Week Two Language Update

As promised I am updating my blog on Monday and I had mixed results for week two. The way I want to start my update is by looking at the goals I made at the start of last week and review what I did and did not do. Here were the goals for week two;

 

Goals for Week 2
French:
• Complete the Michel Thomas Advanced Course
• Write 75 more words/phrases for the Goldlist Method
• Write a paragraph about my day in French

German:
• Write 100 more words/phrases for the Goldlist Method
• Complete chapters 2 & 3 of Schaum’s German Grammar
• Write a paragraph about my day in German

The ones that I did not complete are not crossed out. Obviously I did not work towards accomplishing my goals for week two. However this does not mean I didn’t do any studying. I did plenty of it, but I focused on other areas instead. The next thing I want to do is look back at how much time I spent studying each language for the second week.

French

Goldlist Method (Writing & Review): I added 50 new words. Bringing my total to 75.
Total: 40 min

Using Michel Thomas Advanced French: Completed the entire advanced course.
Total: 2 hours 35 min

Paul Noble French: I started this course towards the end of the week. It works and sounds almost exactly like Michel Thomas.
Total: 2 hours 35 mins

The Ultimate French Review Exercises: I did only a couple of grammar exercises.
Total: 40 mins

Week 2 Total (01/16-01/22): 6 hours 30 min

German

Goldlist Method (writing & Review): I added 25 new words. Bringing my total to 125.
Total: 20 min

Schaum’s German Grammar: I did quite a few exercises and this is mostly what I did for German in week two.
Total: 1 hour

Week 2 Total (01/16-01/22): 1 hours 20 min

Conclusion:

It looks like I didn’t divide my study time evenly. This is something I should work on for the new week. With that said, here are the new goals for week 3.

Goals for Week 3

French
• Complete the Paul Noble French course
• Add another 50 words/phrases to the Goldlist
• Write a paragraph about anything in French
• Do at least 4 grammar exercises

German
• Study for at least 4 hours
• Add another 50 words/phrases to the Goldlist
• Write a paragraph about anything in German
• Redo the Michel Thomas German Advanced course
• Do at least 4 grammar exercises

First Weekly Update

One of the ways I want to keep myself motivated in blogging about my language experience is to give a weekly update on how I did for each language. I plan to start a new week each Monday with Sunday being the final day. For that reason I plan to give a weekly update on Mondays when the new one starts. I am keeping track of the time I spend studying each language. Typically I put a timer on my iPhone for 20 minutes and work through a lesson. I took the advice from various sources on keeping a study session short with a 10 minute break following and resuming another 20 minute session if I wish. From my understanding this is a good way to allow one to retain what he or she learned and not overload the brain. With that said, here is the weekly update!

French

Using Michel Thomas Advanced French: 40 min

Using the Michel Thomas Method on my iPhone

The Ultimate French Review Exercises: 40 min

Goldlist Method (Writing & Review): I wrote down a total of 25 words & phrases for the week.
Total: 20 min

Week 1 Total (01/09-01/15): 1 hour 40 min

German

Goldlist Method (Writing & Review): I wrote down a total of 100 words and phrases for the week.
Total: 1 hour 20 min

Schaum’s German Grammar: I worked on chapter two, which deals with nouns and articles. I am planning on working through the entire book by the the middle of March. Most of this will be review for me. I did 5 exercises and made two declension tables for “ein” and “der” words in the nominative and accusative form.
Total: 40 min

A few exercises and accusative table for German using Schaum's German Grammar

Week 1 Total (01/09-01/15): 2 hours

Goals for Week 2

French:
• Complete the Michel Thomas Advanced Course
• Write 75 more words/phrases for the Goldlist Method
• Write a paragraph about my day in French

German:
• Write 100 more words/phrases for the Goldlist Method
• Complete chapters 2 & 3 of Schaum’s German Grammar
• Write a paragraph about my day in German

Language Decision Made

Okay on my first post I gave a brief introduction about myself and in there I mentioned that I would have a decision made by Friday concerning which language(s) I will be learning this year. Before I made the decision I was going to decide to either study one language or the maximum of two. I also mentioned on my first post that regardless of the decision, German would be one or the only language I would study. With that said, I did pick two languages.

German

and….

French!

Honestly this was not an easy decision. The close runner-up was Russian. Why did I choose French among the others? One of the reasons for my decision to go with French was that it was the first language I attempted to learn. Also I invested a lot of time studying French, two college semesters worth. At the highest point of my studies, I reached a pretty high level of French. I was able to hold conversations with minimal problems. Unfortunately, because I have not studied it seriously since spring 2009, most of what I knew is not in my immediate memory. This is of course another reason why I decided to “relearn” French. Since I just have to spend a few weeks reviewing, most of what I have to do after is mostly to improve my vocabulary and start speaking again. I realized that if I started learning French and spent countless hours having fun studying it, I might as well finish the job.

In my next post, I will talk about the material I will be using for both French and German. Stay tuned!

365 Complete Collection

365 Complete Collection, a set on Flickr.

On top of trying to complete a language challenge, I am also working on a photography project! I am taking one picture a day for a year! The project began in September 2011 and will end in September 2012. Keep up with my progress

Welcome! An Introduction

The last day of 2nd semester German. I met a lot of fun people and enjoyed the learning environment (West Valley College, May 2009)

This is my very first post for this blog. A quick background on me. I am 23 years old and my language journey began when I was a young 19 year old adult. I grew up bilingual speaking Spanish and English so my first real experience with learning a language was French (Fall 2007). I took two semesters of it in college and after I realized how much fun and how quick I picked up the language, I had this unstoppable curiosity to see if I could learn more. My fascination with Cold War history lead me to teaching myself Russian for a good year (2008) and then I followed the new school year (Fall 2008) by taking German (which I did for two semesters).

For the next few years to the present, I have uncontrollably attempted to learn several languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Dutch, Mandarin, and Romanian. While this might come off as impressive, I will say that it has been my biggest problem. Because I was constantly switching languages, one week Romanian, next month French, two days of Dutch, etc, I never capitalized on improving one or two languages to a level near fluency. German has been the language that I have been more consistent in studying, but after studying at a good pace for 5-6 months I would get lazy and not keep the same level of consistency. For the last two years, 2010 & 2011, I have brought my mistakes to my attention and I have promised myself the beginning of those years that I would focus on one or two languages and not let the “language wanderlust” get to me. Obviously I did not keep my promise and I am here in the begining of 2012 trying to give it another go hoping that I will follow through this time. Perhaps the third time will be the lucky charm and I will bring myself to focus and succeed in my goal of becoming fluent in at least one other language. I want to use this blog to record my experience and I am going to spend the next two days coming up with a plan. Also I will announce which language(s) I will ONLY focus on for the entire year. I will fight my urge to jump from several languages this year others because I know that if I never learn to control my desire, then every year will be the same and I wont get closer to my goal.

Again, the next few days I will think of whether I want to focus on one language, which I know one will be German for sure, or if I can allow myself to do two. The candidates that I have in mind are the following;

Definitely: German

My stronger languages: French and Russian

My weaker languages: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian,

Not this year: Mandarin, Ukrainian,