sharpening

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This was a fairly typical week for my language studies. I managed to reach my Omuzannyo point goal and spent a good amount of time working through the translation exercises in the Luganda grammar book that I'm using. I'm starting to get to chapters that deal with some of the more nuanced grammatical points, and so I'm trying to go slowly, pay careful attention, and aim for accuracy as I practice.

An example of this type of grammar would be the use of nga. Nga is used in a whole bunch of different ways and in service of different meanings, and it pretty much has always thrown me into a panic when I've come across it while listening or reading. When nga is used before a noun it has one meaning, used before a verb it has a different meaning. When used with a prefix, yet another meaning, and used alongside the word bwe (which translates to when), another. The list goes on.

In sharpening my use of grammar like nga, I am inching ever closer to the superior proficiency level of Luganda. I am trying to really use the lessons that I am getting from the grammar book in my other, more embedded, learning practices. After working on the nga chapter, I found myself paying more careful attention to its uses in a Bukedde article I was reading - and increasingly being able to do so more accurately. It is situations like this that make me happy that I decided to do the grammar book this semester - I feel like I'm sharpening, at least!

Here is the overall picture of what my week looked like:
Monday: Lesson with Simon, 15 minutes of deep listening
Tuesday: 50 Quizlet words, 1 hour lesson work, texting with a friend, 20 minutes deep listening
Wednesday: 15 minutes deep listening, 20 minutes watching videos, 100 Quizlet words
Thursday: 15 minutes deep listening, 1 hour lesson work, translate 1 Bukedde article, 50 Quizlet words
Friday: 50 Quizlet words, read 1 Bukedde article
Saturday: 1 hour lesson work
Sunday: 50 Quizlet words, 30 minutes lesson work

I'm looking forward to continuing to work on sharpening through continued work in my grammar book this week. I'm also hoping to spend more dedicated time to my emotion wheel, which I didn't touch at all this past week, as well as my proposal translation. This set of three activities really represents the type of sharpening and progress that I'm aiming for this semester. I'm feeling hyper aware that time is moving quickly and that there's only a few more weeks to really advance before the semester comes to an end. The urgency is motivating!


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