so, do not disturb... why is my arm all the way up in the air. hello? I'll just keep it there,
I guess. what if I told you that a quarter of the year is now gone? actually more than a quarter
of the year is gone, but I did not realize this, okay? this is why words and language are my thing
and not math and numbers, because I told you guys, right? I'm gonna be studying languages by quarter
this year, so therefore I'm gonna give you an update every single quarter. and I was like,
"so I'll see you guys in April!" I even said that in the video, like the first video I made at the
beginning of the year. [I'm gonna be doing a video like, every three months at the beginning of every
quarter] but alas, this is how my brain thinks, okay? quarter? four. four months. okay, so at the
end of April, that's the end of the first quarter, right? no babe, that's not how math works. it's 12
in four quarters, so therefore quarter one ended at the end of March. so I am entirely over a month
late with this update video, but... I'm here now! all jokes aside, all stupidity and lack of
concept of time aside, the first quarter of the year is over, which means that I owe you guys a
progress update! so today I'm just going to give you a quick little rundown of how my studies went
in quarter one, like, you know, my goals and my plans, and how it actually turned out. and then
talk about what I'm doing this quarter, or what I've already been doing this quarter,
because I didn't realize that the quarter started like over a month ago, so... but I will not do
this again. I probably will. it's just like, I just need to talk it out, so this is going to
be a more chatty video, if that's okay with you. is that okay with you? I don't care-- this is my
channel! this is my show! so relax, get yourself a cup of tea, I would have one too but I just drank
one. and I drink black tea, so that's too much caffeine. I know the Turks are laughing at me
right now. are you guys laughing? you laughing girl?? you trying to laugh?? I'm gonna show you
guys my plans and organization for Quarter 2 on my Notion template in just a little bit, so if you're
interested in that, if you're interested in using it for yourself, stay tuned. so let's talk about
quarter one. so my kind of plan and breakdown for quarter one since I kind of divide it by
language by month, it was going to be January just German, February French and Turkish, and
then March was going to be French and German. now the reason I was solely focused on German at the
beginning of the year was because I was planning to be on the Easy German Podcast in February the
following month! which I actually ended up doing. it was very exciting! I used my German
for 30 minutes straight, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. here take a listen.
and
but yeah, that's why I was focusing on just German, because it's a lot of pressure to
be on a podcast speaking just German for 30 minutes, even more to be getting like
interviewed as.. I don't know, like, an authority figure on language learning in German? so yeah,
I did not want to get caught with my pants down, it had been a while since I had spoken German, so
I just wanted to like, brush up. but it was just gonna be for the month of January, right? because
I was going to do the interview the podcast in the beginning of February, right? but then..
came the rescheduling. twice! we rescheduled twice, so I didn't end up actually recording
the podcast until March, the beginning of March. so as you could predict, that threw off my plans
originally from March to study French and Turkish. you know, I was planning, like, oh you know I'm
gonna be done with the podcast recording, and then for the rest of the month of March, I'm just gonna
like do some French and Turkish for fun. no. so yeah, the French and Turkish ended up being the
month of March instead of February like I planned, and it was really.. like, it was cathartic to get
that podcast recording done. so for the rest of the month of March I just did like, fun stuff in
French and Turkish. I wasn't really focusing on any concrete goals, I was more so just doing like
crosswords, reading, like, watching TV, all that good stuff... can we just talk about crosswords
for a moment? for language learning? because they really are the truth. like, people sleep
on crosswords so much, like, "oh, that's a grandma thing. you do crosswords?" yeah I do crosswords!
are you kidding? it's.. it's such a good exercise for your brain in general, even if you do them in
your native language. but layer that with language learning? it's like.. oh, all my synapses.. oh
they're firing. oh.. crosswords help you avoid dementia, so when you guys have dementia at 45 and
you guys are the grandmas early because you didn't do a crossword, don't come to me. anyways... why
did I get so heated up about that? so yes, even though quarter one-- the timing was a bit off,
I didn't get to balance my different languages between the months exactly like I wanted to,
it was still a really productive quarter. I basically accomplished what I wanted to do,
I had fun. also can we talk about the fact that I haven't even mentioned Spanish at all? I was
in Mexico for the entirety of quarter one, so I was also using my Spanish and improving it every
single day. hell yeah, a huevo! it was a good quarter, okay? so quarter one, out of the way,
under the belt. let's move on to quarter two. so I'm gonna tell you guys what I plan to do for Q2,
what I've ended up doing so far, and what I'm gonna continue doing until the end of June. if
you'll follow me to camera two.. hello. so we've been here before, right? this is my 2023 language
plan and track. this is a notion template that I designed myself for my personal use, but I've also
made it available for you to use and customize and put your own goals and track your progress and all
that good stuff, so if you'd like to access it, I will leave a link down in the description! so
yeah, this is basically where all my goals live here on the side. I have my goals for the whole
year and my goals for each month, and I have like you know progress journals and all that. yeah but
let's jump into Q2. so this is my page for Q2. immediately at the top, this is my favorite thing
about this template that I made, the little, like, inspirational quotes I put at the top.
I'm so corny, y'all, honestly. it's spring, and life is in everything! at the beginning of the
year we sowed the seeds, we planned & experimented with new routines, and drew our momentum-- don't
lose focus now! continue to breathe life and focus into your endeavors, and let your languages enrich
your life in return. that's pretty-- that's pretty damn good, honestly, give myself a little pat on
the back for those. I love those, they get me so hyped up, I'm like, I wrote that?? I agree b*tch,
like yeah let's do it! so I'm gonna walk you guys through this little breakdown real quick,
and then talk about like the specifics of what I'm planning to do each month. so first of all,
you'll notice that the monthly breakdown per month like, in which languages, is a little
different this time because there's percentages. so that essentially just means like how many
days out of the month I'm gonna be studying that language. so for example, April ended up being a
mostly French month because I'm doing my DALF-- ohp, spoiler! we'll talk about that in a second,
okay? the DALF is coming, the DALF is coming. so yeah, April was pretty much just a French month,
there were some Turkish days here and there, but you know 10% of 30 days is three days, so honestly
not that much. in this month of May, it's still more French than Turkish, but a bit more Turkish
than last month. so 75 and 25 because it's French during the week, and on the weekends I'm doing
Turkish. I literally have to force myself to not study French on the weekends just because like,
I don't want my brain to get so overloaded. I do need to hop around a little bit. and in
June we have French and German, so we're going to completely just leave Turkish out of the mix for a
little bit in June. but you see these dates here? you see these dates? June 15th, okay, let's talk
about it. I'm taking the DALF C1 exam way sooner than I expected. okay, you guys, I expected--
let me show you. if we go over here to the home page of the tracker, you'll see on the sidebar
here it says "end of Q3, so that's like, almost the beginning of winter, pass C1 French and B2
German". so originally I was planning to take both of these exams at essentially the end of quarter
three, but I just got antsy one day. honestly, thinking about it causes a lot of anxiety,
like taking two big exams in the same quarter, so at the beginning of April I just got the thought
one day, I was like, "why am I waiting? why am I doing this? I'm just like, prolonging the
anticipation a little bit and that just like that doesn't sit right with me." so literally that day,
I called up the Alliance Française here in Chicago and I was like, when is the next DALF C1 exam? and
they said June 15th. so therefore, June 15th. that's the day that I'm going to obviously,
stop focusing on French and switch to German. so it's literally a clean split down the middle for
June, it's just, you know, 50 50. 15 days French, 15 days German. stuff changes honestly, but that's
why at the beginning of the year I only mapped out my plans for quarter one and quarter four.
because honestly I predicted that stuff was just gonna shift around a ton like in the middle of
the year. so let's go scroll down to my goals and my resources and all that stuff. let's talk about
Turkish-- or, French first. so French, the thing that has always been a problem with me for French,
like ever since I quit studying French after high school, it's just been a vocab loss. like a
continuous, steady vocab loss. so my main goal to do well on the DALF C1, I really just think that
I need to perfect my vocabulary. and of course, I guess "perfect" isn't a good word, because there's
always going to be words that I don't know. but I just need, like, hello words, okay? so the main
goal with French is vocab acquisition, and this is the time where I talk to you guys about what I'm
doing. but you'll see this in a video soon, but I'll go ahead and talk about it now. I'm doing the
Lingoda Sprint. I don't know if you guys know what Lingoda is, it's basically like an online language
school where you can take group classes or private classes, and they have a whole curriculum and
a couple different languages, so. so basically the Lingoda Sprint is just like, you sign up for
either 30 or 60 group classes in the language, and if you finish all of them you get your money back.
well if you do the 30 days you get half of your money back, and if you do the 60 days you get a
full refund. which is pretty cool! let me actually show you guys, because I have Lingoda open right
here. this is not sponsored, by the way. I am going to be doing a sponsored video with Lingoda
next month, but I'm just.. I'm just showing you this stuff now to show you what I'm doing, okay?
promise. it has like, a curriculum, you know? so there's like different chapters and themes, and
you just like take classes within these chapters. so yeah, you can see I've been mostly taking
classes in like the B2 levels. there's B2.1, .2, .3, and then 0.3, so.. yeah, check me out!
very good, but yeah, the little green check marks are just like the classes
that I've done, so it could be like you know how to resolve problems.
I literally just took that class, like, an hour ago, so yeah. that's basically it, like
I'm just taking themed classes and getting a ton of like vocabulary in different areas, so like,
environment, work, society, and that's really what's good for DALF preparation, it's just like
having a lot of words from a lot of different, you know, topics or buckets. because it's a very,
like, interdisciplinary test. they ask you about so many different things, it's honestly kind of
intimidating. and I also have a book. hold on. this is a test prep book, it's called DALF 100%
Réussite. so basically just you know divides the test up into its different sections, and give you
like exercises to work with. so when I say weekly DALF section practice, I'm talking about that. I'm
talking about reading comprehension, writing, you know, all the different sections of the test. each
week I'm prepping for a different section. now moving on to Turkish, I do have a couple of like
concrete, really specific goals for Turkish, but I'm gonna still keep it pretty lax. in Turkish I
want to work on negation, because honestly it's so confusing sometimes, the difference between like,
I don't, or... yapamiyorum? yapamam? is that even a thing? see, obviously I have no idea.
that's why I need to work on my Turkish negation. making sentences negative. I also want to just
perfect talking in the different basic tenses, so I'm pretty good at the present tense, but I want
to talk about the future and the past better. so yeah, this is kind of like my whole spiel,
like, the concrete things I'm gonna do. so working with the Turkisch Für Anfänger book that I have,
using Busuu to just, you know, get vocab and just practice, and I'm also taking speaking lessons.
I'd say that's where I get like the majority of my practice is through speaking lessons. I've
been taking classes on the weekends. Saturday I do 30 minutes, Sunday I do 30 minutes. perfect.
and if we look at German, it literally says TBD. if you go down to resources for German,
it says TBD. for German it's going to be just vibes, honestly, because German is just like,
hitching a ride onto the tail end of this quarter. it's literally 15 days out of the whole quarter,
so I just want to like have fun and relax after the stress that is you know, the DALF and the prep
for the DALF. so I'm not doing any planning for German really, probably just gonna vibe. that's
probably on the menu. so if we scroll down now to my routine and talking about time division,
this is more just like technical stuff for me. so French obviously is still getting the majority of
time, seven plus hours a week, Turkish is like approximately two and a half hours per week, and
German, TBD. to be determined, no plan at all. I'm studying every single day of the week because I'm
doing the Lingoda Sprint. I'm taking a class every single day, so yeah. I usually don't do that, but,
you know. over here this is where I put my weekly routine, but I don't really have a routine this
month. there is a bit of chaos here, but it's like Controlled Chaos.. okay? I promise that I have it
under control, it's not just, like, planned to the T. we don't really do that here, if you've
noticed. pretty much the only set or fixed things I'm doing every week are my Turkish classes,
so on Saturday morning and Sunday morning, I have my 30 minute classes, like I said. now back to
other Elysse! thank you for tuning in my friends, this has been an Elysse DaVega original progress
update, and I'll see you at the beginning of July for another one. quarter three, how exciting. how
are we-- this year is literally-- where's my cats? this year is flying by. if you would be so kind,
let me know down in the comments your plans, goals, intentions, whatever, for quarter two.
how they're measuring up so far, since once again, the quarter is almost already over. once again,
if you'd like to use the same template that I do to plan my goals, track my progress every
single quarter, I'll leave the link for you down below! you can make it your own, customize it,
you can put a picture of cats on it. see you next time, [in a billion languages], see ya. bye!