100 Days of Spanish: Day 3

How is everyone? Settling into December? Getting ready for Christmas/the end of the year?

The first three days of this challenge have been quite interesting – in that I seem to have had no time at all. However, I have managed to get some things done.

The Coffee Break Spanish podcasts have been absolutely the most helpful thing so far. Because I have to travel at least 25 minutes to work each day (depending on whether the trains are delayed/there’s a long wait when I change), I can listen to one on the way there and one on the way back – so I’ve gone through six of the episodes so far! Usually, I wouldn’t recommend this, but it’s all been very basic stuff (greetings, how to say your name, how to introduce your family…) so it’s more of a refresher than anything.

I did the first lesson of Assimil on the first day (which again, was greetings, so it didn’t take too long) and I opened FSI and did about a page, but apart from that I haven’t managed to use these resources that much. It’s kind of disappointing, but there’s not much I can do about it. I know that mid-next week I’ll have more time and I can focus on these then.

Memrise, as always, is a solid companion and I’ve done some good sessions with it. I added another Spanish course – Spanish 101 – well, I re-added it, I found out, after I clicked to learn something and it told me I had nearly 300 words to review! Still, it’s also been a nice refresher – though I can’t remember when I started with the course originally.

So, it’s not going as successfully as I’d hoped, but the whole thing is far from going badly. I need to remember to not neglect Mandarin especially, as I try to do more Spanish, but again, I think next week I’ll get back into a routine.

Also, for anyone who is interested: I’m keeping a spreadsheet on Google Sheets, tracking the time I’m spending studying, what I’m doing, etc. If you’re interested in looking at it, you can find that here (let me know if the link doesn’t work; I have no idea what I’m really doing with GoogleDocs). It’s pretty straightforward – it has the time I’ve spent, what I’ve done and also any links to videos, blog posts, lang-8 entries etc. You can watch my three whole GiveIt100 videos through those links too 😉 (and you can watch my messed-up pronunciation of llaman from today…).

Now, I can see this project getting put on the backburner over the next few days, because my mum and aunt are coming to visit tomorrow until Tuesday. I don’t envision I’ll get much Spanish done when they’re here and I think it’s highly unlikely I’ll get around to making a video/uploading a blog post – but it’s possible. I am calling this a ‘100 day’ project and I will be evaluating my progress next March, but ultimately, the aim of the game is to make sure I am actively and consistently studying and using Spanish. If I have to miss a few days here and there, it’s not the end of the world.

I’ll probably still be using Memrise though.

Let me know how you’re all getting on. Has anyone made their 2015 goals yet? I’m not letting myself think about those until after Christmas, but for example, Lindsay over at Lindsay Does Languages has set herself a ‘2015 Scripts Challenge’, which you can read about here (it looks really cool). Have you got an idea? No idea? Don’t worry, there’s still time! 🙂