January 2024 Wrapped ❄️☃️⛄️🧤🧣🏂🎿🧦🌨️⛸️❄️
Table of Contents
🥱 tl;dr
💡 Highlights
📈 Anki + Toggl Stats
🗂️ Anki
🎧 Listening
📺 Watching
🤸🏼 Other
🌻 Goals for February
🥱 tl;dr
This was my month to get back into my language learning after falling off the last couple months of 2023. I was in a really good rhythm from about May - October 2023 then after my job layoff lost my momentum a bit. However, January I hit the ground running and generally got back into it! As job interviews got intense the last two weeks of January, I've been less on top of things. However, I am feeling reinvigorated and hoping that once my life goes back to normal soon, I can settle fully into my routine.
💡 Highlights
Got back on the wagon! The first few days of Anki getting through backed up reviews were pretty agonizing, but once I got my ES1K deck under control, it felt great to be back at it. Also set up VocabSieve on my laptop (shoutout Andrew for the assist) and finally started sentence mining for real.
Beyond Anki, mostly just got back into same resources I had left off. Primarily listening to Harry Potter audiobooks, watching a lot of Dreaming Spanish for Comprehensible Input, and La Casa de Las Flores on Netflix for interactive immersion and sentence mining. Getting a little sick of La Casa de Las Flores so may need to find another show to balance with.
Costa Rica with our family was doooopppeeee, and fun immersion time. See waterfall pic below.
📈 Anki + Toggl Stats
Anki
Toggl
🗂️ Anki
Did my Anki 28 out of 31 days in January, which feels pretty good! Bringing anti-streak energy into 2024, so not putting pressure on myself if I miss a day here or there. Only really working on my ES1K reviews right now, I haven't started working on my self-made sentence mining deck (wanted to get it up to at least 100 cards first). Would like to find a second pre-made straight up vocab deck to work through, but haven't gotten there yet.
🎧 Listening
On Harry Potter y el Prisionerio de Azkaban (numero tres). Unfortunately got taken away from me on Libby before I finished so have jumped to the sixth book in the meantime because that was the only other one available, smh. I use this as "passive immersion," usually listening while I walk, to spend time with the language but not be trying to understand every single word and sentence. Since I know the story so well, it works out great!
📺 Watching
Pretty much all of my watching is Dreaming Spanish and La Casa de Las Flores. With Dreaming Spanish, I watch without subtitles to practice comprehension. Alternate between Beginner and Intermediate-level videos, depending on my brain power at the moment. For La Casa de Las Flores, I watch using Language Reactor with Spanish subtitles and auto-pause. After each line, I check my comprehension with pop-up dictionaries. I also sometimes sentence mine while doing this using VocabSieve to easily create Anki cards out of 1T sentences.
🤸🏼 Other
Have also been doing some reading with the Magic Treehouse books in Spanish! Have been slowly working through the second book, "El caballero del alba." It is delightful but so...tiring. Takes me like 15 minutes to get through one page when I'm really focusing and doing lookups. Have also done some sentence mining while reading this.
Lastly, I've been doing a little speaking here and there! Marco and I a couple days a week have spent 5-10 minutes chit-chatting in Spanish. Additionally, got a lot of good immersion in Costa Rica. Practiced little phrases here and there and did a lot of listening with various drivers / waiters / etc.
🌻 Goals for February
Main goal for next month is to continue making my routine a habit. Hoping that once I start my new job, can get back into a normal daytime schedule and find where language work can fit in best. More specific items to check off:
⛏️ Get sentence mining deck to 100 cards and start adding cards to Anki routine.
🪄 Finish Harry Potter y el Prisionerio de Azkaban.
⏳ Hit 1 full hour of learning for at least 20 days.
¡Gracias por leer! Happy Love Month! 💕💗💞💖💓🌸💐🌺💘💝🌷🎀🐷👙💄👛🦩👚🩰🎟️💖💓