If you want to make God laugh, make plans

Yeah, I don’t think all this planning is actually working, every single plan I’ve made has ended up changing, so I’m not going to bother trying to plan my languages now, I’ll just guess what I’ll end up doing and then see what happens :P.

Not strictly in the plan, but hey

I told myself again and again, no more new languages this year. German from February, French from May, then that’s more than enough until August at least. But there’s an exception to every rule, so I finally gave in to the temptation and started learning Catalan.

Kalimera!

I haven’t written in a long time, I have a lot to write. My last entry was shortly before Christmas, and a lot has happened since then. For Christmas, I got a book and a tape for learning Cantonese (which is on my list of “possible future” languages), a new Spanish dictionary, and a Kindle (onto which I downloaded some issues of El Pais).

It’s nearly Christmas!

I am looking forward to Christmas a lot, especially because until Christmas is over I can’t really buy anything due to the possibility that someone I know might give me the same thing for Christmas. For example, the Greek grammar I really want to buy immediately, but I’ve mentioned it a few times to my family, so there’s a chance my mum or someone else might have bought it for me. Until recently I couldn’t buy anything because I was saving up to buy Christmas presents for other people. So up until now, I’ve been struggling with a lack of resources for Greek. I don’t even have a dictionary yet!

The Paris trip is no more

I’ve been told that the Paris trip isn’t going to happen, which is a huge disappointment. Then I was told it’s back on, but only for the people in the GCSE French class. Either way, I won’t be going, so that’s that dream out the window.

However, as one door closes, another one opens

Yesterday I spoke to my mum’s friend Kate who is a language teacher (the same woman who lent me the Sueños book which I mentioned in my post on August 12th). She knows a family who live in Crete, and she has offered me the chance to go on an exchange trip there. Nothing’s been arranged yet, but it’s going to be amazing :D!

Another month has passed

I can’t believe it’s nearly a month since my last post! Looking back through my diary, I can see I’ve been very busy. I have learned quite a lot earlier in the month, though the past week or two have been a bit unproductive. I was busy and stressed out with school, and then during half term I went to Scotland with my family, where I didn’t get anything useful done. I’m catching up again this week, though 🙂

I am (possibly) going to Paris!

At my school, we have been told that if we behave well, get good attendence, and work hard for the rest of the year, a group of us will get to go to Paris. My friends are not quite as excited about this as I am, possibly because the teachers don’t like us so we’re unlikely to be selected, but I don’t care; I will work as hard as is necessary in all my lessons (even the pointless subjects like PE), and I will learn French after Romanian so I can very politely persuade the teacher, in French, that I deserve a place on the trip.

This means I know which language I will be learning next, and going to Paris will be brilliant! 🙂

It’s almost the end of my second month of Romanian!

How time flies. I have been learning Romanian in August and September, so that means I’m at the end of my second month of study. I think I have made great progress. I understand a lot more now than I could last month, and I can also form my own sentences (not very well, but at least I can put words together, even if they’re not entirely correct yet).

When people ask me to “say something in Romanian”, I have been replying with “Nu pot să vorbesc foarte bine” (“I can’t speak very well”), but I’m going to change my standard reply to something different, because soon it won’t be true anymore 🙂

My guide to which Romanian resources are useful

As promised, here is my review of the things I bought from Amazon last month. I would have posted this earlier, but I didn’t receive the last item until Wednesday (I have never had to wait so long for an order from Amazon before; their punctuality is normally excellent. I bought this from a different seller to save some money, though, and that normally takes slightly longer to arrive). Anyway, everything is here now and I can share my recommendations and criticisms.

Read on to find out more…

How to tell what will help you: part two

Yesterday I wrote about programs that create a false sense of acheivement without helping you very much in real time. Today’s post is focused on how to find the things that WILL help you.

As I said, programs marketed as “zero effort” are unlikely to be very much help if your goal is fluency. I’m not saying don’t use these programs; they have their place, and they’re better than nothing. But don’t use them exclusively and then expect to magically be able to speak and understand the language. If you want to use them, use them as one part of your method, not as the entire method.