Expug's 2019 Log - Reasonable Learning

[zjones]

I've never heard of this website before. I'm probably going to try it out, but I'm curious if you think it would be useful for advanced learners (B2+). I want to experiment with new ways to work on my French, but most websites are more useful for beginners and they don't have a lot to offer for more advanced students.

I have only checked the Estonian one so far, but what I have to say is that, as much as I like the interface, their innovations and their overall quality, I wouldn't use it for a language I'm at a solid B1 at. So I don't think you wouldn't get anything for your French that you wouldn't get or might have already gotten from other sources.

I think you're right about Speakly. I signed up for a free trial the other day and took the placement test, but I got several questions wrong because the English translations were confusing. I was told to conjugate the verb for "We will go to the store", so I wrote "Nous irons au magasin", but they marked the question wrong because they wanted "Nous allons au magasin" (le futur proche). This happened at least a couple times and I wasn't very happy about it. It seems like a really stupid mistake to make, especially in a language like French where le future proche is almost always translated to "going to" in English.

[Expugnator]

Today's post was accidentally closed without saving or posting, but basically it was about Mandarin and Hebrew, both of which have seen some progress in the past days.

[Expugnator]

Thursday started with the usual change in the schedule again, with a class in the morning. No Clozemaster, Duolingo or reading ahead while at home. So I decided to take a break after lunch for doing the Clozemaster that swyping part, instead of doing it hazardly while watching series. I already do typing while watching TV series, so adding the on-the-phone part to the equation would make the overall agenda even less productive.

I've also realized that it's better I split the longer reading sessions and insert some other activities in between. So, as I've only read 3 pages of non-fiction in the morning, I won't try to read the remaining 17 pages at once. Instead, I'll go for as many as I can while I have a break again and then take the remaining ones at their natural position in the schedule, which is after Russian listening-reading.

Speakly.me is being missed at my schedule. Estonian was in such an upswing. Having to pay for an annual subscription at once, right now that I've booked flights, is no option at the moment, though. Maybe in a couple of months I'll reactive the subscription. Looking forward for them to increase their language mix as well, because so far only Estonian and Finnish would be of direct interest and even a buy-one-take-all them wouldn't attract me at the moment.

I decided to focus on Guarani again, leaving little time for Hebrew and subtitled Indonesian series. I don't regret it, though Guarani remains mind-boggling. Some serious grammar info is scattered through notes, which makes the textbook a sort of a grammar-translation one with Assimil layout.

In the end, I made it to Hebrew and Indonesian.

[Expugnator]

I'm already immersed at the sequel novel in Georgian. I'm starting to focus on other words as the most frequent ones become more and more familiar. It wasn't a burden today to go through longer descriptive paragraphs, and dialogs were a breeze.

Mandarin really is going somewhere. I enjoy the Taiwanese soap opera so much, its characters are complex and not sharply divided into good and evil like the Western mentality. Being able to understand the words, the lines on their own and not only through the translated subtitles helps me apprehend the emotions involved more deeply. So far both the series I've watched and my Mandarin knowledge have been shallow, but I'm more and more leaning towards more profound meaning.

My Russian listening-reading takes me around 8 min a day. That's less than a series 'slot'. So I wonder if I shouldn't be doing my favorite activity in other languages such as Romanian. Why keep postponing this pleasure? Well, time remains an issue though. Even 10 minutes more in the end of the day might represent not doing the Indonesian subtitle watching of the day.

Still struggling with some lessons and their new vocabulary at the old Assimil Hebrew, but plugging along. The format changed again and now there's no simple translation exercise anymore. The first one is questions and answers, and only the questions are recorded; the second one is plurals, and no recording or transcription. So for the time being I won't do any writing for the Assimil lessons. That buys time and takes some pressure from daily activities, but I'll be missing it in the long run. Next time I review this and the newer book I won't be doing written exercises anymore. Anyway, I'll make up for it with Clozemaster text input and getting used to swyping quickly.

Other than my desktop-study resources, including the ones I've put on hold, I have two resources lined up which are the multimedia CD-ROM which I can only access from home and the lessons on Facebook by a Chilean friend. I'm waiting for my friend's lessons to pile up to 2 or 3 dozens before giving them a try (currently on 20, still very basic which means the learning curve is smooth and he has sound teaching skills, from what I can tell); that will also match up with my finishing the old L'Hebrew. As for the multimedia course, it's not that bad but probably getting easier each day. Overall, some resources remain hard due to the lack of either audio or transcription, but I believe I won't resume some of them or start the remaining ones, due to my overall level improving. Now I have double subtitles where I can follow the audio better each day, plus the possibility of audiobooks which is likely to solve many doubts regarding vocalization, at least the ones logically explained by regular morphological patterns. All in all, I'm confident about my path having been traced for learning Hebrew and I don't think I'll fall into the dismay of not having the appropriate material for my progress.

Every language apart from the FIGS seems to have this issue of resources not covering a specific transition between some CEFR levels in the A and B ranges, which usually involve catching up by overdoing a better favored skill. I've faced this with Georgian, Estonian, Hebrew, even Indonesian, and had I started over I would know how to tackle this. As a matter of fact, it was much less traumatic with Hebrew and Indonesian than it as with Georgian and Estonian, and I have to thank Clozemaster for part of my success in overcoming those plateaux.

I've just written the words above and now I'm facing the Indonesian materials issue again. Having finished Indonesianpod101's upper-beginner level, I noticed that the Intermediate level is simply twice as much content per lesson. Not going to work now. I want something that isn't so basic but will still settle the basics for me. So, Colloquial Indonesian it is. I don't want to lose momentum with a frustrating textbook now that I'm finally consolidating my current level at Clozemaster.

Just got a new Georgian textbook, by Liam Campbell: Georgian Language Comprehensive. Moreover, the excellent Intensive Course by Nikolaishvili has been entirely translated. Not likely that I'm going to work on these cover to cover, but they're great additions for the new learners. The former doesn't seem to have been officially published, the author being a reviewer of Kiziria's book. It seems a collection of notes, but a fairly didactic and accessible one. That brings hope to future authors like me.Self-publishing is a fact.

The language-study day ended calmly but I didn't engage in any other activities, as I had spent some time searching for Indonesian and Georgian material and with only some minutes left I decided to leave earlier. If the trend persists, though, I'll be able to do quite a bit more.

[Expugnator]

Last weekend I've basically indulged myself into some gamification fetish and for the first time finished the week as number #1 on the Clozemaster leaderboard. Now, this on itself has no direct impact on language learning and only shows that I should take it easy from now on, now that I know that I can do it. I had a specially calm weekend with no classes or social commitments which I could otherwise have made more productive or rewarding.

Now for the effects on this Clozemaster marathon:

I spent way too much time on Romance languages because they are the most straightforward ones to do additional work on, at least typing work which is a bit less tiresome than swyping on the phone. SO I took a disproportionally higher effort on French, Spanish and Esperanto and not as much on Italian, Norwegian and German, which could benefit from the typing as well. Even so, I noticed solid improvement in the Romance languages plus German and Norwegian.

French and Spanish are already at a level where progress is marginal, but I'm getting good at remembering and activating the unique, non-cognate words for these languages.

In the case of Esperanto, I'm still working on text inpu level by level, that is, I'm not accessing the whole corpus. As I'm not even studying Esperanto officially yet, that means the high-frequency vocabulary I'm learning is becoming really solid and activable - which I'm not exactly doing simply because I'm merely dabbling now.

For Norwegian I just need a bit more confidence so I can do more extra sessions on it and slowly bring it to the same level of, say, Italian. I have much more exposure to Norwegian than Italian overall and even if it's not a Romance language that alone means that I can reach a C level. Clozemaster is a key factor on that plan because it forces on me frequent abstract words which are unique to Norwegian, no English or Latin cognate or decypherable from Germanic roots. My Norwegian deserves more from me.

German has been evolving far better than Norwegian. I'm doing random, text input even if I'm not even halfway through its huge deck. This is aligned with my overall evolution in German comprehension, both aural and written, and my need to finally activate it somehow. I've struggled a bit the first weeks but now, as a matter of fact, I get most words right on text input mood and I have to resort less and less to the multiple choice help key. As with Norwegian, some words that seemed impossible to stick are finally solidifying.

Greek is in a situation similar to that of German, though on a narrower scale. I'm fed up with my messed up Greek-English deck where I can't work individually by levels for text input as they simply won't keep track of sentences mastered; random text input still feels a bit too hard and it's not optimal because there's still some basic vocabulary I want to activate first, though I can't deny that the few weeks I've worked on this mode have seen an improvement on mentally guessing and teling apart perfect from imperfect forms. Anyway, I decided to remedy the situation by starting over the Greek-German deck! I could start from zero. It's a slightly shorter deck and if no bugs come up I'll be able to pave my way up to active B1 Greek, because elsewhere from Clozemaster my receptive skills are improving steadly, and all that is missing is the minimal activation Clozemaster allows me to perform since I don't have the discipline to work directly on my active skills.

Hebrew is going great! Whoever did the Clozemaster deck deserves a prize. I've started level 3 by multiple choice, which are 501-1000 most frequent words. Meanwhile, I've also worked on text input for the first level, and I'm happy with my progress.

Indonesian has a shorter and more problematic deck but I'm finally making a good use of it, after it had been too hard all that time. I'm improving level by level while revisiting the earlier levels, which finally do seem easy. All multiple choice.

Mandarin is still on HSK 3 at text input mode (I've always played random for multiple choice). I'm working exactly on the words I need to. As a matter of fact, I've learned to know better whenever this is happening for a specifically language and it's always rewarding when I notice this happen as is the case with Hebrew and Mandarin.

Not so much with Russian, where the deck is so large that I seem never to finish one sublevel and move up to the other, even though both are still easy for my overall Russian level. Working on the Russian-Lithuanian deck might help partially take care of the issue, though my goal with it remains pure dabbling in Lithuanian.

On Saturday I woke up early and went on grocery shopping. While shopping, I decided to give Norwegian podcasts a try, and I failed. I understand much more than before but not enough to have fun. I have to keep reading Norwegian intensively so as to improve my overall vocabulary.

Other than that, I also listened to the French podcast and read ahead both non-fiction and Spanish fiction. Doing this for Spanish as well has proved effective for today, as this Spanish sci-fi novel is a particularly slow read given its high dosis of nonsense.

I could have done more if I wasn't caught up by the Clozemaster frenzi. No gathering material, and I have to pick a series to watch with Indonesian subs next, probably from the Arrowverse; no new lesson from the Hebrew CD-ROm course.

This morning I couldn't do much of a headstart. The girls woke up early. They're approaching 3 years and it's fascinating how communicative they are. It's always great to spend more time with them, and at the same time a bit depressing because at this stage where they are no longer babies and not yet full-fledged children every day has so much novelty, so many discoveries.

Yesterday they didn't want to come back from the club, where we went to even if it was cloudy, and still had a good time there. As their mom prompted to go and have a shower before dinner, which they weren't really looking forward to, one of them said "Estou com dor de cabeça. Tenho que ver desenho. Aí melhora" (roughly "I have a headache. I ought to see cartoons. Then it will get better).

They are very affectionate towards me, leaving no room for anyone to insinuate that I'm not a present dad or even root for this to be the case. It just gets a bit sad to think that this might be the best tims in my life, at least familiarly, and once they've grown up much of this magic is gone. I'm really looking forward to helping them learn how to fall in love in life, to be curious and willing to discover, learn and let themselves be surprised. I understand a bit now why grandchildren are so welcome, as they represent a comeback to the time of cherishing and nurturing a child.

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Mandarin listening-reading getting better. A "related books" for the Chinese audiobook site wouldn't be a bad idea at all, as I'd not be so thrilled about wheter I'll find another blockbuster to do next.

As i've read PM's log, I thought of myself when I considered the diplomatic career decades ago. I know I'm not suited for a nomadic language with my family. Even so, the mere possibility of having a job where I'd learn a specific language to a high level and that would be my main asset would make me really motivated. Not something that happens at Brazilian standards though, as language remains accesory. On the other hand, I've met so many people that are on a solid career path and still lacking language skills, which is really holding them back. Really? Language skills always seemed to me as the simplest skill to obtain. I mean, simplest, not easiest obviously. It's a matter of different people getting the different opportunities/challenges in life, really.

The Assimil Hebrew lesson is much more accessible now that I'm more familiarized with the vocabulary and, on top of that, there are no translation exercises. It's not mentally exhausting anymore. Formerly I'd have to take a break after doing it even if I was ahead of schedule.

First day of Colloquial Indonesian and I decided to remain at the introduction which has a lot of sample vocabulary. Lesson 01 is due tomorrow.

Another Guarani lesson from the Whatsapp group. There are still a lot of holes in grammar, but I'm plugging along. Duolingo is surprisingly helping quite much. It might be jopará but the basis is there. Moreover, there is a good deal of vocabulary repetition on Duolingo which leaves me relaxed to focus on grammar. There is some repetition at the textbook as well, but the overall vocabulary is still high and there are some collocations that are barely mentioned in notes.

All in all, a very positive day with much learning taking place. I could have done more app learning but I had to leave rather early.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I decided to start using shortkeys on Clozemaster which will allow me to avoid using the mouse with languages such as Norwegian. It will still be necessary for Esperanto because I have to click manually at its unique letters at the Clozemaster window, but at least for Norwegian and German I won't have to click in order to open up the multiple choice hints anymore.

This morning there was time both for a headstart and for statying with the girls. They woke up later and in a much better mood. Before that, I did my morning Clozemaster, then Duolingo, then read ahead in both non-fiction and Spanish fiction.

Still letting Clozemaster distract me from the Estonian soap opera. Now that I'm not doing Speakly.me anymore, I really have to pay attention to the resources I'm using. The parallel reading, which takes place down the afternoon, at a moment I'm a bit more tired, has also been suffering from suboptimal attention. And I can't find the energy for reviewing older textbooks for grammar, even knowing that now with my higher experience with the language they could be fairly useful for filling up some gaps. Looks like I'm losing momentum even if I'm overall satisfied with my Estonian progress. I though I wouldn't have reach my current level, though I'm still eager for more as Estonian is a language I really learned to appreciate.

Mandarin listening-reading is going smoothly. I can absorb more and more from the audio and allowing myself to focus on new words.

Finished the great and absurd comedy novel Tatt av Kvinen, by Erlend Loe. Think about a distortion on feminism taken to its highest level, from the point of view of a man. Not the type of relationship I'd be looking forward to, though, but at the same time much more socially acceptable had the gender roles been inverted in this story.

Following my decision to spare some money on Norwegian media for the time being, I decided to stick to Knut Hamsun's Sult. Is it technically in Danish? I had one book by Ingvar Ambjørnsen but it happened to be the second in series and I'm not willing to get the first one at the moment.

Finished Gendarmes film 4. A good one but I got the impression it all happened too fast with subplots coming one after the other.

Russian is going somewhere. This book's translation is rather loose, so sometimes it's better to just stick to the Russian and only resort to French for the overall meaning.

Started Colloquial Indonesian for real. Needless to say lesson 01 was a breeze, but the book does have some important content organized in a useful way.

Today I finally had plenty of time, over 2 hours after finishing all the desk study. Still not in the mood for any long term activities, though.

[Expugnator]

A productive evening of studies. Less than an hour, but I managed a Hebrew multimedia lesson. They are not bad, really. Grammar is no novelty but the dialogues are good for reviewing and learning a couple of words. Still on lesson 4, so I believe it will get more challenging. I'm just skipping grammar because it's basically fill in the blanks and I have enough from Clozemaster.

This morning I could read ahead again. I finished my non-fiction book and will start another one from the same author, also in Spanish translation. Also read from the Spanish fiction. Splitting my reading into those hidden-reading moments has proved much more effective as I'm no longer trapped into those long reading sessions in the middle of my desktop study.

Trying to find a compromize between Clozemaster and the Estonian soap opera. Today I managed to pay attention to most scenes.

Managed to pay more attention to the dubbed Georgian series as well. I still lose focus on longer dialog lines, but I've followed most of it.

Got derailed in the middle of the afternoon. Some Whatsapp discussions. Even so, I managed to have a productive Estonian parallel reading as well.

Not the easiest day but I still made it to Hebrew series time and Indonesian subtitles time.

[Expugnator]

Maybe there's hope for Norwegian. I'm staritng to watch the series the way I do with French, needing less and less attention in order to follow the story and following the speech rather than the subtitles rather often. Mammon seems a great and complex series, worth of my commitment.

My mornings have been much better organized. No matter which time I get here within a 20-min range, I manage to browse stuff rather quickly and then proceed to Estonian TV series and Mandarin listening-reading. I invariably manage to watch the French series before leaving for lunch, and I usually do Yabla Chinese as well and start Georgian reading. So even if I still "lose" some 30 minutes in the morning as I turn on the computer, read social networks and read in Papiamento while listening to the Curaçaoan TV, I still manage to keep focus. Now that I'm having lunch at work I'm actually having those 30 minutes back. What determines how productive my afternoon will be are the amount of work I have after lunch (sometimes a lot) and whether there is a lot of discussion going on, work-related or not. When people leave at home at about the same time, that leaves me room for doing the Georgian and German reading rather quikcly. These two are the most frequent victims of derailing, delays or sheer procrastination, because it's much harder to get back into reading after pausing 4, 5 times than it is with video, where you can hit a button and even allow your mind to wander for some seconds before tuning in again and it doesn't feel that tiresome.

Today as I had classes in the morning I even had to catch up with Clozemaster, which I did before lunch, all but Greek. Duolingo remained undone until then, though.

So, Georgian reading today has been fairly productive again despite the longer descriptive paragraphs. I'm definitely improving my reading skills. Someday I'll try reading a random, non-translated native Georgian novel just to check. It might still be too early, though.

I found out where Castbox records saved podcasts so now from folder to Drive then to computer (I can't play GBVF from France Inter site due to the audioblock). The only drawback now is having to manually keep partially played podcasts on track at the phone.

Russian listening-reading is finally on the flow. I'm being able to focus and absorb individual words as I manage to understand full periods more and more. I even start to regret sticking to Luntik for so long and not watching an authentic Russian series that would be a complement to a contemporary translation.

Not much lucky in finding Indonesian subtitles for my usual shows. Whenever epísode I want to watch hasn't been translated into Indonesian. The ratio for the seasons I'm watching now is 4 episodes per season.

L'interviewé d'aujourd'hui sur Grand Bien Vous Fasse vient du Canada. Ça sent bien d'entendre l'accent québecois et de réussir a le comprendre.

L'Hébreu is back at fill in the blank exercises so I'm partially back into writing again.

Now with Colloquial Indonesian it feels more like study. The lessons are long and well-structured. They remind me more of Living Language than the usual Colloquial format. Not a bad book really, given the overall quality of Indonesian resources. It moves a bit too fast, though. On lesson 3 there are several translation exercises plus a long reading passage without translation. My computer (FF) crashed while I was reading the text so it took me many more minutes than expected.

No time for the Guarani lesson today. Probably tomorrow will be better.

[Expugnator]

You know that Georgian soap opera I always watch on the background, not paying much attention? Well, it seems that when I do focus I can actually understand what's going on. And they speak at full-speed, no subtitles.

Just watched an episode of Luntik where I understood nearly everything. This might turn out as a good year for Russian.

Modern Greek L-R going smoothly. Words are starting to stick and the fog is lifting.

Colloquial Indonesian has a list of independent verbs on lesson 4. Exhaustive and exhausting. To my surprise, I actually know most of these verbs. I thought my Indonesian was still at an A0.5ish stage. Anyway, I've started to OCR the reading passages. They are interesting but too intense for a beginner, and even in my case I don't want to spend time looking up too many words and missing the context.

Yesterday I had time to read the Guarani lesson but not for the exercises. So I did them today. The dictionary I usually check was offline, so I had to use a pdf one. Turned out it was much more reliable and not that hard to navigate through, so now at least I know I'm training to mrecognize some words while doing the exercises.

[Expugnator]

The weekend could have been a bit more productive but it wasn't nil at all. I'll start with Clozemaster:

I'm really enjoying doing the Mandarin HSK3 sentences at text input level. After only a couple of weeks it doesn't feel that difficult anymore. I wonder how many words are actually tested for every, let's say, 100 thousands of sentences. Because there are over 2000 sentences at this level and I really feel I'm being tested in around a dozen words. I'm sure there's more to the real HSK 3 than these words that are being tested. Anyway, I don't work only on the clozed word so overall my vocabulary is finally increasing on the active range, so better just stick to what is working.

A new dabbling language: Afrikaans. It happens to be grouped by levels now, just like Icelandic, which itself is actually becoming easy to decode. The ease with Icelandic and now Afrikaans that starts nearly transparent made me think whether a third Slavic language, second dabbling one wouldn't be a bad idea at all. The problem is the usual suspects haven't been split into groupings. Only Russian, Czech (which I'm already doing) and Polish have been so. I'd have to resort to a reverse Russian-Serbian deck which wouldn't be productive at all.

Afrikaans itself has a beautiful syntax, with its double negatives and hybrid word order.

Modern Greek is seeing some progress now that I'm working from the earlier levels on the Greek-German deck.

Hebrew is challenging at the 3rd grouping as multiple choice, but not much so as I'd have thought. I'm soon moving to level 2 as text input, which might be easier than level 1 as I spent a good deal of time at the former at the multiple choice mood.

I couldn't listen to the podcast. I tried, but it was a time when I had to take care of the girls. In the end I managed to prepare my snack while watching them play, but doing so while having a podcast played out loud would have been practically impossible. I'm still recovering from Saturday when they were literally running on the madrass on top of the bed and one of them slipped and felt on the back of her head. I was devastated when that happened, as I was alone with them and it all happened at the blink of an eye, when I was trying to convince them to get off the bed. It was the largest bump I've ever seen on anyone's head, and the noise it made when her head hit the floor was also loud. I had just looked off when that happened. I couldn't reach anyone in the first minutes so I even though about calling the rescue, but she only got sleepy, no harsh symptom like vomiting or passing out. I had to wait for my wife to come back home and we left for the urgence a couple of hours later. It was so crowded that we had to wait over 3 hours to see the doctor, and this in a private pediatric hospital. Nothing serious in the end, the X-ray showed nothing internal to the skull and the doctor recommended just some rest and ice on the hematoma. She was so chatty, much more than usual. She was excited about having her mom and dad for herself only for those many hours, as she's with her sister all the time. At one moment, though, she said she wanted to call her sister. They talked over the phone like grown-ups, asking each other how they felt, telling the other to take care, all those formules de politesse one uses over the phone.

The issue with Indonesian subtitles was an issue only because I was looking at the wrong source. Its main concurrent has subtitles for virtually everyhing. It actually has a much better coverage for Asian languages. Now I can pick whatever trendy series I want and put on Indonesian subtitles and create my own parallel reading. I'm going to boost up the Arrowverse ones though, as I want to finish them and feel free to do something else. So I got one of the series in English and I'm going to start watching it with English-Indonesian subtitles once I'm done with Plan Coeur sometime this week.

I managed to read ahead both non-fiction and Spanish fiction. That saved my day, because this morning my wife travelled and I had to wait for my mother-in-law to arrive before I could go to the gym, so I did no Clozemaster or Duolingo early in the morning.

Mammon has no Norwegian subtitles for the remaining episodes so I'll have to pay attention to the audio or else it won't be a learning exercise anymore with the Portuguese subtitles being my only input. Fortunately my language skills have improved and so I can understand much more and I don't really have to rely on the L2 subtitle to figure out what is being said on the L2 audio.

This is even more valid for German. I tried ignoring the subtitles at the dubbed series and I really got much more than just the hang of it.

Finished Falling in love with me, my first Taiwanese drama. I really liked it. First of all, I had never had any contact with the Taiwanese life. It's great to have exposure to its accent and to a more laid-back Chinese-speaking society, given that Taiwan is nearly a developped country now. Moreover, no matter how simple or cheesy the story may seem at first look, later on the characters turned out really complex, in a development much different than a typical Wester one where one side only stops when the other one is slaughtered. It's a story that teaches forgiveness in a deep but at the same time simple, non-pretentious way. I'm really going to miss this show.

Now thanks to Viki I'm not really short of show recommendations and I can see Mainland and Taiwan separately. Just for a change, I'm back to Mainland shows now, and will probably keep alternating. Making due allowance, listening to the Taiwanese accent felt like listening to Québecois: we prepare for the worse, for unintelligible mumbling which we have to start over in order to understand, and in the end it's the very same language with minor adaptions. Really, exposing yourself to different accents is a must if you ever dream of becoming an advanced learner. It actually adds back to your overall standard language listening skills, from what I could notice, the same way suboptimal audio might do.

Finnish is now on Duolingo Incubator. If only Estonian could be next! Just checked the forum and the messages of people interested in actually starting the Estonian course all date back to 3 years or more, when they applied to Duolingo with no response. Given the lack of success I had with adding Papiamento on Duolingo I should not have any expectations.

All went well today, though now that I'm doing Colloquial Indonesian I'm not having much extra time. Luckily today's lesson has no blind-reading passage, but merely navigating through all the dialogs, explanations and exercises that make up a lesson is time-consuming enough.