Looking Back on 2014: What I Accomplished

I honestly had no idea we had views like this where I live--but look at what you can find if you just try a different route! :)

2014 was an insanely awesome year. Seriously.

I've been suffering with a lack of motivation since around Christmas time, and with us already into a full week of 2015, I decided I have to get a move on things (especially Irish, which I said I would be practicing daily (which I have been! ;) )).

My lack of motivation made me look back on 2014 and think, Wow, I sucked. But, once I got out of my moodiness, I realized just how much I was able to accomplish regarding my languages in one full year. I'm going to create a pretty little "timeline" for you below. :)

January '14--barely 1 month into my Spanish challenge

March '14--Spanish challenge successfully completed

I was able to communicate with my coworkers in Spanish and I now have a blast listening to people's conversations (oh, come on--you know you do it, too!)

around May '14--begin to learn Romanian

Romanian is the one thing I have a set resolution to learn this new year, because of how passionate I had practiced it for months. It's been my favorite language since I began listening to Romanian music back in 2012 and I am ready to set a challenge for it, though I'm still collecting materials beforehand.

August '14--1 month Brazilian Portuguese challenge begins and is successful

This was my favorite challenge because of how hard I buckled down and learned the language. I jogged everything in a notebook, studied around an hour a day, and by the end of August, I was talking to a few of my new found friends who live in Sao Paolo. I will definitely write about this challenge in the near future so that you can (hopefully) try it yourself! Agora eu posso falar em portugues e eu amo a idioma!
I created a booklet during the beginning of August, which you can find here

August thru October '14--American Sign Language

I love this language. so. much. I really had fun and was really dedicated towards learning it. My lack of friends who could sign discouraged me a bit, although I was able to make sentences and (hopefully) get my point across. I'm starting this again this month as well to refresh what I learned and get some new vocab!

September '14--try German

German has never been a strong language for me (although I should learn it, since I AM mostly German), but I dove into the learning process for a good month or two, before I lost interest. :'(

November '14--begin Irish and Swedish challenge

You can see my beginning post of the challenge here
... and when I added Swedish to the mix here

So, what did 2014 add to my life?

2014 brought 4 languages into my daily life. That means that before 2014 began, I only knew 3 languages (English, Italian, French). That's a big jump--and I acknowledge that there are more than 4 languages listed above, but I only included the ones I still use today on a regular basis. 2015 will be the year where I learn Romanian and hopefully have another go at German.

What languages were you able to learn in 2014? What goals do you have for yourself in 2015?

I will be updating my Irish in the near future, and until then, I wish you all the very best on your language journeys from here on! Keep with it!

Failing & Succeeding at the Same Time (Say What?!)

When in Rome!

Hey all,

We're at the end of the challenge! YAAAAAYY!

Good news and bad news. First of all, Swedish has been successfully chugging along. Irish not so much. I had a bump in the road about a week ago when my 17 year-old Cockatiel, Holly, passed away, which stripped my motivation to learn for a couple of days. But, now, I am full speed ahead and haven't felt better!

My Swedish, I believe, has really improved, although listening can still be challenging. Creating sentences on the top of my head is fairly easy, and so is speaking and reading. I'll just have to practice listening for the next couple of weeks and see how that improves ;)

There's a lot I have to say about Irish, but most of it are excuses. I really do enjoy Irish, and this journey has been extremely difficult--but I love challenges. So, what's the problem here?

I've had finals, a couple days of mourning, and those are pretty much all the roadblocks I hit. So, why did Swedish continue to improve while Irish had stagnated success?

I'm guessing it was all about the timing. So, to try and redeem my Irish, I'm going to extend it until January 14th. I'll be on break that whole time, so there's no excuses regarding schoolwork.

Here are my goals for the next three weeks of intensive Irish:

1) Study Irish around 30 mins to an hour everyday. If it is MWF (which are currently my Portuguese, Italian, and Irish days), I'll focus on writing and listening more. This way, I have a strong foundation where I have to partly immerse myself in the language everyday for three weeks. Now that sounds fun to me!

2) Try speaking Irish during everyday activities; this'll make it easier for me (over time) to think off the top of my head when speaking in Irish.

3) Find a friend? ;)

4) Write sentences in Irish and put them on Lang-8 for correction. Also continue using Memrise for vocabulary.

This is going to be a fun next 3 weeks!

So, what about Swedish? What's next?
Well, I'm currently looking for Swedish buddies to talk to. This way I can continue to improve it while I continue to learn new vocabulary. I'll still be practicing MWF and working on it!

I know that it sounds like these challenges will make you fluent towards the end. That's not how it really works out. I use challenges for motivation to learn more and more. And boy, do I learn a lot during that time period! I usually learn the most during that period in the shortest amount of time, because I focus mainly on that language (or those languages). I'm still going to focus on building off the strong foundation I have built for Swedish, but my focus will be shifted more towards Irish from now on.

I'm hoping to start Romanian (again) during January, but I really want my Irish to get flying first, so it'll most likely start around mid January. Who knows, though? It might start earlier ;)

Happy holidays!

Irish AND Swedish? Month 1 Update

Oh, New York City--one of my fave cities that really got me into travelling. <3

Hey all,

Well. Would you look at who hasn't been spending time on her blog? Yep, that's me.

In fact, I've been thinking about blogging for so many days now that it feels like I've written several, when in my fact my last post is from the first of November. Today's the 26th.

Damn. Sorry, y'all. You know what life can do in a moment's notice to plans.

Anyways, what matters right now is that I'm here---yay! I have an exciting update for you all and hope that this can help you in some way.

Some things I have learned within this month of starting Irish.

Time goes by REALLY slow when unmotivated, and fast when you're in action. It feels like it has definitely been more than a month since starting Irish, but it actually hasn't. The first two weeks were a breeze, where I could breathed in the Irish. Oh, how wonderful!

I love birds. This really has nothing to do with my language learning :) but my cockatiel, Holly, had his seventeenth bday this week and I must say, I really miss having him interact with us and perch on our fingers. I've been working with him everyday for a week and a half and today my mother and I finally got him out of his cage! He was as excited as we were ;)

Actually, practicing with Holly has helped me with my language learning. You need a crapload of patience in order to accomplish anything--and you need to remember this. You can't get a bird to suddenly trust you after being with it for an hour. You need to be reliable, determined, and willing to sacrifice your time for practice/training. Bam; I just connected cockatiel taming to language learning. You're welcome.

Memrise is a saviour. I first started off using Anki, but the interface became dull for me very quickly and I became discouraged in practicing my new vocabulary. Memrise makes learning vocab feel like a game--basically because it is! 

Tacking on other languages is sometimes a good idea. I had no intention starting Swedish--in fact, I was planning on projecting that project sometime next year (with Romanian). Due to my impatience, though, I simply can't wait. I love to learn. I love being curious. Swedish has been going on strong with me as I'm going through the Irish vocab I'm having trouble on, which reminds me...

Review review review! If you aren't comfortable continuing, then go back to what you've already learned. Learn the basics by heart--this is how you'll stay strong as you progress. As I continued to push my Irish further and further, I acknowledged that I was losing vocab by rushing. Truth is, you need to take it slow. That solid month of August, when I was learning Portuguese, I kept a slow, steady pace. That's what you need to win.

These are what I have learned during my Irish/Swedish project. IMO, I think my Swedish is actually better than my Irish (lol). Although I picked up on Swedish only about a week or two ago, I am more accustomed to the way sentences are structured, but that doesn't mean I haven't made big improvements in Irish. This month has taught me a lot about changing my ways of language learning to make it easier for myself, and to help other learn languages they desire.

Level:

Irish--able to form sentences and conjugate verbs in present tense, very hard to think on the spot (
Swedish--able to form basic sentences (jag tycker om mina djur ;) (duh!))

And remember--my project date for Irish is still December 22nd. I will try to post more updates more frequently as the date gets closer, and maybe I'll make a video with it! :)

Hej då/Slán/Bye!

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

My First Love: Livemocha

Roses are red, violets are blue
Livemocha rocks, and so do you

Really, though, you do rock ;) you rock SO MUCH that I'm going to share my first true love. No, not a story about that crush I had in fourth grade, but my first language love.

When I was first intrigued to learn French, I didn't know where to start. There were programs like Rosetta Stone (don't mention that name to me--it's forbidden on my site!) that cost a lot of money, which wasn't an option for me since I didn't work. During my search, I found a website called Livemocha.

Now, after finally using something other than Internet Explorer, I can use it again--yay!

This website is really nice for beginners to get on their feet with a new language, especially if you don't have people who speak the language around you. You can make friends, chat, and provide advice for people learning languages you speak.

Here, I am going to show you some screenshots from my attempt at Swedish with Livemocha. There are four stages that you go through per lesson, which we will go further into depth.


1) Learn--probably the most required for the lesson, this part focuses on introducing you to the new vocabulary/phrases, the pronunciation, and the meanings.

As you go through the sentences, you will hear the pronunciation as well as the sentence in the chosen language. To see the English translation, you hit <Translate> under the photos on the left hand side. To see tips on the sentence, you can view them on the left hand side of the screen.

After you finish going through the lesson, you will be able to create a flashcard set, which can be a plus if you plan on printing them out and taking them with you somewhere. I have used this part of the website and it is nice to be able to have the set of flashcards, but I prefer using sites like Quizlet or Memrise for memorization.

2) Review--you will be "quizzed" on your newly-learned vocabulary with reading and listening exercises. You will have to match a photo with the description/phrase, or re-create the sentence. Both of these ways are to help you remember the phrases and (hopefully) place them into long-term memory. (IMO) it's a really fun way to recognize and remember the new information, and it is simple.

3) Write--this can be a bit complicated at first, but the meaning of the exercise is to allow you to understand how to use your new vocabulary. When you hit <Submit>, others will be able to make corrections for you and/or tell you how well you did.

4) Speak--ah, the fun part! During this exercise, I've noticed that they'll give you words that you haven't yet learned. While that's okay, it may be frustrating since you may not know how to pronounce them. Once you add audio, you can submit it, where it will be reviewed by another speaker. Some speakers are kind enough to make a recording of their own voice so that you can hear the pronunciation better, which rocks!

And, you're done! All set to go onto the next lesson! If you want extra practice, you can hit one of the three tabs under <Skill Builder Exercises> on the bottom right hand corner.

The thing that always amazes me about the site is how much content they allow people to learn for free. There are courses which you can buy, called Active Courses, and from my personal experience they work really well if you are dedicated to learning the language. Those courses offer more insight and grammar lessons, and allow you to participate in "role plays" with your voice recording. They also have quizzes and tests, which makes me jump for joy (sadly). I completed three of the four Active French courses and I really did enjoy them, but the free courses are great as well!

If you have any questions at all about the program, feel free to ask away! What I would recommend, from personal experience, is to get a notebook for the specific language and write your notes/new vocabulary in there, as well as grammar explanations that you find difficult. That way, you can find all of your progress in one spot.