100 Days of Spanish

Hitting my language goals was pretty rough this week. I came down with a head cold that just wouldn't let up. That made finding the motivation impossible to concentrate on language drills and translations. So, most of the work got done early in the week from before I was sick. I got only four lessons done out of the goal of seven, so just over half of my goal. I should be learning how to conjugate in the past tense soon, so I am very excited for the upcoming lessons this week. In the Cantor and Sanderson reading, there was a lot of talk concerning resources in occupation. The presence of certain resources allow for participation in desired goals, as well as the likelihood of goal adherence. My greatest resource in this occupation for instance is Duolingo. The Duolingo program is incredibly fun and has an aesthetic interface that makes it pleasant to use. If Duolingo were not free, there are very few other free services of the same quality and I would likely not be able to continue ...

       Spanish went super well this week! I managed to do just one lesson every day like I had planned and I managed to finish unit 2. I think I will keep going at this pace, but I'll have to rework the math to see when exactly I'll finish the entire Duolingo Spanish tree. I'm really looking forward to getting into the past tense lessons that are coming up in this unit and I'd like to start looking for new ways to take in more Spanish media.      Considering my new occupation in terms of identity formation, I think that the goal setting section in the reading described my situation perfectly. Our identities are built from our actions and choices. Goal setting is a type of intentional identity construction. We purposely imagine a future self in our minds that we aspire to be. In a few more months, weather I have succeeded or failed though, this attempt at learning Spanish will be assimilated into my life story. It will either be the time I knuckled down...

    Ok so maybe my fifteen lesson goal from last week was asking a bit too much. I only got five lessons done. My plan to schedule in half an hour block every day worked well. I completed my half hour practice four out of the seven days. Despite that success, the lessons have gotten harder as I've moved forward, and so each one has been taking more time. So, moving forward, I will try to get seven lessons done each week. One for every day of the week is a much smaller, much more manageable goal.     During our reading last week, we learned about Dweck's entity and incremental theory. I think some skills that I have the entity theory applied to are singing, swimming, and remembering directions. Remembering directions is the worst culprit because it's been a problem I've had for so long, it's hard to believe that I can get better at it. I've honestly really really tried to get better, but it just hasn't happened for me.  Some skills that I apply the increment...

       This week was a pretty lousy one for my progress. I only got four lessons done despite my best efforts. Of course I take responsibility, I could have at least gotten a few more done while I was eating breakfast, or before bed. The big stressor of the week was the anatomy exam, and so I was too preoccupied to think about my less important goals.  This week will be less busy, so I need to take this opportunity to catch up with my Spanish. To meet my end goal of completing half of the Duolingo Spanish tree I need to make up for my last few weeks of missed quotas. To start on this goal repair, this week I will do fifteen lessons. It's a lot, but if I break it up into seven days, that only comes out to a little over two lessons per day.  According to the Nakamura, J reading,  E xperiencing flow causes a person to persist and return to an activity and foster growth in that activity. This state of flow comes about when a person engages in a task which ...

       This week was much better than last week. I got a total of eight lessons despite the huge anatomy exam that's been looming over my head. The technique I used for keeping Duolingo in the corner of my eye worked very well. Having a tab open of the occupation you need to work on makes it so much easier. It reduces the will power needed to open it every time you need to work on your new hobby. I expect that next week I will do even better on my lesson goals because I will be past the exam.      In the Hasselkus reading, the concept of places being containers of experiences was explored. I think the best example of that happening to me in my life was the new apartment I moved into when I moved to Pocatello. At first it was just a concrete box for me to sleep in, but then I got married! After that, my new bride moved in and gradually she started to cover the walls with art. The shelves became overflowing with all of our books. The fridge was filled wi...

     This week was my slowest one yet for Spanish! I had an embarrassing six lessons total for my progress. So, things could be going better. There were quite a few days that I didn't even open the app because it just had no appeal to me at all. I was planning to catch up over the weekend, but I wanted to make it to my six year old niece's birthday party in Utah, so I spent all of Saturday and Sunday with family. This week I really want to hit my goal though, so I need to find a way to make practicing easier. I had this exact same problem with my guitar last year. The thing that worked was putting it on a guitar stand, instead of leaving it in the case. After I did that, every time I entered the room I would see my guitar in the corner, and start practicing on impulse. I think the theory behind my life hack was reducing the number of steps between thinking about doing the occupation and then actually doing it. Before I would have to get my case out of the closet, open it,...

      It's the second week of my one hundred days of Spanish challenge and I've already had some problems. My main problem it turns out, is that my ultimate goal of finishing the Duolingo Spanish tree is pretty intense. I started out very strong my first week, but this last week, I only hit one half of my quota, equaling fourteen lessons, which can be seen in the top picture at the bottom of this post. With that in mind, I think that I can reasonably change my goal to complete one half of the Duolingo tree at the end of my one hundred days, and be completely finished one hundred days after the semester. I had some pretty high hopes, but it looks like I should reign in my expectations a bit.      The other problem I face with my Spanish challenge is sheer boredom. The app is fun, but it gets repetitive if it's your only learning source. A lot of the time I worked on Spanish last week was through reading comic books in Spanish. My favorite right now is "...