Here're my thoughts.
I have really enjoyed the new system that I have developed - a big giant feedback loop. Practicing, repracticing, repracticing. Basing a lot of the focus on words with high frequency.
Though, of course, then you end up getting things like "lze" which seem to not be very functional in speech, but are all over writing. "jde to" = "lze to"
Anyway.
A fun part of this journey for me is of course, building the system. I really enjoy thinking about my learning, thinking about how to optimize it. That is really fun. I suppose that is one reason why I was drawn towards language teaching.
The dark part of myself tells me I only landed in that field because I didn't have many other great options after completely wrecking my options in the MESA major. I feel such regret and frustration about stupid choices I made when I was in my early 20's, young, not thinking, way overly impulsive and emotional. I really hate that past version of myself. I guess I am not alone, but that is hardly any kind of consolation.
But maybe I would have been drawn to language teaching anyway. I don't know. I certainly have done a lot of language teaching in our home, with our five children. I taught all of them how to speak English.
I'm finally making some progress towards the part of the Corpus Linguistics MOOC on Future Learn that is about what I'm really interested in doing: language teaching and building informed learner dictionaries and textbooks.
Because LITERALLY every. single. Czech as a second language textbook. Sucks.
I started making a running list of the reasons why they suck. It is quite satisfying to put it in writing. But they are mostly hypotheses. I could use CL methodologies to prove (or disprove!) what I am intuitively guessing. It's...it's really enticing.
More about my learning: I needed to pause and break things into even smaller chunks. I am quite sure that nobody knows what the heck I'm talking about. That's because I haven't shared my giant spreadsheet detailing the list of things I've been doing - the order, the feedback loop, etc. It is too embarrassing to share in its entirety. Here's the latest iteration of the labels of the things I've been doing:
Red means there's an artifact which belongs on my blog
Pink means I am dependent on a collaborator
I gave myself some extra flashcard practice spaces because I really need the encouragement to do that.
I also decided that one of my meta posts would specifically be about my feelings about my attempts to translate.
In other news, every time I see "o pokroku" it seems like it should be sung to the tune of "O Christmas Tree." haha
There weren't enough places to take a pause and write a meta post. So I have updated that. It is important to me to write about my learning. I am not exactly sure why - but it is. Maybe for that creating-the-perfect-textbook-for-English-speaking-Czech-learners that is wayyyy far away on the horizon. Maybe for some internal emotional reason. It really is word vomit, though. Unorganized. Stream of consciousness. How I would speak. Actually, probably a bit faster. I seem to be more collected in my writing than my speech. I dunno.
Also, I had to add some other steps to the process. These were the rote steps which I tend to skip unless I force myself to do them. And they are important. For example, I am going to force myself to write out the pády forms each week. It actually significantly helped when I was doing this before. It does not take very long. I can't base all of my learning on rote activities, but this is one I have to do. Also, flashcard practicing. Which yeah, of course, I have had many long conversations with collaborators about how dumb flashcards are. Contextless words are far inferior to words in context. But there is some value to the rote repetitive learning. I don't know why it's that way. I've tried to design this system so that it minimizes these kinds of frustratingly painful activities, or rather, incorporates them quietly into the other activities. Like, so it's invisible and I don't even notice. But I really think I'd do better if I did slightly more of them.
So, I renumbered my list, including at least three reflection checkpoints. This gives me about 35 tasks to complete each week. That's kind of ridiculous. I should probably shorten it. But...I'm already doing these tasks. This just labels them and makes them easier to figure out what to do next. I am going to label them according to where I can do them: on my pc, phone, laptop, just audio (driving). I've been organizing my to-do lists this way for the past month or so and it's been quite satisfying. I often end up nursing a baby with just a phone in my hand, so having a list of possible things I can do can help keep me focused rather than getting sucked into wikipedia or something like that. I got rid of Facebook on my phone entirely because it was such an utterly depressing time waster. There's too much stuff I want to learn and not enough time, so getting rid of the time wasters is an important task.
Talking to friends is not a waste of time. I have a lot of stupid things on these lists like, "spend time with my mom" or "call someone." I have to continually remind myself to do these things, and that they are crucial to my wellbeing, lest I get sucked into the trap of thinking that the only things that matter are the things in the appeals-to-my-emotions and appeals-to-my-intelligence sector of my brain. I also have to force myself to do things like work out.
Unrelated news: I have lost 10 pounds in the past month. Still 50 more to go. Baby weight is horrible. But I've done this four times before, so I'm sure I'll be successful again. I just really, really hate it.
Still other news: I'm really, really happy with sketch engine. It is so fun to play with. It has provided me with tools to explore whether or not my ideas are right, in a surprisingly wide variety of contexts, even. I wish that the beta version I have would allow me to upload my own corpora. I also wish that I knew the terms to look for the tools that would help me create my own corpora. But I think there's still a lot I need to learn and read about before jumping in and going crazy.
I feel like I'm so late to the game. It is not a great feeling.
I wrote a poem to express these general learner-anxiety feelings which I frequently have (by the way, writing poetry in Czech is totally miserable. An absolute exercise in the worst kind of embarrassing futility. Someday maybe it will be fun - that day is not today). I think the first step to divesting myself of them is to recognize that they exist, they are born mostly in my mind and emotions, and with a label smacked on them maybe it will be easier to discount them. "Oh, those feelings again. Well, I can safely ignore 'em. They're not useful at all."
Sorry that I'm not better for you.
Sorry that I'm pathetic.
Sorry that in whatever I do
these feelings render me paretic.
Sorry that I'm not anywhere close
to knowing the things
that you already know.
Sorry that I'm so impossibly proud
and can't find the things
that I don't know about.
Sorry, just sorry - forgive me - forget.
I'm not good enough.
At least...not yet.
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