Tag: instagram

Categories
Practice

Instagram Language Diary Challenge

I often use instagram in my language learning. I’ve mentioned that now I often take part in the Language Diary Challenge, but what is it and how can you use it to improve your Vietnamese?

From offline to online

As you might know, when I was learning Korean I started writing a sentence a day. I’ve now moved to instagram where I post a caption instead of writing my diary on paper. I don’t manage to do it daily but sharing my pictures and captions online is more motivating than keeping a notebook, I get to learn and practice language relevant to my life and the support of other language learners is also motivating!

This support largely comes from the other participants in the #languagediarychallenge.

Organised by Joy Of Languages, the aim is to practise speaking or writing your chosen language every day for 30 days. As added motivation, there is a prize to be won each month.

How to take part?

1. Follow @joyoflanguages on instagram. (I’m there too, @morelanguages)

2. Post a picture or video and say something in Vietnamese, every day for a month.

3. Use the hashtags #languagediarychallenge and #joyoflanguages

For added benefit, follow other language learners and support each other by commenting and liking. The community is one of the things I like best about this challenge, along with how personalised it is writing about things in my life.

Over to you: Do you use instagram for language learning? How do you practice writing or speaking about your daily life?

Categories
Experiences

Have you been doing something?

Korean daily sentences, early April
I had to crop most of the other sentences because they were just talking about being hungry. I need to learn to say something new!

The last thing I posted is that you should do something, no matter how big or small, to get your learning back on track.

Somehow that was 2 months ago. So I thought I’d check in and ask how you’re doing, did you manage to do something? I did. Not quite as much as I’d hoped, but more than I did in March…

If you remember, I set two goals:

  • Writing a sentence a day in Korean, 5 days a week
  • Posting 3 words per week in the Instagram language challenge (IGLC)

Daily sentences

I wrote something 13 times in April. Many of these sentences were 2, 3 or even 4 sentences (so over the month I still totalled 30 ;)).

Korean daily sentences, early April
Half of my sentences were about food or being hungry, but not these ones.
(3/4: There’s no spring in southern Vietnam. April is really hot.
4/4: I really like Saturdays.)

As you can see, your sentences don’t have to be long, which makes this goal very achievable.

I felt like I was learning a lot, but in a manageable way. I had to look up the occasional new word, but not so many that it’s frustrating and you want to give up. Success!

Then I sort of stopped. I wasn’t carrying my notebook around with me much, or I did but just left it in my bag when I got home. Looking through my Kakaotalk, I still wrote Korean a few times in May. Semi-success? I’m not sure.

IGLC


I posted to Instagram 5 times in April and 4 in May. Not great. I found the theme in April difficult as it was spring-related during the hottest month of the year in Saigon! In May, I forgot to save the prompts infographic to my phone so I didn’t keep track of the daily theme. I’ve already put the June prompts on my phone, so hopefully I can meet to my aim next month!

Other things

I’m still looking for a decent Vietnamese drama series that I can get subtitled. I don’t really read fast enough to watch Korean dramas with Vietnamese subtitles. However I recently watched an American film that had Vietnamese subtitles, so I was able to glance at the subtitles to see how certain words and expressions had been translated. Interesting, but not a great study method.

Next month

Summer means extra work for me, so I don’t have time to do the italki lessons challenge* (one day I will!) or anything else particularly intensive. So I’m going to set similar goals:

  • Write a sentence a day in Korean (minimum 15 days).
  • Post 3 words per week in the Instagram language challenge (aim 10 words).
  • Keep reviewing vocabulary with Anki and Memrise every day.

Over to you: What have you been doing to boost your learning recently? What’s your aim for the next month?

Categories
Learning

Learn vocabulary on Instagram

So, things have been busy for the past couple of months and probably will continue to be until Tết.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to join Lindsay on her quest to share new vocabulary on Instagram, starting this month. I’m aiming to post 3-4 pictures a week.

IGLC january 2015

You can find me on Instagram here.

morevietnamese-instagram

While you’re there, you should also follow Viet Wordly who post gorgeous Vietnamese vocabulary pictures.

Over to you: Have you ever used Instagram to learn new vocabulary? How about joining in with the challenge?