Language Learning Goals for March 2017

A week late again, oops. Seems this is becoming a habit. Same explanation as last month: I did set up my goals by the end of February, but couldn’t find the energy to type them into a blog post until now – really getting my daily dose of typing and screen-staring at work!

This post is inspired by the Clear the list challenge hosted by Lindsy Williams from Lindsay does languages, Shannon of Eurolinguiste, Kris Broholm and Angel Pretot.

Review: February 2017

Well, let’s say I didn’t expect to have two months in a row like January was… First week was just fine. The second week I caught a cold and lied four days at home, with nothing else to do except my languages, so I guess I overdid it.

After that, I got kind of stressed out about not having done any of my Thesis while being sick, and besides, I was slowly getting into a more stressful stage of the project anyway. So the second half of  February, I let the habit of planning my week in languages slip, and so I didn’t get half of my weekly exercises done.

So here’s how I did:

Russian

Tandem: Three meetings – Done! But the quality seemed to go down for me towards the end of the month: First an excellent job interview practice meeting, then one pretty basic, and the last one where I came really unprepared and felt like I couldn’t speak at all. 😀
Translate one dialogue per week – I did two dialogues, couldn’t bother at all in the last week of the month…
Case exercises from two textbook chapters each week – I did four chapters in total, so one per week on average.
Six lessons per week on Babbel – Did 4-6 lessons per week.
One episode of Бедная Настя per week – I think I watched almost ten while I being forced to stay in bed in fever. The next week the site where I was watching them stopped working, boo! So no Nastya for the last two weeks.
Watching news at least once a week – Done for three weeks, then dropped it.
Vocabulary – I did this laid-back picking interesting words from a vocabulary thing twice a week until mid-February, then dropped it.

French

Goldlist: three sets per week – Done for two weeks, then dropped it. 😦 This I am a bit sad about.
Listen to an audiobook for half an hour or so – Done! I went for another book I’ve read in English: Twilight, which I of course loved as a teenager. The story is a bit silly, but I needed something easy for now, and it’s still fun to listen to a familiar story in a new language.

Swedish

Watch weekly vlog from Clara Henry – Skipped one week.
Vägen till Jerusalem: Read 30 pages (or so) each week – Very little reading done… I’m too tired in the evenings and the book is slightly heavy to read. But little is better than nothing.

Extra (French and Swedish): I met once with my new French friend to practice French and Swedish. I was really happy about being able to almost explain in French what my Thesis is about! (As I’m an engineering student, that’s not the most simple thing to explain even in Finnish).

So practically, I had one (and a half, perhaps) very unproductive week, otherwise I did alright! It’s just that I don’t think my goals were that ambitious, or rather, they were at a minimum level of languages that I’d like to be able to fit in my weeks. But as we Finns say:

Meaning, when the road gets rough, just keep going. Therefore…

Language learning goals for March 2017

Russian

Still my main learning project. I feel like I should do a bit more. I got some moments of success and now I’m hungry for more of the feeling of making progress… but I’m afraid I won’t have time for more. I’ve made some small changes though:

Same same but different: Tandem, Textbook, Babbel

In tandem, we’ll keep meeting once a week if we can find the time.

With the textbook, I’m letting myself ease it down with the translation practice, to two dialogues this month, and one set of grammar exercise per week.

And with Babbel, I unsubscribed the Russian courses, but the Review Manager is still available for me so I’ll review twice a week the stuff I’ve learned.

Reading

I thought last month I should find something to read in Russian in March. Then I remembered I got a  Класс!ное чтение -reading practice book from my tandem partner as a new year’s present! It’s a story called Ася, from a 19th century Russian author, Turgenev, with some kind of exercises attached.

That seems the perfect way to start practicing to read something more textbook chapters. I’m quite excited to try something new now!

I’ll try reading one chapter per week.

Listening

When I was sick, I actually got very bored and ended up trying out something I didn’t think I could do: listening to an audiobook. It was better than expected. I’ll write about this experience in more detail later, but I’ll reveal, it’s my friend Harry Potter again. 😀

So I’ll do some audiobook listening three times a week and also try to squeeze in some news at least once a week, too.

In addition, I’ll keep doing the Instagram Language Challenge, hopefully more actively than last month.

French and Swedish

Unfortunately I do feel like I have to give up French Goldlist for now. It works better when I can do it nearly every day and am learning a lot of French with other methods at the same time. Now the three times a week combined with the audiobook only didn’t really feel motivating. So I’ll give it a break and get back to it in a month or two. Luckily, it shouldwork fine even after a break, since the words I learned are supposed to be in my long-term memory now 🙂

I’ll keep listening to the French audiobook two or three times a week. I also want to do a bit of writing. I thought I’d try out a song text exercise: I’ll pick a song, try to figure out and write down the lyrics, then check. I’ll do this once a week.

In Swedish, I’ll keep trying to read Vägendro till Jerusalem. Slowly but surely…

And, hopefully, another Swedish-French-meeting this month, too!