One thing that has still been frustrating this week has been getting all of my alphabet sounds right. Learning about them in class and their structure made me want to go back and pay more attention than I had initially planned to. I realized midway through that I was being too reliant on the Nepali that I did know to get by up until now rather than the Nepali that is missing. I also realized that I was relying too much of what "sounds right" rather than actually checking if that is exactly how it should have sounded.
This week I've been trying to just rehash on the basics and build on top of that. I was also thinking about the way that I am beginning to learn now in order to be able to teach for the 5-10 minute presentation. I think what I am doing now will have to be different from when I teach someone who has absolutely no clue what anything in Nepali means.
After speaking to my tutor Keshav, I think it is important that I can increase in some sort of level in terms of the materials that I am reading and the videos that I am watching. The modifications for the reading includes transitioning slowly but not completely to newspapers that are more "pure" Nepali rather than other newspapers that have a mix of English and Nepali. I did look into some of the older/more well known difficult newspapers and I have to say that it did remind me that there is so much more that I can work on. One specific things for that is the inclusion of words rather than the substitution of a Nepanglish word. Even saying that though, it is really difficult to actually put into place because since Nepali has become more and more digital, younger people have opted to use Nepali + English substitutes more and more. I realized that solely relying on social media and online webpages pushed me further into the Nepali mixed with English route.
For next week, I really want to challenge myself and try to read some literature or something that will make me suuuper confused. This was suggested by my parents because apparently I have been running away from something like this for ages and I guess it is finally time for that to catch up to me. I think in terms of practice, it is also a good way to get my mind going and start making connections between what I know and what I may not know. You can only go so far on previously gained knowledge and there will be some point where I will need to expand into something that I might not fully understand so I think it is important that I transition into this sooner than later.
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I agree with you when you say you fall back to the Nepali that you knew instead of learning what you don't know. I feel like my Korean is like that and I keep saying the same things over and over again and feel gaping holes in my knowledge and that my language is really limited because of that. I also want to transition from "informal" and easy/colloquial Korean to more formal and non-everyday, but deeper conversation and discussion and debate-like Korean (perhaps more academic?). I also fall back on Konglish (Korean-English) or Anglicized Korean instead of the real Korean words. While I'm still working on basic reading and comprehension and won't necessarily be able to understand a newspaper right away, I hope to work up to that level too!