Intensive language program -- strategies
Apologies in advance for a lengthy post. I have been writing this post in my head for weeks to this community but often felt overwhelmed with all my many questions.
Questions/advice wanted: How do I best amplify my learning and move toward fluency?
Background: I am fluent-ish (rusty these days due) in Spanish and a native English speaker. Currently, I am in an intensive Swedish language program in Sweden that is very heavily focused on grammar and more tradition language learning. Lots of grammar workbook exercises, lots of conjugating of verbs or pluralization practice of nouns (definite, indefinite articles, etc.), and lots of othe grammar stuff.
On my own, I have learned about Gabriel Wyner's Fluent Forever approach and a friend of mine recently told me about Krashen. I'm struggling because I find that their approaches sort of conflict with my program. I'm trying to figure out how to be approach my program and my learning.
I get about 300-400 new phrases/words/verbs a week through my language program's Quizlet links and I find it super "meh" in terms of learning. I have tried Anki (how do people do that without a lot of tech knowledge?!) with the help of my husband, but my flashcards are still just Swedish to English with Google voices added to the Swedish. I am not really sure how to add images to complex verbs or phrases. I also am unsure how to add images to 300-400 (sometimes more!) new cards per week and actually get through those decks in addition to all of the other work I have to do in this program.
There is also about 4 hours of group work a week in addition to the 7 hours of lecture, that often just feels like the blind leading the blind. We all sit around with our super low-level Swedish and our heavy accents trying to have conversations on given topics.
Input issues and approaches: My husband speaks little to no Swedish. We speak English at home with our children. I try to consumer as much Swedish media as possible, but to be honest I don't have much time for that since I'm in this intense program that takes up about 50 hours a week. But I listen to a few slower Swedish podcasts, in addition to my textbook's listening exercises.
I have tried to talk to my children in Swedish (they are learning through pure immersion at their elementary schools), but often they just ignore me. Haha. When we occassionally watch TV, we often do opt for Swedish. But I'm not a big TV watcher (again, don't have time!).
I'm currently reading a book in my course and I think I understand about 50-60% of the words. I read it to get the gist, write down any words that either keep me from understanding a twist in the plot or words that come up frequently.
Dealing with vocabulary: I have thought about copying my weekly word and phrase lists into Gemini and asking it to help me create conversations with it (AI) using that vocabulary. I thought maybe this would help me more with production.
Getting practice with native speakers: I have reached out to some elderly people in my apartment building and I'm having coffee with them about once a week to practice speaking with native Swedes. I will continue doing that but damn it must be painful to speak with me. haha.
I talk to nearly everyone in Swedish. Shop keepers, neighbors, bus drivers, etc. When people switch over to English, I kindly ask them for us to keep speaking in Swedish unless it is something very important (finances, legal, or pertinent health issues).
What advice do you all have? I know that is a big question.
How should I approach all the vocab?
I keep having Spanish leave my mouth when I'm trying to speak Swedish. I assume this is normal (happening to my kids, too). How do I handle this?
What are gaps in my approach? How can I hack it better?
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