2017 was a good year for language. In the spirit of this 2016 update on language, I'm going to work through my goals of becoming a polyglot and try to set future goals for 2018. Eventually, I do want to work on other languages, especially Hindi, but for this year I need to focus on the languages that I've already gotten a grasp in. This is because I need to use these languages for ministry and work. Overall, I want to maintain my Chinese, recover my Japanese to a conversational level, and increase my speed and fluency in Spanish. It helps that for Japanese and Spanish that I have concrete reasons to get to those levels of language, so I am hopeful that I will be able to complete my goals.
- Chinese
- Update: Occasionally I talk with Chinese friends in really short conversations and read internet memes or something like that, but haven't been doing anything regular. Earlier in 2016 and 2017, I used my Chinese-English Bible at church and that helped a good bit. My understanding and reading is still ok, but speaking is becoming more difficult. I think my tones are getting worse. However, I still think this is my best foreign language due to studying it in-country. And I'm so happy that I got the chance to study it full time, so want to keep it up!
- 2018 Goal: Maintain Chinese through continued occasional conversations and internet input. Even though I want to maintain it, this language is low priority for me because I actually need Spanish and Japanese language ability this year for practical reasons.
- Japanese
- Update: I went to Japan for 3 weeks last summer on a mission trip!!! After 8 years away, I was finally able to return to the land of the rising sun. It was so good to go back and be in that environment again. As for language ability, I was able to use my limited Japanese a bit while there, though I mostly talked to new friends in English.. While highly impressed by the language ability of some friends who went with me, I was unable to engage in any complex conversations.
- 2018 Goal: Get my Japanese level back to a conversational level before May 2018. I need to do this for the mission trip I'm planning on going on. To achieve this goal, I need to be really intentional, so I'm planning on setting aside 30 minutes each day to work on this goal. Still have my textbooks from college, so maybe I can break them up into chunks. I could also potentially take a page from my Mandarin learning schedule (which of course was 3 hours a day instead of 30 minutes. This is the schedule I had for each day while in China:
- Spanish
- Update: Great news! I've been able to work using Spanish, conducting presentations and in a couple of instances interpreting English>Spanish. This has substantially increased my speaking and listening level to the next degree. Most of it is regarding industry-specific topics, however my normal vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar needs to improve. Really encouraging that I can use it quite regularly however.
- 2018 Goal: Improve my fluency and speed of interpretation. How to do that? I can't study Spanish as much if I want to focus on Japanese. Maybe at least one day a week, Is should take a peek at Spanish. At least every night before I present in Spanish, I need to study Spanish in some way. I'll revisit this.
Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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Songs
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Reading
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Listening/Characters
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Reading
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Photo Dictionary
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Grammar
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Speaking
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Characters
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Homonyms
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Free Talk/Video
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As you can see, I had it jam-packed. It's unrealistic to do that much each day on top of other responsibilities, so I think I will modify it, but keep some of the basic parts. In addition, I will make a goal of writing one Japanese-related post a week on this blog related to one of these categories.
I'll start this next week:
Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Friday
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Songs
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Reading
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Listening
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Reading
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Video
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