Hosted by myself, Kris Broholm, Angel Pretot and Shannon of Eurolinguiste, we share our monthly goals and encourage you to do the same. Check the bottom of this post for more info on how to join in.

Your free planner for April!

Before we get started, it’s a new month, which means a new planner!

Click the image below to download your free monthly language learning calendar for April. Use it to keep track of your language plans and goals for the coming month. Woop!

Join the #IGLC in April!

Need a little accountability? Join the Instagram Language Challenge for April.

It’a a completely free way to share your studies, connect with equally language-obsessed folk, and learn a little language each day. Click here to find out more about how to join in.

Language Learning Review for March

Indonesian

Phew! It’s been a busy one. Although I didn’t get everything completely done, I’ve still made time for Indonesian in March.

Complete Indonesian – Not quite…My goal was to completely finish the Memrise course I’m creating for the course book. Well, I added a second Memrise level for each unit in the course. The first level for each unit is tricky words and the second is sentences taken from the dialogues and grammar explanations. This meant that it was slower to process and considering I’m half way through the book having done double the work I anticipated per unit, I wasn’t far off with my estimation of a month to finish as I would be done if I hadn’t added that second level each unit.

Memrise – I wanted to keep my 5 day streak. And I did a pretty good job until the end of the month. The Online Teaching Starter Kit opened for enrollment at the end of the month so things have been just a little busier than usual…!

italki – My goal was 1 session each week, which almost happened except for the second week when my tutor was unavailable. I also realised that I’m able to talk quite freely for long periods of time, so I’m pretty happy with that!

Lang-8 – I didn’t get to this until very late in the month. Eeek! But I’m looking forward to using it more in April now I’m familiar with it.

Language Reading Challenge

The theme for Shannon’s Language Reading Challenge in March was a book about someone who learns a language (can be fiction or non-fiction).

I read When In French, a book about the author’s journey learning French as she fell in love with her partner. It’s a sweet book, but not smushy – there’s still plenty of language-related diversions throughout the book to keep that side of things happy, which I liked.

There’s some cool facts about the French and language in general in the book too. For example, did you know that when the French Revolution happened, only half of France spoke fluent French? Or that (according to Steven Pinker) if a language had just 60,000 words there’s roughly 100 million trillion ten-word sentences that make sense? Crazy stuff.

Language Learning Goals for April

Indonesian

Complete Indonesian – I’m going to keep going to complete that Memrise course!! It should be done by the end of April.

Memrise – Back on that streak! I have a bigger daily goal on the course I’m creating of 15 minutes per day, which is one reason I lost the streak last month. To make sure I improve in April, I’m going to make sure that I have at least 3 sessions during the day when I’m on a break from working Pomodoro (25 minutes on task, 5 minute break).

Lang-8 – I’m going to get more into Lang-8 to help build on my writing skills this month. Considering most of my time early on in the month will be dedicated to finishing off my Memrise course, my goal is to write 3 posts on Lang-8.

Glossika – I found myself listening to Glossika while I’ve been adding my vocab to my Memrise course and it’s a great way to double up and make a little more of a pretty dull task. I’ll be sharing more about how you can use Glossika on the blog in April.

Language Reading Challenge

The theme for Shannon’s Language Reading Challenge in April is ‘a book written by an author from a country that speaks your target language, either translated or original’.

I’m actually going to skip this month because I don’t have a particular book in mind that fits that theme and I have lots of books to read before we go on our trip in August. This month, I’m reading Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea by Susanne Kuehling.

This is an anthropology book about one of the islands that speaks Dobuan, one of the languages we’ll be making a film about towards the end of our trip.

I’m not really used to reading academic style texts with references and all that jazz, but I’m really interested in anthropology, and of course interested in learning more about where we’ll be headed, so we’ll see how this goes in April.

Speaking of Our Trip…

As we get closer to leaving for our trip, our plans are changing and morphing and forming into actual solid plans, which is really exciting!

I was considering writing a whole blog post about how things have changed since I originally announced our trip in this post last year. However, because things are still likely to change at this stage, instead, I’ve decided to include a little update with each Clear The List post.

One big thing that’s happened this month is that we’ve booked our one-way flight! Eek! Before I tell you where to, let me just backtrack a little in case you’ve missed anything.

In August, Ashley (my husband) and I are setting off on a year-long trip around the world exploring and making films about languages and the people who speak them.

Our first inspiration for where to go was a strange book I found in my old small town library (you can read more about the book here). The book is about Dobuan, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea.

Our initial plans were to travel overland to Papua New Guinea, discovering many places and languages along the way.

However, due to getting stuck with overland plans on the edge of Europe and being unsure of the best way to go, and LangFest in Montreal calling pretty hard, we decided to switch things up and start on the other side of the planet.

Our confirmed plan so far consists of flying to New York City mid-August, meaning I’ll be there for my birthday (this was an accident, but I’m pretty chuffed about that), then heading up to Montreal for LangFest (while Ashley goes and runs a marathon in Quebec City on his birthday).

So things are working out a lot easier than with the first plan, and I’ll update you with any developments in next month’s Clear The List post.

But for now, I’m just going to go and pretend to be Carrie Bradshaw and listen to Empire State of Mind for the umpteenth time.

Join Clear the list!

1. Share your goal post whether it includes your aspirations for the month or year. Submissions unrelated to the theme or links to your homepage will be deleted.

2. Link back to this post. You can use our button code below if you wish.

3. Follow the hosts: Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages, Shannon from Eurolinguiste, Kris from Actual Fluency and Angel from French Lover.

4. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: Please visit the site of the person who linked up immediately before you and leave them an encouraging comment! By hosting this linkup, we’re hoping to create a positive community where we can all share our goals. If you do not do this, you will be removed from the linkup.

5. Share on social media using #ClearTheList.

<div align="center"><a href="http://eurolinguiste.com/tag/clear-the-list" title="Set your language learning goals as a part of the Clear the List Link Up hosted by Shannon Kennedy of Eurolinguiste, Lindsay Dow of Lindsay Does Languages, Angel Pretot of French Lover, and Kris Broholm of Actual Fluency"><img src="https://eurolinguiste.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/clear-the-list-sidebar-1.jpg" alt="Set your language learning goals as a part of the Clear the List Link Up hosted by Shannon Kennedy of Eurolinguiste, Lindsay Dow of Lindsay Does Languages, Angel Pretot of French Lover, and Kris Broholm of Actual Fluency" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Your free planner for April!

If you missed it up top, you don’t have to scroll all the way back up. Heck no.

Click the image below to get your language learning calendar planner straight to your inbox for free, amigo. Woop!

P.S. If you’re already on my mailing list, use your password to get it direct from the Little Language Library.

Which language are you learning this month? What do you want to achieve? Join Clear The List to share your goals or comment below!