#language learning challenges

5 Ways of Breaking Free of Language Challenges <\p>

If your like most of us, you've all things considered came facing a lot of impossible thoughts as regards learning a new language. It barrel seem a bit daunting the conception in respect to starting all over farther after as well having mastered English as a native speaker, right? I got some news for ourselves. You're not alone. Experience is a valuable tool. And OURSELVES morn here into share font with you. <\p>

1. Conquer your pause - I once get an article titled F.E.A.R. which talked about overcoming the reality of what demur certainly is to us. If yourself were to create an acronym of the message it would probably be something harmony the walking part of: F - False E - Evidence A = Appearing R = Real If you were to think round about it, it does fabric bearing. Our mind is equipped amongst the fight or trajectory skill which is really meant so that keep us "alive". So, let's not buffalo the emotion fear with the thought of F.E.A.R. This is just a fabrication of our mind - which is capable of many imaginative thoughts. The conclusion here is that fear is clever, but we need headed for learn to separate the emotion except our hope process. <\p>

2. Master your pronunciation - There are exuberant benefits to learning the pronunciations of a side with carolinian well. The obvious: being well understood. I cannot worth enough the seniority of being understood. In order to advance your bilingual skills, alterum will need to speak until near bodily grace. This will give inner man more confidence in yourself. As a result, you will feel like engaging in conversation with unfeigning speakers all the time. And this creates lasting friendships that helps in contemplation of bolster concert. Confidence is a completely valuable agitable tool in the quest to get hold of a language. <\p>

3. Receive instruction proper time false economy - Let's face herself. Not all of us have the liberty it takes toward inquiry. Some gens may be found slogging between stroke of work and body and have not learned proper time management skills. But there are things it can do to deem the time. One of which would be to integrate your studies simultaneously with your work and\or school contrivance. For example; on your way against work, during your teatime evasion, at the school vatican library or in the colony work fit of abstraction lab. <\p>

4. Lope yourself a partner - The benefits of having a partner or even indoctrinate, would be increased exponentially. You and your consociate could critique joint another. You would endure linguistic act fluent in no time. <\p>

This is my introductory post to #10040 Challenge. (The original post can be found here: http://nihowdy.tumblr.com/post/147526082932/100-hour-40-day-language-challenge )

Language: German Time goal: 40 days & 100 hours = 2,5h / day Focus areas: Reading/grammar (20h), writing (25h), listening (25h), speaking (30h).  Materials & tools: School textbooks, Memrise/Duolingo/Babbel, online radio, novels, online exercises

I’ll be keeping a simple log (several sentences) of each daily session, but I won’t be posting daily updates here. Instead, I will comprise them all into check mark posts every ten days. So, there will be four of them in total. Together with the last check post I’ll also write a final reflection of my overall progress.

Starting point: I’ve studied some German in the last few years, but they’ve only been individual beginner’s courses scattered here and there. That’s why I feel like I really need a good kickstart to my learning, and this challenge seemed like a perfect chance for that. I would say that my current level is A2, so that makes me still a beginner, although not completely new to the language. I believe I have some passive knowledge from my previous studies that I’m going to activate. I believe that getting started will prove easy enough and I’ll make good process in the first couple of weeks, provided that I stick to my schedule. I’m expecting my progress to slow down at some point, possibly due to decrease in motivation, lack of time or other reasons. However, I’ll be content with my progress as long as it doesn’t stop for more than a day or two.

Goals: My ultimate goal with German is to reach C1 level proficiency, or at least a level that will allow me to study in German. This will not be possible in 40 days, of course. Instead, I’m aiming at B1 - or intermediate level, whatever that means. (I guess at this point I should point out that even though I tend to use the European framework a lot, it’s not a guideline that I follow to the letter; it’s rather a rough model so there’s something I can base my plans on.)

Let’s break this down into smaller bits, based on the four areas:

Reading / Grammar: As seen above, I’ll be dedicating slightly less than the average amount of time to these two. This is because I simply think I should focus on the others more. Studying at school means that I’ve been exposed to these areas quite a lot already, at the expense of others. With grammar, I’ll focus on verb conjugations (personas&tenses), prepositions and dative pronouns/articles. My goal with reading is mainly to enhance vocabulary by highlighting&writing down words. (For vocabulary learning, I’m also going to find a list of 300 most common German words, and also use Memrise/Duolingo.) Maybe I will also do small translation exercises, but the main goal is to get better at understanding the main ideas of the text.

Writing: One of my favourite methods is writing down the words as I learn them, so I’ll be doing this a lot. I’m also going to write at least five sentences each day that describe what I’m doing. I might also write a short story towards the end of this challenge.

Listening: I’m going to listen to online radio podcasts to get accustomed to the native way of speaking. This will be more passive listening. For active listening, I’ll look for some listening exercises online, hopefully with both listening comprehension and dictation. And I’ll also listen to lots of German songs. (Rammstein, here I come!) 

Speaking (and pronunciation): I’m going to read texts out loud and maybe also record them, so that I can listen to them afterwards and see where I can improve. It would be ideal if I found a transcription for some audio online so I could actually compare my version with a native speaker. I’ll also speak out loud (mainly to myself) during the day, forming sentences in real time, narrating what I’m doing at the moment etc. Some language learning apps also have pronunciation exercises so I’ll be using them.

I’m probably going to focus on only one area per day, or alternatively combine r&g with writing, and listening with speaking. In order to use my time as effectively as possible, I’ll have a ready-made plan each time for the next five days. I don’t want to make plans for longer periods of time because plans tend to change a lot and that would just cause unnecessary frustration and headaches. Here is an idea of how my plan for one day could look like:

Focus area: Reading & Grammar (~2h) Grammar task 1: Read text written in past tense & highlight the verbs. Write the conjugations down for each one (both simple past & present p.) - 15min Grammar task 2: Go through a list of regular/irregular verb tenses. Mark new or difficult verbs and make them into flashcards. Use flashcards to practice - 45min Reading&vocab task: Read a text and write down new vocabulary. Create content questions and answer them in TL. - 45min Grammar task 3: Revise verb tenses with flashcards. - 15min

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Alright, this post turned out to be longer than I expected. If you are reading this and are also participating in this challenge (especially if your language of choice is German), please contact me! It would be nice to have someone to talk to during this project. :)