Small steps

Small steps

Det er ligegyldigt, hvor langsomt du går, så længe du ikke stopper.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Welcome to the summary of my past week successes. This week was a right successful goal-driven progressive win for me, but much of that may have had to do with my being at home to take a training course all week. When the work day wraps at 3pm, it gives me a lot more time than I would normally have to work on my personal goals. The real test will the next week when I’m back at my regular job. That’s when some excuses will try to wriggle their way in and upset my progress.

Danish Language Progress

In my previous post, I laid out daily goals, with this blog post part of my Saturday goals. I successfully completed two of my DC101 Beginner lessons and submitted my audio recordings to my teacher. For each lesson, I write a few sentences using the concepts taught in the lesson, and then practice and record it. I am and will be for the near future using Google Translate to write up my assignments to help me with learning the grammar and vocabulary. I find that the small words are sometimes the hardest; my corrections this week were for år (“year”) and på (“on” or “in”). Hmm, maybe it’s å that’s the real culprit.

My new Danish grammar book categorizes å as a rounded back vowel with no equivalent in English, French, or German. Helpful.

Danish: An Essential Grammar book cover
Now I have to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet too?

Just to keep things exciting, my teacher also sent me a one-minute-long audio in Danish without providing the text, as she has done in the past. My goal for the next few days is to try and translate it. Listening – my weakest skill so far.

In addition to writing up notes for my lessons, with the extra time I had this week, I also transferred earlier lesson notes done in a smaller notebook to my new Arc notebook.

Learning Danish *and* practicing my cursive handwriting!

On Wednesday, I recorded myself reading a paragraph from a book and uploaded it as a private video on YouTube. Then I had some extra fun adding captions, so I might know what I was trying to say in the future. Hopefully in a few months, I will look back at this first video and think “wow, how far I’ve come!”

This was my summary of the week:

Denne uge lærte jeg, hvordan man taler om shopping, og hvordan man taler om begivenheder, der sker i fremtiden. Jeg videotapede mig selv ved at læse fra en bog og sendte to taleopgaver til min lærer. Små ord er vanskelige at udtale, så jeg er glad for, at min læreres ekstra hjælp til dem. I går aftes sendte min lærer mig en lang verbal optagelse, som jeg må forstå.

I exceeded my Duolingo goal of 15404 and maintained my streak, now at 33 days. I’m currently in the “Ruby” league.

I am planning for next week to be very similar to this week. That’s the way to build new habits, right?

Saturday

  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Blog daily tasks for the next week (this post!)

Sunday

Monday

  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Write and practice teacher recording (W) (S)

Tuesday

  • Review teacher commentary
  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Read and translate one paragraph of Kvinden i Buret. (R)

Wednesday

Thursday

  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Write and practice teacher recording (W) (S)

Friday

  • Review teacher commentary
  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Write and record short text related to weekly lessons (W) (S)

Saturday

  • Review DC101 conversation and practice speaking (R) (L) (S)
  • Blog about my success! And update my teacher.

Every day will include the following tasks:

  • Maintain Duolingo streak (R) (L) (S)
  • Flashcard practice (as scheduled by the app) (R) (L) (S

With it being September 1 tomorrow, I also plan to kickstart my bullet journaling (again!). Then I can track my daily habits and keep notes about what’s going well or not. Soldier on!

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