General language log

[sporedandroid]

It seems like my new routine for Hebrew is working well. At the moment I have one book I like, so I kind of end up reading one or two chapters before bed. At the moment my main goal isn’t to grow my vocabulary or even improve my overall level. I gave myself full permission to “quit” Hebrew. At some moments I even felt like I actually did quit. I just quit all exposure to Hebrew because the whole language was just stressing me out. Eventually I just eased myself into Hebrew by just listening to some music when I wanted to. My main goal at the moment is just to enjoy myself.

I can’t really have that goal when I’m more of a beginner because being a beginner isn’t exactly something I find fun. It involves more consistency and memorization. So I can sort of get into the mindset of chasing after numbers. I think that sort of works when you’re a beginner and can’t do “fun” stuff yet.

I’m glad I’m at the stage where the languages I’m studying don’t feel like they’re competing. There is no way I’d enjoy any Finnish books at my level. I’ve tried getting through some basic podcasts. I just find podcasts too frustrating at the moment. So I’m more into Anki, active listening, parallel texts and some passive listening. Mainly YouTube videos where I can get more visual cues. I personally really struggle studying two languages at once if the level and study routine is too similar. I also feel like Finnish takes some pressure away. Even when my comprehension of a Hebrew book doesn’t feel perfect, it’s still better than any Finnish video I watch. I kind of predicted this would happen. I’ll have fun with the novelty of Finnish for a while, but eventually I’ll get sort of frustrated by my lack of comprehension. So I’d want to get back to Hebrew.

[sporedandroid]

Part of my challenge with reading Hebrew books is the fact that the process of looking for books actually feels tedious. I still don’t feel like a fluent reader. I definitely notice some books feel easier to read than others. There was this one book that was “similar” to the book I’m currently reading. I found the description super tedious to read. I almost impulsively bought it because it was on sale. I decided to try the book out. Even with the audiobook playing, I still found it tedious to read. So I didn’t end up getting it. The story sort of seemed interesting, but I just didn’t like the writing style.

I still don’t exactly know what my taste in books is. This is annoying because when I was a kid I used to love reading. I pretty much knew what type of books I enjoyed reading. I seem to like books with a nice atmosphere. I did end up getting another book. I immediately knew I enjoyed the writing style.

Since I feel focused and quick today, I decided to work on some active listening for Finnish. I was watching this video that was reviewing some new books. I think I did a decent job of understanding what each book was about. I had some extra time and I decided to look at the transcript. Even though I’m feeling good and had an English translation, I was still fairly slow. I find studying Finnish just makes me stare into empty space a lot. I did end up learning some new words and making some Anki cards. I think I am noticing more progress in Finnish when I simply try to learn more words. I’ll continue to mostly focus on active listening and video transcripts/articles when I have more focus.

One thing I forgot is how time consuming this is. I think I used to maybe study Hebrew for 30 minutes to an hour a day consistently, but when I studied YouTube videos I think it probably took an hour or two to study one video.

I didn’t understand why those short videos took so long to study. I forgot to take into account that I was learning 80-90 words per video. I sort of tried to do it all in one study session, but of course I often couldn’t. I think I’ve improved my process now. At the moment I don’t try to do it all in one session. It helps that I create a word document and write notes so I don’t lose my place. One thing I like to do is cross a sentence out if I create an Anki card. I think studying those videos was the reason I made fast progress in Hebrew. Now I think I’m pacing myself better.

[sporedandroid]

Yesterday I ended up doing quite a bit of reading and really enjoyed it. It felt exactly like I imagined reading in Hebrew would feel. I also finally decided to return my library book. I just wasn’t into it. It’s just so hard to find books I’m into regardless of the language. This is frustrating because I know I enjoy reading once I find a book I actually enjoy.

Unfortunately I didn’t sleep too well. So I took it easy. I just did my Anki reviews and half an hour of passive listening. I’d say my passive listening comprehension is improving a bit. At the moment I’m happy with my multiple study routines. I can do more relaxed and less “effective” things when I’m tired, but save the more intense and effective things for when I have more energy.

[sporedandroid]

I’ve been getting dreams in Hebrew. When I was trying to stay motivated to study Hebrew, the Hebrew dreams faded away. They were obviously gone when I took a break. Now that I’m getting back into reading in Hebrew the dreams came back. Sometimes I wonder why part of my dream was in Hebrew and then I remember that I read a book in Hebrew.

Finnish hasn’t been going as well for the last few days. I’m glad I did a bunch of active study because right now I’m doing simpler stuff. Yesterday I tried doing some passive listening, but I just felt too fuzzy to even get into that. Today I seem better at passive listening. I can sort of follow a video I couldn’t handle yesterday. I’ve been in the mood for suspending a bunch of Anki cards. So I’m mainly only studying what stands out as something that I either know or I don’t know. If I can’t decide whether I know something or not, I suspend it. I can deal with it later. Mainly so I won’t keep marking things again and getting too many reviews, or mark everything as good and under study stuff. I have quite a few unstudied cards, so I don’t really have to create any new cards either. So everything can be super passive if I want it to.

[sporedandroid]

I was really in the mood for Hebrew yesterday, so I watched some YouTube videos. The vloggers I used to watch seem like they’re trying to pretend nothing is going on at this point, which is sort of what I expected. I’m still sort of annoyed at my reading level. I get irritated at trying to read news headlines, but other stuff doesn’t bother me as much. I still enjoy reading in the context of reading a book. For the last few days I did my usual routine for Finnish, but I wasn’t as into it.

Today is different. I woke up exhausted. I decided to sort of passively watch some short documentary. It looked pretty interesting despite my low comprehension. It was about young people being indifferent to politics and finding them boring. Anki isn’t exactly the best. I’ll just take a break from studying anything new. I’ll probably make some easy flashcards based off that video.

Now that I calculate things, my break from Hebrew took about as long as I expected. I think I took a break that’s about six months. Since I was studying for about four years with pretty much no break, I pretty much think that barely made a dent. I really wasn’t making progress. Now I have moments where I can enjoy Hebrew again. So I don’t care as much about progress. I think I’m also more likely to make progress by just really getting into a book. I just had a hard time getting an ebook and audiobook at the same time. Now that it’s sort of available for me, I have specific goals to work with again. That was my main issue with Hebrew. There wasn’t any specific goals and I was tired.

[sporedandroid]

Today was an interesting day. I barely felt like doing Anki, so I suspended a bunch of cards. There was a bunch of things I wasn’t sure if I knew or not. I’ll deal with that stuff later. I’ll either realize I do know those things or truly forget them and relearn them. Despite that, I did a pretty good job of active listening. I watched a video and I actually felt like I understood it. When I read the transcript it was clear I didn’t know everything, but I still knew the gist. So it’s perfect for me to study later on. I’m just really not in the mood for a lot of studying. Maybe soon I’ll be able to listen to podcasts without getting super frustrated. When I feel super sharp and productive I’ll rewatch some videos and see what I still don’t understand. That quickly shows me what I actually need to study.

[sporedandroid]

I’ve been reading my Hebrew book fairly consistently, but I just feel like taking a bit of a break. Luckily I found a book in English I enjoy. I’m happy that I’ve gotten into the flow of reading again. I just downloaded a PDF and I read it on my iPad. The print is huge when I turn it sideways, but that helps me focus on the book more. Even though I don’t need the print to be huge.

It didn’t go too great with Finnish. I watched this video and I barely followed it. I think it was about the Finnish Russian border. Anki felt tedious as well. I suspended a bunch of cards. I did get to study some new cards. There’s quite a few vocabulary words and sentences I forgot about. I think this approach has sped up my progress. My progress felt a bit too slow before.

[sporedandroid]

I didn’t have the best time studying today. At least I managed to create some Anki cards. I was putting that off for a few days. I also “read” another article. Even though I was just creating a parallel text, it was still fairly tiring. I do know that I’ll get to studying it another day. It’s sort of similar to what I did with Hebrew, but I’m happy it’s more sustainable. I’m glad I also have an effective way of testing what I truly learned. I can often “study” parallel texts without actually studying at all.

[sporedandroid]

Today is an active listening day. I started off by reading some chapters in my Hebrew book. Eventually I sort of got sick of it and hit a longer chapter. So I stopped. It’s hard to know if I’m getting slightly annoyed with the book because my comprehension isn’t perfect or the book itself. When I’m done with the book I’ll have to read it more intensely. I’m still not entirely sure how I’ll approach this. I’ve tried to before, but it often ends up being slow and tedious and I end up giving up.

Afterwards I quickly got my Anki reviews done and didn’t study anything new. I rewatched one video I was recently studying. That was a bit of a mistake. It felt more like rote memorization than actual listening practice. I think the subtitles were distracting me as well. So I turned them off. After that things went smoother. I rewatched another video I haven’t seen in a while without subtitles. That went a lot better. I understood some of it, but not all of it. It felt a lot more natural. Afterwards I peeked at the transcript. There was definitely stuff I missed and I ended up creating some Anki cards. I couldn’t convince myself that I actually knew those sentences because of how simple they looked. I don’t automatically understand something just because it looks simple.

[sporedandroid]

My motivation to even get my Anki reviews done has been low. Today I finally decided to go through my suspended cards and clean them up. Some of the time I created a new card to reinforce it and some of the time I decided to delete some. Most of the deck is intended to be deleted at one point. I might even start an intermediate deck. I’ll start an intermediate deck when I no longer find English translations helpful. I think that’s my issue with my Hebrew deck. The ease is too low because of when I created the deck.