Nearing the end of the year of German!

As I move through the midway point of December, I have successfully increased my intensity with my German studies.  I am up over 3300 words known at this point, and may have a shot at 4000 by the end of the month if I can keep up the pace.  I find German flowing through my brain a little bit easier and I am thinking about trying to get to one of the last meetups for the German group here in town to test my level.  

My singing has had ups and downs this month.  I sang for a number of events at church that ranged from going really well to me struggling with similar issues that I did in my auditions.  I am currently succumbing to the cold that generally marks the end of the holiday season and, with the exception of a family funeral I am singing tomorrow, have placed myself on vocal rest so that I can make it through the Christmas mass schedule next week.  My final blog post of the year will be a review of the last year and a preview to the coming year's plans.  Have a blessed Christmas!

After the wedding...

The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind.  On the eighth of October I got married and thusly have not had much time to devote to anything else.  I just got back into practicing both vocally and linguistically this week.  On the vocal side of things I did make a couple of recordings prior to the wedding and posted them to youtube for the sake of my upcoming auditions for various YAPs (young artist programs).

I never did get around to putting subtitles on the second clip.  Hopefully I will do that soon.  In coming back to practicing after about two weeks I am encountering some strange veil over my voice whilst singing.  I am not sure if this is sign of an oncoming illness, or just some minor entropy from not singing in a while.  Interestingly, I did not lose any of my range, the quality is just different and my endurance seems to have backtracked a bit.

Linguistically I have had a pleasant experience coming back after two weeks.  I have found that a number of things have solidified themselves and I am working around the language more easily than I did prior to the wedding.  At this point, if I work every day I can finish Assimil on January 2, 2013.  I don't know if I will work the two extra days, or stick to my plan of moving on to Spanish on January 1.  I am quite excited with how my German is progressing, even if I am not at the level I was hoping to be by this point of the year.

العربية -- أسبوع ٩

I decided to take the week off from most of my active studying.  I still did some listening and my Anki, but otherwise I was feeling a little burnt out so I took a break.

Vocally progress is still steady.

Methodology Minute - The Importance of Rest

I wrote on this in an earlier post, but I believe that in most skill acquisition rest is an important part of the process.  The most typical application of this concept is can be found in weight training.  The body does not actually build muscle during the lifting itself, but during the rest period in between sessions.  I believe that the same thing occurs during all fields of learning.  In voice training, the muscles of the voice need time to rebuild stronger from the exercises performed.  In exercises of the mind, it is good to give the brain some time to process what it has learned.    

I have found that after periods of rest, I come back to my studies or vocal training stronger and with a renewed energy.  There is a limit I believe to the amount of rest that can be taken before it becomes to much and has a detrimental effect.  Sometimes, coming back from a prolonged rest I find things to be more difficult.  However, in physical training about 2-4 days rest seems to be optimal.  Mental rest, on the other hand, is dependent  on the person.  I think that while one make take a rest from learning new things, I still think that some small review during the session of rest is beneficial to not totally allow the brain to shut down.