Language Learning Activity Goals for 2022

Shadowing, uh, of the Mini Stories, which we have in all of our Слежка за мини-историями, которые есть во всех наших

languages, is something that I'm going to do more of in the new year.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here and today, I want to talk about goals for 2022,

but not in terms of my language goals, but in terms of my activity goals.

And I mentioned that in the video that I did earlier on my language goals.

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So I told you that I was going to continue focusing on Arabic and Persian.

Uh, I might dabble a bit in Turkish, but if we do launch Punjabi or some other

other South, or at least Indian, uh, languages at LingQ, I will try to get

a bit of a sense of that language as well as Tagalog, because we have a lot

of Punjabi speakers and Filipinos in Vancouver, whether they speak, whether

they're native speakers of Tagalog or not, I don't know, but I think most people

in the Philippines do speak Tagalog.

So I'll get my jollies surprising them, say. Então eu vou ter minhas alegrias surpreendê-los, digamos. Так что, скажем, я повеселюсь, удивив их.

So those are language goals. Então, esses são os objetivos da linguagem.

Now activity goals, uh, one of the things that I want to do in the

new year is I want to read more.

I look back to my sort of Chinese learning, uh, experience and, uh, I Eu olho para trás para o meu tipo de aprendizado chinês, uh, experiência e, uh, eu

did a lot of reading, more reading than I'm doing now in my Arabic and

Persian because I had less audio. Persa porque eu tinha menos áudio.

So now I can sort of say, okay, I'm listening.

I listened to something.

I picked it up. Eu peguei.

I listened to half an hour while preparing breakfast and cleaning Eu escutei meia hora enquanto preparava o café da manhã e limpava

up or I listened to it in the car.

So I've done my thing.

Uh, actually, when I was learning Chinese, I read a lot.

I read a lot and reading is powerful.

So I've said in the new year, I'm going to read more and I can

read at LingQ in sentence mode.

And I can hear each sentence if it's timestamped or I can use the

five-second rewind to, uh, to make sure I've got the audio for that sentence.

But to some extent I'm cheating because I'm listening to it

at the same time and it...

reading in, uh, Arabic and Persian is difficult.

But I'm going to force myself to do more reading where I don't listen so

that I'm forcing myself to try to rely on my ability to read the language.

So that's one of my goals, do more reading and I definitely would recommend

people that don't neglect your reading.

Reading is a powerful way for your brain to get used to the language.

That's number one.

Number two, I am going to do more shadowing.

I've started...

I mentioned shadowing in a previous video.

I've never been a big fan of shadowing uh, partly because a lot of my listening is

listening to things, you know, whether it be politics or economics, things where I'm

trying to understand what they're saying, and if I shadow, then it confuses me and

I can't really hear what their saying.

But what I have discovered is that our Mini Stories are ideal for

shadowing because inevitably...

shadowing by the way, is when you listen to something and you

try to speak at the same time.

It's not a pause where you repeat what you heard.

It's actually trying to imitate what you hear simultaneously.

And I just find that that's, if I'm listening to something that I'm genuinely

interested in, I find that very difficult to do, and I quickly stop doing it.

But I said to myself, I'm going to give this another chance.

So I tried it with different kinds of material, and I find that with

the Mini Stories, it's great because the Mini Stories are simpler.

I know the stories, there's so much repetition that if I miss a

word in the first point of view of the story, I'll pick it up in the

second point of view or I'll pick it up in the questions and answers.

So it lends itself to a shadowing. Por isso, presta-se a um sombreamento.

Second of all, I find that as I listen to these mini stories, which I've listened

to many times, sometimes I lose focus.

And so even if I listen to it another time and another time, I'm not

gaining anything because I'm kind of skipping over the same parts that

I...that I skipped over the last time.

Now I'm forcing myself to actually say what I hear and it forces me

to focus in, and I notice things that I didn't notice before.

And so, and I enjoy it now.

So now for example, I was just on my nordic track, you know, cross country

ski exercising thing that I have at home.

And I was listening to my mini stories in Levantine Arabic, and I enjoy doing it.

It's a challenge.

It just, it's a challenge to try to shadow with what you're listening to.

Uh, there's words there that I noticed that I don't know.

So now I'm motivated to go and read them again in the story.

And so I think that the shadowing of the Mini Stories uh, which we have in

all of our languages, is something that I'm going to do more of in the new year.

So more reading, more shadowing and perhaps a little more

flashcarding of phrases.

I, I'm not convinced that flashcarding words is all that useful, but with

phrases, key phrases to focus in on those phrases that will help me speak

Arabic and Persian a little bit better.

So there, you have it, a bit of a, of a sense of, um, some of my, uh, language

activity goals for the new year.

And I'll leave you the video that I did on shadowing. А я залишу вам відео, яке я зняла про тінінг.

And, uh, also another one.

Uh, the one I did about my language goals.

Thank you for listening.