After another long absence, I’m back again. I’m kind of thinking of making a fresh start with a new log even though I usually wait until the New Year for that kind of thing, but I’m making major changes in my life and routines and also this log has been kind of a bust, so maybe I’ll just do that. But first a wrap up of the past month or so. My studying never really got back of the ground after the Gathering and it still isn’t going so well, but it is just about starting to pick up again. The three kittens are now gone off to their “forever-homes”. Of course, I cried when they left. But it is a lot quieter and easier to study without them. Now I just have a big tomcat that hides under the sofa most of the time, so he’s not much work. I really have a new-found respect for the parents out there with two or three little kids who still manage to study. I don’t know how you do it. For a month or so before the kittens left, I could hardly manage to sit down long enough to actually learn anything. As soon as I sat down, one or more kittens would be climbing all over me demanding attention or they would get into something so that I had to run off to stop them or to clean up the mess they’d just made.
The kittens and I became briefly famous (at least among the age 60+ crowd who watch local news and listen to local radio) when we were asked to appear on local radio and TV for a segment about the animal protection society. So, that was exciting. I was rather nervous about it though and I think it shows a bit, particularly in the radio piece which is the one we did first. My voice sounds rather high and thin
. At least my mind didn’t go completely blank when they asked me stuff. I didn’t know ahead of time what they would ask except that it would, of course, be cat-related.
Here is the program from the local radio. There are several bits about the animal protection society (Dyrebeskyttelsen), but the one that I’m in starts about one hour into the program. It’s the third one on “Dyrebeskyttelsen”.
Here is the piece from the local TV news. You can click on number four “Dyrebesyttelsen” to see me and the kitties. And now that I’ve embarrassed myself thoroughly, I think I should definitely start a new log.
My life and study routine have also been disrupted by my having a new boyfriend, the same fellow I said I was going to turn down as being too young; he convinced me otherwise. But now that the newness has worn off and we have settled down into a routine, I find that he doesn’t really disrupt my studying too much. I just try to rearrange my studying so that I can do most of the bits where I do a lot of talking to myself while he isn’t here. Not that he would be so bothered by my talking to myself, but that I find it a little embarrassing to have him hear me, especially if it’s a language he can understand somewhat.
At the moment I’m sick with a cold that has lasted nearly two weeks already, but I’m feeling confident that I’ll be able to get back into proper study mode in time for the November 6WC. The last time I did a 6WC was February, I think. I didn’t do May’s because it always gets interrupted by the Gathering and that brings my score so far down that I get rather demotivated by it. And August was complicated by the page being gone and the bot not working the first week, so I didn’t bother on that one. I wouldn’t have done well anyway since I was being disturbed by kittens 200 times a day.
JapaneseAt the moment, I think of all the languages I’m supposed to be studying, it is actually Japanese that is going the best, and that is really surprising since I’ve had such a hard time motivating myself to work on it for so long. I think it’s because I decided to put it on the back burner and let it simmer and not worry about trying to get anywhere. I’m enjoying the stories in Satori Reader enough that I find myself wanting to read the next instalment each time. I’ve managed to make myself a little routine that feels like almost no work at all, but still seems to help me progress. It’s very simple and since it doesn’t feel like work, I don’t try to avoid it. First, I review the story from last time by just listening to the whole thing once through, sometimes twice. The stories are so short that it only takes a minute or two to listen to the whole thing. If I struggle on some word or expression, I’ll have a quick look at the text to refresh my memory of the meaning, otherwise, I just mark it as complete and move on to the episode I want to work on that day. First, I listen once or twice without looking. Then I listen while reading the text. This usually clears up a few things for me since I often understand the kanji even though I might not know the word when spoken. Then I go through the whole text sentence by sentence, listening to the sentence and shadowing it, clicking on unknown words and phrases as well as any special notes to look them up, and sometimes checking the English translation of the sentence as a whole. Once I understand the whole text and can shadow the sentences individually. I try shadowing the audio as a whole. Then I finish by listening to the audio without looking at the text and leave the lesson marked as incomplete so that I can listen one more time as a review during the next session. I then preview the next story by listening once or twice without looking. Sometimes, if I’m feeling like I want more, I might go through the whole story as described above, but usually I just preview it and leave it for next time. In the beginning, I tried using the flashcard function, but I found that made me not want to do study, so I cut it out. I figure this method is slow in terms of how much I’m likely to learn, but it’s better than trying to do more and giving up. I’ve also decided that Japanese is a language I don’t care about speaking above B1, but I would like to be able to understand well enough to enjoy popular literature and movies.
PolishI did eventually finish the Pimsleur short course. I hated every minute of it, so I won’t be buying the longer course for myself. Since I’m still struggling to motivate myself for Polish, I’m giving it the back-burner treatment too. At the moment, all I’m doing is a bit of Memrise and watching Peppa Pig. I’m am noticing that Peppa is getting clearer and easier to understand though.
Speaking of Memrise, I’m a bit annoyed with the latest update. First of all, it crashes sometimes, but not enough to really bother me too much. I was annoyed though the other day when it ignored the fifty reviews I’d just done and made me do the exact same words in the exact same order all over again. The thing that really bugs me though is that they’ve tried to make it easier. I generally use the app on my iPad and until recently when you had to type in a word, the keyboard came up automatically, but now you have to touch the blank fill-in space to make the keyboard come up. I liked that I could put down the keyboard and see the little choose-the-letters field with just a few letters when I came across a hard word that I couldn’t answer without that extra hint, but I don’t want the hint if I don’t need it. On the phone version, I think it was always the hint-keyboard that came up, but I don’t really use it much on the phone and on the rare occasions that I do, it doesn’t bother me so much because it can be hard typing on a phone-sized keyboard with tiny buttons, but on my iPad, that isn’t a problem so why this update to dumb things down again?
German and SpanishI really haven’t been doing so much on these two, just a bit of textbook work a few times a week, not even every day. I really need to start reading a book or watching a series or something in addition or my abilities will start to deteriorate. Even in Spanish, I need to hear it regularly or I forget it. I don’t really
forget it I suppose, but it gets lost in the attic of my brain and I start to have trouble retrieving it. I’m supposed to be talking with Zenmonkey once or twice a week, but other than a couple of times in August, I think it was, we haven’t been Skyping at all. We just take turns cancelling. Lately, I’ve been the guilty party because of my cold, but we’re both pretty good at cancelling our sessions.