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November 6 Week Challenge | ||
Tags: 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4040 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 49 of 63 30 November 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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no problem!
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| linguchan Newbie United States Joined 3673 days ago 5 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Irish, French | Message 50 of 63 14 December 2014 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, how does everyone feel they fared, now that the 6 weeks is up? I was hoping to reach 100 hours of French, but was a little disappointed to have only ended up with 80. I overestimated how much studying I would be able to do while on vacation I guess. Overall I feel like I've reached a lower level with French than I had expected within the span of 6 weeks, but I really enjoyed the challenge, and came out with a better understanding of how to improve my study habits.
I spent the majority of my study time either listening to or shadowing French. I used Assimil, and studied 2 new lessons everyday (though sometimes I had to double-up and do 4 lessons a day because studying on certain days wasn't feasible). I feel like I often rushed through my lessons as well, and that I wasn't giving enough attention to verb tenses and grammar. I shadowed each new lesson 10 times the first day, and then once a day for the next 9 days. I tried to also do scriptorium for each new lesson, and to do so again when I dropped the lessons, but unfortunately I couldn't motivate myself to keep up with it. I believe the lessons I did scriptorium for are the lessons that I understand the best though, because I took the time to understand each word. Overall I feel that the shadowing of each lesson only gained me the ability to say that lesson quickly with adequate pronunciation, and to better distinguish between words when listening. I don't feel like I've learned enough French grammar or vocabulary, though I am sure I've "assimilated" some. I think this much exposure to the language can only be a good thing. I do often get phrases from my lessons stuck in my head, which means I must be absorbing the information, if only subconsciously. I also spent my leisure time listening to Disney movies in French, particularly Aladdin, which I probably watched about 10 or 12 times, with and without subs. I also did something like the LR method with Pride and Prejudice, but as I had no parallel texts I just listened to the chapter once while looking at the French text and again right after while looking at the English. As I've read that novel more times than I can count in English, I could understand quite a bit of the story in French, and never really got lost. I don't know what exactly this exercise has done to improve my French, since there's no way to know if my comprehension is getting better or if I'm just understanding based on prior knowledge of the text. Regardless though, I felt like anything I could do in French that I found fun would be worthwhile, as it would motivate me to keep studying. As to continuing French in the future, I'm starting lessons 96 and 97 today with Assimil, and I would like to finish the book and then continue to shadow it for several months in the future; really burn those dialogs into my memory. I also intend to start the advanced book within short order of completing "French with Ease", and to supplement with some grammar study. On a side note, my boyfriend took this 6 week French challenge with me, though he didn't tweet his times, and he ended up with 55 hours or so of French study. He applied Learning With Text to his studies and worked on nothing but Assimil, using the same shadowing method. I feel that because he utilized LWT, and specifically because he made annotated texts, he managed to get a better understanding of grammar and vocabulary than I did, though he spent quite a bit less time with the language. I'd like to know what methods everyone else used and also if they ended up reaching their personal goals with this challenge. It's been very helpful, I think, to have a deadline and some friendly competition. I was very inspired by some who are listed as being employed full time and yet who achieved really high numbers of study hours despite that. You've all kept me working hard, so I wanted to thank you and congratulate you on what you've achieved. Good job everyone! : ) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5301 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 51 of 63 15 December 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I came 1st or 2nd during the first few weeks, then I stopped studying due to moving house, and ended up at 4th (target) and 5th (overall). I don't regret stopping because it was simply impossible to study at the time, and because the earlier weeks had been extremely fruitful. I got to know about the Russian language, got an overview of all the grammar, learned 1000+ words, became able to match up audio and text in L-R sessions, understood a number of listening exercises... which I consider quite an achievement given that I was a complete beginner before the Challenge. I also decided that I don't want to learn Russian anymore. Sounds sad, but killing wanderlust is a good thing. I turned back to Italian, began to read fiction, and can now read satisfactorily aka not too frustratingly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4040 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 52 of 63 16 December 2014 at 8:04am | IP Logged | ||
from my log
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4882 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 53 of 63 16 December 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wanted to take a half break from the Super Challenge to push my Italian forward; my
hope was that I'd have an easier time reading after some formal study. And my results: Week 1: I start strong. I have five days off work this week, and no social commitments. I read, I watch tv, I pick up Assimil and Living Language where I left off last summer. I build an anki deck, and download Michel Thomas vocab builder onto my walkman. I peak at number 11 on the charts, tantalizingly close to the top ten! Week 2: Last week's pace was fun but not sustainable. This week I settle into what I hope will be a long term groove. I average a little more than an hour a day, and slip down into the top 15. Week 3: Work gets crazy busy. I wasn't expecting this. I get home mentally tired, and all I wanted to do was listen to music and chill. I keep up with my reading and tv, but actual study slips. I hover somewhere between 18 and 22 in the rankings. Week 4: Social life gets crazy. This is a good thing, thought there's not much time for studying. Week 5 & 6: I stop updating on twitter. It just got to be too much of a pain. Partly this was because I spent the first weekend on the beach with a sangria in one hand and a book in the other. I would read, nap, gossip, surf, nap, read, repeat. It was a bit hard to keep track of my time. And yet I only slipped to number 25 in the charts - I think others must have dropped off also. Final results: In the 30 days I tracked myself I had 34 hours of Italian and 21 hours of French. This includes 6 hours with Assimil and 6.5 with Living Language. I also realized (or re-realized) that I spend more time building anki decks than actually using them. I think SRS is great, but I can never commit to it for more than a week or two. And I listened to Michel Thomas Language Builder exactly once. I like his intro courses a lot, but have no patience for his "master class." I didn't make the huge leap I wanted; I needed one or two more language-intensive weekends for that. But it did feel like a nice, small hop forward. Edited by kanewai on 17 December 2014 at 3:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| linguchan Newbie United States Joined 3673 days ago 5 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Irish, French | Message 54 of 63 17 December 2014 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
I debated whether or not to use an SRS when starting the challenge for this very reason. In the end, I chose to embrace the idea of assimilating French through listening, shadowing and reading the same lessons/chapters/films repeatedly. My first two years of studying Japanese were almost entirely Anki-based with a bit of grammar study, and a heck of a lot of anime watching. Even when I would just modify decks from other people, I was still spending a lot of time editing cards with better definitions, or adding tags or audio etc. It would get to the point where I wouldn't even want to open the program because of all the extra work that went into prepping new cards, and therefore there were many days where my reviews piled up and had to be subsequently rescheduled. Such is my level of willpower I guess. But you know, I didn't feel like it was worth the effort. I found that though I tried vocab cards (studying front to back and back to front), cloze-deletion cards, and normal sentence cards, the only way that Anki really seemed useful to me was when I had it show me short paragraphs that included a word I didn't know, with that word highlighted in blue. I needed to know what that word meant in that specific context, rather than a list of maybe 15 possible uses for the word. Really, I could do the same thing by sticking the sentences in Learning with Texts and making annotated texts to read aloud daily, (or better yet, shadow if I pulled them out of an audiobook or something). So that's what I do now instead. I find this process more enjoyable anyway, because you end up getting practice in listening comprehension, reading comprehension and pronunciation, and I feel the results of those studies every day. As my boyfriend puts it, Anki seems to improve your knowledge of one thing: how to do Anki really well. I wonder if he and I are the only ones that could see one of our cards and be able to answer it almost instantly based not on our understanding of the word, but on the vague shape of the paragraph of text that described all of the word's possible definitions. "Oh, right. The transitive verb that can mean about thirty different things and takes up two thirds of the screen? That must be あげる. Yep, I'm going to hit Easy on that one." Everyone studies differently though, right? Maybe SRS just isn't something that works well for my language studies, but is just the right fit for someone else. Since there's no way to know what works for you without some trial and error, I think these challenges are a good opportunity to experiment. In that way, I'm very happy with my results. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6575 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 55 of 63 17 December 2014 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
This is exactly why I don't do sentence cards. I love having the context, but I put the sentence on the back instead of on the front. I want as little context as possible on the front. I don't even want to know what gender it is or if it's an adjective or noun (in cases where that's not evident). The stock response from people who do do sentence cards is that the ability to guess based on context disappears after a while, but I've never gotten to that point; I always feel I'm wasting my time before that point arrives. I do do Anki, though, about an hour a day to get through my decks (Around 15,000 cards at the moment). I'm fortunate enough to find Anki enjoyable, but I understand people who find it boring and if you don't enjoy it, you need to change the routine or stop altogether. I think you made the right call, since no routine seems to have worked for you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6590 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 63 17 December 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find that it helps to take several sentences from the same article. If I'm just remembering superficially, I'll usually mix them up.
Maybe sentence cards work better for somewhat transparent words. I agree that the decision seems right, but I think the main mistake was making the cards too complicated. If a verb has 32 uses, pick about five and make separate cards for them, with example sentences preferably. The sentence cards should ideally be easy enough that it takes less effort to remember the word than to associate it with the shapes etc. It also helps to choose such short sentences that there's no noticeable shape. Ari, I wonder what kind of sentences you used? I think I definitely need an emotional/personal connection to sentence cards. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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