This week, in Kinyarwanda study, wasn't a terribly eventful one, but I can't expect them all to be "home-runs," I suppose. I continued working with my flashcards, again, continuing to ensure that the amount of time I spent creating them was half (or under) the amount of time I spent studying them. I'd like to think this system holds me to account, so I'm not just creating flashcards. I'm also using them. This week, I spent an average of twenty minutes, creating flashcards (for both my individual use and for my language-learning website), and about forty minutes, studying them, per day.
Pertinent to my language-learning website, I have continued embedding flashcards into my website. I think it looks great, and it is much more technologically advanced than I would have ever thought myself to be, but I'd still like to do more! One of my fellow language-learners, R, has started to create adult coloring-books for her own language-instruction, and I'd be interested in investigating with that as a potential method. In particular, this week, I am going to modify lessons that I previously posted (on household and school-related items), and I could see where placing an un-colored image of a house or a school might be very fruitful. For example, I could tell them to "color the door red," or I could ask them to "color the table brown." Not only would this exercise test website visitors on the items of study, but it would also test their knowledge of colors. I could then post an answer key. Of course, I think this is asking too much, but I am forced to wonder if there's a way I could embed the coloring sheet and have website visitors color it on my website, but I'll look into it all the same...
In addition to flashcard work and website progress, I have continued watching genocide testimony video for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes per day. I try to be strategic about this, watching the same video once each day, taking notes as I go, writing down words that I don't know, and guessing at the meaning, before eventually comparing my understanding with the English subtitles provided.
And I have begun trying to parse a document from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda's website, which I've been trying to dedicate twenty minutes to per day. I'd like to think of this as good practice for when I will (hopefully) be in Rwanda at the Genocide Archive this summer.
Last week, I said that I would be investigating with TimeTrack, and I did, indeed, download the app and have been trying to use it faithfully, but I guess I'm not used to such a standardized system yet, because sometimes I forget to start the TimeTrack (when I begin an activity), or I forget to end it (when I finish an activity), or I simply forget about it. I'm going to try to make a much more concentrated effort to commit myself to it this week. Indeed, I think such an would be useful to me, because I've been adding additional activities to my daily schedule, such as research visa applications, reviewing French, and continuing to investigate summer learning options for Swahili. I feel it is now even more essential that I use my time wisely.
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