Expug's 2019 Log - Reasonable Learning

[Expugnator]

Back at regular study after the weekend and a day off yesterday (when I worked as a tour guide).

The weekend was a relaxing one. I managed to let go off part of my self-imposed routine. On Saturday we just stayed home after lunch and went out later in the evening; first to the supermarket, then to shop for a new sofa, then to a restaurant with a playground. The girls loved it as the playground was something unexpected. On Sunday we had guests at home. My wife cooked and we enjoyed slow food and beverages. As I knew I wasn't going to work full-time on Monday, I decide to postpone some tasks - maybe too many of them.I did some material gathering but no reading ahead and I didn't prepare my snacks either.

So on Monday I had a lot pending and had to catch up. Clozemaster suffered and I started the week at a low score. At least I managed to save some more Chinese audiobook files and the missing episodes for two of the CW series, the initial one for another one, plus Fais pas ci fais pas ça. I managed to find several more Chinese audiobooks thanks to checking related files. Well, now I think I have enough material for this week and next one which will be pretty short, if any fulltime study day.

Almost done with Indonesian for Beginners. If all goes well, I'll finish this year. The lessons are still long but they involve more reading. Always with translation, which is good as it trains me to tackle native material later. I only have a couple of translated novels in Indonesian, but that will do at the beginning. Meanwhile, subtitle reading has been quite productive. I need to do it for other languages. They exist for several languages I don't get dubbed audio for. So, as long as there are subtitles, there's hope.

I managed to alternate Esperanto and Italian for mass review rounds on Clozemaster. I plan to gradually bring French and Spanish in the game. German and Indonesian at a more fluent level are a goal for 2020 (I can be 'fluent' at the earlier CM levels in Indonesian the way I am in Esperanto).

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I managed to slow down in the evening. It helped that I didn't have the two usual classes (one in the morning and one in the evening). I had to stay over for about an hour waiting for pending material. Meanwhile, I did some Clozemaster and read non-fiction, half of my quota. I got home before the girls went to sleep so I still managed to spend time with them. Later on I had plenty of time for Duolingo and more time for Clozemaster as I had already done part of the reading. I managed to finally do a bit more of the Indonesian second level, it's starting to become as automatic as the first one. I'm starting to think in Indonesian. Moreover, yesterday I actually studied all levels and not just streak-checked for my non-typing languages.

Now what's left to do at my home desktop is mostly renewing my playlist before Summer Holidays.

This morning I didn't have much of a headstart. There's an Indonesian WP group that has become a bit more active. I noticed that I have interference from Papiamento. They all have a typical CVCV pattern with several k's and Dutch words, so I have to restrain myself not to start writing Papiamento instead of Indonesian.

Have I already said this week how much I enjoy listening-reading Mandarin? Some characters are starting to stick. I'm listening at 0.8 speed which gives me enough time to look up the text with the Chinese Pop-up dictionary, but it's starting to feel 'slow' already, which is a great sign of progress.

A strategy I've been adopting is the very moment I finish Chinese I already play the Norwegian audiobook, even before I open the text and paste it on GT. That buys me some precious minutes (in case I get distracted with browsing something else) and puts me into listening-only mode.

I'm getting an increasingly high number of first-corrects in the languages I'm not properly studying yet but which I'm "reaping" through doing text input on Clozemaster: Swedish, Romanian, Afrikaans, Catalan. I won't be surprised if I managed to start speaking in those languages after just a couple of textbooks.

German was probably the language I progressed the most this year but it keeps improving. Due to technica constraints I've stopped using double subtitles as well as the German text when listening-reading, but I'm managing to hear the German words well and relate them to L1 text so I can use them for actually improving vocabulary and not just listening skills.

Just had another session of 2nd-level CM Indonesian. My average time per round decreased by some 20 seconds.

Finished the good Hebrew series "When Heroes Fly". I really enjoy watching Hebrew series. They just feel a bit too American sometimes. They also tend to have at least 1 foreign language. This one had some English and a lot of Spanish. Even so, I noticed that my Hebrew improved since the first episode. Now I'm actually starting to understand some words and grab a few more from context.

I'm favoring series I can get proper English subtitles for (Hebrew subs being already a must have). These are usually the most widespread ones like the ones available on Netflix. That's why I decided to watch Shtisel (which has one actor from When Heroes Fly), even though I had gotten the entire Srugim.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I wasn't as much productive as on Tuesday regarding studying in the evening. I had to run some errands while still in the office and when at home I focussed on updating my playlist. Now the only task missing is grabbing the Chinese audiobooks while they're still available.

This morning I managed some headstart on Clozemaster plus Duolingo. Still on demotion zone for the latter.

I tried to advance my tasks and I was managing right thanks to a good rhythm in the morning, but post-lunch work was heavy and I had to attend a meeting with the parents at my one of my girls' class. Then loads of work when coming back. Result that even though I stayed over I didn't manage it to the end, just till the Greek listening-reading.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I had to stay over again, then went for a class. I just had the time for reading ahead when I got home. Not much Clozemaster. I could barely keep my Speakly streak.

I've slept better for a couple of days and so I've woken up earlier as well. It's impressive how much daylight we get at around 5h20 AM these days. I didn't have a better headstart because the girls also woke up earlier today and they asked me to play ball and turn the rope (they don't know how to jump it properly so we just swing it on the floor, they call it to jump over the snake. When they step on the rope they say they've got their feet hurt).

Time to search for new Russian cartoons. Barboskiny's playlist is coming to an end. The remaining episodes are not numbered, making it all more confusing. I might stick to dubbed series for the time being.

The day was meant to be a calm Friday, one of the latest study days this year. A meeting and then some errands to run made me only go as far as the dubbed Georgian series. And I even had to work overtime. My daughters asked my wife to send me an audio asking me if I'd get home still at daylight, and I didn't make it.

[Expugnator]

The weekend was rather relaxed with little language learning. Well, at least with little Clozemaster. The stalker might have taken some time off and so I could just do enough to take the lead. On Saturday I could study all languages with no rush. On Sunday I still had to streak-check the remaining for, but then I managed to do a lot of Duolingo which was productive. I didn't have time for researching for Chinese audiobooks which was my only great pending task, but it's no problem if I don't manage it before holidays.

This morning I had a timid headstart on Clozemaster, but since I had a class inserted in the middle of the day I ended up behind schedule. There was a lot of work during the day was well.

The day was rather productive for Norwegian. I'm starting to improve my listening skills for this audiobook by Tom Egeland. Took more time than the ones by other authors, even of a similar genre. Well, better late than never. Next one by him will probably be easier already.

Finished the first volume in the trilogy by Jorge Amado I've been listening-reading in Greek. Second one is all-set. I've seen some improvement this time so I'll stick to it instead of picking another Dan Brown.

Today's Indonesian for Beginner's lesson was about Surabaya. Not the first time I read about it. Looks like a place worth visiting.

Started Shtisel. Double Hebrew-Portuguese subtitles. Already productive, I understand a lot from the audio. It's great to have ideal resources. No time for my daily quota of 10 minutes but I can watch the rest on Netflix with single subtitles anyway.

[Iversen]

Surabaya: big dusty place with an OK zoo. Probably interesting enough for a short stay, but Yogyakarta is prettier and its zoo is prettier and it has a Kraton in the center (royal palace area) which is on the Unesco list of nice places. Besides Borobodur is just a short drive away, and that's definitely a place you should see if you visit Java (also on the Unesco list). Go for Yogyakarta..

[Expugnator]

@Iversen thank you for the tips. I'm sure there are more genuine places. I'm just interested in cities that experienced growth turned into important and large ones in the past decades, it's like seeing history happening.

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The end of the year is almost there and every day seems busier. Yesterday we had guests. I didn't bother with doing extra Clozemaster, not even reading ahead non-fiction. Today is my final study day this year and so I'll dillute today's 20-page quota into the next days and eventually finish the book before I'm back.

I had a class inserted around lunchtime so I didn't have much of a headstart. Also had to run some errands at the mall. Well, at least I hope I can make it to Indonesian so I can finish the book.

Accomplished Language Book: Indonesian for Beginners



Long time no post this "section" at my log, as I'm only using textbooks for Hebrew and Indonesian nowadays, and the textbooks tend to be long. This one specifically was short: only 12 lessons. Actually not that short in itself as the lessons are rather long, which is not my preferred format: I'd rather have short lessons. Still, it's a good textbook. I particularly like its typography with L1 text in bold and nearly everything getting translated including exercises. That actually helped improve my reading speed in Indonesian, instead of acting like a crutch.

Now I'm glad I accomplished this late goal at my last study day this year. I'm at a stage where either long short-lesson courses or short long-lesson courses or grammar or enhanced phrasebooks bore me. I've improved quite a bit thanks to DLI, Clozemaster and subtitle reading. Moreover, most resources have long English text on cultural notes. So, before taking the huge step into Linguaphone, and through acknowledging I probably won't get back to The Indonesian Way or any methods with fancy exercises and little actual graded reading in the near future, I decided to tackle an old Méthode d'Indonésien edition. Then probably Linguaphone.

Okay, forgot to mention that Shtisel has Yiddish. Great to hear it. Definitely not easy to find a monolingual Hebrew series. After all, it's a multilingual country.

I didn't make it to the two series but it was by no means a disappointing study day. My last one in 2019, which was a year so full of emotions and indeed fewer study days.

A wrap-up post is coming this week or the next one. I'm back to full study in a new log probably January 15th.

[Expugnator]

Time for a 2019 wrap-up post

I haven't studied in the past days, other than the occasional app-learning, which was mostly Duolingo and Speakly and much less Clozemaster.

2019 has represented a watershed in my language learning journey. Not in the sense that I had major breakthroughs for individual languages. Neither have I experienced and/or implemented innovative language learning techniques. As a matter of fact, I've kept doing what I had been doing, just a little less intense because I have been busier at work overall and I have devoted fewer days to language learning altogether.

The major changes and opportunities in 2019 have to do with language learning and parallel careers. I've seen new opportunities arise which might require more focus on specific languages and less hyperpolyglot mania.

Apart from my main career in the public sector, I've been trying to trace a plan B which might involve language learning. This year I've given language classes, - but much less intensely, I've started working as a tour guide to foreigners - a profession I quickly learned to love but which depends rather on global demand to my destination than to my own promotion efforts - and I've given a first lecture on polyglottery, a field which is highly competitive and where I'm not actually convinced I have something to add to. Receiving this first exposure into the polyglot circuit brouught a lot of great networking but the inmposter syndrom has never hit me so hard as it is now. Besides, there is translation which is a solid career when you live in a country with an underdevalued currency, but it's something rather specific and that involves working to the detail and fine tuning, something that doesn't fit my working style that much even though I tend to be rather attentive and detail-oriented when required to. Then there is digital marketing which is a tangent from language learning but which also requires study time which will be removed from languages and in the end might help with my plans for developing material.

I've continued the best practices from 2018 especially the sustainable dabbling and the microlearning. I've noticed myself being able to produce sentences in languages I've just studied passively on Clozemaster. Even though they were close to languages I speak, being able to acquire active skills as well has been quite a surprise.

On the other hand, I haven't done anything necessary for moving forward in my older languages. I have a long pending list of books I need to work on in order to solve some grammar issues even in stronger languages such as English but also in languages I'm just half a CEFR-level from an active breakthrough. I keep postponing such studies because I'm all trapped into a long, daily schedule which lately I've failed to meet rather often, and which is based almost entirely on short sessions of passive comprehension involving native materials.

Ok, now to individidual languages:

English
I want to study at least two important grammar books. Whatever tutoring I do is rather consulting than actually teaching, but I do want to get better at understanding how the language works as well as fill in some gaps. I have no specific writing goals and I won't promise any static posts until I am comfortable enough for doing them, but miracles can happen. No listening goals either, though I should give some series a try in their native release.

No can do. I haven't touched an English grammar book the entire year. I should be reading a book on English translation into Portuguese, but I'm a total habit killer at this matter.

French
I'm not really in the mood for studying French grammar, really. I'd like to make my speech even more spontaneous and less bookish. Maybe writing a bit more to friends.

Partially achieved. I've made my French more spontanenous thanks to watching native materials including Fais pas ci, fais pas ça. No grammar study and very little conversational practice.

Papiamento
I'm happy with my progress so far and I don't foresee any speaking opportunities. No changes in the daily schedule then, but I do want to go through the Spanish edition of Papiamentu Textbook so as to prepare me to write learning material one day.

Success!. I've joined a Whatsapp group with a native speaker who hosts a Youtube channel and sends us speaking prompts once a week, to which she corrects and gives feedback. I've kept with reading and listening to the news and I'm really happy with the progress so far and so is the tutor.

Spanish
Now I claim I can speak it, even if still rather portuñolish. I want to use it for laddering: asking questions about Guarani in the Spanish WP group. I won't set any goals for starting to watch a series, they will remain an off-schedule activity, but I'll try.

Moderate success. I have improved a lot in terms of decyphering difficult accents. I'm using Spanish as a language of instruction by listening to podcasts on themes I'd be studying in Portuguese or Spanish anyway, mainly digital marketing now. I've also practiced and improved my speaking, which is much less portuñol nowadays.

Italian
I'm happy with the audiobook part; wish I had more reading time, but like Spanish it comes down to finding absolute must-reads; reading a novel just because it's in Italian is no efficient use of time. I will keep watching series as an off-schedule activity and maybe seek some paragraph correction. I might alternate the audiobook with German, Norwegian and English, though.

Partially achieved. I did much less Italian listening and reading than I had planned, but the little I did was a good use of my time. I listened to podcasts including onr for learners and I did many rounds of Clozemaster which allowed me to get rid of some important pan=romance-based mistakes.

Norwegian
No specific goals here other than to keep improving. My active skills haven't skyrocketed but they are there. I still have room to improve on listening. I need to be more present while doing activities in Norwegian, as it is the language where my mind tends to wander, together with Georgian. I also have a material writing lifelong goal but nothing concrete.

Goal reached. Now I regret not having set bolder goals for Norwegian. My listening skills have improved and so has my reading. I didn't work on detail - same issue with French and English, and that is keeping my skills from improving on the way to a professional level. I've managed to keep my motivation high and it remains my favorite foreign language. I kept improving even though I've been listening-reading fewer pages a day.

German
Activate or lose. I'm happy about reaching my reading goal, but in order to be able to claim I can speak it I need to be able to say a good deal of stuff. That means learning actively some conversational chunks, I might need to write some islands as it's still hard to produce the German word order. No specific goals for listening or reading as the audiobook test might still be a bit challenging (which is valid for Norwegian as well).

Language of the year, that's for sure. I didn't push German that much further, it just happened. My reading skills reached a critical mass and now I'm past beyond basic reading fluency. I've listened to a podcast all over the year, starting from 20% comprehension and now over 50% without paying much attention or over 70% when focusing. I might still fail the audiobook test but I can consume audiovisual material in German now. This has affected my active skills and I notice I really speak some German now. Still need to work on islands if I want to reach a B2 active as well. German is the language that keeps my motivation on language learning because back in my early frustration days I thought I'd never reach a higher level on it. I start progressing when I stopped demanding too much of myself and just started enjoying the process.

Mandarin
Activate or die, to a lesser extent (or not, depending on the opportunities). It's not the first time I realize that not practicing output is hindering my input comprehension as well. I need to be able to use some chunks that will then sound obvious and transparent from input material. I want to keep reading intensively, and the Slow Chinese podcast might be a better option than Yabla at this respect, but then...completionism.

Partially achieved. No, I haven't worked specifically on language islands nor have I practiced that much with natives, but my reading and listening have improved almost by a CEFR level. I'm really close to a breakthrough. Still not sure if I should have any serious goals for the language, in terms of making it a professional language in the future. I'm working on Yabla but most of my learning comes from listening-reading translated novels, which is simply my favorite language learning activity these days.

Georgian
I feel I am improving but unlike German and Mandarin I'm not sure what to focus on. I can converse surprisingly better than in German and I got most of my islands done. Maybe writing is the key again, though I should also remain more focused when reading in parallel, so as to finally get to know some frequent words I keep overlooking. Before I forget: I need to review verbal morphology once and again, will probably use Basic Georgian as a start. It's something I've been postponing for years but now I've finally lived enough in the language to actually manage it efficiently.

Sufficiently improved. I could have improved much better in Georgian. I have motivation, I have a regular penpal now I can chat with, I've got my islands done and my active skills are probably better than German and Mandarin just because I've practicted them more. My handbreak is pulled for Georgian: whatever practice I'd do at this point would revert at even higher practice. I'm far from reaching a diminishing return point. It's the language that points to success in my language trajectory because it's opaque, it's reputed as having a difficult grammar and I've spent most years without proper resources. I don't have any professional prospects (well, this year someone wanted a KA-PT translation but it had to be made by a Portugal resident) but it's a language I enjoy learning, it's perhaps the greatest reminder I'm not deceiving myself or the world but I'm still not good enough on it.

Russian
It's more of a side language now. I'm not really looking forward to speaking that much, rather to reach some sort of basic reading fluency (which used to be my goal in German for the past years). I might not be that far and I might be on the right track as long as I stick to actual comprehensible input in the form of translated novels.

Sufficiently improved. I did get to improve a bit more and I'm starting to have some incipient active skills. I've noticed considerable improvements in listening thanks to cartoons, and I want to replace them with dubbed series this year so as to catch up with Georgian which benefitted from dubbing. My reading skills have improved considerably. It was like German: I improved when I stopped worrying, though I'm probably one CEFR level behind (B2 passive/B1 active for German and B1 passive/A2 active for Russian).

Estonian
This needs to get somewhere and it won't unless I do some grammar, whether drilling or just reading about it. I have had some important practice at Speakly.me but I need to reach the textbooks again. I'm a member of a WP group now so output is starting to turn into reality. Reading basic fluency is no utopical goal at all as I've always learned it more quickly than Russian, but for this I'll just stick to what I'm doing, 1 page a day, 2 if it gets easy enough.

Goal reached. I've had some occasional interactions but thanks to the complex noun morphology I haven't been able to consolidate my islands yet. Speakly has been my greatest ally both in vocabulary and in morphology, which I've been learning just intuitively through exposure after having studied the theory early in my studies. As with Georgian, I could have been improving for every extra minute invested, I'm doing too little for it. I have great resources so I expect to keep improving. Oh, I haven't reached basic reading fluency but I'm improved more on daily conversation than I had expected so that's why I consider I've improved enough this year.

Modern Greek
I need to review the main verbal forms. Clozemaster has been helping a lot, but maybe just re-reading some grammar will do most of the job. I don't need that much morphology that I do for Estonian and Georgian in order to progress, as Greek simply seems more intuitive. What I need is to get more active with the language, and WP groups might come in handy. So, a textbook or grammar is lined up but other than that just stick to listening-reading which is helping enough.

Goal reached. I've solved most doubts through practice at Clozemaster, as I reviewed the earlier levels. My reading and listening skills have improved consistently through the year thanks to narrow listening-reading. Also a language I didn't do as much as I could have for improving even more.

Hebrew
I'm happy with progress so far. I'm not advancing with textbooks that have turned unproductive just for the sake of completion, and that alone has been responsible for my sustainable progress in Hebrew. I want to keep doing dialogue-based textbooks while addressing some morphology to the side, as I get more comfortable with vocabulary. Like I said before, it's pointless for me to try and understand a grammar rule when I don't know the vocabulary behind it, the resulting sentence thus communicates too little for the learning to take place effectively. Watching TV with double subtitles is an off-schedule goal.

Goal reached. Still happy with my progress. With Hebrew I got healed from language-textbook-completionism. I've paused when the book had gone too wild in vocabulary. I've made sure to keep at N+1 texts. I've introduced native materials - TV with double subs - and I've already seen some improvement. I could have done better by inserting more frequent micro-learning such as reviewing early Clozemaster levels.

Indonesian
Clozemaster will take the lead at this as the textbooks bore me to death, their learning curves being all too steep. I have to make the main words stick before I can venture other things, though watching series with subtitles in Indonesian might help tackle the register issues. I'm a bit skeptical about seeing a breakthrough at this, but one never knows.

Goal reached. I'm really happy with my progress. Massive reviews on Clozemaster made all the difference. The traditional Indonesian resources aren't that helpful as they make learning the language feel like just learning vocabulary. Even the focus on prefixes is wrong in my opinion. We know that we can turn a verb into a noun in a Romance language by adding -ante, -ador, -ância in a Romance languages, but we don't go about drilling those variations, we just learn them as vocabulary and intuitively learn the roots, so why is it a part of Indonesian's learning platform I don't understand. I spent part of the year worried that Indonesian would be my new Esperanto - too hard for a reportedly easy language - but towards the final months I made a good use of Clozemaster and reached an important milestone of being able to communicate in the basics and start following some texts.

Guarani
Finally turning to the Southern Hemisphere. Swahili will have to wait, though (it wouldn't if it were on Clozemaster). I'm seizing the great opportunity of being on a WP group where native speakers keep chatting and translating and one of them goes to the extent of recording the many bilingual anthologies and posting the audio, thus creating simple, direct, XXI-century-made listening-reading materials. I never though I'd be so blessed in terms of materials for Guarani. Like I said, I want to learn as much from this set of factors and then just keep it slowly. The beginning will be tough as the grammar is rather challenging, agglutinative to the extent that you lose sense of word boundaries, but the joy of learning another language from a country I've visited, one that feels so close to home and even to the Brazilian old Tupi and Nheengatu, will make up for all that, I hope.

Sufficiently improved. I haven't engaged with Guarani and its learning community the way I probably should, but I'm happy with my progress based exclusively on the Duolingo crown system and overlearning/microlearning. Towards the end of the year, the language's complicated syntax started to click and now it's a matter of building vocabulary so as to start having conversations. I'm comfortably assessed by natives on WP groups so I think I'm seizing this opportunity.

Prospects
None other than the usual suspects. All my pure dabbling languages mentioned above, plus Swahili. I really don't foresee adding any languages now, though. As with Russian and my struggle not to add a second Slavic language, I'll have to try hard to keep Hebrew my only Afro-Asiatic one, as Syriac and Arabic are tempting.

No new language added permanently. I did the first crown for the not so good Duolingo Arabic. I did Clozemaster for Esperanto, Catalan, Romanian and Swedish in a way that was much beyond simply dabbling and I won't start any of these languages from scratch when I get down to learning them. Then the not so serious dabbling on Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech and Lithuanian.

A start post for 2020 will probably come in a week.

[Expugnator]

Before I forget, here's the link to my new log:

Expug’s 2020 Log: Austerity and Adaptability .