LANGUAGE LEARNING | PROGRESS REPORT | EDUCATION
My Language Learning 3: How To Set Priorities
Learning Italian, Chinese, and Finnish in 2023
Missed any of my past language-learning stories? Find them here. ๐
Also in the third week, I devoted many hours to learning languages. Italian, Finnish, and Mandarin ๐ and in that order.
In fact, Italian is going very well, which is incredibly motivating.
In addition, I recently discovered LingQ. With that, Iโm now reading (and listening!) excessively โ but more on that next week.
Finnish also gets a good chunk of my time, not least because of the leaderboards on Duolingo ๐, which is why I work through my portion of Finnish every day, both in the mornings and evenings.
In any case, I study all 3 languages on a daily basis. Sometimes even โ thanks to LingQ โ some English and Spanish, in the (treasure) hunt for unknown words and phrases.
A Little Bit of Organization Thanks to a Simple Daily Todo List
I created this list in Obsidian. A better-known software for this purpose would be Notion. But also a simple mobile app can do the job if needed. For example ๐ Loop Habit Tracker.
As you can see, there are various โtasksโ under each language. Anki provides the flashcards. Working through the due cards daily is essential so the contents are reliably stored in long-term memory.
Also, I have assigned each language its own language app.
However, I only use these temporarily until I can learn primarily through immersion, thus
- ๐บ videos
- ๐ป podcasts
- ๐ books
- ๐ฐ newspaper & blog articles.
In fact, Iโm already a bit inclined to take Memrise for Italian out of the list, or rather to move it to โoptionalโ. Because most of the time I deal with media in Italian anyway, even though itโs still simple content.
The Duolingo course for Finnish I will probably continue until the very end.
- First, it is relatively short with 23 units. For comparison: Spanish has a whopping 211 units!
- Second, Duolingo teaches some grammar. Not in a direct way, but the exercises do indeed cover some basics.
Chinese is still progressing extremely slowly, but thatโs okay.
While both LingoDeer and FluentU teach some basics and simple phrases, I practice characters with the app TOFU.
And with this list, I make sure to interact regularly with all 3 languages. Everything else is a bonus! In doing so, I tend to go with my mood โ because learning languages should also be fun! ๐๐บ
For example, I like to listen to ๐ป Radio Rock โ a Finnish radio station โ while making breakfast in the kitchen in the mornings. Especially in the early hours, thereโs still a lot of talking going on.
Or while playing video games, I often let the playlist of an Italian cover singer play. I shared a video of her at the end of todayโs story. Really a very lovely voice!
My Progress in Finnish
Duolingo Unit 13 (of 23)
- ๐ Experience: 15816 XP (+ 3269 XP)
Do you also learn with Duolingo? Add me: Henryetha. ๐ซ
Anki โ Sentence Mining
- ๐ข Young Cards: 123 (- 16)
- โ Mature Cards: 24 (+ 20)
My Progress in Mandarin
LingoDeer
- ๐ Progress: 22.5 % (+ 4.4 %)
Refold Anki Deck โ Mandarin 1k
- ๐ต New Cards: 925 ( โ )
- ๐ข Young Cards: 70 (- 5)
- โ Mature Cards: 5 (+ 5)
My Progress in Italian
Memrise
- Italian 1 โ (202 items)
- Italian 2 โ (364 items) โ (+ 130)
- Italian 3 ๐ (36 / 634 items)
Anki Italian GCSE Deck
- ๐ต New Cards: 3178 (- 773)
- ๐ข Young Cards: 1291 (+ 691)
- โ Mature Cards: 9 (+ 9)
๐ 73 cards I have abandoned. They were exercises in which you learn to say the time in Italian โ but too much of it!
When virtually almost the same thing is asked in abundance, itโs rather a waste of time. So I sorted those out to make room for โrealโ new vocabulary.
A few days ago I discovered this channel. The woman has a beautiful voice and sings Italian covers of songs from anime and video games.
Did you like this story? Then stay tuned for next weekโs article! ๐๐
On another matterโฆ
Unfortunately, todayโs story came late. I had already finished it on Friday and submitted it to the appropriate publication.
Today is Monday. Neither was it published nor did I get any notice. I had already communicated that it is important to me that my articles are published before Monday โ and there were no objections.
Please, if you have a publication, also think about the writers! If you need half a week to publish an article, communicate that!
As for me, I will self-publish for now and think about something for the future.
Thatโs all. I hope you have a good, successful week, anyway. ๐
