Clear the List | Monthly Language Learning Strategies Update | January 2021

It’s a new year and while I love setting goals, I don’t particularly tie them to this month. They happen for me throughout the year.

Though this year, I am kicking off a new language learning project… Norwegian.

And not only am I kicking off a new language, but I’m also starting a new project — Language Conqueror.

It’s a course I’m putting together with my friend Caitlin Sacasas of 5 Minute Japanese. And each month, we highlight a new topic to help you learn a new language through passion-driven learning. You can learn more, get a feel for our teaching style, and download our free PDF here:

Get the Free PDF

And, not only did we launch Language Conqueror, but we also launched… Snack-Sized Language!

Snack-Sized Language is a free podcast where we teach you snack-sized language lessons. So far we have episodes teaching general language learning tips, Japanese, French, Mandarin and Korean.

Here’s a snippet:

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You can subscribe to the podcast on your preferred podcast platform.

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google Podcasts

And if you enjoy Snack-Sized language, we would absolutely love it if you left us a review!

And now, on to #clearthelist …

Wondering what #clearthelist is? Let me clear it up for you (see what I did there?). #CleartheList is a linkup where we share our monthly goals, and by we, I mean myself, and Lindsay of Lindsay Does Languages.

We’d absolutely love for you to a part of our community. You can join us by adding a link to your own goal post in the comments below.

So let’s get started, sharing our goals and motivating one another to #clearthelist!

Please feel free to tag your posts or photos with either #clearthelist on your favorite social media channels!

Last Month’s Highlights on Instagram

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Last Month’s Goals

Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // This month wasn’t the best month for Chinese. Because of the holidays, we’ve been watching a lot more holiday-themed movies in English. There are some that are available in Chinese on Netflix, and I also ordered Home Alone in Chinese, but English definitely dominated this month. In the new year, I hope to fix this.

Maintain my vocabulary learning streak. // Yes! This goal is working really well for me and it’s a solid part of my routine.

Keep working through my YouTube Queue.  // Last month I had 1,974 videos in my queue. This month, at the time of writing, I have 1,745. So some decent progress here. I made it through lots of Easy Languages videos.

Fluent in 3 Months Challenge // I’ve been studying my five focus languages consistently — Croatian, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese and Persian.

Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // I make it a goal to read outloud a little bit each day to improve my Russian pronunciation.

Get through at least three more chapters in each course book I’m working on. // Yes, I’ve been steadily doing this though not quite at the pace I’d like.

Maintain my weekly lessons in each language. // Yes, as much as my teachers are available.

This Month’s Goals

Continue filling the gaps in my Mandarin vocabulary I’ve noticed since Little Linguist’s arrival. // I’d like to continue to incorporate this more and more until we’re an OPOL household. And I’m actually thinking of re-incorporating French as well.

Maintain my vocabulary learning streak. // This has been a great way to rebuild my language routine, so it’s staying on the list indefinitely! Plus, I’m really seeing the impact of this study. I share my stats over on Instagram, so if you’re ever curious where I’m at, you can check out my stories.

Keep working through my YouTube Queue.  // I definitely want to keep working through this. I’ve been learning a lot and am making good progress!

Fluent in 3 Months Challenge // Another month or so is left!

Keep reading Game of Thrones in Russian. // I’m definitely noticing my confidence picking up and I want to continue this.

Learn Norwegian with Drops // I’m aiming to learn all the relevant-to-me words in Drops for Norwegian over the first 90 days of the year. I want to get one month under my belt!

Get through at least three more chapters in each course book I’m working on. // These are still: Teach Yourself Complete Persian, Genki I for Japanese, Colloquial Russian, Colloquial Croatian, and Colloquial Hungarian.

Maintain my weekly lessons in each language. // It makes sure I’m using all my languages each week and helps me a ton with accountability. Plus, as I mentioned last month, now that I’m maintaining five languages, this is more important than ever.

Resources I Used This Month

A quick recap of the materials I am using.

What I Am Using to Learn Chinese

LingQ – my favorite tooliTalki Lessons – I have weekly Chinese lessonsMemrise  Drops

What I’m Using to Brush Up/Improve My French:

LingQListening to French radio/podcasts/music

What I am Using to Learn Russian:

Colloquial RussianLingQiTalki LessonsDropsPimsleur

What I am Using to Learn Persian:

LingQPreply LessonsDropsPimsleurTeach Yourself Complete Persian

What I am Using to Learn Hebrew:

LingQiTalki LessonsDropsPimsleur

What I am Using to Learn Korean:

LingQDrops – they just added several hundred new culture-specific words for Korean and I’m so excited about the new content!iTalki LessonsPimsleur

What I am Using to Learn Spanish:

LingQ

What I am Using to Learn Italian:

LingQ

What I’m Using to Learn Japanese:

Genki IDrops – they just added hundreds of new culture-specific words for Japanese!iTalki LessonsPimsleur

What I’m Using to Learn Croatian:

Colloquial CroatianiTalki LessonsLingQ – they added Croatian, woot woot!Drops

What I’m Using to Learn Hungarian:

Colloquial HungarianiTalki LessonsDropsLingQ – they added Hungarian, too!

Not Currently doing any study for: German, Hindi

What I’m Using for Little Linguist

Lots of booksDay-to-day interactionitalki LessonsDuolingo ABCDropletsMovies in ChineseGus on the Go Chinese

Resources That Aren’t Language Specific

Fluent in 3 Months ChallengeTodoist (to keep all my language lessons and to-do’s organized)Notion – my new favorite app for taking notesThe Biggest Lesson I Am Taking Away from This Month

This month has been all about getting caught up and organized. It’s something that I’ve been working towards over the last few months, but this particular month is when I really started to notice and feel “caught up”. I still have a ways to go to really be where I want to be, and when I get there, I’m sure I’ll find more to do, but I’m celebrating where I’m at today because it’s infinitely better than where I was last month.

A lot of the stuff I wanted to catch up on was personal or work related, but it’s allowed for more space in my life for languages and other projects, so I’m very grateful for that.

Don’t forget that I would love to hear all about your goals for this month! Please join us by adding your post to the linkup below! 

Clear The List Linkup Rules:

1. Share your goal post whether it includes your aspirations for the month or year. Submissions unrelated to the theme or links to your homepage will be deleted.

2. Link back to this post. You can use our button if you wish.

3. Follow the hosts: Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages and Shannon from Eurolinguiste.

4. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Please visit the site of the person who linked up immediately before you and leave them an encouraging comment! By hosting this linkup, we’re hoping to create a positive community where we can all share our goals. If you do not do this, you will be removed from the linkup.

5. Share on social media using #ClearTheList

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