Monday, July 14, 2014

Everyday Life: The time sheet

 
(Click for a larger view)

When I transitioned to one-on-one sessions (around Christmas), I had to start filling out time sheets.  I wasn't really thrilled with the prospect.  Like, "Oh, great, how am I going to remember to write everything down?  And I have to turn them in? <sigh>"

But it actually hasn't been bad.  First, I don't have to write down EVERYTHING that I do - grocery shopping or writing emails or doing dishes - just language/culture related stuff.  And most things related to that fit nicely into the categories you see above. :)

Language/culture learning is my "full-time job/ministry" right now, so I aim to spend about 40 hours a week on that.  Some weeks I have more, some weeks less, but on average, I try for 40 hours.  Having to fill out a time sheet sort of keeps me on track and shows me how much time I really am spending doing what I'm supposed to be doing.  Turning it in provides some accountability, too, although I've never felt that leadership is breathing down my neck or trying to micromanage my time.

Here's a bit of an explanation for the categories you see on the chart.

Planning/preparation: This is planning for language sessions - writing out the activities I want to do in a session, reviewing material I'll be using in a session (which could be stories or books or video clips), or listening to old recordings to find new areas to investigate.

Session: Also know as "class".

Session review: Listening to the recordings from class.  Usually I do that when I get back, but it doesn't have to be done the same day, just before the following session.

Visiting: Again, pretty self-explanatory.  Most of the visiting I'm doing at this point means going over my host family's and hanging out.  (I really should do a post just on my host family.  Along with all my other brilliant someday-posts. :))

Listening library: Listening to recordings (but not from that day's session).  It's important to review the words I learn on a given day, but it's also really important to review old recordings so I become more and more familiar with those words, phrases, etc.  As opposed to, say, forgetting them...which is likely what would happen if I didn't review.

Church activities: At this point, this is usually just Sunday mornings for me.  I'm not part of any mid-week activities.

Other/media: This is a bit of a catch-all category.  It might include reading, watching a movie, or listening to the radio in French.  In the beginning phases, I did very little in this category, mainly because it would have been waaaay over my head.  And stuff that's way over your head doesn't really help you learn. :)

New words: For each session, I keep track of how many new words or phrases I learn.  (Each hour of session time should give me 8-10 new words/phrases.  As you can see, this week was a bit higher than average.)  This new words or phrases are written down in my "word log", and I keep a running total.  This week I expect to hit 6500.

Phase hours (upper right corner): This is the running total of how many hours I've spent in the particular phase.  Only session time (average 20 hours/week) counts towards the phase.  How many hours in each phase, you wonder?

Phase 1 = 100
Phase 2 = 150
Phase 3 = 250
Phase 4 = 500
Phase 5 = 500

...Which means that I've spent 731 hours in the program so far.  Almost half-way done!

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