28/30 Days of Productivity

October 28:

Making this post early because, even though I still have language plans for tonight, I’ve finished what I wanted to with Mandarin today.

I finished unit two in the Duolingo Mandarin tree today! I’m still in the number one spot (ahead by like, 800 exp), and have a six day streak, but I’m totally planning on losing that streak because, now that I’ve completed this section, I’m planning on getting back to more textbook study rather than depending on Duolingo. I really only did so much of it because I was so massively busy this week, but next week will be more relaxed. But wait a minute, I only have the weekend left for this challenge. Wow, time really flies. I also felt a little click today that I hadn’t before. Listening, ever my Sisyphean feat, felt just a little bit easier today. Not only in being able to pick out words but in understanding it as a whole rather than bit by bit. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I’m ready to take the plunge.

I never paid much attention to this, but the reviews for Duolingo are pretty intriguing to me right now, especially the listening and speaking exercises. I don’t remember if I ever tried them with the Japanese course and how I felt about them there, but I would like to try them out with either language, especially to brush up on my listening.

I read some more manga this morning, and am planning on finishing it off tonight before I go to sleep. I’ve only got about fifty pages left, so it should be very doable since it’s a manga. Although, it’s already ten pm and I haven’t eaten dinner or done dishes, so it might be a little optimistic.

I also practiced some listening in Japanese today! Podcasts and the like really aren’t something I’m into, which ends up with me hoarding resources and using none of them, but last night I spent some time finding something that I actually thought I would take the time to listen to- the drama CDs for 薔薇王の葬列. This series is probably the only thing I’m into enough to actually listen to an audio drama, and although I don’t think I actually ended up finding the full things (and I didn’t find the third one at all), I understood a lot more than I expected. Listening comprehension is still something I want to work on and it still feels like it’s lagging behind my reading skills, but this definitely showed me that I know more than I thought I did. I guess I just have troubles understanding colloquial spoken Japanese. Oops.

Nearing the end of this challenge is making me sentimental and has me looking back on where I was at the beginning, but I’ll save all that for the End end!