I am now back from my vacation. It was lovely while it lasted, but it is time to continue with the hard work! I took my new purchase with me (briefly mentioned in my last entry), Teach Yourself Complete Swedish and have been so impressed I felt it was important to write about it!
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| A book and audio CD pack. |
Combined with my other ongoing methods of learning Swedish (i.e. Rosetta Stone, Lund University podcasts etc.) I immediately noticed, from the first few pages, how helpful the book was for pronunciation - who knew there were rules depending on consonants, vowels and syllables?! Add to this the CD enabling you to listen to the pronunciation and you are already well underway. I particularly liked the example conversations - I have been making a conscious effort to decipher the conversation in Swedish before I double check with the translations underneath. All in all, this pack is excellent value for money and is a great addition to the other resources that I have been using.
As I have never learned another language before (apart from basic French in school which did not amount to much) I still feel a little out of my depth in terms of what to learn next. I would really appreciate some tips on how to do this - should I learn just a vast selection of words? Should I begin reading articles and make an attempt to translate them by learning new words along the way? Should I learn by forming sentences? At the moment I am trying to just do bits of each but it does seem somewhat unorganised. Please help!
One last update I have for you all is that the dates have now been released for when I can apply to the Swedish universities. My application timeline is now as follows:
Application opens: 17th October 2013
Application deadline: 15th January 2014
Notification of results: 27th March 2014
Fingers crossed! In the meantime, if anyone has any language learning tips, please get back to me!
