Today has been rough to say the least. Between a long, and tiring day, and a few personal events that left me rather emotional (and will not dive into on this blog), I did force myself to do some more Spanish, both on Duolingo, and with a new language partner.
I've noticed immediately I was struggling considerably, even with the most basic words (a rather notable instance is I mentally blocked on "español", a rather grating thing since "No español" was something I said a LOT in previous trips through Spanish speaking countries). I think a large thing about being able to speak is emotional state; when I spoke with my partner tonight, I was recovering from the emotional roller coaster that was today. Just as booze can make it easier to speak, personal issues don't.
That being said, I'm not calling today a loss by any stretch of the imagination. While I didn't make much progress on the skill tree, what Spanish I could manage WAS understandable by a native speaker whom I never had a voice conversation with before, and on three occasions, I paused to look up a word, and managed to pronouce it correctly on the first go. I think that's rather excellent for four days of progress.
That's a victory, no matter how you slice it. In addition, with discussions with some my language partners, I realized I need to redefine how I am going to do things.
One of the first things I do when I meet a new language partner is I point them to this blog, and the videos on YouTube, explaining my motivation and my insanity. Late yesterday, Sarah mentioned my mini-goals I listed on Day 1; I had completely forgotten about them.
In hindsight, it isn't very surprising. At the best of times, I'm an organized mess. For instance, in Ubuntu, one of the things we did was have whiteboard with work items for a blueprint. The blueprint would have the overarching goal, with work items (in theory) being how to accomplish it step by step.
Almost every time I wrote a blueprint and work items, I'd rewrite the work items on a near-daily basis, changing the waypoints towards success, but making steady progress towards my goal. It's who I am, and I'm not going to succeed unless I take into account how I work into this. I think its a part of why I find Duolingo so attractive; its organized into a nice skill tree, which I can just follow the prompts, but I just can do it at my leasure.
In a lot of ways, this is both a good and bad thing. For good, I can be extremely flexible in my work, and get around just about any problem issue that may come up. The downsides of course have always been obvious is that I can always miss the obvious.
I've been making a point to try and use the vocabulary and grammar it gives me in every call I have. For instance, Mi/Su/etc. started appearing in my conversations the moment I finished the Possessives lesson.
Duolingo itself may be flawed in several ways, but its excellent for someone like me who has issues staying on a specific track, and needs a framework to bounce around in, but the freedom to get to their goals via one of multiple different tracks.
As such, I need to redefine my goals as I go. Mentally, I'm thinking of them more as benchmarks, to see where I am and what to improve on. That is to say at the end of the week, when I look at this blog post, I can see if I've achieved them, and on some level, they'll be in the back of my mind pushing me onwards.
I'm reminded of a quotation I once read (quite possibly on Benny's blog). Paraphrased, it goes something like this:
In light of this, from now on, when I look up a work during a conversation, I'm going to build an Anki deck out of it. I hope by doing so I can generate an excellent list of flashcards to expand my vocabulary.
So Day 4 comes to an end, 86 days remain ...
I've noticed immediately I was struggling considerably, even with the most basic words (a rather notable instance is I mentally blocked on "español", a rather grating thing since "No español" was something I said a LOT in previous trips through Spanish speaking countries). I think a large thing about being able to speak is emotional state; when I spoke with my partner tonight, I was recovering from the emotional roller coaster that was today. Just as booze can make it easier to speak, personal issues don't.
That being said, I'm not calling today a loss by any stretch of the imagination. While I didn't make much progress on the skill tree, what Spanish I could manage WAS understandable by a native speaker whom I never had a voice conversation with before, and on three occasions, I paused to look up a word, and managed to pronouce it correctly on the first go. I think that's rather excellent for four days of progress.
That's a victory, no matter how you slice it. In addition, with discussions with some my language partners, I realized I need to redefine how I am going to do things.
One of the first things I do when I meet a new language partner is I point them to this blog, and the videos on YouTube, explaining my motivation and my insanity. Late yesterday, Sarah mentioned my mini-goals I listed on Day 1; I had completely forgotten about them.
In hindsight, it isn't very surprising. At the best of times, I'm an organized mess. For instance, in Ubuntu, one of the things we did was have whiteboard with work items for a blueprint. The blueprint would have the overarching goal, with work items (in theory) being how to accomplish it step by step.
Almost every time I wrote a blueprint and work items, I'd rewrite the work items on a near-daily basis, changing the waypoints towards success, but making steady progress towards my goal. It's who I am, and I'm not going to succeed unless I take into account how I work into this. I think its a part of why I find Duolingo so attractive; its organized into a nice skill tree, which I can just follow the prompts, but I just can do it at my leasure.
In a lot of ways, this is both a good and bad thing. For good, I can be extremely flexible in my work, and get around just about any problem issue that may come up. The downsides of course have always been obvious is that I can always miss the obvious.
I've been making a point to try and use the vocabulary and grammar it gives me in every call I have. For instance, Mi/Su/etc. started appearing in my conversations the moment I finished the Possessives lesson.
Duolingo itself may be flawed in several ways, but its excellent for someone like me who has issues staying on a specific track, and needs a framework to bounce around in, but the freedom to get to their goals via one of multiple different tracks.
As such, I need to redefine my goals as I go. Mentally, I'm thinking of them more as benchmarks, to see where I am and what to improve on. That is to say at the end of the week, when I look at this blog post, I can see if I've achieved them, and on some level, they'll be in the back of my mind pushing me onwards.
I'm reminded of a quotation I once read (quite possibly on Benny's blog). Paraphrased, it goes something like this:
When driving at night, all you can see is the end of your headlights. You are never sure where you are or where you been, but you can drive the entire way home like that.Its a philosophy that I'm going to take to heart with language learning. I may not know where I am, I may not be sure where I was, but I'm damn sure I'm making progress towards fluent Spanish.
In light of this, from now on, when I look up a work during a conversation, I'm going to build an Anki deck out of it. I hope by doing so I can generate an excellent list of flashcards to expand my vocabulary.
So Day 4 comes to an end, 86 days remain ...
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