u/Daghatar

هالأيام براجع تطبيق أنكي الصبح و اليل لما بيكون في عندي وقت فاضي بحضر فيديوهات بالعربي، بقرأ شوي، او بحكي (حتى لو اكون وحدي). و بشترك بكم من الصب العربي هون.

و انتو، شو روتينكم؟

For the past month, I've been recording daily videos of myself speaking ("monologue practice" as another commenter named it) and then posting them on YouTube for accountability purposes. Today marks 30 videos, so I thought I'd make a another update post like i did for 2 weeks (here). I am primarily doing this to feel more at ease with speaking the language and also identify gaps in my vocabulary, especially since there are few native speakers who live near me.

Typically, the length of the videos are between 5-15 minutes. Topics range from what I did that day to summarizing the book I am reading and telling a story about how a past friendship slowly disappeared. I try to mix talking about physical and day-to-day topics with more abstract things so that I am stretched. I keep a whiteboard with me when i record and note down any words or phrases that I'm really struggling to communicate in the TL so I can look them up later.

Overall, I definitely feel more confident speaking. I think the main thing is just an expansion on what I wrote about in the last point - there are plenty of words, phrases, and structures I can recognize well but that are much more difficult to produce, which is natural. A recent example was the word محترف, which means professional. I have the word in my Anki deck, but when speaking extemporaneously, I struggled to come up with it. I did end up thinking of it, but for one reason or another I got doubtful of if it meant what I thought it did. Having that experience while speaking into a camera really cemented that word when I looked it up later and confirmed. I don't think I'll forget it anytime soon!

Perhaps that's the best part of this exercise - forging personal connections to vocabulary. Not a new concept by any means. I'd recommend anyone else to do this exercise, and post your progress publicly.

After I make a video today, I'm going to switch gears slightly for the next 30 days - I want to increase my listening compehension, so I'm going to pick a video in my TL, watch it daily (without than with subtitles later in the week), and make just 1 video a week where I summarize the video. So I'll still be practicing speaking, even though the focus will shift to listening.

Happy to hear about anyone else's experiences doing similar exercises!

The idea: take a random prompt or subject for each video and record myself speaking about it in my TL. This accomplishes several things:

-forces me to speak my TL since I don't get many chances to do so in real life. (Very few TL speakers near me).

-identifies gaps in my vocabulary. I may be very comfortable talking about my daily routine or my plans for the weekend, but can I describe my favorite board game? Discuss the geography and biodiversity near me? Share room design and interior decoration opinions?

-allows me to practice and use grammatical concepts and vocab that I may be familiar with when reading but don't have much experience producing myself. I might easily recognize the conditional while reading, but can I produce it on the spot without hesitating?

I've been posting videos of 5-12 minutes daily for accountability's sake. Some days, I'll do a little preparation on the topic. For example, I played my favorite board game with some friends this weekend, and it has a sci-fi theme. I figured I could use that as a topic. But I didn't know the words for galaxy, spaceship, or alien, so I learned those earlier in the day as they would be indispensable. Other days, I pick the topic a minute before recording so it's very spontaneous. I keep a small whiteboard near me when I record so I can write words or phrases I'm struggling to think of in my TL.

It's only been 2 weeks, so it'll probably take a couple more before significant results are seen - I'll do another post then. But already, I feel more at ease speaking. It's been a fun challenge, I'm not sweating while staring at the camera. I've learned words and phrases from this exercise that will be very handy if I wish to reach B2 by the end of the year. And this is in addition to daily Anki and input.

So far, I'd recommend this drill to anyone, even if you're a beginner. If nothing else, it can serve as a sort of journal that you can look back on later and see how far you've come. The main downside to this is that correction from natives is pretty rare (I have only 16 subscribers), so you may be making some errors consistently that will be hard for you to realize.

If you've done anything similar or have any questions on my experience, feel free to comment. But make sure you've done your language practice for the day!

Hi all, if anyone would like to play chess on the chess.com app, let me know. I don't have a lot of free time to schedule time to play real-time games, but if we're taking a couple turns a day and messaging on the chat throughout, it could be a fun and chill way to practice. My Romanian is very much beginner level, but French and then Arabic is much higher.