Hi, all! It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been back here, though I’ve been posting my goals still over on my log on the language learner’s forum. (I’ve been late with them there, too, sadly.) It’s been a busy time but I’ve now got about a week off work so I’m hoping to get back on top of everything.
I’m not going to rehash last week’s goals—since I never posted them here in the first place—but I thought a fun thing to do would be to look at my time stats for 2019 so far. I’ve been keeping track of time using the Hours app on my phone (I just have to remember to switch it on and off), and then compiling the overall time spent on each language per day in a spreadsheet. I’m tracking activities at the moment as part of the 6WC, but generally I don’t find this that useful, except when it comes to challenges like the 6WC or the Super Challenge.
So, my January times were:
German: 570 minutes / 9h30m
Mandarin: 1,085 minutes / 18h05m
Spanish: 368 minutes / 6h08m
Basque: 7 minutes (oops!)
Polish: 20 minutes
Korean: 38 minutes
Some ups and downs there (!) but I’m not surprised to see Mandarin come out on top. Taking part in the 365-day language challenge has made me really focus on the language (even if that only means watching some TV) and after six full weeks of mostly ‘casual’ study, I can still tell there’s a difference.
This is what February looks like so far (up to yesterday):
German: 241 minutes / 4h01m
Mandarin: 403 minutes / 6h43m
Spanish: 114 minutes / 1h54m
Basque: 46 minutes
Polish: 89 minutes / 1h29m
Korean: 424 minutes / 7h04m
There’s a significant jump for Korean there because that’s my target language for the 6WC, but I’m glad to see I’m spreading my focus to include Basque and Polish, too. That’s part of why I like tracking like this—although it can be a bit cumbersome at first, and can seem a little rigid, it means I know which languages I’m spending more time on. For example, I only spent seven minutes on Basque last month. Seven minutes! That’s nothing, in the grand scheme of things, but now that I know that, I can see it’s a blind spot and switch to spending more time on it.
Hopefully I will, anyway! 😉
Anyhow, onto this week’s goals:
German: Read 250 pages; study grammar for two hours. – I’m really starting to put some work in on upping those Super Challenge numbers, so the pages will help with that. So will the Manga Madness Readathon, which I’m taking part in from the end of the week. I also just want to refresh/study some grammar because I still have weak areas. I mean, I always will, but I might as well spend some time trying to strengthen them.
Mandarin: Watch two TV episodes; complete reviews up to NPCR 1 L9. – I’m still watching the same show I was and I’m about halfway through now. I’m also still refreshing NPCR 1, but I need to speed up if I want to get through the textbooks quickly (I probably need to give myself realistic deadlines).
Spanish: Read 50 pages; study three lessons from the Living Language – Ultimate Spanish textbook. – The pages should get read in the readathon, though I’ve also started LRing (L2-L2) Harry Potter, which totally counts. I’ve started from the beginning with Living Language, which is why a goal of three lessons doesn’t seem completely unreasonable. Well, right now it doesn’t.
Basque: Review one Assimil lesson. – I think I’m up to lesson four now. The furthest I’ve managed to get on Assimil altogether was lesson eight, so it won’t be long before I’m just studying new lessons again.
Polish: Study for fifteen minutes. – This was my goal last week too, and I hit it, but I don’t want to increase it too soon. I’ve been using Pimsleur, but I’ve also got a textbook I’m hoping to start work on.
Korean: Do one Pimsleur lesson per day; study for five hours total; watch two TV episodes. – I’ve been using Pimsleur while out on my runs and find it kind of useful, especially for someone like me, who does not practise speaking enough. I’ve also started a re-watch of My Princess—which I’m pretty sure I last watched in 2013/14—and ugh it’s so fun. I don’t know that I’m learning too much from it, but it is reinforcing certain words and phrases. And it’s fun!
I never did post that Korean 6WC study plan, so I’ll get around to that at some point. I am taking part in the Language Jam this weekend, however, where I’ll be studying Urdu and updating here/on Instagram as I hopefully learn some new things. I am also taking part in the Manga Madness Readathon (16th-26th February) and plan to read all my manga for that time in my target languages (specifically, German, Mandarin, and Spanish)! So there’s a lot going on in the next couple of weeks—but I’ll make sure I let you all know about it here!
Is anyone else taking part in the LangJam this weekend? Or the readathon? If you are, have fun with them both!