especially when I know that I have to write a whole paragraph or two. I don't know why, but I end up dreading it. So this week I'm going to try to do a little bit of writing each day. Hopefully the fact that it'll be less writing per day will make me more willing to do it!

Goals for Week 9 (February 25-March 3):
Main goals
[ ] Listening: 2 hours
[ ] Speaking: 45 minutes
[ ] Reading: 20 pages
[ ] Writing: 750 words

Other goals
[ ] Stick to the writing plan I made a few weeks ago, but try writing every day!

On Sunday I'll be leaving for a week-long trip to London and Dublin! I've never been to England or Ireland before so I'm really excited. I won't be able to study Spanish much during the trip, except I hope to get a lot of reading done in the airport, on the train, etc. I also hope I can go to Foyles as I've heard they have a lot of language books.

[philomath]

I’m going to divide the year into two parts: January-May (~20 weeks) and June-December (~30 weeks). During the first five months I’ll be busy with university, so I want to set lower goals:
Listening: 40 hours (100+ by the end of the year)
Speaking: 15 hours (50+ by the end of the year)
Reading: 400 pages (1,600+ by the end of the year)
Writing: 15,000 words (50,000+ by the end of the year)

Results for January:
- Listening: 4 hours and 10 minutes
- Speaking: 2 hours and 8 minutes
- Reading: 134 pages
- Writing: 1,846 words

Results for February:
- Listening: 3 hours and 50 minutes (8 hours total)
- Speaking: 1 hour and 23 minutes (3 hours and 31 minutes total)
- Reading: 13 pages (147 pages total)
- Writing: 1,662 words (3,508 words total)

These numbers are a little bit disappointing...I'll definitely try to do better in March. I think the important thing is to build a habit around studying Spanish. Maybe I need to adjust my weekly goals somehow though.

[philomath]

Goals for Week 9 (February 25-March 3):
Main goals
[ ] Listening: 2 hours
[ ] Speaking: 45 minutes
[ ] Reading: 20 pages
[ ] Writing: 750 words

Other goals
[ ] Stick to the writing plan I made a few weeks ago, but try writing every day!

Results for Week 9 (February 25-March 3):
- Listening: 0 minutes
- Speaking: 36 minutes
- Reading: 0 pages
- Writing: 361 words

I didn't have concrete goals for Week 10 because I was traveling (to London and Dublin!).

Results for Week 10 (March 4-10):
- Speaking: 10 minutes
- Writing: 1050 words

It seems pretty clear that the schedule I made for accomplishing my language goals each week isn't working. Maybe I'm trying to do too much each week.

I keep thinking about the trip to Spain I took last May, and how it helped me improve my Spanish. I didn't actually speak Spanish as much as I wanted to during the trip, but I did feel that my Spanish improved a lot during the two weeks I was there. Why? Because being in Spain, in an environment where I knew I might have to speak Spanish any moment, made me get into the habit of trying to think in Spanish whenever I could. And I was constantly jotting notes in my phone about grammar I wasn't sure about, phrases I wanted to say, etc. Then I would go watch TV in Spanish, read, write in my diary, etc. and keep writing down new phrases and new words. At the end of the day I would have a whole bunch of new Anki flashcards to learn. Of course, I ended up overdoing it with Anki and getting sick of flash cards, but it was great being sort of "immersed" in Spanish, in my head at least.

I want to get back to that feeling. Despite the fact that I've been trying to do more speaking and writing lately, I feel as if I'm not really learning from it. I'm sure I must be, but I haven't been consistently writing down and reviewing all of the things I don't know.

This upcoming week I have a ton of schoolwork to do (plus a job interview, woo!). So I might not be able to accomplish all of my language goals, but here's what I'd like to do:

Goals for Week 11 (March 11-17):
Main goals
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Reading: 15 pages
[ ] Writing: 1,500 words

Other goals
[ ] Figure out how to organize my Spanish notebook to make reviewing new words easier. Maybe I should mark the more difficult/important words a certain way? I'm not sure.
[ ] Make 30 Anki flashcards and review them.

[cjareck]

It seems pretty clear that the schedule I made for accomplishing my language goals each week isn't working. Maybe I'm trying to do too much each week.

This may be the case. I made plans which turned out to be unrealistic and finally I quit planning because every week I was more and more disappointed. I didn't want to quit language learning, so I quit planning instead
The best idea would be setting realistic and achievable goals, but I didn't manage it. Maybe I will try it during the summer holidays when I hope to have more time.

[philomath]

As I mentioned earlier in this log, I'm taking a linguistics course this semester and researching Somali for my semester project. So far I’ve learned a lot about the phonetics and phonology of the language, and I’m starting to get interested in actually studying it. Not to a high level, but it would be fun to learn some conversational phrases and get to a very basic level in reading or writing. So I think I may try that in my spare time and post some of my notes here. The best resource that I’ve found so far is Colloquial Somali.

The main thing that intimidates me about Somali is that there are a lot of sounds that don’t occur in English, and there are a bunch of features like the pitch accent and vowel harmony that aren’t well explained in the textbooks I’ve seen. We’ll see how it goes!

[philomath]

Here are some "difficult" sounds of Somali (difficult for me, at least):
(Note: I'm using the Somali orthography, not the International Phonetic Alphabet here.)

- dh = a voiced retroflex stop, which may become a voiced retroflex tap in between vowel sounds
- q = a voiced uvular stop, which may become devoiced at the start and end of words, and may become a voiced velar fricative between vowels
- kh = a voiceless uvular fricative, generally only in Arabic loanwords
- x = a voiceless pharyngeal fricative
- c = a voiced pharyngeal fricative
- ' = a glottal stop

I'm a little intimidated by some of these sounds, especially the uvular and pharyngeal ones. I guess it'll just require some practice. There's also the matter of the pitch accent and vowel harmony, and I'm not sure how to go about learning those...

[the1whoknocks]

Creo que necesito una rutina de escribir en español para aumentar mi vocabulario y mejorir mi escritura. Últimamente, como se puede ver en este bitácora, me he estado esforzando por escribir 750 palabras en español cada semana. Pero este meta carece de propósito y estructura. Cada vez que empiezo a escribir, me cuesta decidir sobre qué tema debo escribir. Y después de terminar mi escritura, olvido lo que he aprendido porque no la repaso.

Busqué algunas entradas sobre la escritura en este foro, y encontré esta sobre una rutina de escribir:

The Plan: Improve my level by focusing on writing argumentative pieces for three months.

-1. Each week, choose a topic of interest. This could be inspired by whatever I have going on in life, a developing current event, or topics that I would generally like to be able to express myself better on. Some examples might be: tax policy; should the international community intervene in Venezuela; my thoughts on Plato’s allegory of the cave; the global rise of Nationalism (Populism?); immigration and the U.S.; God; feminism; gun control; homosexuality, abortion; the death penalty; Denmark. The idea is to really push myself by writing on some really touchy topics while maintaining a degree of tact and substance.

-2. Spend 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, reading narrowly on said topic; new article each day. This will be intensive in nature.

-3. Spend another 20 minutes, 5 days a week, listening narrowly on said topic; new video or podcast, each day.

-4. Spend 20 minutes, 5 days a week, writing on whatever I read and listened to and possibly post to Lang-8. Here, word count isn’t important, just frequency. I estimate this being somewhere between 50 - 100 words.

Hay una respuesta interesante también:

Every day I chose a local newspaper article and read it intensively, pulling out new vocabulary and noticing grammar points that I needed to work on. From there, I wrote an opinion piece and a list of 8-10 questions based on (or inspired by) the article.

A good chunk of my class time the following day focused on the article. We edited my writing together, my teacher gave me tips to improve, and then we spent upwards of an hour discussing the questions that I had prepared. The time passed quickly and it was both challenging and enjoyable. I saw a definite improvement in my writing over the course of only a week.

Me gustan mucho las palabras que he puesto en negrita. Voy a tratar de hacer esto. Actualmente no tengo una maestra de iTalki, pero quizá puedo publicar lo que he escrito en iTalki para recibir correcciones. Y las preguntas sobre el artículo las puedo contestar cuando practico hablando.

Bueno, voy a tratar de hacer algo como se describe en las citas arriba. Hoy es jueves, y ya he elegido un tema para mi escritura esta semana. Esta noche voy a buscar algunos artículos sobre este y leerlos, y este fin de semana voy a escribir un ensayo corto. También quiero empezar a escribir mi diario en español.

Hi, Philomath!

Thanks for browsing through my log. Sorry that I'm just seeing your message. I hope you won't mind me weighing in on the writing plan I was following.

First, I found it to be immensely helpful with aquiring vocabulary. I did a lot of listening, but writing regularly (while I stuck with it) helped me in a very special way. There was just something about writing that forced me to find ways to express myself concisely and accurately - my guess is the "struggle" to do this is what helped me retain the words better at the time.

That said, I remember it taking a long time to get momentum going. I'm pretty sure I skipped some time in the beginning. Booking sessions weeks ahead of time, and telling my tutor what I was trying to work on during a given number of weeks kept me accountable. If I didn't write, I would have wasted their time (and my money) since working with my writing (and discussing corrections made before we met) was always a large part of how we would spend our sessions at that point in time.

I think I started out going for a certain number of words, but aiming for time may have been more beneficial to ease me into the habit.

In terms of what to write about. That was rough for me. I ended up writing on things I tended to talk about anyway - I enjoy discussing current events and politics so things that were happening in the news were natural writing topics for me ... I just wanted to be able to express myself more accurately on certain things so I chose them.

I sometimes broke from the plan and just wrote about a random thought, or my day. The important thing was that I wrote, and even if I deviated from the topic of the week, I found myself using certain structures to express myself that I got value in repetition anyway. Anything that would allow me to offer perspective and opinion was good ... If I was really stuck, or bored, my tutor usually proposed a C1 DELE exam type prompt.

I worked with a tutor on this. I'm not convinced it was necessary, but I do feel it was helpful. I was posting most of my articles to Lang-8 (signed up before they stopped accepting new accounts) and italki. I found corrections on both sites to be helpful and usually posted there, received feedback and reviewed before sending it to my tutors for review.

So, I followed the spirit of the plan, but did take breaks or change topics whenever I felt like it. I'd write -> post to Italia/Lang-8, maybe chat it over with my language partner -> email to tutor before the session -> review their corrections -> rewrite if appropriate and come to session prepared to discuss the opinion piece. Since it tended to be something I'd discuss anyway, so got extra practice during the week with friends/ exchange partners just trying to express myself. Writing took time in the beginning, but I remember becoming faster at it over the span of a few weeks. It was mental. Reading on a given topic beforehand made it easier.

Looks like you've kept at writing so what you're doing probably works for you and seem well on your way. I just thought I'd comment since you were kind enough to quote a post of mine. Not sure structured plans work for me as far as Spanish is concerned, but using a goal I was trying to achieve as motivation was really helpful.

Good luck and looking forward to following your progress.

[philomath]

Hi, Philomath!

Thanks for browsing through my log. Sorry that I'm just seeing your message. I hope you won't mind me weighing in on the writing plan I was following.

First, I found it to be immensely helpful with aquiring vocabulary. I did a lot of listening, but writing regularly (while I stuck with it) helped me in a very special way. There was just something about writing that forced me to find ways to express myself concisely and accurately - my guess is the "struggle" to do this is what helped me retain the words better at the time.

That said, I remember it taking a long time to get momentum going. I'm pretty sure I skipped some time in the beginning. Booking sessions weeks ahead of time, and telling my tutor what I was trying to work on during a given number of weeks kept me accountable. If I didn't write, I would have wasted their time (and my money) since working with my writing (and discussing corrections made before we met) was always a large part of how we would spend our sessions at that point in time.

I think I started out going for a certain number of words, but aiming for time may have been more beneficial to ease me into the habit.

In terms of what to write about. That was rough for me. I ended up writing on things I tended to talk about anyway - I enjoy discussing current events and politics so things that were happening in the news were natural writing topics for me ... I just wanted to be able to express myself more accurately on certain things so I chose them.

I sometimes broke from the plan and just wrote about a random thought, or my day. The important thing was that I wrote, and even if I deviated from the topic of the week, I found myself using certain structures to express myself that I got value in repetition anyway. Anything that would allow me to offer perspective and opinion was good ... If I was really stuck, or bored, my tutor usually proposed a C1 DELE exam type prompt.

I worked with a tutor on this. I'm not convinced it was necessary, but I do feel it was helpful. I was posting most of my articles to Lang-8 (signed up before they stopped accepting new accounts) and italki. I found corrections on both sites to be helpful and usually posted there, received feedback and reviewed before sending it to my tutors for review.

So, I followed the spirit of the plan, but did take breaks or change topics whenever I felt like it. I'd write -> post to Italia/Lang-8, maybe chat it over with my language partner -> email to tutor before the session -> review their corrections -> rewrite if appropriate and come to session prepared to discuss the opinion piece. Since it tended to be something I'd discuss anyway, so got extra practice during the week with friends/ exchange partners just trying to express myself. Writing took time in the beginning, but I remember becoming faster at it over the span of a few weeks. It was mental. Reading on a given topic beforehand made it easier.

Looks like you've kept at writing so what you're doing probably works for you and seem well on your way. I just thought I'd comment since you were kind enough to quote a post of mine. Not sure structured plans work for me as far as Spanish is concerned, but using a goal I was trying to achieve as motivation was really helpful.

Good luck and looking forward to following your progress.

Hi, thanks so much for your reply! I really liked reading about your writing routine and I think I need to do something similar to really improve my writing skills. So far I've been having trouble with consistency and with thinking of topics to write about. I might start picking a DELE exam prompt or a news article to write about each week. Hopefully that will give my writing routine some more structure.

[philomath]

This upcoming week I have a ton of schoolwork to do (plus a job interview, woo!). So I might not be able to accomplish all of my language goals, but here's what I'd like to do:

Goals for Week 11 (March 11-17):
Main goals
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Reading: 15 pages
[ ] Writing: 1,500 words

Other goals
[X] Figure out how to organize my Spanish notebook to make reviewing new words easier. Maybe I should mark the more difficult/important words a certain way? I'm not sure.
[ ] Make 30 Anki flashcards and review them.

I was a little bit more productive this week, although I was very busy because of my classes and job interviews (hoping to hear back from the interviewers this week, fingers crossed!).

Results:
Main goals
- Speaking: 17 minutes
- Reading: 6 pages
- Writing: 457 words

Other goals
- I began a new section in my Spanish notebook. I've been writing example sentences in it with Spanish on one side and English on the other. All of the sentences show grammatical features or words that I wanted to learn. For example one of the sentences is "El anfitrión de la fiesta nos dio una calurosa bienvenida." I plan to make two cloze deletion cards for it in Anki, one for "el anfitrión" and the other for "calurosa".
- Anki flashcards: 0. I wrote down ~40 sentences in my notebook to make flashcards for, but I never got around to actually making them!

This week I spent a lot of time reviewing the journal entries that I wrote in Spanish while I was in London. The majority of the entries seemed correct, but there were some words that I didn't know when I was writing, so I had to sort of "write around" them. I plan on making flashcards for those words so I can learn them.

This week I want to keep writing in my journal, and I want to start making Anki flashcards again. Also, I want to keep a list in my Spanish notebook of grammatical features or phrases I have trouble with. For example, when writing in my journal last week I noticed two sentences where I wanted to use the word "ello", for example "En Londres había un parque hermoso y me gustaba pasear por ello." (I suppose I could rearrange that sentence to sound more sophisticated, but I wonder whether the sentence is technically correct anyway.) I also have trouble with sentences like this: "No nos hemos visto desde hace seis años." (I think that's correct, but for some reason I'm doubting myself?)

Goals for Week 12 (March 18-24):
Main goals
[ ] Speaking: 30 minutes
[ ] Reading: 30 pages (I need to start doing more reading again!)
[ ] Writing: 1,000 words

Other goals
[ ] Make a section in my Spanish notebook for jotting down phrases that I'm unsure about.
[ ] Post at least 5 of those phrases on iTalki for correction.
[ ] Make 30 Anki flash cards and review them.
[ ] Go through the first dialogue in Lesson 1 of Colloquial Somali.

[javier_getafe]

For example, when writing in my journal last week I noticed two sentences where I wanted to use the word "ello", for example "En Londres había un parque hermoso y me gustaba pasear por ello." (I suppose I could rearrange that sentence to sound more sophisticated, but I wonder whether the sentence is technically correct anyway.)

Noup! I'm afraid that this sentence doesn't sound nice.

"En Londres había un parque hermoso y me gustaba pasear por allí " You forget "ello", this word is hardly used.

I also have trouble with sentences like this: "No nos hemos visto desde hace seis años." (I think that's correct, but for some reason I'm doubting myself?)

Perfectly correct!!