Hello there! Why don’t you grab a cup of very gentle camomile tea and join me on my latest post in the Clear the List series. Clear the List is a monthly language learning round-up where I share my goals and progress.

If you’re inspired to try your own check-in, why not join our #clearthelist blog round-up hosted by Shannon Kennedy and Lindsay Williams.

Previously On Clear The List..

I barely remember typing my last Clear The List entry. That was back in early April, so I missed a month on documenting. As you probably know, it’s almost impossible to grasp all the many things that have happened in the world since then.

During lockdown, I’ve celebrated Easter, my birthday and my 5th wedding anniversary. This also makes it nearly 5 years of learning Welsh and I’m very happy to call that TWO love affairs in my life.

The Fluent Show

The podcast has been back on its usual weekly schedule with renewed energy.

Here are 3 highlight episodes for you:

How to Learn a Language Every Day
An interview with the lovely Sara Maria Hasbun on languages, lockdown and long-term success - perfect episode for world travellers who love languages
A special statement about racism, only 6 minutes long and inspired by recent events

I’m very very proud and grateful to the Fluent Show patrons. There are 36 of them now, making a real contribution to the podcast. Patrons of the Fluent Show get extra show notes, news from behind the scenes, and discounts and bonus audio on a regular basis.

If you are interested in becoming a patron, go to www.patreon.com/fluentshow to get involved.

How I Learnt Languages in April and May

Having moved house during the truly frightening anxieties of Coronavirus overwhelming the UK, I didn’t find it easy to focus on languages for the first half of April. But slowly, the stars started to align again.

italki Language Challenge

90% of language learning will have to happen online for the foreseeable future. Fun events like cultural festivals are cancelled. It’s a GREAT time to make friends with online lessons.

During lockdown, lots of new teachers opened the doors to their very own one-person language schools. This included my friend Dafydd who shared that he’d just started teaching on italki. Dafydd has been a super patient practice partner for my Welsh on several occasions, so it felt like the perfect time for me to book some classes.

If you’ve never tried italki before, check out my review here for more information.

And while I was over on italki, I spotted that they were running a new language challenge and signed up on the spot! This challenge isn’t complicated: simply set a goal of at least 12 lesson hours during the challenge period and work towards it.

During the last italki challenge, I didn’t manage to hit 12 hours. Travel commitments got in the way, and I found it hard to fit it all into 4 weeks. This time, italki offered an extended challenge period of 6 weeks and obviously I wasn’t going anywhere.

Welsh Speaking Progress

Since April I’ve been taking regular one-hour practice lessons in Welsh, chatting about everything and nothing with Dafydd. Just like every other tutor I’ve worked with on italki, he’s fab and very patient. I’m comfortable with Welsh now and that hour a week is a great way to keep going and get better.

Chinese Speaking Progress

In Chinese, April was a great time for me to try again in terms of speaking. I booked new classes with my old “Google translate read out loud” partner Zuo, who’s always fun to talk to. And behold, this time I was able to say that much more!

I’m still far from “conversational” in Chinese, but it’s always nice to feel that my work has actually paid off.

The conversation based lessons are fairly loose and chaotic (and short!) and I wasn’t going to reach 12 hours that way alone, so in addition I signed up with a more established teacher in China. She took one look at me, said a few incomprehensible things, and then exclaimed “HSK 1!” and sent me a huge PDF containing the full HSK1 materials. These lessons are different, they mostly consist of us working through the textbook and there’s a LOT of non-entertaining content. But as I had misplaced my textbook anyway during the move, it felt kinda right to bring in this element of structure.

The “start right at page 1” approach might have been disheartening to some, but my ego was restored very quickly as I found I’m breezing through pages 1-50.

Language Goals for June

Nearly halfway through the year, I’m still refusing to give up on learning Chinese. No, we’re not on cloud 9 together yet. But I have hope, or at least I have my ambitions! It’s great to be learning my first Asian language, too.

Chinese Language Goals

My most important commitments are to improving my listening, reading and speaking skills. I’m a natural doodler, so I’ve found that writing down vocab and even practicing Chinese characters tends to happen as standard with me. That’s enough for now.

Listening

I’ve got into episodes of iPartment on Yabla and neglected them during the italki language challenge, but I’ll be happy to return to these. I do love Yabla because of the super easy rewind and loop functionality!

Yabla used to be my morning activity and I’ll aim to bring it back for 10 minutes (minimum) on weekday mornings.

Speaking

In terms of my pronunciation, I’m happy. People can understand me and make positive remarks. Now if only I could express myself better… the goal is simple here: Take 3 Sunday lessons with my HSK1 teacher and 2 conversation classes with community teachers, all through italki

Reading

My favourite study app for Chinese is Lingodeer and I’m about halfway through their HSK1 skill tree. They’ve also added more reading exercises, so my goal is to focus on Lingodeer practice and reach the next checkpoint in the app.

Having finished all mini stories, I’ve got a bit of a Lingq gap at the moment, so let’s save Lingq practice for July.

Welsh Language Goals

Usually around this time I’d start to get excited about planning my Eisteddfod trip to Wales, but due to Coronavirus this was not to be. I have lots of Welsh in my life through conversation lessons and exchanges, television and social media.

The only extra goal I’d like to add for the summer is to find a new book to read! After finishing Ffenestri last year, I had planned to buy a new one in Wales and again Coronavirus blocked me there. So it’s time for a trip to Hive.co.uk to find new entertaining Welsh writing.

What are Your Language Learning Goals?

I hope you’re safe and healthy, and finding consolation and calm in a linguistic refuge right now. What are your language goals? Did you put a tenner on my commitment to Chinese? Leave me a comment below or say hi over in my Facebook Group to chat more!