General language log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:13 pm

I’ve barely been adding new Anki words. My issue is that when I encounter unknown words a lot of times there will be another word in the sentence I’m iffy about as well. So there’s not a whole lot of i+1 content for me. I only really find i+1/2 or i+2 content. A huge majority of the time I also encounter sentences or paragraphs where I technically know 100% of the words, but I don’t feel fluent at all. That’s why I’m focusing a lot on rereading articles. Since I’m lazy I just leave a bunch of tabs open and reread things when I feel like it. This is slightly frustrating because it’s not as easy to track as Anki even though I know it’s more efficient for me now. Especially for Hebrew. At first you need to memorize a lot of vocabulary, but after a couple of years you realize how small the vocabulary is compared to other languages.
4 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Dec 19, 2022 4:09 am

I just haven’t been super motivated to study Hebrew lately. It sort of feels like my motivation has been tied to adding new Anki words and feeling getting an instant sense of progress. Even though my reviews are going down, it feels harder to keep up with my reviews. The migraines are making it hard to get reading done. Some days I can barely even read English.

My motivation to study Finnish hasn’t been great either, but I’m noticing progress without consistently studying. All I really do consistently is listen to Finnish music for fun. I barely even look up the lyrics. I just notice that I recognize more and more words when I’m just listening to music normally. I can’t really say I’m understanding the songs, but it is cool to just notice more and more words I know.
3 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Jan 03, 2023 11:10 pm

One thing I’m noticing is that it’s been a lot harder to log my time on polylogger. At first it was super motivating, but now it’s not. I got into language learning at first because I honestly had no motivation for anything. Now I’m starting to become more well rounded. I can’t say I’ve technically quit Hebrew. I don’t feel like I’m making great progress either. Part of the issue is that it’s hard to get motivated to read. So it’s hard to expand my vocabulary and feel like I’m making progress.

I just started watching a teen show that’s in Arabic and Hebrew. It’s an interesting challenge because I’m still not fast enough at reading Hebrew to reliably use it for subtitles. It’s a pretty decent show and I find it easier to relate to characters on that show. I can’t exactly relate to characters on some thriller about the conflict. So far it doesn’t seem like this year will be great for language learning. 2022 wasn’t too great either. I guess I sort of proved to myself I can consistently stick to learning a language. Now I’m happy to sort of get my personality back.
5 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: General language log

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Jan 04, 2023 12:15 am

sporedandroid wrote:One thing I’m noticing is that it’s been a lot harder to log my time on polylogger. At first it was super motivating, but now it’s not. I got into language learning at first because I honestly had no motivation for anything. Now I’m starting to become more well rounded. I can’t say I’ve technically quit Hebrew. I don’t feel like I’m making great progress either. Part of the issue is that it’s hard to get motivated to read. So it’s hard to expand my vocabulary and feel like I’m making progress.

I just started watching a teen show that’s in Arabic and Hebrew. It’s an interesting challenge because I’m still not fast enough at reading Hebrew to reliably use it for subtitles. It’s a pretty decent show and I find it easier to relate to characters on that show. I can’t exactly relate to characters on some thriller about the conflict. So far it doesn’t seem like this year will be great for language learning. 2022 wasn’t too great either. I guess I sort of proved to myself I can consistently stick to learning a language. Now I’m happy to sort of get my personality back.
It's good you've found a series you like. Perhaps you could read fan-pages about the series instead of a book?
1 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Jan 04, 2023 4:56 am

DaveAgain wrote:
sporedandroid wrote:One thing I’m noticing is that it’s been a lot harder to log my time on polylogger. At first it was super motivating, but now it’s not. I got into language learning at first because I honestly had no motivation for anything. Now I’m starting to become more well rounded. I can’t say I’ve technically quit Hebrew. I don’t feel like I’m making great progress either. Part of the issue is that it’s hard to get motivated to read. So it’s hard to expand my vocabulary and feel like I’m making progress.

I just started watching a teen show that’s in Arabic and Hebrew. It’s an interesting challenge because I’m still not fast enough at reading Hebrew to reliably use it for subtitles. It’s a pretty decent show and I find it easier to relate to characters on that show. I can’t exactly relate to characters on some thriller about the conflict. So far it doesn’t seem like this year will be great for language learning. 2022 wasn’t too great either. I guess I sort of proved to myself I can consistently stick to learning a language. Now I’m happy to sort of get my personality back.
It's good you've found a series you like. Perhaps you could read fan-pages about the series instead of a book?

Not sure if there’s fan pages, but there’s definitely some media coverage on the show. About a month ago I read a lot about this wacky politician. Since I’m not really interested in politics all that much that interest faded away pretty quickly like I expected.
3 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:10 am

I’m still struggling to read Hebrew subtitles fast enough on the Arabic/Hebrew show. I guess it really does show that my listening comprehension is still ahead of my reading comprehension. It seems to be easier to read Hebrew subtitles if it’s a more familiar language like French or even Swedish. But maybe the Arabic dialogue is ridiculously fast paced.
3 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Mon Jan 30, 2023 5:39 am

It seems like I’m getting slightly faster at reading Hebrew subtitles. Other than that my motivation isn’t too great. My over all motivation is low, so that’s probably transferring over to Hebrew. I’m too nervous to actually use it to communicate. That would probably help with my motivation. Hebrew feels pointless, but so does everything else. Being able to quantify progress really helps with my motivation. I could quantify the amount of vocabulary words I was learning. Hebrew doesn’t have a huge vocabulary. I didn’t notice that at first because of it being unrelated to any language I know. It was just endless new words. Now it’s not. I’m sure there’s a lot of words I don’t know, but those words pretty much only show up in text way above my reading level. My reading level is another thing I’m frustrated with. I can practice reading when I have willpower, but I haven’t had a whole bunch of that lately.

It doesn’t look like this is the year for language learning. That might be sort of a good thing. It’s a good chance to get back into other hobbies. I sort of want to get more into Finnish. I like the vibe of that language, but I honestly don’t have any other reasons. I also like how I’m still making some progress even though I’m barely even trying or being consistent.
I’m not sure I’ll dare make an anki deck. Maybe that will help kick off my motivation. I still haven’t deleted my Anki decks for Icelandic. I haven’t studied them for three years. Not sure what I’ll do with them when I want to study them again.
4 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:05 am

I did end up adding a basic premade anki deck for Finnish. No clue if I’ll stick to it. I ended up stopping Icelandic because I felt like it was distracting me and taking away my motivation. Now that I barely have any base motivation for Hebrew, there isn’t really any motivation to suck up. I’ll see how starting Finnish affects my motivation for Hebrew and even my over all motivation in life. So far today it seemed to have no effect/slightly improved my motivation to study Hebrew. A lot of my objections to studying Finnish sort of went away after studying Hebrew.
4 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Feb 02, 2023 7:13 am

I’m not sure this premade Finnish Anki deck would work for me. It shows me two word phrases to make things “easier”, but all that does it make things harder. The phrases it picks just don’t make sense. I think I’ll look for a better anki deck that actually has full sentences. I found an anki deck for Filipino nurses. I like that it shows the difference between spoken Finnish and written Finnish. What I don’t like as much is that there’s a lot of situations that aren’t relevant to me. There’s also a Tatoeba deck that I just found. I think I’ll just try both of those decks and delete my current deck. I’ll probably focus more on the Tatoeba deck.

It actually does seem like my active Hebrew skills have improved. I tried writing a journal entry and I did find that phrases came to me more easily. It also seemed like spelling came more easily to me. It’s hard to get motivated to do this, but I probably should be doing more writing. I just don’t know if I’d be able to find anyone to correct it. I guess progress in Hebrew is harder to notice because I’m hardly ever learning any new words.
4 x

User avatar
sporedandroid
Blue Belt
Posts: 656
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 6:54 am
Languages: English (N), Spanish (heritage/intermediate), Hebrew (A2-B1)
x 1371

Re: General language log

Postby sporedandroid » Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:23 pm

I just started both of the decks. Right now I actually like the deck for the Filipino nurses better. Even though I’m not a nurse, it’s just easier for me to visualize the phrases. The Tatoeba deck seems pretty bad so far. It isn’t much better than the deck I just deleted. The phrases are just way too short. I guess I expected it to be better because the Hebrew version was pretty good.

It looks like I’ll just have to make my own deck. Since I’m at a pretty low level I’ll use phrases from wiktionary and learner videos. Wiktionary for Finnish is pretty good and I wondered why I didn’t use it for Hebrew. When I tried it for Hebrew it wasn’t very good. At least the English version. The Hebrew only version is better.

Right now I just started a Beginner Finnish Anki deck. I’ll probably use that deck until I don’t need English translations anymore. There will be a point when I can’t find sentences with translations anymore and hopefully I won’t need them.
3 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 2 guests