A4.5.30 meta: o pokroku

Alright, time for another round of, "Kate's feelings about her learning." :-) 

So! 

Here is my beautiful spreadsheet showing what I've been up to. 

If my goal was to finish A4.6 this week, uh, well, that ain't happenin'. 

Right now I am averaging about 8-10 days to finish a "unit." But I really must keep moving forward, for momentum, interest, and just the fact that otherwise I will be stuck focused on the same dumb 10 words for too long.

I am easily going to finish A4.5 tomorrow. It is actually extraordinarily simple to ask my collaborators to give me a fill in the blank test. So far, they have all been more than accommodating in that regard, and they do it fast. I think because it is a concrete, easy to do task that does not take a lot of effort, and for which they can give me very easy feedback, that makes it a good choice for the majority of my collaborators.

I have pretty much three kinds of collaborators:

1. Nerdy Czech men who are interested in the aboutness of this project: the Computer Assisted Language Learning aspects of it, the connections with NLP and CL. These collaborators generally have a very high level of English, are computer programmers, and I have very little to offer them in return for all they give me. I guess there are three people who fall in this specific category (plus their spouses), and without them this project would not look at all the same. My life would not be the same either, since it turns out that these friendships legitimately matter to me on a personal level.

2. Brave Czech men and women in need of a speaking partner. They are generally intermediate/low-advanced level. Their tech literacy usually falls within a range of casual to advanced users. These people have a much broader range of occupations and also matter to me on a personal level. I was able to meet several of them last time we were in the Czech Republic. These collaborators tend to fluctuate a bit more in terms of whether or not we are actively communicating. They are goal-oriented, and I can help them concretely. Usually the main thing they want to do is "just talk." None of the collaborators I've worked with closely so far have had a background in foreign language teaching.

3. Very shy Czech women who are very self-conscious about their English. These women have surprised me: sometimes their tech literacy is beyond what I thought it would be. They often are not from the same exact social background, age, or lifestyle as me. It is extremely interesting to me - totally fascinating, actually - to talk with them.

I love all of my collaborators. It would be so interesting to try to scale this experience, to export it so that other people could also find a way to learn Czech.