So if you know me quite well, you are not surprised to know that I have a dog. He is wonderful. I make to let everybody know.
Why am I mentioning this? When I go about learning words, I learn the words that apply to me. I need to know phrases that I will likely use because......I plan to use them. Being as I don't have a cat, the need to talk about cats isn't as high on my priority. This is likely why you hear me mention "kelbi" nearly every video, because that is "my dog".
Look at how tired they are though! You may not know this, but I really like my dog.
I learned very quickly how to say "engineer" not because it is an easy word to say, but because I need to be able to say it. This means I learn it much sooner than would typically be taught, but I also will be using it more than the average learner would.
Hesitated in writing the translations in Arabic and instead just used the phonetic versions.
Anyways, I'll keep this short. I started writing out some sentences and seeing how well I could translate them before having to look up words and I was pleasantly surprised. I've gotten very good in the past few weeks at saying "to swim" (which coincidentally is how long I have been swimming again).
When I first began learning Chinese, I signed up for a class. There are a lot of reasons to sign up for a class; you may not know where to start, you may want a structured outline of where to go, you may want to have friends that you can study with. Overall, everybody will have their own reasons, but mine was mainly to confirm that the pronunciation that I was doing was correct. I had been studying Chinese for over three months and I wasn't sure if my tones were actually correct.
After the class, I grew the confidence to have my first real conversation and start really practicing. I believed I could converse with natives and wasn't as nervous about the situation (granted I was still VERY nervous)
Recently, my teacher invited me to attend a private lesson with some of his other students. I was excited as this likely would be both a new opportunity to learn, and a way to refresh and show him the progress that I've made. Attending the class was a wonderful experience for me. It wasn't due to the learning that I achieved during the class, but instead the opportunity to see how much I have improved since his class.
I quickly saw that most of the phrases and vocabulary that I use now were taught to me through real life conversations, not while attending a class. My confidence to speak was far greater than I realized while watching others in the class speak. Not only that, I noticed that my pronunciation was much closer to the style that the native speakers do than the other classmates.
I can't begin to praise how effective actually speaking with people did for me. When I first began learning how to speak Chinese, I would have to sit and rehearse fake conversations with myself in hopes that I would have the courage to actually go and initiate one someday. Now, I don't hesitate for that opportunity because I know the joy that it brings both myself for being able to speak, and them for having somebody willing to talk to them.
Anyways, here's a short video randomly talking about my weekend.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned how as of recently, other things had taken priority in my life. I wanted to learn Arabic, but not as much as I was willing to give up other things. I told myself to change this habit and to focus a little time on Arabic every day. These small time frames could be anywhere from five minutes a day to an hour, but the key was to do it EVERY DAY.
Most of the time, these efforts were utilized in a common setting: staring at a notebook and reviewing vocabulary. The parts that were more beneficial were the uncommon settings. Allowing myself to review, speak, practice, etc. in a more natural state allowed me to associate speaking in every day settings. Here are some of those moments:
Talking to myself in the car.
Having conversations with myself at the grocery store.
Translating conversations while in the middle of them.
Explaining all the steps of getting food to eating it, while trying to cook it.
Posting small phrases on language learning websites to be corrected.
While exercising.
Conversing via WhatsApp
The big thing is to keep going. Sure, I feel like I've had more success as of late but if I pause I could lose all the progress that I've made. The longer I wait between reviewing the harder it is to remember. Making sure to take a small amount every day, no matter how small, can help to keep that comfort and confidence where it is at right now.
Here is a video of me trying to utilize some of the phrases I worked on this week. Making all my videos on the first take definitely leaves the sentences sounding choppy, but with repetition after the videos I can become more flowing with all that I say.
