2019: Learn Harder [DE, ZH, ES, EU, PL, KO]

[LunaMoonsilver]

Oh, it's been like a month already since I last posted...

Anyway, just a quick check in to say I'm alive and still learning languages over here. I've been trying to focus pretty intensively on my Super Challenge stats—I'm up to 54% of my Mandarin watching completed and woooooooooow, I can feel the difference. It's also helped that I've been doing this every day thanks to the 365-day language challenge; there's a lot of useful phrases and structures rattling around in my head again now. It's kind of similar for Spanish, though that's lagging a little. For German, I'm watching shows with German subtitles occasionally and I know that's a bit of a crutch, but I watch everything in English with subtitles, too. Still, I might do a whole re-watch of Game of Thrones once the show has finished without subtitles, so that should help level up my listening skills a little.

I've switched from Viki to Netflix for my Mandarin and Korean shows... I find the ads on Viki really annoying (I'm not willing to pay to get rid of them) and Netflix has some pretty fun offerings. I'm currently watching Ashes of Love and I just started A Korean Odyssey which, aside from each episode being ~90 minutes long, is great.

Reading-wise and studying-wise, I'm trying to keep up. I went on holiday in April and since I've come back to work I've been hitting ~50 hour weeks most of the time but I'm going to consciously limit the long hours I do in June. As usual, I'm trying to do everything at once, but, for once, I'm actually getting to do a little bit of everything. It's a nice change

I'm going to come back to weekly updates in June (I have an event next week, so while I'll keep up my Mandarin over the weekend, I think everything else will suffer a little) but I hope everything's going well for all of you all too!

[javier_getafe]

50 hour weeks!!
Amazed and #stunned.
And I that thought I was studying so hard because I devoted about 10 hours per week, what the hell!

[LunaMoonsilver]

50 hour weeks!!
Amazed and #stunned.
And I that thought I was studying so hard because I devoted about 10 hours per week, what the hell!

Oh God, that wasn't studying I was (am still) working 50+ hour weeks in what tends to be a relatively physically-active job so coming home and studying isn't always on the table for me. Hence why I've been gone from the forum for 6+ weeks again

Studying 50 hours a week... well, I'd be seeing a lot more progress, that's for sure!

[LunaMoonsilver]

Weekly Goals: Week 29
15/07/2019-21/07/2019

Changing back to Monday being the beginning of the week, because even though it doesn't line up with how the weeks started this year, it's just lining up better for me, time-wise.

I've been dipping in and out of the forum, but I'm still about, and still studying. I'm so glad to have kept up with the 365-day language challenge... at this point, I do not want to break that streak, which has meant some hasty Memrise sessions just after midnight, but I've definitely seen a notable improvement from where my Mandarin was at the beginning of this year. Everything else is going steadily, though I've realised I need to put in some more time with Korean and French if I want to see better results.

German
I've been reading books on Wattpad the last few weeks and messaged one of the authors this past weekend to ask them if I could translate theirs—I've not been practising translation recently and I miss it. They said yes, so I'm working on that when I have time, which is also having a noted impact on my German vocabulary. I'm trying to get back into watching TV in German (Dark Season Two came out a few weeks ago, but I haven't watched it yet!) when I can. I've also started listening to more podcasts; I'm always pleasantly surprised at my listening level because for some reason I just assume I'm not going to understand anything

Goals for this week:

• Translate one chapter (~1,500 words)
• Watch one episode of Dark Season One (I binged it and need to rewatch...)
• Listen to one episode of Mordlust

Mandarin
Like I mentioned already, I've kept up with Mandarin, and though a lot of the half-an-hour-a-day studying I do involves my phone, I'm switching it up with podcasts and a bit of (laboured) reading when I can. I've completed my Duolingo tree (as in, everything is at level one), which makes it the first one I've managed. Duolingo is not super useful for Mandarin in a lot of ways, but the later topics do drill sentences rather than teaching you grammar—I've already done the learning in most cases, so the practice is helpful.

Goals for this week:

• Listen to two ChinesePod podcasts
• Summarise the rest of the lessons in NPCR 1

Spanish
I listened to the first one of the Duolingo Spanish podcasts last week and found that wasn't so bad (I got lost a couple of times, but I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would be), so I'd like to keep working on my listening there. I still need to find my way with Spanish—I just cannot settle on a course—but for now, playing with different things and watching TV are bringing my level up a bit.

Goals for this week:

• Listen to one more Duolingo podcast
• Watch one TV episode

Korean
Ugh, I've not done much for Korean in a while. I find Duolingo absolutely useless for it, and though I like LingoDeer a little better, I know I still need a base in the language before any apps become that useful. I've got the Living Language coursebook, and I like it, I just need to stick with it. I'm not going to learn anything if I don't make the effort to.

Goals for this week:

• Do Living Language lesson one (again, but it's been a long while since I did it)
• Watch A Korean Odyssey episode two

French
I've still been studying French, yay! But I want some fairly decent FLC results in November, so I've got to step it up a little. Handily, Duolingo are putting as much effort into French as they are into Spanish now, so there's stories on the desktop version and there's now a podcast. It's still a little beyond me most of the time, but I listened to the first episode and I found that I understood some of it, at least! Still have to knuckle down here; once the basics are in place, I think I'll make fairly decent progress.

Goals for this week:

• Do the first FSI Basic lesson
• Cover two Duolingo stories
• Listen to one Duolingo podcast

Yeah, that all should fill up some of my spare time. In unrelated news, I've also recently started learning to drive. I don't want to say I'm bad at it (I've had like six lessons, so I don't think I can be good at it yet) but wowwwwww it's draining right now. Kind of like learning a new language, except I can't veer off and run people over with a new language so there are slightly higher stakes. I am very much looking forward to the day when driving is like speaking reading German to me... then I'll know it's okay

[LunaMoonsilver]

Weekly Goals: Week 30
22/07/2019-28/07/2019

I'm going away this weekend and didn't get everything done last week, so I'm basically rolling those goals over.

Some of the reason I didn't finish all those goals is because the 24 in 48 Readathon was on again this weekend! I first did it back in January, with the following results:

Readathon Update
So, I read (including the audiobook, which went at a much slower pace than I would read) 2,441 pages in 1,458 minutes.

English = 1,276 minutes (audiobook = 620 minutes; 43% of total time); 88% of the total time. I read 2,171 pages, which came to 89% of my total. I was reading at an average of 164 pages per hour.

Mandarin = 49 minutes; 3% of the total time. I read 16 pages ( ), which came to 1% of my total. I was reading at an average of 20 pages per hour.

German = 52 minutes; 4% of the total time. I read 68 pages (way fewer than I thought I would!), which came to 3% of my total. I was reading at an average of 78 pages per hour.

Spanish = 81 minutes; 6% of the total time. I read 186 pages, which came to 8% of my total. I was reading at an average of 138 pages per hour.

I tried a different readathon in April (24 hours only) where I focused on not reading in English, which went pretty well, so I decided to do that again this weekend. While I didn't hit the 24 hour target, I read a grand total of 1,303 pages in 910 minutes (just over 15 hours), with only thirteen of those pages being in English! Wooooooooooh



Love keeping a good spreadsheet.

Anyway, like last time, I've counted manga pages 1:1 for the purposes of the readathon, but I've done 5:1 when logging with the Super Challenge bot. I also noticed a really big difference when it came to reading in Mandarin. I've always tended to lean towards intensive reading for Mandarin because it can be difficult (impossible?) to tell the pronunciation of some characters otherwise. This time, I just decided to ignore that—if I couldn't tell the pronunciation, I'd just skip it in my head and try and parse the meaning instead.

It's so much easier now! I read a few of the same manga chapters in Spanish and in Mandarin, and even though I could technically read every word of the Spanish, my understanding of the Mandarin was generally much better. I'm not going to move up to reading books especially soon, but it's nice to think that I can actually read something!

I'm away again this weekend but with the train delays we're looking at having tomorrow, I might study or read to try and take my mind off things. I'm really into the German book I'm reading rn too, so should get that all wrapped up!

[LunaMoonsilver]

2019 Wrap-Up

Just had a quick glance through my log for this year and realised I didn't really set myself measurable goals for every language... but, despite my severe absence (off-and-on) from the forum, I've had a pretty good 2019!

After my final post (where I was lamenting train delays? Yeah, it took 10 hours to get to London!!), I was interviewed and got a new job—I now work in marketing for a company that makes a language-learning app, so, uh, right up my street—and had to move to an entirely new city, which meant finding somewhere to live, adjusting to working regular hours but in a job I'd never even tried before, and somehow coming to understand that being an adult means you make more money but somehow end up with less. (Don't mean taxes, just mean the cost of living in London suuuuuuuucks.)

Anyway, this meant a lot of the good habits I'd been building up kind of slipped—though I did mostly keep on track with the 365-day language challenge. Think I've missed about five or six days on that all year, which is amazing!

I also dropped a lot of the languages I started out with, but I'm happy with the progress/maintenance I've managed with German and Mandarin. I went to Berlin in November for work and spoke German a lot of the weekend, which felt so good. Mandarin was my 365-day challenge language and although I could probably have made more dedicated, measurable progress, I've kept it at a level far more consistent than I've managed any of the years since I graduated.

Also, while I still haven't completed the Super Challenge (2020/2021 is my time! ), doing the readathons earlier in the year and focusing on non-English texts was so much fun and I came very close for Mandarin listening (89%!).

Tl;dr: 2019's been a pretty good year and I'm excited to start 2020 in a little bit more of a focused manner. I hope no one on the forum's feeling down on themselves about their progress right now (you shouldn't!) because we've all made it through this weird, long decade and with any luck, we'll manage the next. I've enjoyed seeing everyone's posts and might even manage to comment more in 2020.

I'll be back to start my new log tomorrow!