Ok. I love languages. As you can probably tell. And I also love challenges and New Years Resolutions-type things. So I thought I would combine the two and give myself a language challenge for 2019! Essentially, I want to try and learn as much as I can of a certain language in a month, and do this for all 12 months of the year. I think that it will teach me a lot about languages and linguistics and it will hopefully show me which languages I want to pursue in the future and which ones are just not for me. It’s a big long-term goal of mine to be fluent in multiple languages so I thought I would try and jump-start that now! If anyone wants to join me, please feel free! I’d love some people who are also doing this or another language challenge so definitely message or tag me in your posts, I’d love to see them!
Anyway, enough talk, let’s get into the nitty gritty of the challenge!
1. Choose your languages. I have a basic idea of what I want to try and do and when, but I’m leaving it so that if I’m not particularly excited for a certain language one month, I can switch it out for another one that I would feel more passionate about learning. I think that would help maintain my motivation! Here’s the “rough draft” of what languages I want to try:
July: Chinese (nervous for the Asian languages!)
Here are some alternate ideas that I may exchange for some of the languages: Dutch, Turkish, Welsh, Norwegian, Finnish, Romanian, Czech, etc.
2. Set some daily goals/tasks. Determine what things you want to try and do every day to help you make the most of your month and maximize your learning. This definitely is up to you since everyone learns differently, but here are some ideas!
Spend at least 30-60 minutes a day working on the l.o.c. (language of choice)
Use Duolingo, Memrise, LingoDeer, LingQ, Busuu, etc.
Watch 1+ video a day about grammar
Write 3+ example sentences from scratch
3. Have some ideas for more advanced language practice for if you are more comfortable with a language (so if a language comes pretty easily to you then can do this earlier, for the others try to do some of these in last week or two of the month)
Watch a documentary with subtitles in l.o.c.
Read a blog post in l.o.c.
Read a short story written in l.o.c.
Listen to music in l.o.c.
Write something in l.o.c. (story, journal entry, recipe, etc.)
Practice speaking in l.o.c. about a certain topic (full sentences/paragraphs, not just individual words or phrases)
Watch a YouTube video in l.o.c.
Listen to an audiobook or podcast in l.o.c.
Read a book (or part of one) in l.o.c.
Translate/read poetry in l.o.c. (and maybe try to write some, too?)
Change phone and computer language to l.o.c.
Research country and culture behind language (watch documentaries, read articles, watch YouTube videos, etc.)
Good luck! Tag me in your posts and/or use the tag #1yearoflangs if you want to participate! :D
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