How I Study Languages: A Quarterly Check-in for Welsh, Italian & Chinese

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This blog post is an my own language learning goals and progress.

Read on to hear about

  • what happened in my life and business so far this year
  • which languages I’m learning and how I’m doing in them
  • which courses I’m taking and creating
  • what I’m planning to do next!

I’ll be referring to January-March as “Q1” from here on, since it was the first quarter of 2021.

Lockdown Language Life in Q1 2021

I live in the UK, and our winter was not exciting. Shortly after the new year started, our country went into a pretty strict coronavirus lockdown which is only now beginning to ease.

Cue…another 3 months spent in and around the home. I’m unbelievably lucky to have space and quiet available in my home, and the rules allowed for just enough outdoor activity to help me avoid loneliness and depression.

I am so happy to know that our vaccine programme is progressing well, and the relief it’s going to bring vulnerable people, their carers, and all who work in healthcare.

We held another Women in Language online conference!

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Let’s start with the biggest event first: Women in Language 2021! The conference was another smash hit and we learnt SO much over the course of 4 days - it’s impossible to sum up everything, but here are some of my personal highlights.

  • Kaché Knowles from The Bahamas helped us kick off the event in the best possible, sunniest, most celebratory mood. I loved her energy!
  • I moderated the “Language Learning in Australia” panel and learnt just SO much about languages down under from Michele Frolla, Bec Howie & Karla Zuluaga. Australia is a 360 degree language space with so many indigenous, regional, and immigrant languages. Wow wow! Loved it!
  • We added our first ever bilingual presentations with contributions in Spanish, French and Mandarin

We had an entrepreneurial streak running through many presentations, including

  • Inspired Teachers Create Inspired Learners! by English language icon Lindsay McMahon
  • A 5-Step Manifesto on Becoming a Language Teacher Rebel by Swedish teacher and Author Anneli Haake
  • A wonderful conversation on Mindset and Self-Worth as you grow your language business by Gwyneth Jones & Marija Dobrovolska I found myself engaged and excited for the many baby language businesses in the chatroom, loving the opportunity to share my knowledge through mentoring.

Stats round-up: 599 participants, 34 speakers, 56 countries, 1145 Facebook group comments over 4 days. PHEW! It is really cool to see more and more men attending this event each year.

Mobile Mentoring by Kerstin Cable

Through February, I have been quietly trying out a new mentoring offer for online teachers and I’m so excited to share that this is now LIVE! I have offered coaching/mentoring for online teachers for a few years now. It’s the perfect mix of

  1. Talking shop
  2. Helping language business owners find the answers that they need for all those decisions about prices, offers, marketing and more
  3. Lighting that fire of excitement in them about the many fantastic ways they can create a business that makes a difference in the world (and makes some money, that's important too)

Long story short, you should consider booking one!

It’s a 1:1 deal with a twist: you get a whole day with me and we’ll be chatting via voice message! Want to learn a little more and try it out? Here’s my booking page link!

Learning Languages in Lockdown 3

When you don’t plan ahead and set myself manageable goals, you don’t achieve as much either.

But when languages are a habit and always form part of your life, you never stand still even in a super busy month.

Closing the 书 on Chinese for now

At the end of last year, I had just completed level HSK 1 in Mandarin Chinese and I wasn’t sure whether to take it any further. Well, after sitting on a very vague intention to do something or other with Chinese, in the end I decided it was time to pack it in.

I am really happy that I took 2020 to learn my first East Asian language, and I’ll happily return to Chinese at some point in the future. I didn’t find it scary or uninteresting, but equally I never quite found my Chinese passion either.

Guess for now we’ll choose to stay friends. 谢谢for the good times, 中文！

La signora nuova on the scene…it’s Italian!!

One of the reasons I wanted to let go of Chinese was to create space for just one of the many languages on my list: Italian! I studied Italian for 2 years as a teenager and I’ve got plenty of cross-language skills from learning other Romance languages over the years. But speaking Italian? Quasi ninety!

In 2021, I’m finally spending a little time with Italian again. I had a really lovely time with it in the late 90s, so I'm looking forward to playing around with Italian again!

I’m not ready to speak to anyone quite yet, but will get there in the next 3 months. Until then, I’m working with my own Vocab Checklist to build a bank of essential phrases and listening to a few learner-friendly podcasts to get into the groove.

Want to find out what I love for learning Italian? Click here to view my page for Italian learners!

My 6th Year of Learning Welsh (Y 6ed blwyddyn yn dysgu Cymraeg)

I love learning Welsh! Yes, even 6 years in I still do. My language level is B2, and I reached it without ever pushing super hard. I have so much fun with Welsh.

My attendance at the Advanced 1 course continues, a friendly weekly evening with other learners. I’m the only one who is joining the group from England, so I’m getting a great treat here from the 2020 online lessons.

My Welsh conversation skills and my grammar have improved. I now feel more confident and competent expressing myself in the language, and I CANNOT WAIT for everyone’s vaccinations and all those festivals and trips I’m going to enjoy after covid. C’mon, world!

Want to enjoy a quick dabble in the beautiful Welsh language yourself? Try my Language Dabbler’s Guide to Welsh!

Also on the Scene: Le Français

In French, I’m in the lucky position that I’ve got a strong basis to fall back onto even if I don’t study for ages. In Q1, I practiced my French mostly with Call My Agent/Dix Pour Cent on Netflix, and in March by listening to Cathy Intro’s awesome My Polyglot Life podcast.

Every now and then, I practice speaking or writing French but it’s not at the top of my priority list.

Want to find out what I love for learning French? Click here to view my page for French learners!

In Conclusion: Steady Effort Wins for Me

That’s it for reviewing my Q1! After many months thinking I’m ready to move on from Chinese for now, I’ve finally done it. It feels good to have taken the pressure off myself, though I want to continue to look beyond Europe for my language education in the future.

A 4th language I’m eager to learn is BSL (British Sign Language), but I’ve decided I’d like to start that in an offline class so it’s on hold for obvious reasons.

2021 is off to a great start, with a successful Women in Language event under our belt, and I’m excited to dive into more support for online teachers and language entrepreneurs through my mobile mentoring days.

Courses & Classes I Use for Languages

Believe it or not, I don’t watch YouTube. some of these links above are affiliate links

Courses & Programmes I Created / Promoted

  • Women in Language 2021 (our 4th one)
  • Mobile Mentoring for language teachers and businesses
  • A new live round of the Language Habit Toolkit (including BINGO with prizes…I love games!)
  • How to Get Fluent When Life’s Chaotic (free class, link coming soon)

Blogs & Podcasts

This post is part of the #clearthelist round-up hosted by Shannon Kennedy and Lindsay Williams. I used to do these check-ins on a monthly basis, but since I’ve found relaxing the pace recently, I decided that a quarterly check-in is just as good.

The world is feeling like that cloud over our heads is starting to move a little. What about you? Do you feel the same? Leave me a comment below if you have any thoughts or questions for me!

Clear The List June 2020: This is Fine for Chinese and Welsh

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.

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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:

  1. How to Learn a Language Every Day
  2. An interview with the lovely Sara Maria Hasbun on languages, lockdown and long-term success - perfect episode for world travellers who love languages
  3. 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!