Monday, December 23, 2013

Language Update #1

Hey all,
I apologize for such a long "break" in writing blog entries, but I've been so busy with school and work and my language studies that I haven't had time to sit down and relax.

And now, since I'm on Winter break, I've found time in my schedule to write ;) This is mainly an update to also say that I am going to be changing my blog to something more personal, and I'll be focusing more on my language process and the difficulties I'm facing.

It's been about a month since I've jumped into the Swedish language and I can say that I definitely know a lot more than I did in November. I'm mostly in beginners now (other than novice) and I've been having a lot of fun with it! I definitely need to practice listening more since I find it difficult, but I know that beginners just need to practice and work hard to see progress. Right now, I've just learned how to conjugate verbs into the present tense which feels like such an accomplishment! I'm really proud with myself for keeping at this language, even when I don't have any Swedish influences near me.

I also started German thirteen days ago (if exactness was needed) and I have been making progress in that as well. I've been able to have short conversations with my dad over breakfast and during the day, which is a lot of fun! I'm taking my time with German since it is the newest of the languages that I have started practicing on a day-to-day basis. Currently I'm able to conjugate regular verbs and I have looked into the future tense, but it's still getting there.

I picked up Spanish even earlier than German and I have been able to communicate with my coworkers in the language ;) I used to take classes for Spanish but found them to be really boring--in fact, within ten days I have been able to learn more useful vocabulary than I have in about seven years of Spanish (for instance, I immediately learned tan, which means "so"). I'm really happy with how my progress has been rapidly increasing with Spanish, and my goal for a somewhat-fluent communication is set in the summer, before I leave for my immersion program in Italy (yay!). To increase my progress, I've been using lyricstraining.com so that I can improve my listening skills, which I definitely recommend doing. I've learned to speak in the present as well as the future, and I'm hoping to learn the past soon.

French--what can I say? It's my beauty, my pride. I'm no longer in the lower intermediate but the intermediate series itself, so I've been learning about the subjunctive tense and the idiomatic expressions (which are absolutely priceless). I definitely need to start writing in French again because it was such a great exercise, and I've also been using lyricstraining.com for this language, too.

Italian, of course, has been improving during class, so I haven't been dedicating much out-of-school time to it since it's more advanced than my other languages. I'm currently driving through an hour and a half to get through the other four languages, which is quite a chunk of my time, but it's something I love doing. If I find ways to cut down on the time I'll be sure to tell you, and if you have any for me then please share :)

Happy learning!

Baylee

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