As I was looking through them, I got the idea to use them as notebooks for the languages I'm currently studying. Two of them I'm trying to get back up to speed in (Japanese and Spanish) and the other I'm learning for the first time (Korean).
It's been tricky trying to get a system and organization down for tackling these languages seriously. Now, for $6 total, I can learn and copy down five new (or review) words a day on the five lines each planner has for each day, repeating the word multiple times and saying them aloud. No more, no less, and the calendar formatting will keep me on track and from trying to cram too much in in one day. If all goes well and even with a few days missing here and there, I could have (re)learned over 1,000 words in each language by the end of the year.
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| Two of my new planner-notebooks and a Marie Antoinette ballet flyer. Sadly, none of the planners featured men like that! |
This assumes a high level of motivation on the part of a student, because without motivation you can live in a country and be surrounded by people speaking a language and still not learn any of it. Motivation can be a lot of things: survival in a different place, a love of that language in general, wanting to translate a particular book eventually (my goal for Japanese), or understanding the lyrics of your favorite band.
My friend taught a Japanese girl once, in Japan, who was learning English specifically so she could understand Bon Jovi lyrics and what he said in interviews. Some people smile at that story, but the cool thing was she was at the top of her class because she was really motivated, no matter what that motivation was.
Getting back to the planning idea, if the idea of 35 new words a week intimidates you, try something else like making Mondays and Tuesdays new vocab day, Wednesday new grammar day, Thursday a review day, and Friday a "test" day where you quiz yourself.
As for me, we'll see how it goes! The Korean alphabet is coming faster to me now, but the pronunciation is murder on my tone-challenged ears. >_>
That's an amazing idea! I am totally going to use it -- thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteI really should finish *cough* learning one of the languages that I am quasi-conversational in, German or Spanish. I think in both of them, I'm at the point where the most benefit would come from talking to a native speaker, on a weekly basis or something. Although with German I need to learn more vocab as well because right now I can only talk about basic things along the lines of, "this beer is delicious. what's the next band you want to see at the festival? your ex-girlfriend's certainly a slag, I saw her last night making out with a guy with vampyre teeth and throwing up in the gutter!" etc etc haha. (Sadly I've mostly spoken German at Wave Gotik Treffen ;). I would love to expand my vocab so I can talk about philosophy and other more lofty things. :)
I think the planner idea is amazing in terms of adding to your vocabulary!
Unfortunately I'm a serial partial-language-learner (Hebrew is another language I know partially, though I can't talk to anyone and definitely can't understand some modern Israeli accents ;), and I'm still having cravings to add more languages. Next I want to learn Welsh!
My mom's family is from Wales and I recently started to get interested in Welsh history and culture. It will be interesting to learn one of the Celtic languages.. I'm curious to see how they differ grammatically etc from English, German, and Spanish.
So maybe I need like 5 planners or something. Lol!
Oh also -- I agree with you about motivation. I was most motivated to learn German whilst dating a German boy. ;) (But now WGT is a good motivating factor!)
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, and thank you for the comments!
ReplyDeleteLOL Yes, that sort of German is infinitely more handy than, "Pardon me, where the is the art museum?" at times. ;) And hot men are the best motivation!
Have you tried Lang-8 (www.lang-8.com)? It's a site where you keep a journal in another language, and native speakers correct you. You, in turn, correct a few entries for people learning English.