mid-semester reflections
I can tell that we're right about in the middle of the semester (though that doesn't seem possible! Everything moves too fast...) because I can tell I'm finally hitting my stride and finding a routine of sorts for my Luganda and other studies.
These last three weeks have been pretty successful. I reached my Omuzannyo goal each week, and have been doing a good mix of lesson-type work, conversations with my language mentor, flashcard practice, reading, and listening practice.
This last week looked a lot like the previous two in terms of my daily work:
Tuesday: 30 minutes of lesson work, 1 hour with my language mentor
Wednesday: 1 hour of lesson work, 1 hour with my language mentor,
Thursday: Read 1 newspaper article, 10 minutes watching the Jesus film, Whatsapped with a friend, and did a lot of flashcard practice (250 words on Long-Term Learning)
Friday: 2 hours of listening to the radio, Quizlet, and read 1 newspaper article
Saturday: Quizlet
Sunday: Intended to do Quizlet but forgot and then the Oscars happened - whoops! Nothing.
Monday: Quizlet, 15 minutes of lesson work
I am feeling good about all of the time I am getting with my language mentor, and I know that I made a good decision in choosing to work with him twice a week this year. My move towards trying to do more listening seemed to pay off this week as well. I was able to pick up on some sentences that used more complex grammatical structures and even noticed some of the more-advanced vocabulary words I've been practicing. But still, it's hard for me to get a lot of content from listening. As I've seen from my conversation practice, nothing replaces putting hard work into it, so I want to continue to increase the time and effort I'm putting into my listening.
On that note, this week I was inspired by a classmate's description in our Facebook group about how she watches videos. The method she uses involves watching the video several times, and each time doing something different. When I have watched videos in the past, I've tended to only watch them once, ascertain what I can understand, pick up on a couple new words, look them up, and then move on. I would like to try watching videos the way my classmate does to see if a more focused approach would help me get more out of video watching. I'll be trying that this week and will let you know how it goes!
Besides that, I am most focused on keeping my routine, and my successful streak, going this week! What I'm doing seems to be, for the most part, working, so the key is just to keep putting in the time.
These last three weeks have been pretty successful. I reached my Omuzannyo goal each week, and have been doing a good mix of lesson-type work, conversations with my language mentor, flashcard practice, reading, and listening practice.
This last week looked a lot like the previous two in terms of my daily work:
Tuesday: 30 minutes of lesson work, 1 hour with my language mentor
Wednesday: 1 hour of lesson work, 1 hour with my language mentor,
Thursday: Read 1 newspaper article, 10 minutes watching the Jesus film, Whatsapped with a friend, and did a lot of flashcard practice (250 words on Long-Term Learning)
Friday: 2 hours of listening to the radio, Quizlet, and read 1 newspaper article
Saturday: Quizlet
Sunday: Intended to do Quizlet but forgot and then the Oscars happened - whoops! Nothing.
Monday: Quizlet, 15 minutes of lesson work
I am feeling good about all of the time I am getting with my language mentor, and I know that I made a good decision in choosing to work with him twice a week this year. My move towards trying to do more listening seemed to pay off this week as well. I was able to pick up on some sentences that used more complex grammatical structures and even noticed some of the more-advanced vocabulary words I've been practicing. But still, it's hard for me to get a lot of content from listening. As I've seen from my conversation practice, nothing replaces putting hard work into it, so I want to continue to increase the time and effort I'm putting into my listening.
On that note, this week I was inspired by a classmate's description in our Facebook group about how she watches videos. The method she uses involves watching the video several times, and each time doing something different. When I have watched videos in the past, I've tended to only watch them once, ascertain what I can understand, pick up on a couple new words, look them up, and then move on. I would like to try watching videos the way my classmate does to see if a more focused approach would help me get more out of video watching. I'll be trying that this week and will let you know how it goes!
Besides that, I am most focused on keeping my routine, and my successful streak, going this week! What I'm doing seems to be, for the most part, working, so the key is just to keep putting in the time.
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