Glossika practice, I'm continuously liking that it challenges me to repeat at a faster pace and pay attention to how to do proper reduction or tone "smoothing" (for lack of a better word ... hummm!)

Glossika: Argh, I'm still not sure if I like Glossika, but I do like that it gives me something specific in a Taiwan accent that is kinda fast to practice since I'm trying to build the skill to overpronounce the tones/pinyin. I decided to pay for a month after the trial. We'll see I find the platform still buggy and has some tones/pinyin issues... but it's convenient.
Book reading practice: Practiced reading a book again - changed it up today and read Secret Garden. I don't have the audiobook for this one, but it was cool to read and try to analyze myself. I can pick up when I make mistakes.

Conversations only! I understood everything and my feedback was that I'm kinda slow still, but I think Glossika can help me with that! Yayyy!

Have a good weekend everybody! Today I did Glossika + Family call. Today I had to speak a lot so my voice felt a bit strained I decided to do only a 30 minutes practice session with Glossika without analyzing too much. We also had a call with my husband's family, it was nice to realize that this time around I could understand better what they say. I have the feeling that practicing speech and analyzing tones/intonations, helped my listening understanding. I'm also usually VERY VERY shy in trying to speak, but I said a few sentences today and it was a BIG STEP for me! Yayyyy! 🙌 I hope all is well in everybody else's challenge!

Glossika + Audacity
Again, I just have this weird fear that I might be repeating my own mistakes, even though I do this I can hear when something is off. I'm still experimenting how to really get the most out of the platform!

Glossika and recording session:I realized that working in the morning/early afternoon is much better for my concentration level. I had a great session today. Here's a few observations:
1. Working on Glossika I realize it's making me work on common speech reduction which I've never worked on before. I realize maybe this is the next step to sound more colloquial how to reduce 我們 into "wom(en)" and how to use 可 instead of using the whole word 可以
2. How to end sentences with 嗎？and 了：I kinda struggle to understand if the ma is supposed to be higher or lower than the last sound sometimes and the SAME for le. I realize that my ma needs to be quite higher than I expected to really sound like a question, and the le when you say something like 太出色了/太好了：is a bit lower than I expected and when I listen to myself I sound more "right"
3. I'm struggling with the third tone in faster speech in most cases when it's 3-3-3-, 3-3 or a 3 at the end of the sentence that needs to not sound like a 4th tone. When I hear someone say 表演 biao3yan3, I don't hear a very low 演 in colloquial/faster speech.
4.Tone combinaison problem areas: 2-3 so the 3 doesn't sound like a 4 and the 4th tone and it's first in a sentence to not let it sound like a 1st tone.
5. 怎麼辦: my ban4 doesn't start high enough sometimes and it doesn't really transfer the right "feel"
6. Taiwanese accent: the "eng" sounds like "en(g)" the g being barely there. I still need to practice my code switching!

I hope you all are having great practice today!

Glossika + Audacity
I'm not 100% certain I love using Glossika yet, while I like that the speed of speech is normal (read: fast!, haha). I often feel scared that I might not hear the mistakes I make and that instead of training a good pattern, I'm training and repeating a bad one over and over. One the flip side, I do enjoy the things I notice. For example, with 我們 the 們 is almost muted at times, and I realize that I still overstressed every syllable as if I'm reading a roman language, but sometimes pairs like 三月is not necessarily "san + yue", but almost "sanue". To be continued....! So scary, hehe!

I had my first shot of the vaccine yesterday and I was too tired to do anything

Glossika Chorusing Practice #1
I like it, I'm using it with Audible. I record the audio snipet, copy it, and record myself a bunch of times to try to really understand the flow. I'm realizing that often my first try without deep analysis is better in terms of flow, but sometimes my tone combinations at first (3-1, 2-3, 3-2) can be a weak point. I'll continue to play with this and see how it goes.

Yoyo tone pairs + Read aloud Sherlock Holmes from Mandarin Companion with Audacity.
Notes: I tend to attack my 他 and it sounds like a 4th tone, it's easier if I start kinda breathing out first so it has a softer landing and if I start breathing out as I'm pronouncing the syllable. During this session, I also noticed that I had a tone pair mistake with 時間 I was dropping my 間. I think it is difficult for me to go up to first tone sometimes and I get lazy unconsciously. I need to keep practicing. Overall, my tones seems better if I think "softer" like when I play saxophone and it's the melancholic/softer Paul Desmond style! ;)