Another week down and with the news that the UK is going back into lockdown, I’m semi-concerned about keeping all my hobbies going. Not that I’ve been out much at all, though I’m probably going to do my best to throw in a daily walk just to get a tiny bit of sunlight. But last week was as normal as it’s been in a while (in that I still didn’t go outside that much lol), and so I did get some studying done!
Started fairly strong this week, with a dip the last couple of days of October as I carried on prepping for this month’s (and next’s) 6WC, as well as NaNoWriMo. Like I said in this post, I’m doing Polyglot NaNoWriMo in combination with the regular one; so my overall goal is at least 50,000 words, but only 6,000 of those have to be in my target language (i.e. not English).
Anyway, let’s take a look at the day-by-day:
Monday 26th October
My ‘free’ day, in that I haven’t chosen a specific language to focus on. Did half an hour of translating (about 750 words) German to English and I’m really getting back into it; there’s a lot of dialogue, which I enjoy, as it tends to be easier to get into the flow of things. I prefer it when writing, too.
Did thirty mins of Frisian as well, all Memrise. Still having a bit of trouble with some longer phrases or sentences, but overall it’s going pretty well.
Tuesday 27th October
German was my focus today, which meant more translation (almost 3,000 words). I think once I’ve done with this (deadline is early December), then I’ll go back to working through some kind of C-level textbook; my level of German is good but there are still areas that are quite weak and I think just powering through may be the most effective method.
Did a lesson for Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo to maintain my streak (I do these every day, but sometimes they only take two or three minutes, so I don’t always track them) and then split my Frisian time between Memrise and the Learning Frisian site. It’s really quite good; I’ve switched over from the Phrases units to the Basic ones instead, because that’s giving me a bit more of an overview (and is teaching general vocabulary as well as full sentences).
Wednesday 28th October
I did about twenty minutes of Mandarin today, working through the second ‘dialogue’ of NPCR L41. It’s less a dialogue and more a long text; I read through it and did the vocabulary, but there are still plenty of words that I know I’ve learnt at some point but can’t really remember any more. Wrote out all the new vocab and then started writing out the text as practice but I had to go and do something so the session got interrupted and I didn’t get back to it. Oh well.
Did some German translation as well, plus Scottish Gaelic Duolingo, and watched a couple of episodes of a Let’s Play on YouTube in German too. I quite like watching these; the vocabulary can be a bit repetitive at times but because the game I was watching was multiplayer, there’s lots of people talking over each other, making quick jokes, all stuff like that. So, I still think it’s very good practice.
Getting to the final few days of Frisian, and I’m still splitting my time where I can between Memrise and the website.
Thursday 29th October
Today was supposed to be all about Spanish – I managed five minutes. It’s mostly down to the fact that NaNoWriMo starts Sunday, as well as the 6WC, so I spent a lot of time after work making sure I was as ready as I could be for that. My 6WC focus is Scottish Gaelic because I think I can probably push up to A1 during this challenge, though hopefully not at the expense of all my other languages!
Friday 30th October
Again, I was supposed to study Korean and I didn’t study Korean. Same excuse as the day before, really. Will try harder next week.
Saturday 31st October
Halloween! And uh, I did a bit of Spanish Duolingo but aside from Frisian that was really it. Still, I found this checklist of things I need to do to achieve an A1 level of Scottish Gaelic – and some of them I already kind of know how to do, so I think it should be manageable.
Sunday 1st November
A new month, a new challenge! Yes, I was supposed to study Arabic and no, I didn’t manage that, but I did get some Scottish Gaelic done, as well as plenty of German.
I started working through Teach Yourself Complete Gaelic Unit 4 – ‘S toil leam biadh Innseanach. It’s all about likes and dislikes, which I learnt pretty well through Duolingo and the uTalk app earlier in the year, so the grammar structures aren’t entirely new, although there are, of course, more nuances to consider.
I also did some time on Duolingo; I’m hoping to complete the Scottish Gaelic tree during this challenge, which should be easy enough to achieve.
Of course, since it’s NaNoWriMo, I was also writing a lot (managed 11,842 words total), and included my translation and what I did for Polyglot NaNoWriMo in that total. Managed 4k of the translation (took about an hour and forty-five mins), as well as just over 300 words on a flash fiction story. Yeah, I was going to write non-fiction, but I found a prompt on Pinterest and decided to run with it.
Tomorrow there’s no particular language focus and, obviously, I’m not having trouble fitting in any German, but I’m hoping to find a balance the rest of the week, especially since I posted my language goals for the year yesterday. Still, if I can get Scottish Gaelic up to A1 by mid-December, then switching my focus to Korean or Arabic (to push them up, too) will feel less like I’m trying to juggle too much.
Maybe I am.
Probably not.
Onward and upward, anyway! I’ll be back with more study times next week!