This is your annual reminder to record yourself speaking in your languages!

It’s certainly my reminder, since I realized I haven’t done it in a while.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but for me speaking skills are the hardest to practice and to see improvement in. While I learn on my own, it can also be hard to tell if I’m making improvement, as well as figuring out what might need adjusting. I have to listen to my own pronunciation and accent, and manage to catch anything that I could tweak.

Making recordings of yourself speaking in your target language can be a good way to work on this! I like to read a small passage out loud first- this usually feels easier to me, and gets me into the flow of speaking out loud for a recording device. Then I choose a topic, and speak about this topic or have an imaginary conversation with myself for another recording. This is a more honest representation of where my speaking skills are, and it will give me a good indication about what I need to work on.

But once the recordings are finished and saved, I can go back years later and see how far I’ve come! I have some early recordings from my French and Spanish practice, and it’s really sweet to hear the things I was interested in back then. Unfortunately I don’t have any saved digital recordings from my middle school French days (which would be adorable to find), but I have a few recordings from college in the 2010’s.

I hope that when I listen back to my 2022 recordings that I can think fondly on this time! I have some newer languages that I’m learning, and I know for sure that those will improve and I’ll see changes in the next few years. They’re slow-going for now, but I’ll be able to appreciate my progress when I get there.

Sjáumst bráðlega,

Kossar og knús xx