Clear the List | Monthly Language Learning Strategies Update | May 2022
We’re quickly approaching mid-year — how are your language goals going?
Here is my latest analysis of my language goals as a part of Clear the List, but also the latest Language Conqueror Quest!
We’re heading into May with a Quest all about mindfulness. This was a practice that was fairly new to me last year, but over the last twelve months, I’ve been aiming to better incorporate it into not just my language studies but also my day-to-day life. Plus, in this month’s Quest, we have Jessica from Sunnyside French join us in a special interview!
What is Language Conqueror? It’s a course I work on with a monthly Quest focused on passion-driven learning. You can learn more, get a feel for my teaching style, and download our free PDF here: Get the Free PDF
And if that’s not enough, you can also get a feel for my teaching style with Snack-Sized Language!
Snack-Sized Language is a free podcast where we teach you snack-sized language lessons. So far we have episodes teaching general language learning tips, Japanese, French, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and German. Not to mention, more languages are coming soon!
You can subscribe to the podcast on your preferred podcast platform.
And if you enjoy Snack-Sized language, we would absolutely love it if you left us a review!
Now, on to #clearthelist …
Wondering what #clearthelist is? Let me clear it up for you (see what I did there?). #CleartheList is a linkup where we share our monthly goals, and by we, I mean myself, and you!
We’d absolutely love for you to be a part of our community. You can join us by adding a link to your own goal post in the comments below.
So let’s get started, sharing our goals and motivating one another to #clearthelist!
Please feel free to tag your posts or photos with either #clearthelist on your favorite social media channels!
Last Month’s Highlights on Instagram
Last Month’s Goals
Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // We’ve started playing with this. There are some basic phrases that I use often with the kids like “hurry up” and now I say them in Chinese and they reply to me in Chinese. I’m working on adding a few of these each week.
Maintain my vocabulary learning streak + maintain my Duolingo learning streak. // Yes, I’m quickly approaching passing 700 in several of my languages.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // Yes! I got my queue down from around 2,600 videos to 2,258. Woot!
Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // I was on and off with this. To be honest, I’m struggling to adapt to the new LingQ interface.
Keep reading Eye of the World in Hungarian. // Same as above.
Read in French. // Same as above.
This Month’s Goals
Continue filling the gaps in our use of Mandarin at home. // As usual, I’d like to continue to incorporate this more and more until we’re an OPOL household. It’s fallen off slightly, so it’s something I want to bring back. And while we’re heading in the right direction, it definitely needs more attention.
Maintain my vocabulary learning streak. // This has been a great way to rebuild my language routine, so it’s staying on the list indefinitely! I share my stats over on Instagram in my stories nearly every day, so if you’re ever curious about where I’m at, you can check out my stories. I am learning Persian, Hungarian, Croatian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // I’d like to try to break 2,000 this week. I hope to continue working at this in order to make consistent progress.
Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // I really want to get back into this.
Keep reading Eye of the World in Hungarian. // Same as above.
Read in French. // Same as above.
Resources I Used This Month
A quick recap of the materials I am using.
What I Am Using to Learn Chinese:
- LingQ – my favorite tool
- iTalki Lessons – I have weekly Chinese lessons
- Memrise
What I’m Using to Brush Up/Improve My French:
What I am Using to Learn Russian:
What I am Using to Learn Persian:
What I’m Using to Learn Japanese:
What I’m Using to Learn Croatian:
What I’m Using to Learn Hungarian:
What I’m Using to Learn Korean:
What I’m Using to Learn Spanish:
What I’m Using to Learn Portuguese:
Not Currently doing any study for: German, Hindi, Norwegian, Hebrew, Italian
What I’m Using for Little Linguist
- Lots of books
- Day-to-day interaction
- italki Lessons
- Duolingo ABC
- Droplets
- Movies in Chinese
- Gus on the Go Chinese
Resources That Aren’t Language-Specific
- Fluent in 3 Months Challenge
- Todoist (to keep all my language lessons and to-do’s organized)
- Notion – my new favorite app for taking notes (I just set up a template for the way I use Notion to take notes if you’re interested in duplicating it for yourself)
The Biggest Lesson I Am Taking Away from This Month
When my son was around three, I switched from using exclusively Chinese to almost exclusively English because of a change of situation at home. Because of this, he really hasn’t retained anything except for a few basics.
I’m not really comfortable jumping back into using exclusively Chinese because I know it would be pretty frustrating for everyone involved. Instead, I’m working on slowly reintroducing it in contexts that make sense and it is working really well.
We focus on just a couple phrases each week and next, I want to re-introduce basic games (probably card games) to expand vocabulary and make re-learning the language fun.
Don’t forget that I would love to hear all about your goals for this month!
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