Learning a new Language Challenge Join now!!!

Spanish reviews, notebook. I'm up to speed.

 

Spanish - two hours. Longer time pays off.

 

Español - dos horas

 

Spanish as usual.

 

Spanish reviews, plus one lesson in an udemy course.

 

Spanish on Sunday morning.
I found a good YouTube channel for learning Spanish:

 

Estoy un genio en español. Repasé todas cosas.

 

Apprendí español hoy.

 

90 minutes

 

Español para siempre...

 

Espanol por dos horas!

 

Spanish reviews as usual.

 

Hello! I want to join this challenge!

I'm gonna be learning Russian. I will not be starting from scratch though because I did learn it back in high school, but I was not particularly good at it, my grades were just barely enough to pass. I still remember a lot of words and can understand some spoken Russian, but I can't speak it much (maybe at a Duolingo educated tourist level at most lol) and I have forgotten how to write, and I don't remember all of the letters anymore, so I can't read much either. I used to know how to write and read back in high school, albeit I sucked at it, but that was almost a decade and a half ago and I have not really used any Russian since.

This is my plan:

• As a start I want to re–learn the Russian alphabet in block letters, a lot of which I have forgotten (and many of the ones that I do remember I remember only because they use the same symbol as Latin alphabet letters, but of course Russia uses their own version of alphabet—Cyrillic script). I want to re–learn their individual sounds, as well as how to write them with hand (if I can memorize the look of the block letter and write the glyph by hand then I should have no issue recognizing it when I read it, that's my thinking). So that's stage one, which is a priority because when I do re–learn letters I will be able to start practicing some simple reading.
  
• Then when that's done I want to re–learn handwritten cursive script, so I can start practicing writing some simple words and sentences in Russian by hand. That's stage two.
• Stage three would be starting to re–learn a lot of the actual vocabulary that I have forgotten over the years, as well as starting to learn new words from scratch.

I hope that this challenge will motivate me to study—I plan on doing 10 minutes a day minimum. 10 minutes doesn't sound as much, but as long as I keep it consistent it will add up to big difference in couple months time! And even bigger difference in a year or two! Let's go!

 

una hora de espanol

 

Checking in for the day one of learning—so far so good! I did start to memorize Russian letters through the use of this Wikipedia page, it has all the info that I need so far on the looks and on the pronunciation of the letters. Did not go through the whole alphabet today, just few of them; gonna add more and more every day until I have them all. I reviewed them multiple times a day by first thinking of the sound I want to make and then writing the block letter for it. I heard somewhere that apparently if you write things down by hand, not digitally but on a piece of paper, then it increases memory retention by up to 75%! Not sure the source of it but I definitely notice it to be true for me personally. So I have my notebook in which I write them down over and over again, not because I will actually ever check the notes, but simply for the process of writing, to remember better.

Yes! Indeed so! Plus I probably gonna do more than 10 min anyways to be honest, cos I looked at the clock today and 10 min passed by so fast and I wasn't even done yet! Just making it 10 min only, and not forcing myself to study more, is more of mental thing for me. Cos if I say I will study for 30 minutes total every day I probably will just freak out and procrastinate lol, but I can do it for 10 min, and then if I feel like doing some more I'll do 5 min more, etc, but if I don't feel like it then no pressure.

 

First, you need to develop a new habit and make learning Russian your long-term goal. It's important to build motivation as it is with nofap. Then you need to be consistent and when you skip a day, you need to make it up the next. At least, this is my way but I hardly ever skip a day. I use Anki, Spanish.dict and duolingo - if I skip the reviews I lose points or get the double number of reviews or break a streak. Carrot and stick kind of motivation.

 

Day two of learning—checking in. Same as yesterday: wrote down some more letters and repeatedly recalled and wrote them down multiple times across the day.

Yep, that's the plan! After I re–learn the letters I want to make a daily habit to read books in Russian every day. I just need to be able to recognize the letters first, but I think I have enough of vocabulary from my high school days to be able to read simple books. Obviously I will only be able to read simple stuff for children for now, not Dostoevsky lol. But once I can do that I should get more practice momentum going.

Yea that's not a good idea for my brain. If I set so strong rule for myself, "I must learn every day", then what's more likely than not gonna happen is that I will get stressed and overwhelmed by this perceived obligation, and due to that stress will procrastinate. Then I will end up not doing it, and now because I must make up for it the next day I will get even more anxious, so I will skip the next day too! And next thing you know I have the whole week worth of learning I need to do at Sunday! And end result of that will be that I will become so stressed about learning that I will stop learning at all and quit.
But if I say to myself: "only 10 minutes, more if you feel like it but no pressure, and if you skip a day doesn't matter, it's not like Russian language will run away somewhere, you can always pick it back up tomorrow or overmorrow, etc" then I will more likely than not end up doing more study and more frequently.

 

Spanish reviews as usual.

@Ūruz Adjust learning to your own style and needs.

 

Minimal Spanish reviews because I'm busy today

 

Another day done! New block letters and reviewing multiple times through the day.

You mentioned Duolingo, so I tried it out. I knew about the app but did not plan to use it at first. But it's actually kind of fun! Gonna add Duolingo to my routine.