Clear the List | Monthly Language Learning Strategies Update | September
It’s September, one of my favorite months. It’s not only my birthday month, but it’s also the first month of fall (imho the best season!). And… Women in Language is here!
I’m a month into my Persian language project, nearly halfway to beating my longest streak ever on Memrise, and getting back into Mandarin Chinese becoming a bigger part of my life again. Let’s dive in!
Women in Language
Want to spend four days learning about language stuff while spending time with an amazing, supportive group of language lovers? Me too! That’s why I co-organize Women in Language each year with Lindsay Williams and Kerstin Cable.
And this month, the next event is happening!
You can attend talks for more than 30 inspiring speakers from September 17-20. We have panels, dream teams, language exchange practice sessions, live q&a’s and a chat that’s always on fire!
The Language Hacking Podcast
The Language Hacking Podcast over at Fluent in 3 Months where I’m co-hosting with Fi3M founder, Benny Lewis is still going strong! We release a new episode every week and we’re up to 13 episodes.
Some of our guests have been: Idahosa Ness, Olly Richards, and Scott Young.
If you give the podcast a listen, or if you already have been listening, we’d love your reviews!
Drops has Serbian and Bosnian
Drops added two more languages last month! You can now learn Serbian and Bosnian with Drops (as well as Croatian).
Spend just 5 minutes a day learning thousands of new words–including those related to staying healthy–in 39+ languages!
For now, on to #clearthelist …
Not sure 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 Lindsay of Lindsay Does Languages.
We’d absolutely love for you to a part of our community. You can join us by adding a link to your own goal post 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 have been introducing more and more Mandarin into our daily routine. Books each night, Mandarin tv time before English tv, Mandarin game play before tablet time, lessons, games in the car, and more.
Maintain my vocabulary learning streak. // Yes! I missed a day for a couple languages because I started too close to midnight, but I’ve kept up my streak for most of my active languages.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // Yes! I made it through quite a few videos this month.
Fluent in 3 Months Challenge // I’m still going strong with my Persian language project!
Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // I didn’t do as much of this as I would have liked.
Study Stranger Things in Hungarian. // Same as above.
Keep working through the PersianPod101 course. // Yes! And I got that coursebook (actually several coursebooks) as the next step.
Finish Pimsleur’s Persian 1. // I’m very close to doing this. So I’ll still count it as a “yay”.
Maintain my weekly lessons in each language. // As much as this has been possible, I’ve done this!
This Month’s Goals
Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // I’d like to continue to incorporate this more and more until we’re an OPOL household.
Maintain my vocabulary learning streak. // This has been a great way to rebuild my language routine, so it’s staying on the list indefinitely! Plus, I’m really seeing the impact of this study.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // I’d like to continue to whittle this down since I have more than 1,000 videos in my queue.
Fluent in 3 Months Challenge // This will be the tail end of my Persian language Challenge.
Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // More like resume reading Game of Thrones in Russian.
Study Stranger Things in Hungarian. // Same as above.
Finish my Persian Script Hacking book. // So that I can start to get comfortable reading and writing in Persian.
Get to lesson 15 of Pimsleur Persian II. // I want to keep knocking this one out.
Maintain my weekly lessons in each language. // It makes sure I’m using all my languages each week and helps me a ton with accountability.
Have an awesome birthday with family. // Because it only happens once a year!
Women in Language // I’m looking forward to all the inspiration and energy of this event.
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
- Drops
What I’m Using to Brush Up/Improve My French:
- LingQ
- Listening to French radio/podcasts/music
What I am Using to Learn Russian:
What I am Using to Learn Persian:
What I am Using to Learn Hebrew:
What I am Using to Learn Korean:
- LingQ
- Drops – they just added several hundred new culture-specific words for Korean and I’m so excited about the new content!
- iTalki Lessons
- Pimsleur
What I am Using to Learn Spanish:
What I am Using to Learn Italian:
What I’m Using to Learn Japanese:
- Drops – they just added hundreds of new culture-specific words for Japanese!
- iTalki Lessons
- Pimsleur
What I’m Using to Learn Croatian:
- iTalki Lessons
- LingQ – they added Croatian, woot woot!
- Drops
What I’m Using to Learn Hungarian:
- iTalki Lessons
- Drops
- LingQ – they added Hungarian, too!
Not Currently doing any study for: German, Hindi
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
The Biggest Lesson I Am Taking Away from This Month
For the first two years of Little Linguist’s life, I spoke to him almost exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. But then, English started to creep in and before I knew it, had taken completely over.
I’ve been trying to get back on track, but I was initially deterred by the idea of starting the language again now that he’s older. He communicates well in English and the idea of starting over with another language seemed intimidating.
So I started with little things I knew he enjoyed–play, reading, movie time. And sure enough, the language began to become a part of our lives once more. And as I continue to make little additions, that part grows.
So my lesson for this month is this…
Sometimes, when a project or change seems overwhelming, just take a single step.
For us, it was reading one Mandarin Chinese book each night. And it grew from there. But it was in taking that first step to get back on track that re-incorporating Chinese stopped seeming overwhelming.
Don’t forget that I would love to hear all about your goals for this month! Please join us by adding your post to the linkup below!
Clear The List Linkup Rules:
1. Share your goal post whether it includes your aspirations for the month or year. Submissions unrelated to the theme or links to your homepage will be deleted.
2. Link back to this post. You can use our button if you wish.
3. Follow the hosts: Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages and Shannon from Eurolinguiste.
4. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Please visit the site of the person who linked up immediately before you and leave them an encouraging comment! By hosting this linkup, we’re hoping to create a positive community where we can all share our goals. If you do not do this, you will be removed from the linkup.
5. Share on social media using #ClearTheList
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