Merry Christmas Everyone! The Festive season is here and I am very excited to unwrap my presents and stuff my face. I am definitely going to have grief bacon in January (read my Lost in Translation Review to get that little German joke).
For those who don’t already know, #Clearthelist is a language learning community that brings together fellow language learners by sharing their monthly goals; hosted by Shannon of Eurolinguiste, Lindsay of Lindsay Does Languages, Kris Broholm of Actual Fluency, and Angel Pretot of French Lover.
November Summary
This month I tried to get myself back on track with language learning and I had mixed success. The beginning of the month went quite well but trailed off at the end. I was very busy and also started playing Ark: Survival Evolved on Xbox again which dominated a lot of my free time. I am considering changing the language on the game so I can learn Italian while I tame dinosaurs… we shall see.
The Results…
Reading – 5/30 – Poor Effort
Book club didn’t really take off due to my laziness when it came to reading. I only managed a couple of pages but we did discuss the English version in our weekly chats. The main problem I had was that I could read the book but found it hard to record the words for future review. I am still working on a method for this that I hope to test out and share with you all in the next few months.
Writing – 16/30 – Good Try
I really enjoyed doing my daily tweets and got some nice comments. Again, I didn’t keep this up in the second half of the month which I was a little disappointed by. Will definitely be something that I try again in the future though.
Speaking – 10/30 – Room for improvement
I may not have recorded myself each day but I have managed to have a regular chat with my Italian friend which has been great. I have realised that my spoken Italian isn’t nearly as bad as I had previously thought. Now I am more confident speaking in general I have noticed an increase in the fluency of my speech. I don’t know many new words or phrases, and my pronunciation still needs work, but I feel a lot more comfortable just having a conversation. Very pleased.
Listening – 21/30 – Great stuff
As always, listening was a lot easier than the rest. Using Lyrics Training is a really fun way of practicing your listening skills and on their website it is particularly tricky as you have to type the words. The main reason I enjoy it is because it helps me find new artists/bands I haven’t heard before to listen to on the go. My current favourite is “Il Volo”. It seems that I am currently enjoying Opera/Pop in Italian. Who would have thought it?
Although I may not have had huge success with my language learning I really enjoyed using my tracker and have some really good strategies to take into the new year to increase my speed.
December Goals
As it is the festive season now I thought it would be good fun to make my very own language advent calendar. 25 days of language fun! The idea will be to complete four key tasks in the six languages that I have learnt so far; English (obviously), Spanish, French, German, Italian and Icelandic. The tasks I have set are all Christmas themed, so should be really fun and help get me in the Christmas spirit. I will be learning a Christmas carol, reading a Christmas story, learning about their Christmas Dinners (and the related vocabulary) and the greetings used throughout the season. I am particularly excited about doing all the research into the food. May even find some recipes to try while I am off work between Christmas and new year.
This time I got some help from my very talented fiancèe on my advent tracker. She does some amazing illustrations and they seemed to fit perfectly with what I was trying to do. It also looks a million miles better than I could achieve. It is a team effort after all. She is always posting her amazing work on Instagram (@finding_nido) so please share the love with her and follow her for more amazing stuff.
You will notice that I have only put up to Christmas Day as I have given myself a week off before the new year to set my new language resolution and put plans in place for the year ahead. This doesn’t mean that I won’t do any language learning, but always nice to have a bit of down time, don’t you think?
So what are your plans for the end of the year? Do you like my advent tracker? Let me know in the comments below.
As always make sure you follow me on Instagram and Twitter to see all my updates. Also don’t forget to share your tracker designs with #p2ptrackerchallenge on Instagram and Twitter.
Ciao for now!
