Welcome to November’s #ClearTheList! This month, it’s all about Guarani, Korean, and a whole host of other languages!

Hosted by myself and Shannon of Eurolinguiste, Clear The List is your chance to set monthly language learning goals + achieve them as part of the community. 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 November!

Before we get started, here’s your chance to make the most of November for language learning completely free with this month’s My Month in Languages Planner.

Click the image below to download your copy for November. Use it to keep track of your language plans and goals for the coming month. Woop!

Or, if you want something with more detail to take things further, then grab a copy of the brand new Solo Language Learner Planner, which contains calendars, goal setting pages, reviews, and a daily study session planner. Woop!

What happened in October

On the blog

Language Varieties: Accents, Dialects + More – Learn about those different words you see used to describe language – accent, dialect, slang…argh! Get it all clear with this post.

When to Worry About Pronunciation When Learning a Language (+ What To Do About It) – When I first started learning Korean, I took 8 hour lessons with a tutor who spent all 8 of those lessons on pronunciation. It put me off for ages! So when should you worry about pronunciation? Find out in this post.

How to NOT Waste Time on Instagram When Learning a Language – Instagram can be a wonderful addition to any language learning routine, but…it can also be a huge distraction. How do you get the balance right and use Instagram well for language learning without wasting your time? This post has your back.

On YouTube

Do Varieties of English Matter? – English is different in different places around the world. Of course, right? But does that mean that one is more important than another?

5 Tips to Find a Language Tutor – Curious how to go about finding your next language tutor? Here’s 5 tips to set you on the right track.

Language Stories

This month, I released the Polyglot Undubbed Editions of some episodes from season 1 that had interviews in different languages, meaning the original episodes had me dubbing in English.

If you’re learning Spanish, this can be a great resource to practice your listening skills with some native speech!

The four episodes are:

Maya Isn’t Dead – In this episode, we visit Mexico, and meet some people doing great things with Yucatec Maya to keep it relevant in a modern world.

Keeping K’iche’ – Join us in the Guatemalan Highlands to meet speakers of K’iche’, the most widely spoken Mayan language, and find out what life is like for speakers of this language.

Nicaraguan Sign Language – Nicaraguan Sign Language has quite the story behind it. It’s a fairly new language, appearing in the 70s and 80s during the Nicaraguan Revolution.

Guarani in The Heart of South America – Guarani is a language that defies all odds to coexist alongside Spanish, being an bit of an oddball in the Americas. This episode explains how it happened.

Teach Languages Online Podcast

Teach Languages Online is a podcast answering your questions and sharing tips about the crazy new world of teaching languages online. To learn more and ask your questions, you can join the Teach Languages Online Facebook Group.

Creative Stuff: Traffic Light Reading – Learn about one of my favourite techniques for showing students just how much they really know. This idea is taken from 100 Creative Ideas for Online Language Teachers.

Hidden Stuff: Naming and Branding Your Online Teaching – The stuff noone talks about. This episode, we discuss what you need to know about naming and branding.

Your Stuff: Diversifying Your Income – Teaching online means more than just 1:1 lessons. In this episode, I share multiple ways you can branch out from 1:1 to grow your online teaching.

Science Stuff: Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle – Ashley’s back for another pedagogy science stuff episode! And this time he’s fanboying a little over what I like to call corn on the Kolb.

Women in Language Camp

This month, I was very excited to finally announce the first Women in Language Camp!

Back in March to celebrate International Women’s Day, I co-hosted the first Women in Language event with Kerstin Cable and Shannon Kennedy. Loads of you came along (male and female) to hear from female voices in language, which was great.

One thing that was clear to us from that event was that connection was key. So we decided that as the nights begin to get shorter, it’s a good time for naother get-together to give us all a language boost for the winter.

Women in Language Camp doesn’t involve actual tents, but it does involve you, and lots of other language learners getting together for the day online this Saturday November 3rd.

I’ll be talking about how to practice your languages with people everyone by using the digital stuff at our fingertips.

Kerstin will be talking about how to swap those pixels for pores and find your language tribe in real life.

And Shannon will be sharing her tips to overcome any shyness-related stumbling blocks that might be holding you back from connecting for your language learning.

Oh, and as well as the three sessions, we’ll be connecting with everyone in the Facebook Group (yes, the Women in Language Facebook Group is back!) and the Campfire Chat session.

AND, you get a 3 month planner to take action on what you learn and see you right through until the main event comes back in March 2019.

It’s going to be a great day!

Click here to get your ticket for Women in Language Camp now.

(P.S. If you can’t join us live, you won’t be able to buy the recordings live. Getting a ticket now before the event on November 3rd is the only way to get access to the recordings.)

Join the #IGLC in November!

Did you join the Instagram Language Challenge last month to learn or share the basics of a language? This month it’s all about useful little words to take your language learning further.

It’s totally free + you get to learn a little language each day. Woop!

This month it’s writing prompts! To share my recent love of writing prompts for language learning (which was also the topic of my presentation at the Polyglot Conference Friday Language Learning Event) I want to share some weekly writing prompts with you.

The point of the Instagram Language Challenge has always been to use the daily prompts for inspiration, but this time, I want to give you longer prompts to work with for a change!

Language Learning Review for October

Guarani

Vocabulary – My goal was to keep doing my daily Duolingos on my second loop of the course. I’m just 2 units away from completing the whole thing twice now!

Grammar – My grammar goal was to use writing to draw my attention to relevant grammar stuff. I played with the the other way a bit too by using writing to practice many of the 30+ suffixes in Guarani that change the meaning of verbs (tenses etc).

Reading – I set myself the goal of rereading some of the small storybook in October, which I didn’t do. I did spend bits of time reading Wikipedia in Guarani on my phone though while we were away.

Listening – I haven’t used the religious podcasts again yet, but I am finding myself randomly singing lines from this song from time to time, and of course, it was easy to listen to music while we were away.

Writing – My aim was to write 13 sentences at least 3 times week (before I went to Croatia and Slovenia). This totally happened for the first 2 weeks of the month before I went away.

Speaking – I didn’t set myself a speaking goal before of the trip.

Korean

Memrise + Drops – My goal for October was to make this a daily habit. Since my iPad died, I haven’t used Drops as I don’t like to have too many apps on my phone but I have been using Memrise, although definitely not daily.

Living Language – My goal for October with my course book was to get to the end of chapter 5. I did this!

Other Languages (French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Mandarin, Japanese, Esperanto, Indonesian)

Study Time – My goal was simply to keep the habit of the final 20 minutes of my language hour each weekday morning being devoted to the languages I’ve previously studied on a two week rotation. Although it doesn’t sound like much, I did a half marathon at the end of September and ended up speaking Indonesian half way round to another runner! I don’t think I would have had the confidence to say something if it hadn’t been for the little refreshers I’d had recently.

Writing – Another goal for my other languages was to keep using 712 More Things to Write About. This is working really well.

Listening – I wanted to keep listening to the SBS podcast feeds daily Monday to Friday but my iPad dying has stalled this as I’m still trying to find a way that’s as effective to listen to them quickly and easily. I’ve tried my phone and I’ve tried Spotify but so far nothing is quite the same.

Language Reading Challenge

The topic for Shannon’s Language Reading Challenge over at Eurolinguiste this month is “Try out a new course book (can just be the first chapter or the entire book)”.

I said I’d try one of the Korean courses on Live Lingua from the FSI, DSI or SOLT but didn’t get around to it, partly because of Croatia and Slovenia taking up half of the month!

Language Learning Goals for November

Guarani

Vocabulary – I’m for sure going to finish the Duolingo course for the second time this month. I can then replace that time with Clozemaster.

Grammar – I want to keep working with the suffixes by writing sentences for practice. I’m then going to share these with my tutor.

Reading – At least once a day, I want to spend a few minutes on Wikipedia in Guarani. This will normally be on my phone.

Listening – At least once a week, I want to listen and sing along to the song I love. At least once a week, I want to listen and shadow one of the religious podcasts or a video from this channel on YouTube.

Writing – I’m going to keep writing 13 sentences at least 3 times a week. They may not always be completely originally created from me. Sometimes, I might take a sentence from Clozemaster or Duolingo and change little bits of it to change the meaning of the sentences.

Speaking – I’m finally going to set myself a speaking goal for Guarani! I’ll speak weekly on Instagram Stories and save it to my Guarani Highlights so I can keep tabs on my progress easily. As for what I’ll say, at this stage I’m more concerned with making it a habit so I’ll allow myself to create something off the top of my head, read something I’ve written aloud, or read something aloud from something that’s already written by someone else.

Korean

Vocabulary – I will finish the Korean 1 Memrise course this month!

Grammar – I’m enjoying the first free Korean Grammar course available on Talk To Me In Korean. Each lesson takes one 20 minute session more or less. I’ve got 17 left in the free course, which I’m aiming to finish by the end of the month.

Reading – I’ve found these webcomics that I’m going to set myself the goal of reading at least one a week. They’re super short but a perfect way for me to begin to develop a reading habit in Korean. I might even learn some new vocab along the way, which I’ll keep note of in my notebook.

Listening – Terrace House is normally my go-to foreign language show on Netflix when I’m washing up etc, but now I’ve finished Part 4, I’m going to use that time to watch stuff in Korean. I don’t mind so much what I’m watching as I’m using it primarily as a time to get some passive Korean listening into my life.

Writing – I’m writing notes from the Talk To Me In Korean lessons, which is helping me to get used to writing in Korean by hand. After each lesson, I then add a bit that I call “My go!” and I use the language I already know with the point I’ve just learnt in that lesson. Sometimes I type these up after on Lang8, because typing Korean is a different skill to writing by hand and it’s good to learn both in my opinion.

Speaking – If I can do it for Guarani, I can do it for Korean! I’m going to start speaking weekly on Instagram for Korean too. I’ll use Instagram Stories and save it to my Korean Highlights tab to keep my progress in one place.

Other Languages (French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Mandarin, Japanese, Esperanto, Indonesian)

I have some general goals below for my other languages and then some more specific ones listed below too.

Writing – I’ll still be using 712 More Things to Write About for when I want to practice my writing in these languages.

Listening – I’m really into Easy Languages on YouTube right now as YouTube keeps suggesting lots of stuff I’m not interested in in my main feed when I login, so it’s easy not to get distracted and just search for “easy languages” instead!

Speaking – I might try the same technique of speaking a little on Instagram Stories to save to my highlights…we’ll see how the Korean and Guarani goes first perhaps!

French + Spanish

I picked up these 750 French Verbs and 750 Spanish Verbs books in a charity shop last month and I showed recently on Instagram how I’ve started to use these. I take a verb (working in order because it’s easiest) and I write the verb and meaning on a Google Doc and add a couple of my own examples.

Once I’ve done that, I check Linguee quickly to see written examples of the verb across the web.

Next I check for the verb on YouTube to see if I can find a spoken example in context, then Google Image search to see what the most common use(s) of the verb are to do with, and give myself a visual attachment.

Finally, I search the verb on Google News to see examples in a written context.

My goal is to do one new verb each time French or Spanish come round on rotation.

Mandarin

I’ll use Assimil Chinese With Ease to give me some structured listening and reading to work through. Each lesson, I’ll read aloud too so I’m speaking as well.

Japanese

I have this shadowing book I bought in Japan (with English, Korean and Chinese translations!). I’ll use this to do one lesson each 20 minute session I have for Japanese. I’ll listen and speak aloud shortly after what I hear.

Esperanto

I have a teeny tiny book called The Esperanto Teacher. I’ll do a lesson from this each Esperanto session.

Indonesian

Finally, for Indonesian, I have Teach Yourself Complete Indonesian, which I’ll work through one lesson per 20 minute Indonesian lesson. It’s what I originally used to learn the language so it’s good to revisit it.

Language Reading Challenge

The topic for Shannon’s Language Reading Challenge over at Eurolinguiste this month is “A book written in your target language (originally, not a translation)”.

I’ll use this prompt to reread my copy of Bodas de Sangre by Lorca that I picked up in Nicaragua. It’s in Spanish.

I’m also wrapping up Others Is Not A Race, which is an incredible book and very eye-opening about life as a Eurasian in Singapore.

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 and Shannon from Eurolinguiste.

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.

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Your free planner for November!

If you missed it up top, click below to get your free My Month In Languages Planner straight to your inbox for free. Woop!

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

And remember, if you want the beefy version of this planner, click here to grab your reusable copy of The Solo Language Learner Planner. Yay!

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