A language learners’ forum

Is anyone else feeling an adrenaline rush? I wish we could get started today! I'm feeling so envious of those in Europe, but especially those in Asia.

JohannaNYC wrote:Is anyone else feeling an adrenaline rush? I wish we could get started today! I'm feeling so envious of those in Europe, but especially those in Asia.

I generally start--and end--the challenge using Berlin time. Otherwise, I'm consistently a day behind everyone else which can seem very de-motivating (if that's a word.)

I'm in again--for the last time, I swear--with Spanish. Maybe I'll finally hit intermediate this time. Or next time.

I've decided to register in addition for Japanese part-time. I am not a complete beginner, and I'm enrolled in a once-a-week course at present. But I find I could use some accountability to keep me learning daily and practicing what I acquire, instead of dashing off the homework the night before and coming up stumped when asked to produce very basic sentences.

I'm also all too susceptible to the habit of pitting one language against another as procrastination, as I'm sure many people here are... "Well, it's easier to read 70 pages of a German novel right now than to learn and practice the elementary Japanese verb forms we learned this week, so I'll bask in my false sense of accomplishment from the former." I hope to balance things out better via the challenge and develop a daily habit, all while racking up the hours.

Edit: Oops, now I see that the bot only allows registration for one language, and for good reason. Fair enough! Perhaps I'll simply keep a personal tally of how it goes with Japanese over the next six weeks.

schlaraffenland wrote:I've decided to register in addition for Japanese part-time. I am not a complete beginner, and I'm enrolled in a once-a-week course at present. But I find I could use some accountability to keep me learning daily and practicing what I acquire, instead of dashing off the homework the night before and coming up stumped when asked to produce very basic sentences.

I'm also all too susceptible to the habit of pitting one language against another as procrastination, as I'm sure many people here are... "Well, it's easier to read 70 pages of a German novel right now than to learn and practice the elementary Japanese verb forms we learned this week, so I'll bask in my false sense of accomplishment from the former." I hope to balance things out better via the challenge and develop a daily habit, all while racking up the hours.

Edit: Oops, now I see that the bot only allows registration for one language, and for good reason. Fair enough! Perhaps I'll simply keep a personal tally of how it goes with Japanese over the next six weeks.

You can only register for one language, but you can track them all. One of the things I like to do, is to look at my graphs to see how much time I'm using on each language compared to the others. It is useful for getting that balance you're looking for.

CarlyD wrote:

JohannaNYC wrote:Is anyone else feeling an adrenaline rush? I wish we could get started today! I'm feeling so envious of those in Europe, but especially those in Asia.

I generally start--and end--the challenge using Berlin time. Otherwise, I'm consistently a day behind everyone else which can seem very de-motivating (if that's a word.)

I'm in again--for the last time, I swear--with Spanish. Maybe I'll finally hit intermediate this time. Or next time.

But there is an advantage to being in one of the last time zones to start too. You can see how much time the people in Europe and Asia did that day and then you know what to aim for. "Brun Ugle did six hours today? I'll show her! I'll do six hours and one minute. "

Brun Ugle wrote:

schlaraffenland wrote:I've decided to register in addition for Japanese part-time. I am not a complete beginner, and I'm enrolled in a once-a-week course at present. But I find I could use some accountability to keep me learning daily and practicing what I acquire, instead of dashing off the homework the night before and coming up stumped when asked to produce very basic sentences.

I'm also all too susceptible to the habit of pitting one language against another as procrastination, as I'm sure many people here are... "Well, it's easier to read 70 pages of a German novel right now than to learn and practice the elementary Japanese verb forms we learned this week, so I'll bask in my false sense of accomplishment from the former." I hope to balance things out better via the challenge and develop a daily habit, all while racking up the hours.

Edit: Oops, now I see that the bot only allows registration for one language, and for good reason. Fair enough! Perhaps I'll simply keep a personal tally of how it goes with Japanese over the next six weeks.

You can only register for one language, but you can track them all. One of the things I like to do, is to look at my graphs to see how much time I'm using on each language compared to the others. It is useful for getting that balance you're looking for.

Just to check, before I get myself in a muddle, I log everything with my target language using that hashtag (plus whatever tags I'm using for me). And then any other language work without any hashtags? Or with that language's hashtag but not any additional tags?

MamaPata wrote:

Brun Ugle wrote:

schlaraffenland wrote:I've decided to register in addition for Japanese part-time. I am not a complete beginner, and I'm enrolled in a once-a-week course at present. But I find I could use some accountability to keep me learning daily and practicing what I acquire, instead of dashing off the homework the night before and coming up stumped when asked to produce very basic sentences.

I'm also all too susceptible to the habit of pitting one language against another as procrastination, as I'm sure many people here are... "Well, it's easier to read 70 pages of a German novel right now than to learn and practice the elementary Japanese verb forms we learned this week, so I'll bask in my false sense of accomplishment from the former." I hope to balance things out better via the challenge and develop a daily habit, all while racking up the hours.

Edit: Oops, now I see that the bot only allows registration for one language, and for good reason. Fair enough! Perhaps I'll simply keep a personal tally of how it goes with Japanese over the next six weeks.

You can only register for one language, but you can track them all. One of the things I like to do, is to look at my graphs to see how much time I'm using on each language compared to the others. It is useful for getting that balance you're looking for.

Just to check, before I get myself in a muddle, I log everything with my target language using that hashtag (plus whatever tags I'm using for me). And then any other language work without any hashtags? Or with that language's hashtag but not any additional tags?

With that language hashtag, plus any others you want. On the charts it'll show up in a different colour and it'll count towards your 'total' score (but not your TL score).

MamaPata wrote:

Brun Ugle wrote:

schlaraffenland wrote:I've decided to register in addition for Japanese part-time. I am not a complete beginner, and I'm enrolled in a once-a-week course at present. But I find I could use some accountability to keep me learning daily and practicing what I acquire, instead of dashing off the homework the night before and coming up stumped when asked to produce very basic sentences.

I'm also all too susceptible to the habit of pitting one language against another as procrastination, as I'm sure many people here are... "Well, it's easier to read 70 pages of a German novel right now than to learn and practice the elementary Japanese verb forms we learned this week, so I'll bask in my false sense of accomplishment from the former." I hope to balance things out better via the challenge and develop a daily habit, all while racking up the hours.

Edit: Oops, now I see that the bot only allows registration for one language, and for good reason. Fair enough! Perhaps I'll simply keep a personal tally of how it goes with Japanese over the next six weeks.

You can only register for one language, but you can track them all. One of the things I like to do, is to look at my graphs to see how much time I'm using on each language compared to the others. It is useful for getting that balance you're looking for.

Just to check, before I get myself in a muddle, I log everything with my target language using that hashtag (plus whatever tags I'm using for me). And then any other language work without any hashtags? Or with that language's hashtag but not any additional tags?

If you're doing more than one language, you need to put the language hashtag and the time, all other hashtags are optional.

I almost always tweet in the form @6WCBot #language #personaltag xx min Here are some examples of my tweets so far for the day so you can get an idea how it works:

@6WCBot #es #audiobook 53 min
@6WCBot #ja #Clozemaster 9 min
@6WCBot #es #vocab 22 min
@6WCBot #de #podcast 47 min
@6WCBot #de #Duolingo 23 min
@6WCBot #ja #audiolingual 21 min
@6WCBot #ja #script 20 min

Now if you go to the score page and click on my name, you can look at the graph for all the tags and languages. Since today is the first day though, there isn't a lot to see. You'll probably get a better idea of how the graphs look if you click on "Old High Scores" and look at the my graphs from last time.

Signing up with my German. Currently passive B1, active A1. It should help. The goal: something every day.

Thanks for still running this, guys.

Brun Ugle wrote: But there is an advantage to being in one of the last time zones to start too. You can see how much time the people in Europe and Asia did that day and then you know what to aim for. "Brun Ugle did six hours today? I'll show her! I'll do six hours and one minute. "

Ummm.....you weren't supposed to notice that I've been doing that.