Wow, it’s been awhile. My interest has not really waned much, but my motivation and attention span have been horrible the past few months, mostly due to personal issues I won’t get into.
Last week, Simon (over on the omniglot blog) mentioned something about the “six week challenge” over at how-to-learn-any-language(dot)com. I often read over on that forum, although my time spent varies greatly, depending on what else is going on in life.
So, I went to check it out. The idea, I believe, was to have a whole bunch of people working on new-to-them, “simple” languages – a number of people doing the same language, for six weeks, with different methods, to see what methods are better than others. [Of course, the fact that we all learn differently, at different speeds, and have different language backgrounds would interfere with that being a legitimate & accurate results.
However, it seems to have turned into a free-for-all, “how much can I learn of a new language in six weeks” challenge. I think it’s a great idea, and I jumped right in. Something fairly simple, I was thinking. Something I don’t know much about. Something Germanic (as English is my native language), other than German – which I took in high school a LONG time ago, and have played around with a little bit recently. So I grabbed Danish, and ran with it.
My plan was to do the first ten lessons of Pimsleur, to get a decent handle on the pronunciation, then work my way through Colloquial Danish. And perhaps using VocabuLearn as an additional tool, since I know that vocabulary is my weakest point (at least in Spanish). I got through the first 2-3 lessons of Pimsleur, and poked my nose around the Teach Yourself Danish (which I had borrowed from the library, while waiting for my Colloquial Danish to show up in my mailbox).
Then I started looking at what I was doing. I don’t want to start a new language. I want to work on the ones I already know. I want to get my ass back on track with Spanish, first of all. As much as I talk about doing it, and think about it, I am not DOing it. So how about let’s switch tracks, and get back on the RIGHT track. So tonight, I am going to work out a plan to work on my Spanish vocabulary.
First of all, I have two books, plus the three sets of VocabuLearn. Alot of them I know, or did know at one point. I am going to work out a flash card system, and decide how many words I can realistically re/learn each day. This is going to be MY six-week challenge.
So, thank you to Simon and Sprachprofi for getting me going again. I’m guess I’m officially “out” of the challenge, but now I have my own. Six weeks of nothing but vocabulary focus. The rest of April, and May.
Perhaps, I will start doing a different “focus” each month. I’d like to work on my German and Russian, and get my feet wet with French and Japanese. Maybe I will pick one of those for my “June” focus. Right now, it is Spanish vocabulary.
