#rizattempts

[rizlearns]

07.06.21 | day 10/30 [ et sammendrag]

today i finished short stories in norwegian! my first (nontext)book! so today i decided to give a summary of the last story i read. i did three takes as usual and it was easier by the third try even if that was only by a little bit. it is crazy how much i can understand of something but then have so much trouble just explaining what i read.

i think the biggest thing that messed me up today was correctly pronouncing the fake names...i should have just said fuck it and kept going but me being, me spent way too much time on that...one thing i also noticed is that i really should refresh on those words and phrases [forgetting the proper term] you need to tell a story cohesively LOL. kinda unrelated but i did have an italki session today and was able to ask (and understand the explanation to!) some grammar questions and also talk about my teacher's gardening experience or lack thereof hahah.

all in all speaking is still very hard after only 10 days but i am really glad i stopped avoiding speaking practice altogether because it would only get harder the longer i waited!

[rizlearns]

21.06.21 [day 24/30; upopulære meninger]

did not make the time to start the review of the next chapter in SSiN but i made it a point to talk about my day and the podcast i had listened to:

talked about how hard it was to exercise today lol

talked about spending too much money at the grocery store because i always need to try the new things

talked about trying to walk my dog earlier than usual but how that failed because it was way too hot outside

listened to a podcast episode about unpopular opinions (re: food, entertainment, relationships, etc)

listed the ones i remembered, gave an explanation on why i either agreed or disagreed

thought my pacing was pretty okay

didn't struggle for words really

was able to speak cohesively instead of short. awkward. sentences.

[rizlearns]

31.05.2021 [day 3/30; story 1: hvordan jeg ble veganer]

i forgot today was a holiday lol so everyone was still home today. also got a much later start to the day but i am happy i am keeping to the schedule thus far (lol its only day 3) despite being so tired!

take 1: this was the best first take so far even though it was still not the best. i messed up the last sentence pretty bad haha. had to stop and look at my notes about half way through and also my dad tried talking to me so that did not help either lmfao.

take 2: made some more changes in my sentence structure after realizing my sentences were awkward or just plain wrong lol but that is good i think (!) because it highlights that even though some words are integral to the story, i can change them around and adjust them accordingly to my new sentence! had a nice moment of this around the 2 minute mark where i totally deconstructed a sentence around but maintained the correct sentence structure!

take 3: continued to add new words to old sentences at this point but still needed to refer to my notes at this. just once or twice though! it does feel a little easier now to form sentences on a whim pertaining to the same topic but it could still flow a lot better.

tomorrow i will try to take all takes without looking at my notes and see how long it takes/what i can come up with if and when i get stuck. still feels gross to listen and hear myself but this is getting a tiny bit easier already. see you again tomorrow!

[rizlearns]

16.06.21 [day 19/30; kapittel 2: et sammendrag]

i have been getting a little lazy with this but mostly because my attention span is nonexistent so i spend way too much time doing this one thing and literally nothing else! but today was alright. i think this was my best first take yet which means that i can see progress because the first take is always off top a.k.a the hardest but today wasn't that hard!

read the story again and listened to the audiobook but somehow forgot completely what the story was about lol...

noted important/new vocabulary

instead of just sitting in silence for 15 seconds, i talked about how ridiculous it was that i forgot what the story was about even though i fucking read it 3 times now

couldn't remember some new words from the story but i did know the synonym(s)

could not say 'bursdagsoverraskelsen' for the life of me today

practiced saying 'bursdagsoverraskelsen' 50 times

[rizlearns]

29.05.2021 [day 1/30; story 1: hvordan jeg ble veganer]

technically i started last night because i was so eager to get going but i will count today as the official day of my 30 days of productivity dedicated specifically to improving my speaking skills in norwegian. so this exercise is based on a youtube video i watched so at the end of the allotted time (30 days) i will do a more in depth review/summary of this experience. but in short, i pick a story to tell about myself or one i know well and go over it until i can tell the story well. a new story every few days. also this post is an anomaly and the others will absolutely not be this long lmfao.

the first story i told was about my first experience being vegan in high school (TL;DR it was horrible) and my experience being vegan now: 4 years and counting :). each recording is 5 minutes long and today i made 4 recordings. I recorded twice last night. the very first recording (last night) was very awkward lol but i had a general idea of the main points of the story so it was just okay. after recording/talking for a full 5 minutes, i listened to myself and wrote down the words/phrases i didnt know, defined/translated them and recorded myself again for another 5 minutes. always talking until the 5 minutes were up (integral basis of the exercise).

fast forward to this morning, same process same story. 3rd time recording (first time today), was slightly better because obvs i already had the story in mind and unknown words defined and thats really the main point; becoming familiar with the story so it *feels* natural even though at this point it is still a little hard to speak. obviously i do not tell the story the same way each time (good) and also each time i was adding a little more to the end bc i would finish the original story line before the five minutes were over. same process as before, i did this 3 more times.

what i will say is that 1. recording/listening to myself speak makes me want to fucking throw up and i hate hearing my voice but i think the most important step is to keep going. on the 5th take (second take today) i literally blanked and really had to look at my notes but that's okay. im gonna spend a week on this story but as the 30 days go by, i will spend less and less time: from 7 days, to 3 days to 2.

anyways, these posts will not always be this long lol just wanted to give some more context to the process but also will give a full review at the end of the month (re: if i actually think this helped me or not). dont think anyone is reading all of this but thanks for listening if you did. speaking is my WORST skill by far so im glad i am making a concentrated effort to do better haha. see you again tomorrow!

[rizlearns]

17.06.21 [day 20/30; i dags italki møte]

another day of doing next to literally nothing and yet, i am exhausted! i did review vocabulary from all previous topics. today i decided to talk about my italki session today and some things i noticed! tomorrow i will get back to my regularly scheduled program:

today we talked about video games we play/played when we were younger and that part of the conversation was okay

in another instance, my teacher asked me what my favorite story was from SSiN and i was like uh.....

i realized today (after 20 days straight of speaking) that i am so afraid of making mistakes that i kinda just stop myself from speaking. as opposed to being able to just keep talking to myself in my recordings

so even though maybe my speaking is a little better than 20 days ago, i still need to get over myself and get more comfortable talking with people

i decided to take this opportunity to write 161 words to talk about today's meeting and actually answer the question(s): what is my favorite story? what is my least favorite? why?

i love talking about gardening!

[rizlearns]

15.06.2021 [day 18/30; kapittel 1: et sammendrag]

said i would start chapter 2 today but honestly just did one take (of chapter 1) at like midnight just for the sake of consistency and it kinda, really, sucked. no notes but this: jeg kan ikke norsk mellom åtte og åtte.

[rizlearns]

13.06.21 [day 16/30; kapittel 1: et sammendrag]

today was a hard day for me but i'm glad that i was able to do this exercise anyways. here are a few notes:

take 1 was 8:34 minutes straight of me talking (!!) literally the best take of my career

in take 1 there were two instances of me not being exactly sure how to phrase things but i kept going/was able to quickly rephrase my sentence(s)

looked up those phrases i wanted to say for the next take

by take 2 was able to cut down a minute without sacrificing the story

realized i said some things wrong in take 1 that i said right in take 2

realized i said some things wrong in take 2 that i said right in take 1

only two takes again today because its late and im tired but it was about the time as my usual 3 so that's okay

today felt much easier than days past but i hope it feels that way tomorrow lol

[rizlearns]

12.06.21 [day 15/30; kapittel 1: et sammendrag]

this took me a lot longer to do than usual because of the re-reading/listening/vocab bit but i think those things are just as helpful as actually speaking. kinda sucks though because i wish i wasn't sacrificing my reading and writing (!!) to do this exercise but that relates more to me not structuring my time the best lol. anyways here are some things i noted in my practice:

listened to audio/re-read through the chapter

focused a lot on shadowing

noted vocabulary in flashcards

giving pretty decent summaries but just need to sound more sure of what i am saying and just try to think faster???

noticed some mistakes upon rewatch (re: prepositions ugh) but glad i was able to notice what was wrong

still getting characters and their pronouns mixed up which again relates to sentences being too long sometimes

i technically only did two full takes but its 11pm so that will have to do

[rizlearns]

11.06.21 [day 14/30; kapittel 8: et sammendrag]

today was a weird day for me so i ended up doing this really late (10pm) but i made the time to do it so that's good enough for today. tomorrow i will start from the beginning of the book with story 1.

getting mixed up with the correct pronouns! not because i don't know what's right but because i need to keep who im talking about straight in my head

sentences are a little too long still but i think the flow is slightly better as its faster

some words i feel like i am not enunciating enough

realizing i was never pronouncing the stupid fake names properly after i thought i finally got it lmfao

kept the proper pronouns straight by the 3rd take

shorter sentences in the end but still awkward in transition

tired and super bored with this story

4 days seems more than enough going forward

i cannot say i give a perfect summary but i think it is clear enough to be understood and covers the main events of the story so it is cohesive

[rizlearns]

10.06.21 [day 13/30; et sammendrag]

today i really noticed that the time in which i do this exercise matters very little because no matter the time, i am always exhausted by the end of it lol. i am not doing any writing this time around, like noting sentences, but instead noted some phrases into flashcards. i think tomorrow will be the last day for this story.

little more trouble with pronunciation today. still tripping up over fake names for some reason

did one take per section plus one video including all 3 parts

read summaries in between takes just to be sure i remembered the story correctly

i think i will start doing 3 takes for a total summary and then a fourth to expand on smaller details

worked on cutting down on run on sentences

acknowledged that even though this is still terrible and hard, i am better than when i started :)

[rizlearns]

08.06.21 [day 11/30; et sammendrag]

i did not know there was an audio book for this book so i bought it lol and have now incorporated listening/reading the story once more as a part of this speaking exercise! definitely helps with pronunciation.

stupidly. i did not note vocab while i was reading so i took the time to make flash cards of new words

3 takes for the 3 sections of the story

no more takes after that because the listening/reading/vocab + speaking was also a lot for this day

def going to structure those days [vocab/reading] better so i dont overload

because i did not actually review the relevant vocab, i tried and failed to implement it in my summary lol

had to refer to the book too much for words

09.06.21 [day 12/30; et sammendrag]

i decided i will so this exercise with the rest of stories from short stories in norwegian. it is day 2 of this story but i think for this exercise i will cut down from 7 days for 1 story to five. but i will see and adjust accordingly.

now i am taking three takes to talk about the three sections of each chapter. then i take a fourth (and final because exhausted after 30 minutes of this) and final take summarizing everything from the three separate videos

for some reason today i kept accidentally saying english words randomly??? like not even in the sense that i didn't know the word...just random lol

did not reference flashcards or book at all while speaking (!)

i think this has been the best day so far solely because there were a lot of instances i knew/checked after awards where my grammar was correct!

getting better at remembering the correct conjugations for past and present perfect which is way harder for me when speaking than writing

still need to refresh on those ordinal phrases and filler words though. that would help a lot!

[rizlearns]

06.06.21 [day 9/30; story 1: min første tur til norge]

writing something for today feels like cheating because i didn't practice speaking in a conversational/storytelling way as much as i just read aloud awkwardly once or twice. sense of self and direction is still very much lost but not finishing this would make it worse lol. again its hard to practice something that feels like i didn't even write it so all i can say is i tried to focus on accent which isn't really the point right now but i needed to do something.

i have 4 italki sessions scheduled this month (one tomorrow) but i think i will cancel the other 3 and just move them to sometime in the distant future because i cannot handle making an idiot of myself, in this way, anymore. also, i have no more money! atm so it might be okay to stretch them out in that sense anyways.

[rizlearns]

05.06.21 [day 8/30; story 2: min første tur til norge]

i did in fact practice this day but did not have the energy to post about it lol. so today i decided on a new story which at first did not seem to complicated to write about but i need not only to tell the story in english, but i had to write it out too and that took me way too long to do. and even though i only had to look up a few words, it felt like i had no idea how to structure any sentences anymore and that was the most annoying part. so really today was spending literal hours drafting a fucking story and just reading it out loud which feels bad because it feels like i didn't even write this story let alone practice telling it aloud.

and after that was kind just a downward spiral lol. and i know a lot of people [i have personally talked to] are like 'this is normal' and 'it happens to the best of us' but this really feels like i have so many holes in my learning ability/capabilities and its embarrassing to even write this even though no one reads these and no one knows me but god it feels so awful and i am really stuck now. so yeah i don't really know what to do right now but today's practice was really difficult and it just should not have been. no comments really other than i literally don't know what i'm doing anymore lol. at first it was like 'nice' to be unemployed because i have so much free time but now its like what the fuck do i have to show for it?? absolutely nothing on most days and that fucking sucks. like just another thing to add to a long list of things i can't do right: im not earning any money, i am not getting any experience in my job field/adding something valuable to my resume, and im not making nearly as much progress as i feel i should be and it's hard. anyways pity party over.

[rizlearns]

04.06.2021 [day 7/30; story 1: hvordan jeg ble veganer]

the three main takeaways from today's recordings are that at this point i can: (1) correct myself in real time and furthermore upon watching (2) there is more ability than before to add more sentences and speak for a little longer than the allocated 5 minutes (3) it is still very hard for me to speak without putting way too much thought into whats next. it is painful to watch sometimes especially when i sound like a malfunctioning robot. at one point i tried to speak about what i wrote on here yesterday but that was still very hard for me (even though i just fucking wrote what i was trying to talk about???).

after 7 days, i still cannot say that i tell this story perfectly --this also totally relates to how poor the wording was in general like even in english i didn't structure this the best--but i was able to tell a story somewhat consistently for five minutes without any major pauses or hiccups; most of the time. anyways, i think i am pretty decided on the next story but i will wait until tomorrow to flesh it out. thanks for reading!

[rizlearns]

03.06.2021 [day 6/30; story 1: hvordan jeg ble veganer]

so i had an italki session today (a surprise to me lol) so i actually got to tell this story, more or less, to my teacher. and despite it all he said i spoke very well so that is nice! i am going to just count that as one of my takes for today because after my second take on my own, i got so tired lol.

take 1: i was able to not only tell a story but answer questions/ talk a little bit more on the matter at hand. except when he asked me what i usually eat...idk why that question always messes me up haha. for the most part my sentence structure was right which is relieving to know considering i have been practicing it a certain way most of this week lol. but it was better than last week and that's really all i can hope for

take 2: free-styled a bit, talked about this mornings fiasco...some mistakes in the end trying to freestyle but understanding my mistakes/mistake(s) pointed out to me from class.

take 3: slightly better? maybe the same or slightly worse lol. the ending was a little sloppy mostly because i didn't know what i wanted to say a g a i n.

last day with this story tomorrow! at this point i dont think i have perfected anything necessarily but it feels a little better which also correlates directly to studying vocabulary and preparing beforehand. who knew planning ahead would actually be helpful lmfao.