To-do List

My life is so unorganized right now, so I’m making an open ended to do list to figure out some priorities. There are more things going on in my life right now than just studies, and I’m actually doing a 50/50 split between studying and working on craft projects. I need to find some ways to work my studies into my crafts and vice-versa. I also need to figure out how best to get caught up before the end of the month!

• Get caught up on Duolingo – approx 25 reviews to go
  • 20
  • 15
  • 10
  • 5 done, 3!
  • done!
• Make progress towards monthly goals
  • Duolingo six modules to go
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • done!
  • Memrise 3 modules to go
    • 2
    • 1
    • done!
• Make some subject lists for
  • camping
    • nouns
    • verbs
    • etc
  • knitting/crocheting
    • nouns
    • verbs
    • etc
  • sewing
    • nouns
    • verbs
    • etc
  • hammocks
    • nouns
    • verbs
    • etc
  • outdoors
    • nouns
    • verbs
    • etc

 

The first two big bullets are fairly straightforward. The third one is going to be time consuming, and is the major reason that my list has no due date. I’m basically going to get sticky notes and label all the things in English, and then find their Hebrew equivalent. After I have my nouns, I’ll populate with verbs, adjectives, etc. The crafty stuff will probably come first, as the contents of my studio don’t tend to move around too much. Plus no one else goes in the room so no one can laugh at my forest of post-its.

Friday Check-in 8/11/17

 

Monday – I caught up on all the Duolingo that dropped in the last couple of days, and got started on the business module’s vocabulary on Memrise. It’s a little more difficult to do given there’s no audio, but it’s still better than trying to learn it through the Duo lessons.

I need to watch some TV (how often do you hear that as a must do instead of a want?) so that I can check that off the list for this week. I’ve been re-watching Mossad 101 to see how my comprehension is increasing. The answer is slowly, but I’m getting where I can tell when a new sentence starts, which is a nice change from the audio version of a text-wall.

I’ve been looking at Hebrew languages recipes, and I’m pleased to say that I can now make myself hungry in two languages. Mostly it’s the pictures, but I’m still happy with the number of words that I can recognize and the fact that I can, haltingly, read a number of the sentences!

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Friday update-

I’ve done fairly well this week. I only had 4 lessons left in Duolingo when this month started, and I finished one of them this week. I’ve been continuing with my recipe searches, most of which I don’t have the ingredients for, unfortunately.

I really think that the cooking is going to be the way forward for me. I need to find a youtube channel for beginning cooks. I think that maybe they’d speak a bit slower to help avoid confusion. I know enough Hebrew to search for it, but I’ve been distracted by other-life things, like having to strip clean the studio that I usually study in. The studio is called that as it houses my yarn, fabric, and my sewing and knitting equipment. I’ve got freaking web-making moth larvae in my studio. I have to wash anything made of fibers of any kind, disinfect anything nonporous, and then treat the carpet. I’m gonna have to move everything out of the room except the big table, so that’s taking up a great deal of my time.

The plan for next week is to finish another Duolingo/Memrise module, and continue with my cooking lessons, such as they are.

Friday Check-in 8/4/17

So, I had a big push to get caught up the last week or so of July. I’m paying for that, a bit, in increased numbers of Duolingo reviews coming due at once. My plan for this week was a) win the lottery, b) not lose my mind at work, c) keep on top of Duolingo so that my review numbers go down.

Two out of three ain’t bad. I’m still poor though…

I’ve kept up with my Duolingo, Memrise reviews, and Anki. I’ve done fairly well with my media, though I’m technically behind on podcasts, because I usually listen to them in the car, and I refuse to do so when the weather is nasty as I need to concentrate on driving. And the weather has been very nasty week in and week out down here. It’ll settle down eventually.

I’m currently doing a translation of a crafting blog. I suppose it would be more useful if I actually had any knitting/crochet patterns actually written in Hebrew. So far, the blog is mostly discussing varieties of a particular pattern, color choices, yarn weight, and needle size.

All of these are definitely something I’m interested in, but maybe not terribly useful as far as increasing my Hebrew knowledge. I’m probably better off going for cooking or some such, except that I’m good at knitting and crap at cooking. Maybe I can learn…

Next week, do at least one (and no more than two) Duolingo modules and their corresponding Memrise lessons. And explore for more blogs/youtubers. I think I’ll look into the cooking this time.

Language Hacker Challenge, August, 2017

As I’m rapidly running out of Duolingo modules, I need to start planning for the future. Developing an actual strategy will be part of this months goals. I make lists like nobodies business!

1. Finish Official Memrise (pt 2)
2. Finish Duolingo (only 4 modules left!)
3. Figure out a way forward.
4. Continue consuming media.

 

So far, my general plan for going forward involves reading blogs and maybe finding some YouTube channels. Eventually, I’ll start talking to natives, but there is little use in that until my active vocabulary gets bigger.

General strategy as it stands, 7/31/17

• Keep Duolingo lessons gilded.
• Keep Official Memrise reviewed, look for and maybe start some new courses there
• Continue building Anki decks that reflect my interests
• Find blogs that match my Anki decks to practice my new vocab
• Find youtube channels that match my Anki decks, to practice hearing my new vocab
• Continue reading baby books, hopefully someday graduating to older child books.
• Through some mysterious alchemy of time plus effort magically gain the ability to speak in Hebrew.

 

I’m not entirely certain about that last step, it just seems like it should be in there somewhere…

Friday Check-in 7/28/17 / Monthly Review

After a couple of weeks of laziness, I finally got myself caught up and finished my monthly goals.

My goals were:

• Meet weeklies (5 podcasts, 3 TV shows/1 movie, 4 paragraphs of reading).
• Finish Memrise through Legends
• Finish Duolingo through Future Nifal

 

I managed to get all caught up, and I finished all my stuff with only a few days left in the month. I did pretty good on my weeklies, and I really think that having them set up as weeklies goals instead of dailies really helped me to get them done. I don’t have the time and energy to remember day to day to watch a TV show, make sure I get one podcast in, etc. Having the Habitica counter reset for each one every week and just checking them off the weekly as I finish them is much easier to keep track of.

I’m looking at the end of the Duolingo Hebrew tree. I’m not quite sure what to do after I finish it. I’ll keep reviewing until I start to run out of things to review (the SRS algorithms eventually moves the reviews so far apart that your reviews drop off significantly). Other than that, I suppose building new vocabulary lists and learning those so I can read more stuff might help.

I need to find a list of blogs on different subjects that interest me. And eventually I need to start a blog list of my own writing about similar subjects. I suppose I’ll get going on that as part of my August goals, so that when September rolls around, I’ll be able to just roll on with it.

Friday Update, Stardate 07/21/17

So… if you follow the blog (and I don’t think anyone actually does) you may have noticed radio silence for the last week. Or two.

I’ve been a lazy asshole most of the time and doing other things the rest of the time, and I had exactly this to report: I’ve done one duolingo lesson everyday and the rest has gone to pot with my blessings.

That’s pretty much it.

‘Tis the season to update one’s camping gear. I’ve been working on that (yay I have a new underquilt for hammock camping) and being a bedworm as I’ve not been feeling all that well.

I’m working on getting caught up on my Duolingo and Memrise reviews, but it’s taking a while as I spend most of my time sleeping, sewing, or working.

Still, I’ve only got sewing supplies left for one more major project and it’s still in the sketch book stages so I might manage to get caught up before the end of the month, even if I never make my goals this month.

On the upside, I did manage to finish the rearranging of my studio/study room, though it is now clear to me that it needs some serious cleaning. At least it’s only clutter and I did all the vacuuming and dusting as I moved furniture.

July Language Hacker Challenge

So, there were some things I really got tired of last month. I’m sick and tired of my Living Language book. It would be better if I got some new subjects in each book, or if maybe they were approached from the viewpoint of grammar instead of subjects like school/work/etc.

There are only so many times I can go over school subjects. I’m 32 and not likely to go back to school unless there’s a lottery win involved. (Though if I ever win the lottery, I’m definitely going back to school!)

1. Continue Duolingo Streak. I’m looking for a slightly more concrete goal set for this in July. I hope to finish the Future Nifal verbs module.
2. Memrise continuing! I hope to finish Legends in July
3. Continue with the media. I’m still enjoying my music and TV shows.
4. Continue reading. I need to get more stuck in with understanding my verb tenses so I can recognize the meanings without really thinking about it. That should help bridge the gap between elementary graded readers and books meant for native speakers of the same tiny age.
5. Continue Anki. I don’t hate it yet…

 

I need to set up a number for some of these. I need to decide how many TV shows/songs/etc I want to go through each week. I also need to get back to working my verbs again. I redesigned my verb sheets so I have all my tenses on one sheet. The past/present/future tense sheets are useful for practicing patterns that reach across binyanim. I feel that having them on one sheet breaks up the patterns and makes me understand the verbs themselves even better. Maybe a sheet or two a week until I stop having to think about them so hard.

Actually, now that I think of it, there’s a total solar eclipse happening in America in late August. I think I’ll get a little more topical with my studies, and study the terminology for solar eclipses and stuff like that in July. I’ve got roughly 6-7 weeks before the eclipse itself, that should give me enough time to find the right kind of words and to study them as well. Then I can have a go at reading articles in Hebrew about the eclipse. Maybe I can even right a short paragraph about it or something.

Friday/Monthly Review, July Challenge

So, this month ends on a Friday, which I’m bad at.

Friday (or rather weekly review): I got quite a bit done this week. I seem to have one or two days a week when I really get things done. This week it was Tuesday and Wednesday. I got fairly far along on my Duolingo in those two days.

Cheerfully, the Memrise course has been extended and should be finished before I finish the Duolingo course in its entirety.

I finished my first baby book, and it was a bit more difficult than I expected, but I got a lot out of reading it. I’m working on a second book that I got free on Kindle Unlimited (highly recommended for all bookworms) but it’s a bit more difficult than I expected so it’s taking quite a bit longer than expected. I definitely need some more practice to leap the distance between the two.

 

This month, my goals were fairly straightforward:

1. Continue Duolingo streak, working towards checkpoint 5
2. Continue Memrise work, and probably finishing Memrise
3. Continue Anki work.
4. Complete Unit 3 in Living Language Intermediate
5. Consume Media like the world is about to end.
6. Read my baby books (Graded readers)

Outcome:

1. Duolingo streak continued, checkpoint 5 reached and passed!
2. Memrise course finished… and then he added more modules.
3. Anki work still up to date
4. LL unit 3 finished! I’m so tired of these books.
5. Media eaten till I have a stomachache in my head.
6. Baby book finished! And a new one started.

 

So, I did pretty well getting everything done, and even finished a few days early (except the Duo streak, which has continued apace).

 

Friday Check-in 6/23/17

This week has been pretty good for me, I got a good bit done and finished my first book!

Duolingo – I got through my 5th checkpoint! It was the final checkpoint left. Now there is just the final segment. Woot!

Memrise – Yay! The Official Memrise course has been updated for a few more levels so I after officially finishing the main course… I can now continue the main course. Insert eye roll.

LL- I kept on and finished another lesson. The further I get, the more annoyed I get. I’ll keep going for a bit longer, but I may put it on fast forward and mostly just have a go at the vocab.

Reading – So, I finished my first book, קריאה קלה. It got a little more difficult as I kept on. As far as I can tell, the book was meant to teach little Jewish children Hebrew. As I got further into the book the stories got a lot more biblical, and I had issues with vocab I can’t guess because I don’t even have words in English for them. Still, as I kept reading it did get easier to make sense of what I was reading.

 

All in all, I did okay. I have another book in mind, about a little boy is afraid of the dark. We’ll see how that goes 😀

 

Friday check-in, June 16th, 2017 long form

So, long form? What?

Just means that it’s Monday and I’m in the mood to make notes. It’s not much into Monday, mind you, at 0500, but I’m up and I’m in the mood to study, so why not.

Long Form version is under the cut.

Friday – My week went fairly well. At the end of the week I’m noticing that my number of Duolingo reviews is starting to slacken again. I think they made some more behind the curtain changes regarding the skill strengthening algorithm and I’m very much in favor of it.

I finished my main Memrise course! I’ll continue reviewing it everytime there are sufficient reviews up (more than 10) but I’ve also decided that as all the levels aren’t available in the Memrise course, I’m building my own as I get the levels revealed. I’m pulling audio from Forvo and that’s always helpful.

I’ve started reading a second baby book, considerably more difficult than the first (which I’m still working my way through). It’s an ebook on kindle and I’m having to look up a lot more vocabulary for it, but that’s going pretty well. Given that it has new vocabulary, I can learn the vocab, work through the verbs, and then practice my recall and understanding by continuing to read through it.

I’ve been adding new words from every direction to Anki. Anything from one of my books goes into the same deck, sorted into sub-decks, and anything I just pick up, like words from a podcast, go into a deck very creatively named “Interesting words”. I never claimed to be good at naming things.

I had to do some minor changing on my goals for this month. It turns out that I’m not working on LL unit 2, I’m working on LL unit 3. Oops.