One year on: What language learning am I doing?

Chúc mừng năm mới, các bạn!

Happy new lunar year of the rooster. I hope it’s a great one for you personally, professionally and in your language learning life too.

Speaking of, I’m well overdue an update here, aren’t I?

Read on for a recap of my language learning in 2016, what study habits and techniques I’m still using and what’s new as I’ve been maintaining my Vietnamese and learning a new language in the past 12 months.

In other news, I’ve started a teaching blog where I reflect and share about teaching English. If you’re a teacher, it might be your cup of tea.

Without further ado, let’s get down to my review of 2016 in language learning.

Maintaining my Vietnamese

I have not been actively learning Vietnamese in 2016. I have been maintaining with less time and enthusiasm than in 2013 but still, Vietnamese will always be part of my life in some way.

I’ve maintained contact with friends on facebook and instagram and well as read things that appear in my news feed in those two places. I also still have V-Pop on my playlist.

In real life I’ve only had one full conversation in Vietnamese since leaving Vietnam. 🙁 But on the plus side I was still able to speak it easily and with most of the fluency I used to have.

Learning a new language

In January I started learning my new language ahead of my move to the Balkans. I started with free videos on Youtube and learning simple words and phrases. I had a few lessons on italki* both before and after I arrived to help me get to grips with the basics.

However I was sorely missing the structure a course provides. Since April I’ve been taking language classes again – two lessons a week of 90 minutes. This has been crucial to my learning.

Of course you know that while I love classes, you can’t expect to magically learn a language without any effort. As well as doing any homework I was set, I have again been using Anki to learn the vocabulary and some phrases we studied in lessons. 10 months and two courses later, I have well over 1000 cards and no backlog!

That all just covers ‘input’ though. What have I been doing to actually practice and work on my speaking and writing?

Living in the country where you speak the language lets you practice the basics for survival like food and transport phrases quite easily. In the city it can be hard to get much speaking practice beyond that as many people speak or are learning English and want to practice on you!

Unsurprisingly I’ve been using Instagram to practice. I participated in Instagram Language Challenge (IGLC) once or twice but the themes don’t always fit in with my learning. I’ve just discovered Instagram Language Diary Challenge which suits me far better. You might remember I used to keep a sentence-long diary in Korean. Now I’m doing the same thing on instagram instead of on paper. I’ve had a few corrections, but not as many as I’d like. However, I’ve been able to read some of my old posts and correct them myself!

Besides that, I have one friend I speak to and message in the language, but other than that I’ve turned to HelloTalk to get more practice. I tried it before when learning Korean but never really got into it.

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Although that sounds like a lot, in reality I average about 10-15 minutes a day on private study. Some days that’s 3 minutes reviewing flashcards in Anki. Other times it’s 30 minutes creating flashcards and adding audio, or messaging a friend while watching TV.

I still have a long way to go and I’m starting to feel like my routine isn’t getting me where I want to be fast enough. I went to a language exchange event for the first time last week and I think that’s something I’m going to be pursuing in 2017.

Over to you: How was your language learning in the year of the monkey? What are your plans for the year of the rooster?