Spanish-
Puerto escondido: chapters 10-12
-Spanish articles: 7 articles
-Isabel: nothing
-Nailed It: Mexico: episodes 5-6
-Velvet: colección: episodes 11-20
-FSI Basic Spanish: unit 24
-Anki: 7/7 days
-GdUdE B1-B2: lessons 105-108
-Practice Makes Perfect Verb Tenses: unit 14
-Duolingo: 293 -> 300 crowns (7/7 days)
French-
Harry Potter et l'ordre du Phénix: chapters 17-22
-French articles: 7 articles
-Buffy the Vampire Slayer: episodes 13-22
-CLE Grammaire Progressive du Français Intermédiaire: unit 26
-FSI French Phonology: unit 6
-Memrise: 7/7 days (1021/5000 items)
-Duolingo: 190 -> 192 crowns (7/7 days)
Korean-How to Study Korean: part of unit 1.2
-How to Study Korean Unit 1 Memrise: 7/7 days (68/1210 items)
-Talk to Me in Korean: level 1.8-1.10
-Talk to Me in Korean Memrise: 7/7 days (54/171 items)
-Korean from Zero: started lesson 4
-Korean from Zero Memrise: 2/7 days (12/527 items)
German-Duolingo: 217 -> 218 crowns (3/7 days)
-Deutsch Warum Nicht: lessons 1.1-1.6
Things are finally going back to normal at work, so I was able to get a good amount done this week. I felt very motivated, and I spent basically all my free time with languages, which I should probably ease back from a bit to avoid burning out again. My alternating day schedule has been working pretty well, I think, although I'm not quite used to it yet, and I do have to double check what languages I'm "supposed" to be working on each day. The true test of how well the schedule works will be when I'm not feeling as motivated. I also spent a lot of time this week thinking about my language learning plans (specifically regarding German and Korean), resulting in some changes from last week.
German: I was still feeling bored/tired of Duolingo German this week, and while I didn't really give my reading German articles plan a chance, I realized that there's no point to keep doing Duolingo if it's annoying me. The only reason I haven't wanted to drop it is that I didn't want to put German entirely back on hold. So I looked around at some resources and decided to replace Duolingo with
Deutsch: Warum Nicht. This works for me because it doesn't really require much effort, I just sit and listen, so I haven't been finding it frustrating, but it's still refreshing my German knowledge. I started off at the very beginning, which is definitely too basic for me, but it's still been good practice, and if I get bored, I can always skip ahead a bit.
German is still my absolute lowest priority, so I don't have it worked into my schedule, but the rough goal is to do a minimum of two lessons per week (I did a bit more than that this week because I was excited to have something new to do, but I imagine that will diminish with time). So far the lessons have only been around 10-15 minutes, and I should be able to fit in 30 minutes of German per week. If I don't feel motivated enough to fit it in, then that's probably a sign that I need to drop German completely for now. I've also been thinking about reading the 6th Harry Potter book in German after I've finished the 5th one in French. I was already planning on switching to a different book/series for French after I finish HP5, and I think doing more reading really would help my German more than anything else right now. I wouldn't plan on doing a lot of reading each week, maybe only a couple pages even, but I'd want to use it to ease back into German and refresh my passive vocab and grammar knowledge. So that's the current plan! We'll see if I can stick to it. And I'm only dropping Duolingo for German — I still like it for French/Spanish.
Korean: I spent a
lot of time thinking about Korean this week. I had been thinking I'd incorporate the Sejong Hakdang books that ロータス and eido mentioned/linked to, but I realized after trying the first lesson that there's just not nearly enough grammar explanation for my liking. The first lesson was on 이에요/예요, and I realized after I finished it that the only reason I was able to complete it was from what I had learned from TTMIK. The only explanation I could find in the textbook was that it's a predicative or interrogative ending attached to a noun, which tbh means very little to me, and even the fact that one's used after nouns ending in a vowel and the other after nouns ending in a consonant is only mentioned in the appendix. I skimmed ahead several chapters, and the lack of explanation seemed to be the case for the whole book (unless I'm missing something?), and the workbook doesn't seem to have much more info. I also kind of hate the website interface you have to use to access the textbook. So I decided that wasn't going to work for me.
I then looked at the Monash University textbooks eido mentioned here/linked to in the resources thread. Those seemed better to me in terms of grammar explanation, but the amount of romanization drove me a little crazy. I don't mind romanization if it's just in parentheses after the word in 한글 along with the English translation, but the textbook would have a dialogue in 한글 on one page and then the next page have the romanization next to the English, and I got annoyed having to jump back and forth to match the 한글 to the English, and I'd like to avoid relying on romanization.
I was starting to get stressed out about finding a Korean textbook to use, which was a little ridiculous and was honestly more due to my general state of mind/stress/anxiety and less about Korean textbooks specifically, but I was very tempted to just give up and go back to what I had been doing because it had been working for me and caused me way less stress. But I started looking through a bunch of Korean logs for ideas, and I found
this post by Evita, which mentioned Korean from Zero as a good, free, beginner textbook. So I took a look at it, and it looks perfect for my purposes. There is a good amount of grammar explanation and exercises, and there's no romanization after the 한글 intro at the beginning.
So I'm going to be focusing on Korean from Zero, TTMIK, and slowly working through HTSK as a supplement (since I do still really like it, particularly the practice videos at the end of each lesson). I skipped past the first few lessons of Korean from Zero since they're mostly about phrases/sentences to memorize, which I always struggle with. I hate memorizing set phrases — I want to know how the grammar of a sentence works, because it's always easier for me to remember it if I understand its components. One of the lessons is on numbers, which I do need to learn at some point, of course, but trying to learn them all at once right now is probably too much for me. I'm planning on using the Memrise course to learn those phrases/vocab while I continue with the rest of the book. Lesson 4 is where the actual grammar starts, so that's where I jumped to, and while I've just started it, I really like it so far, so I'm very excited about this new plan.
French: I continue to feel like my comprehension of Buffy has improved slightly. I definitely still miss a good amount, and I'm nowhere near where I am in Spanish (not that I would expect to be), but I feel like I'm understanding close around 60-70% now. I have just under 50 hours of French listening at the moment, for reference. I've also been making an effort to learn more new words per day via Memrise. In the past, my goal was just to add 7 new words per day and do all the reviews, but I realized it would take me until late 2020 to finish the course at that pace (assuming no missed days, which isn't likely). I'm now trying to do 21 new words a day, since that's close to how many new words I learn with Anki for my Spanish deck every day, and it would have me finishing by the end of this year. So far it hasn't been too bad, but I know the reviews will start increasing, so we'll see how well I manage when I get to that point.
Spanish: I ended up doing a lot of listening this week. First, I finished Nailed It: Mexico. Then, I started the second season of Velvet: colección, which was a bit of an adjustment. I forgot how quickly the actors on that show speak, especially in contrast to Nailed It: Mexico, where my comprehension was very high. The first scene, I felt like I could barely understand a single word (and it probably didn't help that I couldn't remember where any of the storylines left off last season). Luckily, after a few scenes, things went back to normal. By the end, I'd say my comprehension was around 80-90%? It was kind of nice to return to a show that I haven't watched since last spring. I remember how difficult it was at times for me to understand the show back then, and there was almost always at least one scene I'd want to rewatch with subtitles. This time around, apart from the very beginning of the first episode, I didn't feel the need to even once. I would still miss words or even entire sentences occasionally, but I'd never finish a scene feeling like I had no idea what it was about. I hit 400 hours of Spanish listening this week, and the difference in my comprehension from last May, when I had around 100-150 hours of listening, is noticeable. It's nice to realize how much progress I've made in less than a year. Anyways, now that I'm done with that, I'm going to go back and finish the third season of Isabel.
I'm also returning to my Estoy vivo translation project! Last December, I translated the first season of the show into English subtitles so I could watch it with my mom when I was home for the holidays since she doesn't speak Spanish (and I didn't see anywhere you could watch the show with English subtitles). The second season of Estoy vivo was released on DVD early in February, so I ordered the DVDs then, and they finally came this past week. Which means I'm going to start translating the season like I did for season 1. I won't be rushing to finish translating the season in a short timeframe this time — my plan is just to do a scene or two whenever I have some spare time. I really love the show, so it's been fun to return to it, and I do think I learn a lot from doing the translating.
I'm obviously using a lot of Memrise courses right now, and I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about the upcoming changes to Memrise yet. The one reason I really like Memrise is that I can use it on my phone during my commute by bus and during downtime at work, which I can't do with Anki. I guess I'll just see what the Decks site looks like when it's released and hope that it works on my phone okay. I guess my other option would be to shell out the $25 or whatever it is for the Anki iPhone app. I do use it enough that it'd probably be worth the cost. Or just deal with only being able to do SRS when I have access to my laptop.
