Language Learning Strategies | #clearthelist March 2017
Hello, hello! It’s time for this month’s #clearthelist!
If you’re new around these parts, #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 Blog Highlights
Travel
Guinness Storehouse // Things to Do In & Around Dublin, Ireland
Antica Sacrestia // Things to Do In & Around Venice, Italy
Language Learning
Getting the Most Out of Your Language Lessons // How to maximize the money and time you invest into working with a language tutor.
There are No Shortcuts to Learning a Language // Why you shouldn’t believe the hype about learning a language fast and why you need to commit for the long run.
How to Use Chunking to Fire Up Your Language Learning // An inspiring post by Fiel Sahir in which he applies his experience as a musician to language learning.
Last Month’s Goals
Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // Yes! I learnt a bunch of new vocabulary this month that has been really helpful.
Read one more language related book. // Yes! I’m making nice, steady progress in my Spanish course book.
Keep playing Zelda Ocarina of Time in Mandarin Chinese. // This is one of those things that I didn’t really do, then remembered that I said I was going to do it and then did a bunch of it at the end of the month. So, still counts, right?
Get ahead reading my language reading challenge books. // I’m both ahead and behind. I am in the middle of several of the books for the challenge, but haven’t actually finished any of them. An odd place to be.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // I’ve worked through it, but I also added more to it this month than I got through, so my number of ‘to watch’ videos is higher than it was last month. I’ll still count this as a win because I did technically watch some of the lessons.
Keep reading my other Pooh Bear book in Chinese // Yes. I kind of procrastinated and didn’t do this until the end of the month, but I still got in my four chapters.
Have something I’m reading that’s in French or Spanish. // Yes! I’m re-reading one of my favorite books in Spanish.
Finish Pimsleur Chinese IV // Done! This was hard because I was really sick and didn’t go to work for a while, and thus, didn’t spend as much time in the car as I normally would. Thankfully I only had about 15 lessons left, so I was able to squeeze them in on the days I did drive.
This Month’s Goals
Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // As long as I’m still speaking to Little Linguist in Chinese, this one is here to stay. And it will always be a priority.
Read one more language related book. // Keep working through my grammar book in Spanish.
Keep playing Zelda Ocarina of Time in Mandarin Chinese. // It’s all about making language a part of my day-to-day life.
Get ahead reading my language reading challenge books. // Since I’m all over the place with this one.
Keep working through my YouTube Queue. // Because there still are just so many language lessons in there I need to do!
Keep reading my other Pooh Bear book in Chinese // Since I did four chapters this past month, my goal is to do yet another four chapters this month.
Finish adding in my sticky notes to the first Pooh Bear Book. // I’ve been putting this off because Mini M was being a bit nosy and went through my notes. He ended up mixing them all up so they were completely out of order. It’s been a nightmare trying to figure it out and put it all back together so I’ve kind of avoided this task. But I really want to read this book with Little Linguist, so I’m going to stop procrastinating.
Have something I’m reading that’s in French or Spanish. // Since I completely slacked on this one this past month.
Do at least 15 Pimsleur Chinese V Lessons. // And then if I get through that, get through some of the Melnyk’s lessons I’ve put on hold.
Resources I Used This Month
A quick recap on the materials I am using.
What I Am Using to Learn Chinese
- iTalki Lessons – I have weekly Chinese lessons
- Pimsleur
- Memrise – I do 12,000 points minimum per day
- ChineseClass101
- Melnyk’s
- Antosch & Lin email newsletters
- FluentU – I watch anywhere from 3-6 videos per day and then work on the “Learning” section for each of the videos
- DramaFever
- Chinese version of the Nintendo 64
What I’m Using to Brush Up/Improve My French:
- Immersion (we speak franglais at home)
- Reading books written by French authors
- Listening to French radio/podcasts
- Chatting with family
- Watching movies and other videos in French
What I am Using to Learn Russian:
- Perfectionnement Russe
- RussianPod101
- iTalki Lessons
- The penmanship practice books from Russian Step-by-Step (a lot of you have been asking me about these)
- Memrise
- Pimsleur
What I am Using to Learn Korean:
- Memrise
- Assimil’s Korean Phrasebook
- Pimsleur
- Trial of 90 Day Korean
What I am Using to Learn Spanish:
- Lingoda (use code FM2J6Y )
- Coffee Break Spanish
- Schaum’s Spanish Grammar
What I’m Using for Little Linguist
- Pooh Bear and Baby Bear
- Little Pim
- YouTube
- Day-to-day interaction
- His Chinese lullaby is from Mantou Riji and his French is Une Souris Verte
The Biggest Lesson I Am Taking Away from This Month
That I really need to work harder at keeping things in Chinese with Little Linguist. Particularly because I was sick and traveling quite a bit this month, and then he was sick, I was just too tired and kept slipping back into English. I know it’s not the end of the world, but I am his only source for Mandarin so I just need to persevere a little more.
He’s at the stage now where his babbling has consonants, so it’s interesting watching how things change in his speech. He says gah, geh and deh a lot and he has really long conversations with some of his toys that probably make sense to him but just make me giggle.
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:
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