how do you word?

Ahh, toothpastefordinner.com ...providing me with cartoons to illustrate my point when words won't do. (IRONY!! THIS IS ACTUALLY IRONY!! I DID IT! I RECOGNISED IRONY IN A SITUATION.)

Previously in my blog, I wrote about vocabulary explosions. Today, because I want to, I'm going to write about how I'm learning new vocabulary in Welsh.

The main thing I like to do is to read the BBC news in Welsh . The BBC have a really cute app on their site that allows you to hover over words that are highlighted in yellow to get a quick translation. I like to do this in the morning while I drink tea and look out at my balcony with the dead plants because I'm posh like that.

I pick four or five words from an article, and plug them into my Anki SRS flashcard app on my phone. (My phone is quickly becoming a language learning dream. More on that later, perhaps.) SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System, by the way - it's intended to make sure that you only practice a word "right before" you're about to forget it, but that's debatable - I think of it as basically a way of practising hard words more frequently and easier words less frequently.

I try and go through my flashcards every day, and it only takes about five minutes, so no biggie there.

Anki also helps me remember what words I want to remember, if that makes sense - I'm reminded to use some of this new vocab. Well, that's the idea anyway, though I usually don't use a word straight away, unless I'm very deliberately going to be talking about a particular topic. What I've found instead is that I start using a new word after I hear someone else say it  - maybe that's the last bit of the learning process that cements the word.

I also get new vocab from skyping in Welsh - usually by the end of a conversation I'll have at least half a dozen new words that I've asked to have spelt for me, and I put them in the Anki app as well. I've started downloading some Welsh flashcards for my Memrise app, but I'm not sure about that yet.

I don't get much vocab from listening to Radio Cymru, to be honest - usually because I listen to it in the car and then I forget the word before I have time to look it up.

....and this is an awkward end to a blog post.