Why did I decide to start French again when I am still not intermediate in Korean? To give my brain something different, I decided to go back to French sooner than expected. Because I am familiar with French and reviewing Korean has become tedious so to bring some excitement, I picked up something different but not new. It has been over ten years since I was diligently practicing French and my skills are now ridiculously low. I figure this will allow me to keep my momentum with studying along with keeping the journey interesting.
Has the improvement in French become noticeable? No, because I just started this at the very beginning of November. However, the wonderful thing about incorporating a language I was once very familiar with is that I will not be reviewing any grammar, instead, I will be working on vocabulary words. The sentence structures in French are similar to Spanish, and I am already fluent in Spanish, so the extra step for grammar will not be needed until I make it to a level where I need to review those points. For now, I will strictly focus on awakening the words during my break from practicing new and old Korean vocabulary as well as remembering those tedious grammar points.
Why didn’t I start on a new language? It was a tough decision but I decided to go with something I could work with and would be low maintenance while I continue to add new and important review sessions for Korean. For me, studying French is like visiting an old library you haven’t been to in years. This process has felt like reorganizing the books and making the catalog clearer to understand.
How many hours a day do I study French? I study French for 15–20 minutes a day and only after powering through a few hours of Korean. My Korean study plan is broken up into 30-minute chunks throughout the day. I start with a podcast in the morning for 20 minutes. As the day progresses, I listen to an audiobook for 10 minutes and then do a book review for 45 minutes. After an hour of Korean studying, I open up my Memrise list for French and do my vocabulary review for 5 minutes. I then read from an old French novel I have and do a ten-minute read, circling any words I do not know and adding them to the Memrise list.
Memrise is important for my Korean review. Earlier this year I would use it every day, but now I only use it once a week for massive chapter reviews. If I am not satisfied with my progress and see too many errors, I will redo the chapter review next week. Each chapter has 40–60 words, so it can take me 30 minutes to complete a session during weekends since I am most likely repeating it. My goal is to master the words, so I can have 5000 actively known words by 2024. When I feel ambitious, I also add in some sentence composition for 20 minutes since my goal is to make five sentences daily. So far, I’ve stuck with this goal and plan to make my paragraphs longer by next year.
What has adding French to my routine shown me? I’ve noticed that recalling a language you once knew is a lot easier but you still need to be patient. Reading old books has been interesting. I can pick up unknown words through context but not remembering words has been challenging. However, this is still week one and I am excited to see how much I will remember after three months with just daily 20-minute reviews.
Will I work on a new language in the future? Still debating which one but I am looking to add a fifth and sixth language to my list. My goal for 2023 is to be at B2 in Korean (Or TOPIK 4) and if I achieve this, I could bring my French to C1. As for learning a brand new language, I will start my fifth language in 2024 and my sixth in 2026. I feel that I’ll pick another complex language, so I want to give myself grace and practice patience in the future.
Originally published at http://thoughtsofang.wordpress.com on November 6, 2022.
