And so she continues (languages)

Hello everyone!

The last one and a half months have been incredibly stressful and left me in dire need of some time off. That being the case, I did not drop immersion at all! I might even say that it gave me somewhat of a safe cozy distraction from life. Let's jump right in with the updating.

In General

Like I just said, despite being endlessly busy, the learning has been ongoing, even though I was not able to spend as much time with it as I would have otherwise. This is a very positive thing because it means that it has become an integral part of my day to day life. The nature of things I learned with changed though. Weirdly enough I did much more intensive immersion than I have beforehand, and much less of the usual podcast-listening on commutes, casual CI input, casual drama watching, that I did before. Maybe I needed the total focus necessary for intensive immersion to give myself a rest from thinking about other things.

Korean

There is actually not that much to report for Korean this time! I watched through one or two dramas free flow, that I will list below as far as I remember them. I did a bunch of what I call drama hopping, it usually happens when I am drama-fatigued and none of them really stick. Starting and not finishing dramas, stopping mid episode, trying to rewatch something I saw before, that sort of undesirable behaviour. My plan of action will be two things, find some YouTube content that I vibe with and find a book to read. More on reasons for the latter in the Japanese section.

• 사냥개들/Bloodhounds, drama – completely free-flow, understood the basic plot points as well as some parts of dialogue, but missed a lot of the technical details of the plot. Usually had a rough Idea of what was going on though.
• 셀러브리티/Celebrity, drama – ended up switching to english subtitles (am still of the opinion that that's not as bad as everyone says, I still learn a little bit, doing that). Did not like it very much but it was intriguing enough to keep me on.
  
• 어느 날 우리 집 현관으로 멸망이 들어왔다/Doom at your service, drama – am currently stuck mid-season because it is just entirely too long. Now weirdly, I am not positive if I watched it with English subs or none (no KR CC available in my region), but I must have had good chunks of it in english, I am just too clear on the plot to not have. But also too hazy about some things to not have seen bits entirely in Korean.
  
• Webtoons, various ones I have been reading before like 노빠꼬 최하영
  
• My favourite 태웅쌤 who has been sustaining my learning from the start. I adore the Stardew Valley videos and am delighted to report that some of the others have become too easy for me. He is on hiatus right now, so there will be a dry patch.
  
• A tiny bit of youtube, when someone puts a video on the Refold Kr discord, or when there is something in my recommended.

Edit: I forgot about 택배기사/Black Knight (drama), I think I saw it freeflow with Kr subs, but it has been a few weeks...

Other than that actually not that much! 

Japanese

In Japanese there is mainly one thing that made the biggest difference in my learning so far. I finished my first light novel!!! I am not going to put the title here because there were some things in it that I just feel iffy about (if you really need to know, I mentioned it in April).
Anyhow, I started it a while ago but put it aside because it was too hard. I came back to it a few weeks ago. At first the reading was very slow and laborious, with a lot of dictionary lookups (finally subscribed to migaku). Halfway through it picked up in speed so much that I was able to finish the other half in a day. I sentence mined a few of the words, but relied mostly on the natural repetition in the book itself. I have since noticed a bunch of words from it in other immersion, which has helped retain them. I never would have thought I'd get to this point. The LN in question was slice of life, so nothing too hard, but I should not talk down this achievement that I am pretty proud of.

Other than that:

• finished 天国大魔境/Heavenly Delusion (anime) and really liked it! I will not claim I understood some of the more complicated plot points but I got a fair bit. JP subs, freeflow
  
• almost finished 古見さんは、コミュ症です/Komi can't communicate (anime) and enjoyed it loads too. The amount of text on screen was a bit overwhelming, and I am sure most of the off hand commentary jokes went over my head completely. But I got some of the jokes (the character names i.e.) and I never felt lost plot wise. JP subs, freeflow
  
• The usual array of podcasts, Nihongo con Teppei, YuYu no nihongo, shikuhaku american life, but less of
• stuck in the middle of ナナ/Nana (anime). I really liked it at the beginning, it is super stylish and really cool. However I ended up pausing it because I could smell the sort of plot development I really hate, the miscommunication trope.I will finish it at some point, might even give the manga a chance, or check out the live action series if I can get my hands on it.

As you can see, Japanese took the bigger chunk of my time recently, unlike last time I updated on here. I progressed a lot and I am actually considering the 2C stage, but I will dwell on it a bit longer. I did not do the monolingual transition that refold recommends at this stage. That being said, the road to 2C feels clear now, I know that I can reach it if I continue as I have. 

What's next?

Copy my success in Japanese in Korean. Meaning reading a book (just have to find one). Reading more in Japanese, it was such a positive experience. Find more opportunities to output, as I don't want to develop a huge gap between my output ability and the rest of skills. Those are the immediate actions.

Next I feel like I need to take it slow for a bit, I am worried about burning myself out and I need to pace everything so not to get frustrated and loose motivation.

Here is a curveball for you: French. I might visit France in the not too far future and it feels silly to not learn some in preparation. I am quite aware though that that would be absolute overwhelm. Two languages are already quite the load. Not that it's not fun, however as I progress, I notice how much more time the intermediate stages need and I don't really want to cut those down or loose momentum. Whilst French is probably easier for me, underestimating it would be stupid. I am not sure what to do, so I would be thankful for recommendations. Can I risk a pause in the other two? How long for? Would I destroy my brain if I dipped my toes in French whilst continuing the other two? Anyone got tips on how to put the two in maintenance mode?

I will be back to report with the results, in the mean time I will remind myself that all of this is optional, none is obligatory and I can do whatever the heck I want (including just not doing French before the trip, or only doing French before the Trip, or not doing any languages at all for a few weeks to focus on some other hobbies).

On that note,

Ta!