Michelle's 2019 Log (Spanish, French, Korean, German, Italian)

[brokenrecord]

I decided to start fresh with a new log for 2019! (With a super creative title, I know.) My old log can be found here.

Where I'm starting 2019 with each of my languages and my plans for 2019:

Spanish: I would describe myself as a low intermediate at the moment. I think of myself as around B1, with the caveat that that's a complete self-assessment and I could be off with that (and I'm sure in the areas of speaking and writing, I'm not there yet). I can usually understand around 70-80% of Spanish shows when I first start watching them (and that tends to go up a bit by the end), and I can read books and articles without much difficulty (although I still have to look up a word or two every page, and more than that for more challenging books). My plan for Spanish for this year is basically just to keep doing what I've been doing since I feel like it's been working for me pretty well. I'm going to continue to read a lot to increase my vocabulary. I'm going to keep watching huge amounts of Spanish TV (and I want to start incorporating movies as well) to improve my listening comprehension. I'm going to finish some of the grammar workbooks I have (GdUdE B1-B2, Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses, and Practice Makes Perfect Complete Spanish) and then spend some time focusing on the subjunctive and getting comfortable with it. I hope to feel like I'm solidly intermediate with my Spanish by the end of the year. For future reference: I'm starting the year with 350 total hours of listening and 5300 pages of reading.

French: It's hard to assess where I am with French because I constantly feel like I know nothing, but then I can still do a lot passively with the language due to my time studying it in high school. False beginner is probably still the best description, I guess. Maybe A2? Although even then I feel like I have too many holes for A2. Reading isn't too hard, but I do have to look up around 5+ words per page of HP5 typically (and I do feel like I'd be a bit more lost if I wasn't already so familiar with the story), and I'd say I understand around 50% of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries dubbed in French. My plan, like with Spanish, is just to keep on doing what I've been doing. I'm going to keep reading a lot to get my vocab up, watch TV (and probably movies, because there are a good number of French films I've previously seen that I enjoyed a lot that would be good to work with, whereas there are no French TV shows I've seen before) for listening comprehension, and make my way through grammar workbooks. By the end of the year, I'd like to feel like I'm at a low intermediate level, with listening comprehension closer to 70%. For future reference: I'm starting the year with 20 hours of listening and roughly 200 pages of reading.

Korean: I'm basically starting from scratch here. I learned 한글 at the age of 12/13, and surprisingly, despite doing essentially nothing with Korean for the past ~17 years, I still remember it fairly well. Otherwise, though, I know essentially nothing, other than like 5 words/phrases. This year is mostly going to be about getting a feel for the language and seeing if I even enjoy it. If I do, my ultimate goal will be to be able to watch KDramas without subtitles (although I imagine it will take me many years to come close to being able to do this).

German: False beginner, with a strong emphasis on beginner, at the moment. I've forgotten so many basic vocab words and grammar. At some point I plan on making more of an effort with German and getting it up to the same level as Spanish/French, but I don't think that's in the cards this year. I just don't have the motivation or need to focus on German right now. So I'm going to continue working my way slowly through the Duolingo tree to refresh my grammar/vocab, and then go from there. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to finish the tree at my current rate, but if it does happen this year, then I'll probably replace Duolingo with reading articles in Der Spiegel or something like that — basically, something that I can do to make sure my German doesn't deteriorate but that won't take more than a couple minutes per day. And depending on how things go with Korean or what mood I'm in, there's always a chance I'll decide to devote more time to German at some point this year.

Italian: Basically still on hold for this year. Although I will say I've started having random urges to get back to it. But Italian isn't like German, where I had years of college classes and don't need a huge amount of focus to pick up again. And I definitely have enough on my plate with the other four languages that I don't need to add Italian, too. But, again, if I'm not feeling Korean or German, there's a very slight chance I might change things up and decide to get back to Italian this year.

[brokenrecord]

Spanish
-Como agua para chocolate: chapter 9
-El País: 3 articles
-Isabel: episode 4
-FSI Basic Spanish: nothing
-Anki: 5/7 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 81-85
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: unit 10
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (247 -> 254 crowns)

French
-Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapter 9
-Le Monde: 3 articles
-Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: episodes 23-24
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: units 13-14
-FSI French Phonology: nothing
-Memrise: 7/7 days
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (170 -> 174 crowns)

Korean
-Lingodeer: 5 lessons
-How to Study Korean: unit 0, lessons 1-3
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1, lesson 1

German
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (201 -> 203 crowns)

All things considered, I definitely got more done this week than I expected. I swear I am going to get back to FSI Spanish and French Phonology this year, but I picked up a nasty cold this week and just wasn't feeling up to any work that required speaking out loud. This week for sure, though!

I haven't totally figured out a system for juggling four languages (well, more like 3 — doing 5 minutes of German on Duolingo doesn't really count), I've mostly just been trying to spread my time around and get a little of everything. It worked out okay this week, in large part because I've been feeling very motivated recently, but I imagine I may need to adjust some things (maybe set some weekly goals to make sure I cover everything) in the future.

Spanish:
I'm finally getting back to watching Spanish TV with Isabel, which I started last fall and then dropped for several months. I like it all right, but I'm not super invested in it, so if I may end up dropping it if I find myself bored down the line. I also watched Roma this week, but with Spanish subtitles because it was something I was interested in watching outside of language-learning, and I was worried about missing too much, so I'm not counting it as listening practice. Even though I feel like it was a bit of a step back to use subtitles, it is cool to realize how easy it is for me to watch TV/movies with Spanish subtitles these days, since it's something I would not have been able to do a few years ago. And there wasn't even that much unfamiliar vocab!

Korean:
First week of Korean! I primarily just focused on brushing up on 한글 and pronunciation. I'm not worrying too much about being able to pronounce things perfectly myself (particularly since I doubt I'll ever have much use to actually speak Korean), but I'm trying to get familiar with how pronunciation can change depending on where a letter falls in a syllable/word to help with listening comprehension. You can see above that I'm using three different sources to learn Korean. This might be overkill, but I think I would get bored with just one source, and seeing the same concept taught or approached from different angles helps me understand it better. I may end up dropping Lingodeer, though. I know they've moved to a pay model, but anyone who already was using it prior to the switch was grandfathered in and didn't have to pay (for now, at least), I believe? And I did download Lingodeer over a year ago, so I think I should be able to use it for free, but I did just get a new phone for Christmas, so I'm not sure if it transferred over. I think I also read that people who were grandfathered in may end up having to pay at some point. I've been able to do the first few lessons on 한글, but I think the paywall is supposed to pop up later, so we'll see. If it does make me pay to keep using it, I'll probably just drop it and stick with How to Study Korean and Talk to Me in Korean.

[Skynet]

Michelle, I browsed your old log and am amazed at the success that you have had learning two similar languages simultaneously.

I have really enjoyed studying German and thought that I could pique your interest in DW's excellent and free resource, Deutsch - warum nicht? There are four series, each with 26 lessons. The course supposedly takes you up the B1 level. Just don't tell Iguanamon that I have long-since reneged on my commitment to the Multi Track Approach.

As for Italian, you have chosen wisely indeed in stopping it for the time being. Focus on, and master, as few languages as possible especially when you have Korean to nurture.

I look forward to reading your new log throughout the year!

[brokenrecord]

Lol, I followed your old log just because I liked your layout and now that you're learning Korean, I have a better reason for following you xD

Aw, thanks, that's nice to hear!

If you still have your old phone, do Lingodeer on that and don't update the app. Everyone has to buy after like the first 15 lessons (if you update the app) so check if you have Korean 2. If you do, it will ask for money. I finished Korean before the change so I still have the whole 'tree' for free, just not Korean 2. I enjoyed Lingodeer's Korean course up until the end where it was very noticeable that they rushed it and didn't give alot of sentences for later grammar. Though you will be fine to drop it if you are doing TTMIK too.

Heads up about HTSK, it introduces a lot of vocabulary per lesson but the sentences are better than your normal textbook. They are actually interesting and long. If you don't like wordy explanation of grammar and learning a lot of words at once, might want to stick with TTMIK and maybe get the beginner Korean Grammar In Use.

Oh and since you like Memrise, there are plenty of TTMIK and HTSK vocab desks on there for you to study from.

Yeah, it looks like I do have Korean 2. Unfortunately, I don't have my old phone anymore. I think I'll just keep going with it until the paywall pops up. Thanks for the info about the Memrise courses! I'm sure the additional review would help me, so I'll check out those courses, and I'll also take a look at Korean Grammar In Use (although I think I will stick with HTSK regardless, since I don't mind wordy grammar explanations). I really appreciate all your advice, particularly since Korean is so different from any language I've learned before, so I'm not as sure about how to approach learning it.

Michelle, I browsed your old log and am amazed at the success that you have had learning two similar languages simultaneously.

I have really enjoyed studying German and thought that I could pique your interest in DW's excellent and free resource, Deutsch - warum nicht? There are four series, each with 26 lessons. The course supposedly takes you up the B1 level. Just don't tell Iguanamon that I have long-since reneged on my commitment to the Multi Track Approach.

Thanks, Skynet! I'm now realizing that I actually skipped over some stuff I did when I wrote about my experience with German, since I know I did look at "Deutsch - warum nicht?" in the past. I don't think I got very far with it, though. I think the beginning was just too easy for me. While I've forgotten a lot of German, my passive knowledge is fairly decent. But when I'm done with Duolingo, I might consider trying it again and jumping later in the course rather than starting from the very beginning. I do love Deutsche Welle as a resource — I also watched the first two seasons (which was all that was out at the time) of Jojo sucht das Glück there several years ago. I had kind of forgotten about it, though, so it's good to get the reminder so I can keep it as a resource for when I finish Duolingo/decide to focus more time on German. Thanks again!

[brokenrecord]

Spanish
-Como agua para chocolate: chapters 10-11
-El País: 6 articles
-Isabel: episodes 5-13
-FSI Basic Spanish: unit 23
-Anki: 7/7 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 86-90
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: units 11-12
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (254 -> 261 crowns)

French
-Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapters 10-11
-Le Monde: 6 articles
-Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: episodes 25-26
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: units 15-16
-FSI French Phonology: unit 4
-Memrise: 7/7 days (756/5000 items)
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (174 -> 177 crowns)

Korean
-Lingodeer: 5 lessons
-How to Study Korean Unit 1 Memrise: 5/7 days (31/1211 items)
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1 lessons 2-3

German
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (203 -> 205 crowns)

This week was a bit busier for me than normal. During the week I had a bunch of things to take care of that I had been putting off dealing with until after the holidays, and then this weekend I was busy preparing to have friends come over to celebrate my birthday — so, a good kind of busy, but it still took time away from languages. I didn't feel like I was as productive as I could've been, but looking above, I actually did get a lot done this week. I think I partially feel like I'm not doing a lot because I'm doing more things overall, so while I'm spending less time on each individual thing, I'm still putting in the about the same amount of time overall. I think I just need to get used to making slightly slower progress than last year because I'm taking on more this year, and there are only so many hours in the day. And it's not like I didn't realize that would be the case, but it's really hitting me now.

Spanish:
I started getting more into Isabel after the first few episodes once she started gaining power and being more involved with the politics and Fernando showed up (nice to see Rodolfo Sancho again, since I always really liked him on El ministerio del tiempo), so I made good progress with the show this week. I was finding my comprehension a bit shaky at first, but after a couple episodes, I feel like I'm back to where I was, if not better. I think I'm understanding about 80%? The one bad thing is that I watched the first two episodes last fall and wasn't fully paying attention to them, and my knowledge of Spanish history is fairly weak, so that resulted in me not really knowing how half the characters were related to one another or who they were, and there were a couple characters who looked incredibly similar to me, so I did struggle a bit with the plot at first. But I think I finally have everything straightened out, although I was a bit tempted to go back and rewatch the first episode or two just to be sure.

Korean:
As recommended by ロータス, I added the Memrise course for HTSK. I'm also planning on adding the course for TTMIK, but I wanted to wait until I actually had gotten through enough lessons so I would have been exposed to all the vocab prior to encountering it in Memrise. I'm doing kind of the opposite with HTSK — there's so much vocab introduced all at once, I've been working on learning it with Memrise before continuing with the first unit. But I've gotten through all the lesson 1 vocab, so I should shift back to that this week, and I've similarly gotten through enough lessons of TTMIK that I should be able start the Memrise course this week. I'm also really liking Lingodeer so far. We'll see how long I can use it until it makes me pay, but I might actually consider paying for it when I get to that point since it's been working pretty well for me, and it doesn't look too unreasonably expensive (compared to something like Kwiziq, for example, which is a great resource, but more money than I can justify spending). I also checked out Korean Grammar in Use, which ロータス suggested, and it looks like it could be a great resource, but probably still a bit too advanced for me at the moment. I think I'll wait a couple months and then revisit adding it in.

French:
For some reason I haven't felt like I have much to say about French recently. I'm basically just plugging away. I don't feel like my comprehension of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries has been improving much, but I also haven't been watching a huge amount of it, and I've still only done about 23 hours of French listening total since picking French back up again, and it definitely took me much more than that to get to a higher comprehension level with Spanish. So I know I just need to be patient and keep listening as much as possible. And reading as much as possible, for that matter, since vocab is my biggest deficiency right now.

[brokenrecord]

Spanish
-Como agua para chocolate: chapter 12 (done!)
-El País: 7 articles
-Isabel: episodes 14-17
-FSI Basic Spanish: nothing (well, part of a unit)
-Anki: 7/7 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 91-97
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: unit 13
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (261 -> 269 crowns)

French
-Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapter 12
-Le Monde: 7 articles
-Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: episodes 27-31
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: units 17-19
-FSI French Phonology: unit 5
-Memrise: 7/7 days (814/5000 items)
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (177 -> 181 crowns)

Korean
-How to Study Korean: unit 1 lesson 1
-How to Study Korean Unit 1 Memrise: 1/7 days (38/1211 items)
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1 lesson 4
-Talk to Me in Korean Book 1 Memrise: 1/7 days (7/171 items)

German
-Duolingo: 7/7 days (205 -> 208 crowns)

This week was pretty stressful and busy, so it's a miracle I managed to stay productive. Language learning has really become a habit for me, which is good. I haven't needed to rely as much on motivation to keep myself going with it — it's more something that's just part of my daily routine. That being said, I have been feeling like I've been doing a bit too much recently, so I might scale back a bit this week to prevent burn-out.

Spanish:
Finally finished Como agua para chocolate. It was fine, but it's just wasn't the type of book I'm normally into. I did like it enough to want to watch the movie, but it took me so long to finish the book that the movie's no longer available on Netflix, unfortunately. I'll sure it'll pop up somewhere at some point for me to watch. The book was a bit more challenging than most of the other ones I've read, but mostly just because of all the unknown food/cooking words.

After I finished that, I started on Puerto escondido by María Oruña. I'm not sure how or where I heard about it, but it's been on my list of books to read for a few months now, and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a detective/mystery type, with flashbacks to the Spanish Civil War (which I'm sure will end up being connected to the present day mystery by the end). It's not the most brilliant thing I've ever read or anything, but it's just very readable, and I got sucked in right from the start. Hopefully I'll continue to be as into it as it goes on. Difficulty-wise, so far it's between the YA stuff I had been reading and Como agua para chocolate, which makes sense — it's an adult book, so the vocab/grammar tends to be a bit more complex than for YA books, but there also aren't a bunch of unknown food/cooking words I have to constantly look up.

French:
I think it was just last week I had mentioned not feeling much improvement in my French listening comprehension, but at the end of this week, I finally got to a couple episodes where I felt like I was understanding more/missing fewer words than past episodes. I'm getting close to being done with Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, so I'll have to find something else to watch soon. Probably another dubbed show, since I don't think I'm quite ready for actual French shows yet.

Korean:
It doesn't look like I did a huge amount this week, but I feel like I did. The HTSK lessons are pretty dense. I really like them so far, though. I definitely feel like I'm getting more out of them than Lingodeer or TTMIK, although I am still struggling a bit with getting the vocab to stick. I especially love all the videos at the end, with sentence practice, dictation practice, and applying the grammar to new vocab. They help a lot.

I've also apparently already reached the paywall for Lingodeer. For some reason I thought I had read about it showing up later, but apparently not. I did find the couple of lessons I was able to do useful, but I don't know that I'm ready to pay for it yet, so I think I'll just stick to HTSK and TTMIK for now.

[brokenrecord]

Spanish
-Puerto escondido: chapter 7
-El País: didn't keep track
-Isabel: episodes 18-22
-FSI Basic Spanish: nothing
-Anki: 6/21 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 98-100
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: nothing
-Duolingo: 269 -> 286 crowns

French
-Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapter 12
-Le Monde: didn't keep track
-Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: episodes 32-34 (done!)
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: units 20-21
-FSI French Phonology: nothing
-Memrise: 9/21 days (863/5000 items)
-Duolingo: 181 -> 187 crowns

Korean
-How to Study Korean: nothing
-How to Study Korean Unit 1 Memrise: 0/21 days (38/1211 items)
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1 lesson 5
-Talk to Me in Korean Memrise: 0/21 days (7/171 items)

German
-Duolingo: 208 -> 215 crowns

So it's been 3 weeks since I last updated, which wasn't intentional. I mentioned in my last post being overwhelmed/stressed at work, and that has continued the past few weeks, to the point where I just didn't have the mental or emotional bandwidth to do anything after work that required any kind of actual effort (meaning I ended up doing a lot of watching TV/movies in English). But I think the worst is over now, so I'm ready to ease back into language learning. I have already broken my New Year's resolution for at least 1 minute of something every day, which should've been easy to follow through on, but I went at least a week without doing a single thing. What I have listed above is what I got done over the past three weeks, but the vast majority of it was done the first week; I've done almost nothing the past two, apart from picking Duolingo back up this past week.

I think I need to ease back into things and go slowly. I have been in the mood for other hobbies, and I want to still leave time for reading/watching things in English. So I'm going to try this week to alternate languages. I still plan on doing things like Duolingo, Anki, and Memrise every day, but otherwise, I plan on trying to limit grammar/listening/reading to one language each day. This may not end up working out because I tend not to do well when I place too many restrictions on myself, and language learning starts feeling more like a chore than a fun hobby, but the problem I was running into before my break was trying to do every single thing every day, which is just a recipe for burn-out. So I'm going to try this as an experiment see if it helps. If I feel too restricted, then I'll drop it and figure something else out.

[brokenrecord]

Spanish
-Puerto escondido: chapters 8-9
-Spanish articles: 11 articles
-Isabel: episodes 23-26
-Nailed It Mexico: episodes 1-4
-FSI Basic Spanish: nothing
-Anki: 7/7 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 101-104
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: nothing
-Duolingo: 286 -> 293 crowns

French
-Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapters 13-16
-French articles: 11 articles
-Buffy the Vampire Slayer: episodes 1-12
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: units 22-25
-FSI French Phonology: a quarter of unit 6
-Memrise: 7/7 days (914/5000 items)
-Duolingo: 187 -> 190 crowns

Korean
-How to Study Korean: half of unit 1 lesson 2
-How to Study Korean Unit 1 Memrise: 6/7 days (61/1211 items)
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1 lessons 6-7
-Talk to Me in Korean Memrise: 6/7 days (25/171 items)

German
-Duolingo: 215 -> 217 crowns

I've been back on track this week, but it's been a bit of a mix emotionally. I'm still incredibly stressed/frustrated at work at the moment, and I should be done with the thing causing me the most stress by the end of February, so I'm basically just counting the days until March so things can get back to normal. I think the break I took from language learning did help, because I felt excited to get back to languages this week (with a few frustrations, which I'll get to). I mentioned feeling the need to alternate languages, and that's worked out pretty well for me this week. I came up with a schedule that I've been liking, and I don't know that it's something that will work for me forever, but it's working for me for now.

Here's the schedule, with each day having one language as a primary focus and one as a secondary:
Sunday: (1) Spanish, (2) Korean
Monday: (1) French, (2) Korean
Tuesday: (1) Korean, (2) Spanish
Wednesday: (1) Spanish, (2) Korean
Thursday: (1) French, (2) Korean
Friday: (1) Korean, (2) French
Saturday: free day

On days where French or Spanish is my primary language, the idea is to do some listening (this week it's been at least 1 episode of whatever TV show I'm watching, but I could also replace this with 30 min of a podcast, or something like that), reading (at least 30 minutes or 1 chapter, whichever comes first), and grammar (at least 1 lesson) per day. On these days, Korean is my secondary language, and the goal here is just to do some quick review. One of the language frustrations I mentioned having was that I'm struggling with Korean vocab sticking (especially HTSK vocab, since they throw a lot at you at once), even with doing the Memrise courses, so I've been picking around 5 words that I am shaky on and writing them down 5 times. I also go back and review part of a past grammar lesson. This doesn't take very much time, but I am already finding just a little more concerted effort with going back and reviewing is helping a lot, and I think writing vocab by hand helps the words stick better. On days when Korean is secondary, I'm solely reviewing things I've already learned and not adding anything new.

On days when Korean is primary, I do 1 new lesson from TTMIK and part of a lesson (at least 1 section) of HTSK. For French/Spanish on these days, the goal is to do 1 of my usual activities, so either 1 TV episode, or 1 chapter/30 min of reading, or 1 grammar lesson.

Saturdays are free because a) it's hard to alternate 3 languages evenly between 7 days, and b) I'd like to give myself the option of not doing anything if I need a break (although this week I ended up doing a lot of TV-watching in both French and Spanish). This will hopefully help prevent burn-out. On all of these days, including Saturdays, I'm still doing Duolingo, Anki, Memrise, and reading articles.

This might seem overly complicated or weird to others, and while it worked well this week, I'm sure things will change in the future that will make it harder to stick to this schedule. But the reason it's working for me right now is that part of my problem was I felt like I had to do every single thing every day and I just didn't end up having time for any other hobbies or any rest. This way, I usually have at least 2-3 hours each night plus all of Saturday where I can do whatever I want and not feel pressured to fit in as much language-learning as possible. It's still a lot of time with languages, though, so I should still make progress every week. And, for example, on a Spanish/Korean day, I'm not forbidding myself from doing anything with French at all. The goal is to do the Spanish and Korean work, and then I have 2-3 hours of free time that I can do whatever I want with. It's mostly to give myself time for other hobbies, like reading in English, but if I have a strong urge to watch an episode of Buffy in French, I can do that instead. But if I do that, it's because I actually feel like doing that, and not because I feel pressured to fit as much language-learning in as I can, if that makes sense.

I didn't include FSI Spanish/French Phonology in my plans. I still plan on finishing them, but I think I do better with them when I have the urge to do them rather than when I'm forcing myself to get through them. So I will finish them, but it's going to be very slow and gradual progress, basically whenever I'm in the mood for them.

Anyways, congrats if you managed to get through and follow all of that! Now on to some specifics from this week:

German: The other frustration I've been having this week is with German. All I'm doing is 1 lesson on Duolingo a day, and I've been getting frustrated at not remembering very simple vocab/grammar. In part I think it's because just under 2 years ago, I spent some time brushing up on German for a trip to Berlin, and I read 3 books in German during that time and didn't have much trouble with them (I looked up plenty of vocab, but I was definitely more advanced than I am now), and I think it's been frustrating me that I'm not where I was 2 years ago. And I just don't think 1 lesson of Duolingo a day is enough to really make a difference. The progress is just too slow. Of course, part of the reason for doing Duolingo is that I'm not ready yet to really devote a lot of time to German, and while I want my level of German to be back where it was someday, I don't plan on working on that this year.

I think I've come to the realization I either need to do more or less German, and by less German, that would basically mean no German for the moment. I don't really have time for more German, so this seems to be the obvious choice. But I'm not quite ready to give German up yet. So what I'm trying at the moment is that I've started following Der Spiegel on twitter. I'm not planning on trying to read an article a day like with French and Spanish, but I might try to read one paragraph of an article if I see one that interests me, and at the very least, I can read their tweets/headlines in German. This way I get a little more exposure to German and more opportunities to refresh my vocab/grammar without spending a lot more time with it. This is an experiment, so if I'm still feeling frustrated with German in a couple weeks and adding Der Spiegel hasn't made a difference in my attitude, then I'll drop German for the foreseeable future.

Spanish: I started following a couple of Spanish newspapers outside of El País on twitter to give myself a broader range of topics to read about and a greater variety of authors. This has encouraged me to read more just because I have more options to choose from, which has been good. I'm also still really enjoying Puerto escondido so far. My interest in Isabel, however, has been waning. I think I was most into it midway through Season 1 to the end of that season, but I haven't cared about season 2 as much. I do want to finish it, but I decided to take a break after finishing season 2 and started watching the new Mexican version of Nailed It! on Netflix. I've watched and enjoyed the English version (it took about a season to grow on me, but now I think it's a lot of fun), and I figured the Mexican version would be good for a few reasons: 1) there are only 6 30-minute episodes, so it's not a big commitment, 2) it's from Mexico, so I'm getting exposure to Spanish accents outside Spain, which I wanted to make more of an effort to do this year, 3) more exposure to some different kinds of vocabulary, and 4) since it's a reality TV show, the speech is a bit more natural than a scripted drama (especially compared to something like Isabel!). If you've seen the English version, it's basically exactly what you'd expect, just with different hosts, but it's fun, and I've been enjoying watching it. My comprehension has been really good, probably around 90-95%? I only have 2 episodes left, so I'll probably finish it today. I also discovered that the second season of Velvet: colección is now on Netflix, so I'm planning on watching that next before I go back and finish the third season of Isabel.

French: Like with Spanish, I started following a few additional French newspapers on Twitter, and it's having the same effect. At the very least, even if I don't read more articles, I read more tweets/headlines, which is still practice, even if it's only a sentence or two. I also started Buffy season 1 this week. My comprehension started off around 50-60%, maybe? But I do think even just over the course of watching the first season, it's improved. In general I've been suddenly feeling improvement in French, which is nice. Reading has been a bit easier, and I'm noticing words that I used to keep having to look up are finally sticking. I still have to look up a fair amount, but I've definitely been noticing some progress, which is a nice feeling.

Korean: Not much to add here, but I do think that spending time just to review what I've learned 4 days a week and only adding new lessons two days a week has been helping me feel less frustrated with Korean than I had been. I think there was just part of me that expected to absorb Korean as quickly as French/Spanish, even though I know that logically that's not reasonable to expect. Trying to take a step back and take things more slowly is helping, anyways.


So, that's what's going on with me at the moment! There's every chance that next week I'll post saying that my schedule completely fell apart or isn't working for me anymore, but that's fine. Part of language learning is constantly evaluating what you're doing and how it's working for you and how much you like it, and that can change from week to week or month to month. This plan is working for me now, it might not next week, and that's okay. I still feel like I'm making progress.

[brokenrecord]

I still recommend you stop using HTSK as textbook or to start using it as reference tool. At the very beginning, 4 days of review seems like a lot and could lead to burnout bc of the slow pace. Here is someone's journey with Korean that I found yesterday that looks like an easy path/pace to follow.

For my studying, I am using a textbook and doing all the exercises in the main textbook and the workbook and it has really helped with remembering the vocabulary and making up sentences on the fly. The grammar is easier to recall now than any other of my attempts to learn KR so I think writing those 5 words down will really help you out but also try to copy down sentences as well. Since each chapter only introduces like 6 words, it is easy to recall them and make sentences with the new grammar compared to HTSK that introduces 20+.

I'm sure a textbook would be useful, but I don't really want to spend any money on Korean resources right now until I'm sure I want to commit to Korean long-term, so I'd rather stick with free resources like HTSK and TTMIK. 4 days might seem like a lot of review, but it's really only been about 15 minutes per day at most, so it doesn't feel like too much. And I've actually been liking HTSK because I feel like I'm learning more about how the language actually works as opposed to TTMIK, where I'm just learning random phrases for the most part (so far, at least). My greatest struggle with Korean so far really has been the amount of vocab they introduce with HTSK, which is why I've felt like adding the review this week has helped. Also, on the days where Korean is my focus and I go through the HTSK units, I do take notes and copy down example sentences, and I did the video reviews at the end of the first unit (and plan on doing them for the rest of the units), which also involves writing sentences, so I feel like I do get practice writing full sentences. Like I said, this might not end up working out for me long term, but I've been happy with it's worked for me this week, so I'm going to stick to it for now and reevaluate if I feel like I'm struggling with it. I do appreciate your advice, though!

[eido]

I'm sure a textbook would be useful, but I don't really want to spend any money on Korean resources right now until I'm sure I want to commit to Korean long-term, so I'd rather stick with free resources like HTSK and TTMIK.

He could be referring to the free textbooks on Sejong Hakdang's website, which I believe he'd been using according to his log. You can't download those, but they're completely free. There are also Monash University textbooks floating around (also completely free, and with audio), and I could hook you up with other ones if you're interested. There are a lot of resources out there for Korean, you just have to know where to find them. Check out the Korean resources thread in the Resources sub-forum for more information.