Hi guys! Today’s 6WC post is a little different – because we’ve just passed the halfway point of the challenge! There are 27 people who have logged time via the twitterbot, though there may be more who are participating a little more unofficially, so if you’re reading this and you’re taking part in whatever sense, then congratulations on making it this far.
So I’m going to do a brief recap of the last few days (as usual) and then talk about the first three weeks of the challenge as a whole – and what I plan on doing for the next three weeks.
Time logged to date: 3449 minutes (57 hours, 29 minutes)
Time spent learning Slovak: 885 minutes (14 hours, 45 minutes)
Well, I can pretty briefly recap the last three days of studying – because I haven’t really done all that much. I haven’t studied any Spanish and I’ve not done a lot of Slovak, though I did watch eight more episodes of 花千骨 (someone send help). I also didn’t study or do anything in particular with German on the day I was supposed to, but that’s really not a big concern.
As it stands though, I am seriously happy with my progress so far. The last few days notwithstanding, this is the most I’ve studied in months – possibly the most I’ve studied continuously since I finished uni last year.
To break it down, those fifty-seven and a half hours have come out to:
Mandarin: 1441 minutes (24 hours, 1 minute)
Slovak: 885 minutes (14 hours, 45 minutes)
Spanish: 522 minutes (8 hours, 42 minutes)
German: 431 minutes (7 hours, 11 minutes)
French: 150 minutes (2 hours, 30 minutes)
Russian: 20 minutes
For Mandarin, twenty of those hours have been watching TV, which might not seem like it’s studying (especially since I still watch with English subtitles), but I can already feel the difference. I’m trying to read the Mandarin subtitles more, which is helping if the vocabulary isn’t too complicated. I’m starting to feel a little more confident about using the language again and that’s great. I maybe should make sure to actually study a little more, but four hours over seven days isn’t terrible either (about 30 mins/day).
I’ve spoken about Slovak a lot (obviously), but I didn’t realise how close I was to hitting my goal of 18 hours already! I’m not going to up the goal because I know there are about nine days over the next couple of weeks where I’m only going to manage to study a little bit, if at all. Like I said in my last update, I’m going to switch from Colloquial Slovak to Krížom krážom soon. I haven’t finished Colloquial Slovak lesson eight yet, but I hope I’ll manage that next week.
I’m honestly surprised I’ve put in more hours with Spanish than German – and I think I’ve covered a larger variety of resources and methods with Spanish than any other language, too. I’m feeling pretty good about my progress with Spanish, but I need to remember to keep up the momentum, especially after the challenge ends.
And for German – I still haven’t found a TV show and I really want to do more reading, but those seven hours logged aren’t actually that representative of how much German I use or hear every day. I do want to spend more of my free time doing entertaining things in German and maybe get a little structure back, but if there’s any language where I can allow a bit of slack, then it’s this one.
So what are my goals for the next three weeks?
- Hit those 18 hours for Slovak. If I hit 20-25 hours, that would be amazing, but I’m going to be pleased with 18 anyway.
- Try and have Slovak remain the second-largest chunk of time; I’d try for the largest, but I don’t think it’s going to overtake Mandarin any time soon. (Oops!)
- Visit Bratislava. I have to pick my mum and aunt up from the airport there in a couple of weeks, so that’s a good excuse to visit in the day!
- Finish NPCR 4 for Mandarin and move onto another textbook/resource.
- Read at least 150 pages in German.
- Finish the next two lessons in Teach Yourself Complete Spanish and try and get some speaking/writing practice in.
That’s it for this time, I guess. Let me know how your studying is going this month – we’re almost wrapped up with November, so what are you looking forward to in December?
Hi! I myself is studying Mandarin, do you have any tv shows that you watch? I watch ‘Growing Up With Chinese’ and it teaches you Chinese, but do you have any series you watch with English subtitiles? Also, do you use an app to catalogue how much time you spend learning, and if so, which one do you use?
Hi! I’ve heard of Growing Up With Chinese but never watched it, is it good? I tend to use viki.com to find new dramas; they’re subtitled by the community there so new ones are not always complete but if they’re popular then they stay on top of it. Right now I’m watching 花千骨 (The Journey of Flower) which has at least 50 eps subtitled. I’ve also watched 步步惊心 (Startling Step by Step) and another one that I’ve forgotten the name of now. I do have a thing for historical romances haha.
I don’t use an app to track time (though that would be amazing); I just have a little table drawn out in my notebook and keep track that way. Probably using a spreadsheet or word doc would help too. It’s not the most efficient system but it works!
How are you finding studying Mandarin? Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment too! 🙂
The scenes where they act out is a bit cheesy, but you learn radicals, vocab and grammar so I think it’s quite good. I must have a look at that website, thanks.
I’m enjoying learning it but it’s a very slow process. I’m in Chengdu but they don’t speak Putonghua, so it’s a bit more challenging. I’m trying to aim to do HSK 3 sometime next year so I’m trying to study for that! Writing 汉字 is a pain though!