Softie美咲🌸

Japanese

1x 30 minute italki lesson. Here’s some new vocabulary:

緊張する（きんちょう）- to be nervous

〜に着く（つく）- to arrive at

約（やく）- around (used with numbers)

一夜（いちや）- one night

面倒を見る（めんどうをみる）- to look after, to take care of

なる - to become

願う（ねがう）- to wish

マジで - seriously (informal/slang, can be used as a question)

Norwegian

Read an article. New words:

fleirfaldig (bm: flerfoldig) - multiple

ringeakta (å ringeakte) - looked down on

uovervinneleg (bm: uovervinnelig) - invincible

i røynda - in truth, in reality

glørne (en/ei glo) - the embers

å menge seg med - to get involved with, to mix with (often derogatory)

niste (en/ei) - food one takes when going out hiking, to work etc

snarrådigheit (bm: en/ei snarrådighet) - resourcefulness

til dømes - for example (more common in nynorsk)

opphavleg - original (nynorsk)

ねぼける

= to be still half asleep

Ex. 彼は寝ぼけて階段から落ちて骨折したそうだ かれは　ねぼけて　かいだんから　おちて　こっせつしたそうだ。 While still being half asleep, he fell down the stairs and broke his arm.

   Feel free to:       ♥ do the prompts in any order       ♥ pick and choose which ones you want to do       ♥ alter them how you see fit       ♥ tag with #moltres langblr challenge       ♥ respond to them in your native or target language (TL) 😚

day 1. What is the “birthday song” of your TL?

day 2. What are your favourite names in your TL?

day 3. What sounds do animals make in your TL? (eg. in English, cats say “meow” and cows say “moo”)

day 4. How do people take their tea/coffee where your TL is spoken? How do you take yours?

day 5. Show us your TL handwriting!

day 6. What is the word for your favourite color? What are some things (plants, gemstones, etc.) that are this color?

day 7. What’s your favourite weather and why?

day 8. Describe a legend/myth/folktale from your TL

day 9. What street food is popular where your TL is spoken?

day 10. Why do you want to learn this language?

day 11. What words/phrases in your TL do you think are cute or interesting?

day 12. Write out your to-do list for today

day 13. List some words in your TL related to the sky (“moon”, “clouds” etc.)

day 14. Are there any words that are difficult to pronounce in your TL?

day 15. Write a haiku about your favourite animal!

day 16. How do people refer to loved ones in your TL? Are there common pet names or diminutives?

day 17. Describe your dream house

day 18. How are people named in your TL? Any naming practises or traditions?

day 19. If you could travel to any city where your TL is the predominant language, where would you go?

day 20. Any grammar differences between your native and target languages?

day 21. Have you watched any shows/movies in your TL? If yes, share your thoughts! If not, is there anything you want to watch?

day 22. Sketch a few types of plants/flowers and write down the names for them in your TL

day 23. Listen to the current #1 hit song in your TL. What do you think?

day 24. Are there any upcoming holidays celebrated by speakers of your TL? What traditions are associated with this holiday?

day 25. What has been the most challenging thing about learning your TL?

day 26. What are your favourite smells or flavours and why?

day 27. Find a recipe (written or video format) in your TL and try to make it! Or just share a recipe that looks yummy :)

day 28. Describe your favourite outfit (if you want, post a pic!)

day 29. Do you have advice for others learning your TL?

Following from my previous posts, if you do feel like working on your languages, but don't know where to start; here are some langblr challenge you might like!

Language Blog Challenge: 20 weeks of challenges | by @lily-learns-finnish

Langblr Reactivation challenge | by @prepolyglot

14 Day langblr challenge | by @lass-uns-studieren

Langblr News challenge | by @tealingual

90-day vocab challenge | by @jibunstudies

100 Happy Days Langblr Challenge | by @nordic-language-love

Mini speaking challenge | by @nordic-language-love

16 words challenge | by @neblina-a-blin

30 day langblr challenge | @moltre-s

Brick-by-brick language learning challenge | @linguistness

Langblr word of the day challenge | @nordic-language-love

So, I was looking for some websites that could offer us some free resources to improve listening skills and I came across with these sites.  

Aozora Roudoku

The best website out there. You can search audiobooks by the author’s name or by the work’s name. There are tons of authors, Japanese and non-Japanese. From Ryuunosuke Akutagawa to Oscar Wilde. You can find the audio transcript in Aozora Bunko by writing the title of the work in the search bar. 

LibriBox

Audiobooks from the free domain read by volunteers. There are collections of stories as well as solo works like novels. However, all of them are from Japanese authors.

Youtube

You can also find audio books or picture books that are read aloud on Youtube. Type 朗読 (to read aloud) in the Youtube search bar and you will encounter a wide variety of options. Listening to this videos helps my listening comprehension a lot and I learn more vocabulary as well. Even if you are at a beginner level I totally recommend listening to audios (picture books, audiobooks, folktales, short stories, podcasts etc) in order to get familiar with the Japanese pitch accent.   

Ryokan-sama: This is an example of an audiobook in Japanese with Japanese captions. Captions are important to me so I can pint point new vocabulary or grammar.

Kurai Tokoro Kara Yattekuru: This is an example of a picture book 絵本 read aloud 読み聞かせ.

Thank you for your kind words!!! 🤍

Actually my priority is chem all the time but I make time at least 3h some days to study languages.

For example this semester more or less my schedule to study languages is like this:

Japanese -> Thursday

Friday -> Secret language + korean (one week korean and another no, on and off)

Saturday -> chinese

I can study 2-3h or even 4h of each language, depending in my motivation that day ✨

Some days between Monday & Wednesday I have some spare hours to review japanese or chinese (I pick the one I want to review) and Sundays are usually free days to relax or just do homework/ study uni subjects.

I have to say that everyday I study like 2h minimum university subjects, specially now that final exams are approaching 🥺

Maybe is not the best method but it works for me and so far has been great 💗

Some people like to log their language learning time. I only sporadically track my time if I'm trying to set a certain goal for that month, but here are the different methods I have used and maybe they'll be useful to you.

1. Toggl

You can set a language or activity as its own color and get different charts for different time periods/tags.

2. Polylogger

This is app is somewhat similar to LingoJournal, but it has a social aspect as well since you can follow other users and congratulate them on their learning. (image not my own)

3. LingoJournal

This app is very detailed in tracking your language learning. You can track by reading/writing/speaking/listening and then break it down into even more activities. It also has goals and how you can reach them, as well as a streak. This is only one of the many graphs of your data.

4. Google Sheets

You can get a pre-made sheet to track your studying time, but I prefer to use it to track new words learned from my reading.

5. Notion

You can make a checklist for each week such as with this template.

6. Forest App

You can track each language or activity learning session in the app and then get a nice graph and forest of your activities.

7. Bullet Journal

This is my preferred way of tracking as I like to make a list of goals and then see how much of them I actually complete :)

Short Term Goals

Japanese: I’ll keep this simple. I want to interact with the language daily. In any way, shape, or form. All that matters is that I get back to consistently using it. I’d like a balanced mix of input and output.

German: A good short-term goal might be to finish watching the first season (or both) of Biohackers. I also hope to attend 2 more italki classes. As an additional, non-obligatory goal, I could also go back to reading a fanfic that I abandoned a while ago!

Lithuanian: In the next month, I would like to improve my ability to conjugate reflexive verbs. I also plan to have 2 more italki classes.

Long Term Goals

Japanese: Consume more media. There’s so much media I’d like to consume that I just haven’t because Brain Is Messy, but I could also use the practice.

German: Become more comfortable speaking the language by using italki.

Lithuanian: Consolodate all my current grammar knowledge. I really should hold off on learning new grammar until I master what I’ve already studied. 

I will achieve these goals by…

planning for my next lithuanian italki class to be about reflexive verbs. 

trying to consume some piece of media daily for the next month (either german or japanese)

booking my italki sessions in advance!!

making an effort to open my lithuanian textbook at least once a week

starting a new japanese journal

Hello everyone! As you may know I've created this challenge to help revive the langblr community. It's a three week challenge designed to get you back into learning languages and (hopefully) give you ideas on how to study and share your knowledge of them. It is completely optional to do, but try to reblog other people's posts if you aren't participating.

The challenge is designed to be done daily, however if you miss a day, you can go back and do it later or continue from where you left off. I do encourage you to do your best to keep up with the challenge though. Tag your posts with #langblr reactivation challenge so that others can find your posts.

If you have any questions, please send me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to answer it.

I'll put the prompts under a read more so this post isn't ridiculously long. Good luck to everyone participating! Remember the best way to promote the langblr revival is by reblogging other people's work.

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot