#indigostudies

sitting down for my first proper self study session in…far too long (;_;) but i feel very motivated! today’s focuses: qazaq and korean ^-^

accomplished a surprising amount today! now that it's summer and i don't have classes, i wanted to keep up with reading and writing for chinese, so i finally got back to using TOFU properly again ^-^ i also dusted off my dot account, because i needed an hsk 6 graded reader resource. i was pleasantly surprised that the restrictions they'd originally placed on free accounts when they transitioned to a free/paid split seem to have been reduced a great deal (probably because they realised that restricting so much from the free model wouldn't work out in the long run). my goal for the summer for chinese is 100 flashcards per day for the two TOFU decks, plus three dot articles per day. for korean, i was able to get through a full lingory unit as well! i feel like i'm making good progress in terms of skills as well—i would place myself solidly at an a1 level now; the hardest part is just remembering vocabulary—i really need to put together a TOFU deck for the vocab i learn while doing lessons! (i tell myself every day, and then forget...) otherwise, i feel pretty confident in the basic grammar forms that i've learnt so far—i just need to track down some graded readers; i really wish there were a korean graded reader-specific app for korean, because graded readers for it are surprisingly hard to find! tomorrow's goals are to add in some german studying as well—it's not really feasible for me to add any more language classes to my uni courseload, because taking 20 credit hours a quarter isn't sustainable for me over the longterm, so i'd like to improve through self-study instead. from what i remember, there's lots of german graded readers, so that's good! i've also downloaded two novels i really enjoyed in english in german translation, and i'd like to work through a chapter a day or so, though i'm not sure how that'll actually work out. definitely will be using the busuu course, though, because from what i remember poking around a while back it seems pretty good.

ez hez beqê dikim i like the frog

i've also decided to take notes physically, rather than just digitally—i need to get in the habit of writing by hand, because it makes the words and grammar stick much better than if i just take digital notes. also, it's nice to look at my notebook and see physical reminders of the progress i've made.

managed to get in about an hour and a half of studying today! i focused on korean and mongolian, and did a short graded reader for german. i'm getting back into the hang of things with korean; the grammar in use textbook i'm using feels at the right level for me, and i've been translating everything in there to work on my comprehension of full sentences, rather than just the grammar principles. with mongolian, i haven't really done much with it previously, so i'm more or less starting from scratch. the textbook i'm using is fairly heavy on the explanation portions, so i only got through about half the chapter today, but i think it's fairly well written and i understood what was being explained. and my practice with cyrillic cursive while taking my qazaq class last year is really coming in handy haha. i need to add a bunch of flashcards from the reading that was included at the start, though. in terms of german, i discovered the graded reader app readle, which has a lot of articles available at all levels. i was originally reading a2 level articles, but i found out that i'm actually more or less able to understand b1 level articles entirely, which made me very happy, because it means that i made decent progress in my german class in the autumn quarter (i used to be around b1-b2 and then spent years not practising and fell to probably an a1-a2 level TT-TT).

i've been chipping away at my chinese maintenance for the past few days, but haven't been doing much active studying—haven't really had the energy. but today i did! so i studied a few lessons on lingory; i think my listening skills are slowly improving—i can more or less get the general understanding of the example sentences just from listening to them, and respond to questions. it's mostly just a matter of remembering vocabulary—i still need to put together a flashcard deck for vocab! in terms of preparation for the next academic year, i've emailed my managers to make sure that i can return to my library position (i can!) and added a german first year review course to my autumn quarter plans, since i have more scholarship money for the year and can pay for an extra class. but that's in the future—for now, i'm enjoying slowly picking my way through personal language studies and relaxing ^-^

i’m planning on writing down specific goals for where i want to be by the start of summer quarter, but for now, just having a reliable, well-structured text to study off of helps a lot. and the warning weather and blossoming flowers all around campus definitely help improve my mood haha