Language Leap!

I am a little over a quarter of the way through my German year and I have made a considerable leap in my ability to express myself in the last couple of weeks.  I had a similar thing occur in French last year, where all of sudden the language began to flow from me with a lot less hindrance.  There are obviously still holes in my vocabulary, however I have discovered that I can now carry on conversations beyond mere greetings and niceties.  I'm not exactly sure what the turning point was for me and I wish I had kept a better catalog of hours spent working in the language so that I could possibly start to formulate a theory on the relationship between time and achievement.  My estimate is about five hours of Michel Thomas, eight hours of Assimil and 10 hours on LingQ.  So that is really only about 23 hours, not including time spent talking to myself and others, time spent watching movies and listening to the radio.  Truthfully though, this is a very small amount of time and I wish I had more time to devote to learning the language.  If I could devote this much time into my week instead of over the last three and a half months I can only imagine how strong my German would be come December 31, 2012!  Unfortunately I do not have four hours a day to devote to language learning so I have to do the best I can with the time I have.  I imagine that I will be able to add German to my list of spoken languages by August; then I would like to amp up my workload to really achieve fluency by the end of the year.

I have been having some struggles lately with my voice.  These challenges are things of my own doing, but they are very annoying nonetheless.  It is especially frustrating because I had such a great lesson a couple of months ago and I feel like I have done the two steps forward, one step back thing in the last couple of weeks.  I am beginning to pull myself out of these issues, but it appears that it is going to take me longer to recover from than it did to fall into.  There are some positives though, I still have built my strength up some as I am now able to sing a fairly consistent A4 ever without warming up (I don't do this often).  Overall it is important to continue to look at the positive movements that are happening and use those to get through the troublesome times.

Adapting the Learning Process

I am getting back in the swing of things somewhat with German over the past couple of weeks.  I have been really good about doing my Michel Thomas, however I have not touched Assimil in over a month.  I think that I have subconsciously decided that I will move on to Assimil after I have finished the MT.  In truth this is probably a good thing because it will give me something to do the second half of the year in addition to LingQ.  I am currently debating whether to go back to the beginning of Assimil, or just pick up where I left off.  In my split second decision making process I just went through I will pick up where I left off.  The last two weeks have been particularly good for my LingQ work.

It never ceases to amaze me the way that we continue to adapt and evolve the longer we work on a specific task.  In the case of LingQ I have just recently modified my approach and find that I am getting a lot more out of the program this way.  Before, I went through a three step cycle which was laid out this way:

1.) Listen without reading

2.) Read without listening

3.) Listen and read simultaneously

This way served me well and I thought that this way I could train my listening separate from my reading and visa-versa.  I recently though began listening and reading all three times through a passage and have found that my comprehension overall has grown markedly.  This should not surprise me since the creator of LingQ, Steve Kaufmann, says that you should never read without listening, nor should you listen without reading in the early stages.  The more surprising thing to me is that my brain spontaneously decided to try this approach seemingly out of the blue.  I am currently creeping in on 1500 words known, which is well behind my goal, but I am still happy with progress of any kind.

Vocally, I have had a similar epiphany in the last week.  It has been about a month since my last lesson with JRL and I decided one day last week to listen to the recording of my lesson.  At first I did not really think I was going to gain much other than some reinforcement of the things I was already doing.  After going through the recording I was amazed at some of the things that I had let slip in the last month.  My practice the rest of the week was great and I felt like I made some very big steps forward, all because I listened to a recording of my lesson.  

This was a big time for me in learning how to better learn.  Sometimes progress may come in different areas than you expect, however it will ultimately lead you to your end goal.

Coming in like a lion

This has been a rough month for me.  The amount of things I have to do at work, which is when I usually study, has increased considerably and taken away my time that I can work on German.  Suffice it to say that I have not been able to make much progress so far this month.  I have tried to maintain at least one aspect of my study per day though, usually Michel Thomas.  I am in the process of trying to restructure my day so that I can fit in my Assimil and LingQ work daily again.  The one positive from this month thus far is that I am at a basic conversational level in German.  I define this as being able to greet and speak candidly with others about menial, day to day things (i.e. How are you?, What are you doing this weekend?, etc.).  I am very pleased and excited about this, especially since I have not been able to put much time in as of late.  When I can get back to more regular study I anticipate being able to count this language as being fully conversational by mid-summer, which makes fluency by December 31 very attainable.

I am still in a very good place vocally as well.  Since my lesson in February I can feel my voice getting stronger every day.  My A-natural (A4) has really solidified as of late and I am now working on B-flat (Bb4) and B (B4).  Even my repertory has taken a step up as I have begun to earnestly work on "La donna e mobile" and "E la solita storia."  My hope for this session between lessons is to have a reliable B-flat and a workable B natural.  Assuming I keep up my newfound pace, I believe I will definitely be audition ready for the fall.  I have about two months until my next trip to New York City and am planning on having a lesson and at least a couple of coachings while I am down.  Until then, I have much work to do so that I can build on the momentum I have gained from my last lesson.

Big Progress!

I had my first lesson in quite a while this past Friday with Jean-Ronald LaFond.  My lesson this time around was one of discovery and great advancement for my part.  During the course of the lesson I felt myself singing in a way I never had before and I liked it.  It was a great experience for me and we even talked about me doing auditions in the fall if I can get a few more things to line up vocally.  Since I've been home, I have continued to work with the new concepts I was given and can employ them fairly well in my vocalises (at least I think I do), however I am struggling to put these things through into my repertoire work.  This is especially frustrating since I was singing so well at my lesson.  I chalk up my difficulties to the fact that I am not in front of JRL receiving guidance as I am singing.  I will ultimately figure out how to incorporate and synthesize these concepts into my singing and know that if I continue with the work ethic I have been developping that I will be fine.

Linguistically, however, is a different story.  I have had a rough couple of weeks with my language learning time.  This is mainly due to a largely increased workload at my actual job which results in less time for study.  I am hoping that things will slow back down to normal at work next week and that I will be able to get back to my normal routine, otherwise I am going to have to find a new time to study.  This is very frustrating to me because I was on such a good pace with German and now I feel as though I have skidded to a stop.  Luckily I still do manage to get in at least a little time with the language, mostly my Michel Thomas recordings.  Again my mantra is, as always:  Slow and steady wins the race.

Back from the abyss

I had a rough week last week in German.  I was very busy at work and very tired when I wasn't busy, so I was not able to do much.  Life is a little bit easier this week though and I have got back into my routine, thankfully.  The advantage with French was that I had a base in the language prior to my intensive work.  While I am not progress at the same rate in German, I do still have somewhat of a base in the language due to being a native English speaker.  There are a vast number of German words which change pronunciation from English very predictably, which makes learning those words vastly easier than a language that doesn't share common roots.

In general, it is said that the more languages you know the easier it is to learn more.  I see this more and more as I progress through languages.  Not only do your methods of learning become more efficient, but the shared vocabulary among the world's languages provides a wonderful base to springboard off of.

I just barely crossed over the 1,000 word mark on LingQ and hope to add about 500 words to that total this week.  The difficult thing about LingQ at this point in my learning is that there are so many words I don't know that I get easily frustrated at how long it takes to get through one story, so I end up only doing one story a day, which does not help my word count.

In other news, I am finally going to get down for a lesson on the 17th of this month.  It has been a long while since my last lesson and I am anxious to see how my progress measures up.  I find myself often frustrated that I am not progressing at a faster pace, but constantly have to remind myself that quality takes time and that if I trust the process it will work for me.  There have been great steps forward in the last few weeks with certain "problem" arias falling into place and feeling comfortable as well as new arias beginning to show signs of growth as well.  Hopefully this will continue into my lesson and I can continue to grow towards being YAP audition ready in the fall, which is my goal.