the tradeoffs of winning Omuzannyo
I reached my Omuzannyo goal again this past week, with 81 points total!
As exciting as this is, I realized this past week that my ability to reach my goal as many weeks as I have is not because I'm super on top of my stuff (though it was nice living under that illusion for a while!). Rather it is that I am choosing Luganda over my other work.
In other words, I think I've set up a learning environment for myself in which I'm highly motivated to put in time. Which is a good thing! But it's also more motivating for me than my other work, which means, when given the choice, I've been doing Luganda instead of other stuff.
This is partly due to the nature of the other courses I'm taking, which is a whole other story. They happen to be the kind of classes where my 100% is not strictly necessary every week.
It's also due to the fact that I've increased by point goal in Omuzannyo this year. I made that change in order to push myself even harder in my Luganda. Mission accomplished on that front: those 10 extra points definitely make me work harder throughout the week. And since I really want to reach that goal, I prioritize getting Luganda in. This is a huge shift from when I started studying Luganda and was doing the reverse - prioritizing my other classes and squeezing Luganda in when I could.
But the main point is twofold: that I have indeed been successful in setting up a system that plays into my motivation but I need to ensure that it isn't taking up all of my time and energy. While prioritizing my language learning is good, I shouldn't be doing it at the expense of everything else!
Anyway, onto this past week. It was a fairly standard one. I traveled over the weekend, and using some of my tricks, was able to at least do some Luganda every day, even while on the move. Again, I made use of time on the airplane to focus in on some translation work, and I used the early mornings before I emerged from my room to do vocabulary practice on Quizlet.
Here's the breakdown for the week:
Monday: 1 hour session with Simon, texting with friends
Tuesday: 250 Long-Term Learning words on Quizlet, 1 hour listening to the radio
Wednesday: 1 hour with Simon and Kevin, several intensive text exchanges, 20 minutes intensive listening
Thursday: 20 minutes intensive listening, 2 stories translated from Mujje Tusome Luganda, 1 extensive text exchange
Friday: Read 1 Bukedde article, 50 Long-Term Learning words on Quizlet
Saturday: 150 words on Quizlet
Sunday: Watched 1 episode of Taata Sam twice (a comedy sketch series), created a new resource for website, 150 Quizlet Long-Term Learning words
Looking ahead, I have another fairly standard week. Standard seems to now include weekend travel, so again I'm going away (for my last wedding of the year!). Unfortunately, Simon forgot about the time change this morning, so I'll be making up for that time and conversation practice in some other ways. I didn't get back to my African Accents book this past week, so I'm hoping to return to it this week, alongside doing some other reading from the textbooks I have borrowed from the library.
As exciting as this is, I realized this past week that my ability to reach my goal as many weeks as I have is not because I'm super on top of my stuff (though it was nice living under that illusion for a while!). Rather it is that I am choosing Luganda over my other work.
In other words, I think I've set up a learning environment for myself in which I'm highly motivated to put in time. Which is a good thing! But it's also more motivating for me than my other work, which means, when given the choice, I've been doing Luganda instead of other stuff.
This is partly due to the nature of the other courses I'm taking, which is a whole other story. They happen to be the kind of classes where my 100% is not strictly necessary every week.
It's also due to the fact that I've increased by point goal in Omuzannyo this year. I made that change in order to push myself even harder in my Luganda. Mission accomplished on that front: those 10 extra points definitely make me work harder throughout the week. And since I really want to reach that goal, I prioritize getting Luganda in. This is a huge shift from when I started studying Luganda and was doing the reverse - prioritizing my other classes and squeezing Luganda in when I could.
But the main point is twofold: that I have indeed been successful in setting up a system that plays into my motivation but I need to ensure that it isn't taking up all of my time and energy. While prioritizing my language learning is good, I shouldn't be doing it at the expense of everything else!
Anyway, onto this past week. It was a fairly standard one. I traveled over the weekend, and using some of my tricks, was able to at least do some Luganda every day, even while on the move. Again, I made use of time on the airplane to focus in on some translation work, and I used the early mornings before I emerged from my room to do vocabulary practice on Quizlet.
Here's the breakdown for the week:
Monday: 1 hour session with Simon, texting with friends
Tuesday: 250 Long-Term Learning words on Quizlet, 1 hour listening to the radio
Wednesday: 1 hour with Simon and Kevin, several intensive text exchanges, 20 minutes intensive listening
Thursday: 20 minutes intensive listening, 2 stories translated from Mujje Tusome Luganda, 1 extensive text exchange
Friday: Read 1 Bukedde article, 50 Long-Term Learning words on Quizlet
Saturday: 150 words on Quizlet
Sunday: Watched 1 episode of Taata Sam twice (a comedy sketch series), created a new resource for website, 150 Quizlet Long-Term Learning words
Looking ahead, I have another fairly standard week. Standard seems to now include weekend travel, so again I'm going away (for my last wedding of the year!). Unfortunately, Simon forgot about the time change this morning, so I'll be making up for that time and conversation practice in some other ways. I didn't get back to my African Accents book this past week, so I'm hoping to return to it this week, alongside doing some other reading from the textbooks I have borrowed from the library.
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