Wow, I just discovered this thread and I think it's a
great idea! So, I'm in. I'm just focusing on my two main languages, French and Hindi, and I intend to try to finish the courses one at a time, rather than in parallel. Duolingo is the one exception, as I expect to work on this alongside other courses.
Language:
French Courses (in the order I plan to complete them):
Hugo French in 3 months (completed 7/12)
Assimil NFWE active wave (I have done 30 or so, but will start again. I like this course and it bears regular revision.)
Hugo Advanced (0/ x)
Assimil Using French (0/ x)
Duolingo French (Present 3: 40/80, but my tree needs a lot of work to bring it back)
CommentsMost of my French activity is taken up with using French input: films, podcasts, reading, etc. My goal in using these courses is to improve my grasp of the basic elements of grammar, and to keep reviewing the basics I already know. However, both Assimil books and the advanced Hugo use more immersive techniques, with lessons being built around dialogues. While working on NFWE I intend to work on shadowing the dialogues, something I haven't done in French.
If I ever finish all those French courses, I'd like to fully complete French in Action and FSI French. I'd also like to work on a few workbooks from the
Progressive series. But for now, I'm determined to finish the above 4 textbooks plus the one online course.
Language:
HindiCoursesAssimil le Hindi sans peine (26/55)
Routledge Intermediate Hindi Reader (by Naresh Sharma) (starting over, so 0/20)
Intermediate Hindi Reader (by Karine Schomer and Usha R. Jain) (0/21)
Teach Yourself Hindi
CommentsSince my visit to India in July/August 2015 I've hardly touched my Hindi books, but I'd like to change that.
I have found Assimil Hindi to be an excellent course, and working on it definitely improved my Hindi when I used it about 2 years ago. Shadowing the dialogues was particularly useful in loosening my tongue to speak. Assimil Hindi is only available in a French base, which I've found to be very useful for improving both languages at once. It also gives a rather different angle to problems they expect a learner to face.
I worked on both readers that summer in India, and I'd like to finish them. I use them like Assimil: listen several times, read the story without looking anything up (underlining unknown words), read again looking up all unknown words and any words I think will continue to be troublesome are entered into Anki. I then read again several times (sometimes while listening), and also periodically re-read and re-listen to previous chapters. I found this to be brilliant for building vocabulary because I was always learning new words with context. The Routledge reader has less content, but it easier to read than the Usha Jain reader, so I'll aim to finish the Routledge one first.
I want to finish Teach Yourself Hindi mostly out of stubbornness. It is really too dense a book, but full of useful content. I've worked on it, on and off, since about 2003 or so. One day I will have read every paragraph and completed every exercise. (FYI Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi, aka Get Started in Hindi, by the same author, is much more sane).
EDIT: added current progress to some of the courses. And here's a link to my log:
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2612