I’ve mentioned in passing before that I write fiction in addition to the variety of other things I fill up all my time with. In truth, though, there hasn’t been much fiction writing happening for the last few years for me, so when November came around, the month of NaNoWriMo, I decided that I ought … Continue reading Language Learning and Procrastination
After getting annoyed with myself in the previous blog over my loss of focus on listening practice, I put in more effort through the week, and ended with a pretty stable block of time every day watching a variety of things. I’ve been doing the listening practice for a long time now, longer than I’ve … Continue reading Listening to a Language Vs. Hearing One
Most people who start in on a long-term, time consuming project eventually have to deal with burnout. I mentioned last week that I was worried that I might be going through a bit of burnout currently, and I was right. It hasn’t completely capsized my study time or anything, I’m still finding the time and … Continue reading Dealing With Burn-Out
A lot of language learners talk about the Intermediate Plateau, a point in the course of language learning where improvement seems to drop off and the learner is left spinning their wheels. They’ve gotten to a good level in their target language and can do quite a bit already, but not in any comfortable or … Continue reading The Intermediate Plateau
Toward the start of this blog, I stated that I had an advantage with learning Spanish growing up here in Denver, where there have been lots of native Spanish speakers around me. From the start I wasn’t left totally unaccustomed to the phonemes of the language, and I already knew how to do things like … Continue reading My Dumb Mouth
Reading 1984 over the past week has been an interesting experience. It is very difficult to read, which of course was expected, considering the jump in reading level compared to the books I’ve read before, but I’ve made myself jump up levels of difficulty before. I’d go as far to say that it is the … Continue reading Reading Out of my Comfort Zone
In my daily life, I am frequently brought into contact with people who speak languages other than English. It’s not always Spanish—I overhear conversations in German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, and others that I haven’t been able to recognize—but most often it is in fact Spanish. And if there’s one surefire way to reinforce … Continue reading Listening to a Foreign Language: The Struggle is Real
There’s this thing that a lot of people do to themselves when setting goals that leads to a self-defeating cycle. They don’t actually set a goal at all and leave their plans nebulous. This causes a whole host of problems, first and foremost being that it’s difficult to come up with a plan for how … Continue reading The Starting Line Mirage
So last week, I was soundly defeated by a book. Things were nicely timed to where I finished El Maravilloso Mago de Oz on Monday, and would be beginning my next book at the start of this week: Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal. Perfect! I’d been working my way up in reading level more … Continue reading Facing Defeat and Bouncing Back
I have no memory of learning to read. The closest I have to that is hazy scenes of a time when I was very small and not wanting to read when asked, which is of course not the same thing. It was a time when I was capable of reading, but hadn’t yet fallen in … Continue reading Reading in a Foreign Language: The Struggle Is Real
Fumbling Toward Fluent 