How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread
How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread
How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread
Going OK. Slow and steady I suppose. I could focus more on it but I get so drained from work and home that I just do a few things and check the box. This last week I have actually been going beyond the minimum so that's a win!
Slow and steady is really good, wayy better than not doing anything at all!
I can relate. If its tough right now try to atleast keep the habit by doing tiny lessons or looking up words atleast a bit every week. Don't let it fade away completely :)
And hell yeah that's a win! More of that when you are able to!
Meh... Lacking motivation this week. Also starting to feel like Pimsleur is a bit pointless.
That's totally okay, just don't fully give up on it! Never heard of Pimsleur before, is it just boring or do you feel like it's too basic for your skill level?
Thanks! :) Yes, definitely not dropping it :)
Pimsleur is actually a rather "old" program, originally devised just as a kind of audiobook, but now they also do have an app. It's 30min/day and basically only teaches you to speak. They do not make any claims about getting you to a point where you are fluent, can read, write, reason about grammar, or anything the like; but they do, very very quickly, get you to actually talk and to understand other people talking.
I initially started learning with them, 20 days before a vacation to a notoriously non-English-speaking country, and it was actually great to, at that early point, already be able to get across what you needed to say and to understand what was being communicated to you in 95% of situations, AND not be hampered by the usual shyness to speak in a foreign language, because I was already so used to actually speaking out loud in it.
I've since added a more traditional grammar/vocab curriculum, but continued Pimsleur precisely because I'd be lacking speaking exercise otherwise. So, yeah, no, I'll probably continue on with it.
What I actually dislike about it is
So, yeah: really nice to get talking quickly and to help with pronunciation and getting used to speaking; really bad for everything else.
Mostly focusing on Norwegian, trying to talk to people and such. Otherwise mostly slow.
That's good! Exactly the same here except I'm working on German.
Ich auch!
We moved to Germany a few weeks ago (well... moved to Berlin). Immersion here is sorta immersion.
I read some new children's books. Spent time translating government documents (the never ending array of government documents). Learned a few new words in conversation and got a bit better at people's names.
Deutsch jeden tag!
I'm still reading. Still speaking to my homestay host while eating lunch or playing cards etc. I noticed a lot of improvement the first week of the stay but after 1 month now I think I'm plateauing. Maybe I should take an intensive course or something :/
Highly recommend it! I felt like my progress halted after awhile of living in a country that speaks my target language too. Intensive course really helped with that.
After the hiccup I ended up getting back on the horse somewhat. Pumping a whole hour into Japanese, Spanish and Irish, which was more than what I was doing before. 30 mins of that is immersion/listening practise though so it's less intense than the more direct study is like. I can't understand anything in Irish besides a few words, but I'm hoping the early immersion is helping train my ear more for the different sounding words/dialects.
Using TG4 for my Irish immersion, and sadly it's not available outside Ireland like I thought it'd be. Good resource though, for sure.
Really happy to hear that you've been able jump back on. And don't downplay the immersion exercises! I am often said to pronounce words pretty well in German and honestly I think it's due to me listening to it so much even when I didn't understand much of it :)