Returning to Mandarin Chinese and French Reading Progress

Wrapping up May and looking forward to June

📅 Week 22/53 | Study Log 2026

Welcome to the last study log of May and happy June!💫

I have big plans in June for language learning (including returning to Mandarin!). I’ll share more about those plans in this week’s bonus post, where I’ll also recap my May studies. Until then, here’s a look at my final week of May.

🥐 French

I actually thought the last day of May was Monday, so when I realized it wasn’t, I had less time than expected to finish the goals I had set for the month. Still, I managed to finish reading Double Crush and read three chapters of L’Étranger, completing Part 1.

Chapter 4 (left side)

From the first part of the book, I’ve saved over 400 new words. My comprehension rate for the last three chapters was around 90%, which I think is largely due to the number of new words I now recognize. I plan to continue reading and saving new vocabulary, but I’ll create a separate deck for Part 2. I also want to start slowly reviewing the words I’ve already collected.

Migaku Stats¹

• French Total Words Known: 2803

• L’Étranger deck: 446 cards

🍜 Japanese

During the week, one of my students, who is Japanese, wanted to practice Japanese words with me. It was a good opportunity to recall vocabulary I already know. At one point, she asked me to sing a Japanese song, and I realized I don’t actually know any Japanese nursery rhymes. She tried teaching me one, and after a few minutes of figuring out what it was, I discovered it was the opening song from My Neighbour Totoro.

That interaction reminded me of a comment my teacher made this week. In one of the example sentences, she wrote that I’m good at Mandarin. It was a nice reminder that I’ve already made it past the beginner stage twice before, with both Mandarin and French, and that I can do the same with Japanese.

🧧 Mandarin

I’m officially going back to studying Mandarin!

This week, I spent some time adding vocabulary to Migaku since I’d like to use it for sentence mining with videos and, eventually, reading.

It’s been over three years since I actively studied the language, so it’s hard to gauge exactly where I am. For now, I have decided to mark HSK 1–5 vocabulary as known in Migaku and plan to add any I miss as I encounter them.

Migaku Stats

• Mandarin Total Words Known: 2617

Seeing that number was encouraging, but also a little surprising since my estimated vocabulary size is roughly the same in Mandarin and French. Once I start watching content again, I'll have a better sense of where I'm actually at and can adjust the number as needed.

I’ve really missed Mandarin, and it feels good to bring it back into my routine.

Have you ever returned to a language after some time?

✨Language Wins of The Week

• Finished part 1 of L’Étranger and the graphic novel Double Crush

• Decided to return to learning Mandarin again!

📅 Next Week’s Plans

• 🥐 French: Start Part 1 of L’Étranger

• 🍜 Japanese: Submit the Japanese presentation script.

• 🧧 Mandarin: Ease into the language by watching YouTube videos and dramas

Thanks for being here! See you next week.

1. Migaku post is coming in the future. I’m really enjoying using it!