Yet another week has flown by, and it’s time for the weekly update of my language learning here on Actual Fluency. In these posts I break down exactly where my time is spent and what goals I have achieved during the week.
Welcome to the Weekly Retrospect, in this weekly update I share my thoughts from last week, including revising my goals and setting new ones for next week. At the end of the post you’ll find the goals section.
Thank you for reading about my week, how was yours? Be sure to share in the comments below.
Actual Fluency
I’ve brought on a new team-member, Mr. Daniel JP. Daniel is a long time friend of mine and will assist me in a new upcoming AF project. You might also see him on the blog here, but for now I’d just like to welcome Daniel on board, and I hope you’ll welcome him with open arms.
This week I posted a very lenghty Esperanto post, which saw a lot of responses on Facebook: http://actualfluency.com/learn-esperanto/
In the post I explain why I think it’s good to learn Esperanto, as well as provide a little quick start guide with a variety of courses and videos. Be sure to check it out if you are interested in learning Esperanto.
And finally, I’m working on an AF-themed kindle book about language learning. If you’d like to get an advance copy, please send me a message using the contact form. I’m looking for a limited amount of people to get some feedback from before the launch.
Lessons learned this week
This week I learned that I’m terrible with habits. I’m also terrible with getting to bed early. I have made a couple of recoveries, though, both of which I find vital to my personal development.
Sleep: Even though I went to bed later than I wanted to, I still didn’t sleep excessively and I mostly respected my alarm clock. Even if I’m not going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 5 am, I’m still doing a lot better than last year when I was going to bed at 4 am and sleeping for 10-12 hours. I still believe getting to bed relatively early, or more importantly getting up early is quite important, but right now I’m struggling with it.
Memrise: Read below in the language learning segment.
I also learnt that I’m a sucker for deals, and spent a fortune on Black Friday related offers. RIP bank account.
Time management
Note: In this section I share my top websites and applications on my computer throughout the week. I use a software called RescueTime, and I recently upgraded to the premium version. Rescuetime registers all my online hours on the computer. Since my job, hobby and school all require the use of my computer I spend most of my waking hours on it, which makes the data quite reliable as productivity measurers.
November 24-30 I logged 86 hours and 29 minutes on the Computer. This is down 3 hours and 22 minutes from last week.
Here is a visual representation of my most used websites and applications:
Note: It’s hard to say what is productive or not, as most of these services or websites have dual functions. As a general rule of thumb anything marked blue is productive and red is unproductive.
Language learning
This week I had my 2x 45 minute lessons with my iTalki tutor Anastasia. It’s become a habit now, and I really feel that by splitting up the sessions into shorter ones, I am more productive and I get better results. Although I did make the second lesson only 30 minutes, because I felt as though Anastasia had been doing her fair share of overtime with me, so I wanted to reciprocate the favour, even if only a little. Afterall I believe she does a fantastic job, and her iTalki rate is only 115 credits per hour.
My memrise has been going rapidly downhill. I’ve had an extremely busy work schedule as of late, and missing a day of Memrising means that the reviewed items kinda pile up, which reduces my motivation to do it again next day. Thefore, as you’ll see in the goals section, I strongly underperfomed.
One realisation I have come to about Flashcards is that it’s way better to do a lot of mini sessions, particularly for reviewing, instead of waiting and then doing fewer, larger sessions. The mountain just gets too big at some point! However, if I consistenly clear my “reviews” queue, then there’s nothing stopping me from adding new words as well.
However, I did not give up and bounced back to recovery here in the weekend. I still missed my goal, but I didn’t completely ignore it. I’ve decided to down-adjust my goal again as well, as a reaction to this happening. I think it’s important to reflect on goals all the time, and if I consistetly fail to make the 35 new words a day, plus reviewing all the others then my goal is probably too ambitious.
Stalling slightly
Language learning I think, can best be described as a series of progressions with a lot of stalling mixed into it. However I also believe that during what one perceives as stalls, we are actually still developing. This is why I’m not panicking about my lack of progress.
However……
My vocabulary acquisition is fine, but my grammar and general comprehension has not improved much lately. Therefore I’ve signed up for RussianPod101 and I will also shortly tackle Glossika Spaced Repetition. These resources are audio-based, which give me more comprehensible input that I have been lacking lately. I also need to sit down and properly study the declension tables and practice them. I do way too much guessing in my tutoring sessions.
Goals of the week
First let’s review last week’s goals:
The good
[check_list][list_item]Lessons: Have 2x 45 minute lessons in Russian – record them for later upload to YouTube[/list_item][list_item]Actual Fluency: Publish 4 posts (tutoring session, blog post, podcast, sunday review)[/list_item][list_item]Reading: Read at least 30 minutes per day in inspirational, motivational books.[/list_item] Currently reading: The Wealthy Barber, Total Recall, as well as a new goal setting book.[/check_list]The Bad
[circle_list][list_item]Memrise: Review everything daily and add 35 new words of Russian.[/list_item] I only managed to add 129 new words which is 116! fewer than the goal of 245.[list_item]Self-Development: Get up no later than 6 am and get to bed no later than 23 pm.[/list_item]Failed. 7/7[/circle_list]
Next Week’s Goals
[arrow_list][list_item]Memrise: 210 new words added, everything refreshed on a daily basis – you can see my progress here.[/list_item][list_item]Russian: 2x 45 minute lessons[/list_item][list_item]Russian: Complete 7 RussianPod101 Lessons[/list_item][list_item]Sleep: Be in bed by midnight and up before 8 am[/list_item][list_item]Reading: Read motivational or inspirational books 30 minutes a day[/list_item][list_item]Actual Fluency: 4 posts. Tutoring, Blog post, Podcast and the weekly retrospect[/list_item][list_item]Actual Fluency: Launch waiting list for new project[/list_item][/arrow_list]I hope you enjoyed the weekly retrospect. How was your week?
The post The Weekly Retrospect – November 24-30 appeared first on Actual Fluency.