Languid Language Learning

[Elenia]

I haven't made a big 2016 goals post or anything like that, so I guess this should be it. Fingers crossed I don't lose stamina halfway through and go to bed instead

LANGUAGES
So far, 2016 will include a ton of Swedish, a lesser amount of German, a fun and healthy twist of Korean and some French whenever I remember. I'll also be spicing things up with a dash of Danish and a nugget of Norwegian. Languages which may or may not creep in when I'm not looking: Dutch, Afrikaans, Finnish (whut), Icelandic (whuuuut), Catalan, Romanian, Russian... okay, so all of the other languages.

GOALS
So, what do I want to do with this ingredient list of hopefully-not-disaster? Well, Swedish is, for all newcomers to this log, the love of my language life - strangely has something to do with a Swedish boyfriend. I hope to sit an exam which is probably a good two CEFR levels above my actual capabilities in autumn of this year which will hopefully not be particularly interesting but will be particularly successful. Once again, fingers crossed. With such an ambitious goal, one might well ask why Swedish isn't my only focus rather than my main focus. The answer is that I'm an idiot. Beyond that, I've been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to learn German for years now. It is only recently that I begin to feel I am getting anywhere with the language. I am enjoying wading through literature way above my level and fantasising about the day I can hold a conversation in German with the Germans in my life. And Korean? Well, I like Korean food.

PLAN OF ATTACK
Swedish I will attack from all four corners and more, if there are more to be found. I will continue reading Swedish books, listening to Swedish media, chatting to Swedish people and writing the Swedish words. I will continue working through Rivstart, Assimil and FSI, and may take up an evening class. I will try to go to the bi-monthly Swedish conversation meet-up (and make it to more group events whenever possible), and I will make ever greater efforts toward only speaking Swedish when in Sweden.

For German, I will continue working my way through the books that I'm reading. I am hoping to finish all four of them by the end of the year. I will make my way through courses that interest me at a languid pace, and I will try to listen to more German. Later in the year, I will turn my thoughts towards production.

As for Korean... well, nothing is set in stone. I am still working through hangul. By the end of the month, I would like to be able to read Korean slightly better than I can read Cyrillic (where I can just about sound out words with no actual clue as to how things are pronounced, where stress goes or what the words I am destroying actually mean). I would also like to achieve perfect recognition of all the names of my favourite dishes. I'll use Sprachprofi's course and anything else that works and that I enjoy. I'll continue watching Two Chefs. I'll also work on deciphering the webtoon Fluttering Feeling's, by Samba.

CHALLENGES
I'll be doing the Output Challenge for Swedish. I'll also continue with the monthly challenges from the Swedish/Polish challenge log.

I am also doing a host of reading challenges which should feed into my language goals. I am thinking of undertaking a personal super challenge, as I am too impatient to wait for the official one to begin.

I will most likely NOT be doing the TAC, although if someone creates a Scandi or Swedish TAC group I'll gladly lurk around. Likewise, if anyone would like a Scandi or Swedish study group (I know there are at least two other interested forum members) I'd gladly join and try to help run the group. More on that later.

---

This has been a post. I have probably forgotten things, but that should be about the sum of it. My Output Challenge progress bars will be in the first post of this log, as will any other progress bars I decide to create throughout the year.

GOOD LUCK TO US ALL

[Yuurei]

Happy (late) birthday! And a happy new year!

I am thinking of undertaking a personal super challenge, as I am too impatient to wait for the official one to begin.

If you decide to go ahead with this and would like some company, hit me up! I want to read a lot of Spanish this year, and yep, May is still far, far away. XD

[Elenia]

Happy (late) birthday! And a happy new year!

I am thinking of undertaking a personal super challenge, as I am too impatient to wait for the official one to begin.

If you decide to go ahead with this and would like some company, hit me up! I want to read a lot of Spanish this year, and yep, May is still far, far away. XD

Thank you! Happy new year

I think that I will aim for something like 10,000 book pages by the end of this year, but I will most probably be counting things I have read before the year starts. This probably doesn't total more than 350 pages though >.< very ambitious! I also doubt I will try to specify an amount for listening as I'm too lazy to find a way to count actual listening hours, but I guess I will try to listen to/watch a given amount of things each week.

---

The output challenge is going. It is not going anywhere fast, but it is going. I have over 600 hundred words written already, but not even six minutes of recorded speech. Ah, well, there's still time.

In other news, I finished a book! The book is Mio, min Mio, and I have written a review in Swedish. This handily counts towards my tadoku and my goodreads challenge, as well as my personal super challenge, and when I reread the book intensively, it will also count towards my european book challenge. Great!

Finally, I created a thread for those studying Scandinavian languages. I'm not sure how things will pan out, but fingers crossed it goes well!

*I've done nothing for the other languages, save a touch of German duolingo.

[Yuurei]

I think that I will aim for something like 10,000 book pages by the end of this year, but I will most probably be counting things I have read before the year starts. This probably doesn't total more than 350 pages though >.< very ambitious! I also doubt I will try to specify an amount for listening as I'm too lazy to find a way to count actual listening hours, but I guess I will try to listen to/watch a given amount of things each week.

Whoa, 10,000 pages by the end of the year is a bit much. I don't think I can keep up with that. Personally, I'll be aiming for 12 books, which is less work keeping track of than pages (especially when some of them may be ebooks without page numbers). According to goodreads the books I read last year had an average of 500 pages, so if that holds I'd be reading about 6000 pages.

Still, I wish you the best of luck with your 10,000 pages.

[Elenia]

I think that I will aim for something like 10,000 book pages by the end of this year, but I will most probably be counting things I have read before the year starts. This probably doesn't total more than 350 pages though >.< very ambitious! I also doubt I will try to specify an amount for listening as I'm too lazy to find a way to count actual listening hours, but I guess I will try to listen to/watch a given amount of things each week.

Whoa, 10,000 pages by the end of the year is a bit much. I don't think I can keep up with that. Personally, I'll be aiming for 12 books, which is less work keeping track of than pages (especially when some of them may be ebooks without page numbers). According to goodreads the books I read last year had an average of 500 pages, so if that holds I'd be reading about 6000 pages.

Still, I wish you the best of luck with your 10,000 pages.

I was originally going to go for something like 5-6,000 pages, but I only work seven and a half hours a week. Even if I don't make it (and I really doubt I will, considering that's an advanced super challenge), it'll give me the push I need to actually get reading. I would have counted books, but I've got a few shorter books that shouldn't count for as much. I'm currently at 495 pages... I should put a progress bar in my first post, that always helps!

[Cavesa]

I'm coming late to the party as usual but still: Happy Birthday, Elenia!

Your plans are a bit of a shock. How the hell got Korean into the mix? But I'm sure it will bring you tons of joy. I'll need to read your last posts again, to make sure those 10000 pages read in 2016 are not gonna be in Korean.

[garyb]

I'm even later, happy birthday and good luck for the year! Definitely some interesting languages in your list.

[Elenia]

Thank you, Cavesa and garyb for the birthday greetings Korean happened while I was looking the other way I'm going to take it slowly. I currently don't have any goals bigger or more ambitious than being able to read through a restaurant menu and pick out my favourite dishes, or to stumble my way through a webtoon with the constant help of google translate. I also realised that I'm still only aiming for half an advanced super challenge but those ten thousand pages will be in Swedish only. German, French and Korean can wait.

---

So far this year, so good. I'm lagging on the spoken portion of the Output Challenge but I'm planning on clawing it back by translating something I've written - maybe a fairytale? and then recording the corrected version. The only fairytale I've actually finished is probably at least 6,500 words in English, so I should get some good mileage out of it. Otherwise, I'm ahead on the written part of the challenge.

I have read 514 words toward my personal reading challenge. I'm still making my way through Sommarboken. It is slower reading than Mio, min Mio, but I adore it so far. Tove Jansson is magic. I'd need to read just under 200 pages a week to reach my goal by the end of the year, starting from scratch, so I'm doing well. What is important is making sure that I don't fall behind.

Also, I am also near the end of the Duolingo Swedish tree. It is quite a weird feeling. I'm feeling fairly advanced in Swedish right now, so I am able to test out of a lot of the things. I can see that the Duo course actually covers quite a lot of ground, but I wouldn't be anywhere near the level I am on due alone. They introduce some of the more complex stuff, but even near the end the sentences are almost as simple as they are in the beginning. I am also still sure that I don't really learn very well from duolingo. I'll continue messing around with it, however, After all, every little helps!

---

It is a Friday, and the first seven days of the new year have passed us by. Therefore, I might as well set some goals!

So, the goals for this, the second week of 2016 are:

Swedish

• Finish reading Sommarboken
• Read one chapter of Mio, min Mio intensively
• Read at least one story of Sommarboken intensively
• Watch an episode of Mitt i Naturen
• Watch a youtube video
• Watch an episode of På Spåret
• Watch an episode of Julkalendar
• Translate the first chapter of the fairytale
  German
• Get up to date with my tandem read of Die unendliche Geschichte
• Read the first chapter of Tintenherz*
• Practice output
  Korean
• Start one of the coursebooks fellow forum members have so kindly helped me out with finding
• Watch another 'Two Chefs' episode
• Seriously try reading a bit of a webtoon

*If, of course, Cavesa is ready to start the tandem read

There is many a Swedish goal up there, less of everything else. The masses of watching is to do with the fact that I'm too lazy to count listening hours for any kind of input challenge. My idea is, instead, to try and watch a given episode of any one kind of thing per week. Although, I'll be honest here and say that På Spåret is just for fun. The rest covers children's TV, for easy listening (although Julkalandern also has a variety of different speakers), something factual to develop my mind, and more casual speech. I make no promises to follow any such guidelines in future.

I also hope to make it out to two meetups from the London Swedish group. One meet up is a film and chat in a pub, the other is one of the two monthly language meetups. I didn't make them goals because I didn't want to feel bad if I can't/don't go to them.

[Bakunin]

[*]Get up to date with my tandem read of Die unendliche Geschichte

I loved that story as a kid! I even read it again in Thai a few years ago, it's really a cool story. There are several other really great books by Michael Ende, his stories are always full of creativity. I hope you'll enjoy the book!

[Elenia]

[*]Get up to date with my tandem read of Die unendliche Geschichte

I loved that story as a kid! I even read it again in Thai a few years ago, it's really a cool story. There are several other really great books by Michael Ende, his stories are always full of creativity. I hope you'll enjoy the book!

I never knew about the book as a child, only the film... which I hated. I'm enjoying the book much more, now. I have Momo on my 'to read' list