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Johanna's Multilingual Journal [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 4:53 pm
by JohannaNYC
I meant to start a language log in 2018, but it didn't happen. So I'm happy to finally get to it in 2019. Of course, starting is only half the challenge.

My main focus languages for 2019 will be French and Croatian. I actually plan on taking the French B2 exam in December and I plan on studying Croatian as if I was getting ready to pass the B2 exam. I was originally planning on taking the DELF in June, but my French spelling is atrocious, being ready for it in June would mean dropping all my other languages and that's not gonna happen. I hope spending 6 hours a week per language (not counting watching TV or listening to music) will be enough to get me ready for the B2 exam by December. I have the DELF B2 book and some lower level practice exams I downloaded. I plan on posting the writing exercises from the book as well as write about my life and language adventures in French, Croatian and Italian. Your corrections would be greatly appreciated.

My "second-tier" languages are Egyptian Arabic, Greek and Russian. I hope to make some progress in these languages while only studying 4 hours per week each. I have been "studying" Greek for over a year, but I've yet to finish the Duolingo tree nor the Mango Languages course. So spending 4 hours per week on Greek is a vast improvement over an hour or less per week.

This past semester I went back to school (university) full-time and had the brilliant idea of signing up for a Russian class since I figured with my knowledge of Croatian Russian would be an easy A :lol: . Boy, was I wrong. Out of the the 30 students in the class only about 5 of us were brand new to Russian, that should've been a sign. We went through the first eight chapters of Beginner's Russian with Interactive Workbook and it was crazy. We had to do every exercise on the website for homework, which took extra long for me since I decided to write out every exercise by hand rather than just printing it out. In the end I managed to get a B+ in the class, but never in my life have I ever had to work so hard at something only to get a B+. My Russian cursive is pretty awesome though, even if I'm nowhere near conversational. My current plan for Russian is to take a free beginners' conversation class offered at a community center and finishing Pimsleur level 1. I don't know if I'll like the class so it's hard to plan ahead for Russian. The Beginner's Russian book can supposedly be used for self-learning and I also have the new Assimil course and other materials I found online so I'll make it up as we go along.

Egyptian Arabic, sigh. I was making great progress and then I took a break. I made this video in April of 2018 https://youtu.be/fHiYLJevR2Q and although the passive skills are still there if I were to try to say all of that now I would probably struggle quite a bit and not be able to come up with all of it. Trying to write something along th elines of what I said was what broke the camel's back and made me temporarily give up on Arabic. I want to be able to read Egyptian Arabic and not just speak it so I'm re-starting from scratch with Rocket Languages and writing out by hand the writing exercises. I plan on using a mix of Luca's Bi-translation method with the Goldlist Method. Last night I bought the newly released Anki deck for Mido in Egyptian Arabic (a bilingual book with audio published by Lingualism) so I'm definitely incorporating that into my study routine. I have tons of materials for learning Egyptian Arabic, so I need to make sure I don't jump around from course to course.

And last, but not least Italian. My Italian got a bit rusty this fall, but it was at a high enough level that it should be back up and running in no time. I don't have any definite plans for Italian other than doing this month's 30-Day Speaking Challenge, speaking at Meetups, and reading and watching TV for the Super Challenge. I hope to write on here too, but I'm not aiming for a specific amount of writing, at least not yet.

So that's all for now. Here's to a productive 2019!!!

Re: Johanna's Multilingual Journal [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 4:54 pm
by JohannaNYC
Reserved for future updates

Re: Johanna's Multilingual Journal [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 4:55 pm
by JohannaNYC
Reserved for end of year updates

Re: A Polyglot's Way [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 5:05 pm
by avalon
Yay, someone else working on Greek!

I've taught the Beginner's Russian book that you're using, so if you ever get stuck on something and need some assistance, feel free to drop me a note.

Re: A Polyglot's Way [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 5:42 pm
by JohannaNYC
avalon wrote:Yay, someone else working on Greek!

I've taught the Beginner's Russian book that you're using, so if you ever get stuck on something and need some assistance, feel free to drop me a note.



Thank you so much Avalon, will do!

Re: A Polyglot's Way [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 7:33 pm
by zjones
Hi Johanna! I'm excited to see someone else working on French (and Greek!). I am planning on taking the DELF B1 in March to get an easy certification, and then taking the DELF B2 in late 2019 or early 2020. Have you taken the DELF before?

By the way, you should come join our Modern Greek Study Group, or at least stop by. :D There are couple handfuls of beginners and intermediates studying Greek this year!

Re: A Polyglot's Way [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 4:41 pm
by Daniel N.
Good luck with HR :)

Re: A Polyglot's Way [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 6:43 pm
by reineke
Ja sam ti poslao srce na ovaj drugi post jer ti ti "future updates" nisu nikad bili jača strana. Sretno u svemu, je*** jezike!

Re: Johanna's Multilingual Journal [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 12:20 pm
by JohannaNYC
First week of the year and I'm already changing my plans, well tweaking really, trying to get the right life balance. I've decided not to take the Russian class even though it's free (and I love free things!). Unfortunately, I already work on Saturdays and would have to rush to the Russian class and be late to it after teaching a sweaty Zumba class. Also, it would mean seeing even less of my boyfriend and he's already complaining about me leaving early on Sundays to go to my language Meetup. It's tough trying to keep languages from taking over my life.

I changed my log's name as it felt too pretentious. Multilingual Rants would be more appropriate, but let's try to stay positive.

I signed up for the 365 Day Language Challenge with Croatian and French. 30 minutes a day is not much of a challenge during the week, but it proved to be a challenge over the weekend. Thank the gods for Memrise.

This article https://jamesclear.com/journaling-one-sentence talks about the benefits of just journaling one sentence per day and since writing is my weaker skill in all my TLs, as well as in my L1 it's a good way to get started. So expect to see a lot more from me.

Also, I haven't been getting email notifications about replies. I apologize if it seemed like I was ignoring your support.

Re: Johanna's Multilingual Journal [AR, EL, FR, HR, IT, RU]

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 5:02 am
by JohannaNYC
Ieri notte mi sono addormentata con il mio telefonino in mano mentre scrivevo nel mio log. Quindi, oggi ho deciso di scrivere al mattino presto per non dimenticare di farlo.