Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5002 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 17 of 73 23 December 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
There is actually quite a lot of options. I haven't learnt Czech as a foreigner but
these are some tips on what I've heard of and what you might want to explore:
Pimsleur Czech (two products:Conversational and Comprehensive)
Teach Yourself Czech-that one is likely to be similar in style to colloquial
Hugo's Czech exists as well
Czech: an essential grammar
-I've used this series briefly for German and I liked it (I just got to even better
resources for German but it might be a vialble choice for Czech)
New Czech Step by Step: a course used by many classrooms, it might have a lot of good
use even for a self-teaching student
Basic Czech-that looks like a serious course and so does look the next one
Čeština pro cizince
Chcete mluvit česky: that is something a few people mentioned using
and there is Assimil in German or in French.
Let's speak Czech (Mluvme Česky) is something published in 2013 by Fragment
And there is a good looking Čeština pro začátečníky by L.Kaska on a czech eshop,
Communicative Czech is another seriously looking one..
Some eshops shipping abroad that you might like: kosmas.cz, perhaps neoluxor.cz (I
think this one ships abroad, not sure. kosmas surely does), megabooks.cz
I actually think you might be surprised with your ability to use a German based
Assimil. Really, the key are the dialogues and audio, that is in Czech. You can use a
dictionary and you don't need to be super awesome at the base language in order to use
assimil successfully. (I am now using Spanish based Assimil German and I am not
awesome at Spanish ;-) )
Edited by Cavesa on 23 December 2014 at 5:01pm
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Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3750 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French
| Message 18 of 73 27 December 2014 at 6:23pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for all the suggestions Cavesa, I really appreciate it. :)
Cavesa wrote:
I actually think you might be surprised with your ability to use a German based
Assimil. Really, the key are the dialogues and audio, that is in Czech. You can use a
dictionary and you don't need to be super awesome at the base language in order to use
assimil successfully. (I am now using Spanish based Assimil German and I am not
awesome at Spanish ;-) )
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I’m really tempted now to give this a try. I’m going to think about it for a little
while longer and, maybe after the holidays are over, I’ll look into ordering Assimil
Czech.
If nothing else it might help me with my German. :)
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Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3750 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French
| Message 19 of 73 28 December 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
Getting ready for a whole new year of language learning!
I’ve found that setting concrete goals to focus on is not only helpful but, in my case
at least, almost vital. I’m easily distracted and it doesn’t take much to derail me
from my studies. Because of this I’m trying to think up some goals to aim for in my
languages, but it’s proving to be surprisingly difficult. :(
Something I am interested in is seeing how many hours I can actually manage to put
into each of my languages over the course of the year, so I’m going to try keeping
track of the actual time that I spend studying each language. Nothing too elaborate,
just an ‘x’ language studied for ‘y’ minutes kind of thing.
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patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4526 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German
| Message 20 of 73 28 December 2014 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
I use Daruma dolls!
The doll represents a medium/long-term goal. At the start of the process you fill in one eye, and then when you've completed your goal the other.
I find keeping track of what I'm doing also helpful, but I just make notes of how many pages I've read or movies I've seen.
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Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3750 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French
| Message 21 of 73 31 December 2014 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
Goals for 2015
1. Survive the Uni Year.
I have 4 years of study ahead of me. It’s a daunting task, so I’m trying to take it
one year at a time. The work is difficult, the exams are many and the stress is
mounting. Fortunately 1st year grades don’t count towards the overall degree, so all I
need to do is pass (hopefully I can manage much better than that though).
2. Pass my French Course.
Again, I’d ideally like to do better than ‘just pass’ the course, but I’d be happy if
I managed that. :)
3. Spend less time reading about learning languages and more time learning them.
Honestly, I can spend more time reading about how other people are learning languages
than I do learning them myself. As useful/helpful as it is to see what other people
are doing, I need to start focusing more on my own studies. There has to be a balance
here somewhere and 2015 is the year to find it.
4. Stop procrastinating.
I am an absolute nightmare when it comes to procrastination. If there’s a way to put
something off until later then I’ll be the one to find it...every time. I’m going to
try and keep myself in check and stop leaving everything ‘til the last minute.
5. Read a book in German.
This will be done, no doubt very slowly over the course of the year (and with
the help of a dictionary), but it will be done.
6. Find a Czech Course that I like and finish it.
At the moment I’m still working with Colloquial and I’m not enjoying it at all
(although the stubborn side of me sort of wants to finish it anyway).
7. Keep track of time spent on each language.
As per my last post, I’m intrigued to see how many hours I can actually put into
language learning over the course of the year, so I’m going to keep track of the time
that I spend on each of my languages.
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Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3750 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French
| Message 22 of 73 31 December 2014 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
I've never heard of those before, it's certainly an interesting idea. I think I’ll stick
with pen and paper for now though. :)
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patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4526 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German
| Message 23 of 73 31 December 2014 at 8:05pm | IP Logged |
Rem wrote:
5. Read a book in German.
This will be done, no doubt very slowly over the course of the year (and with
the help of a dictionary), but it will be done.
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I bet you could do this more quickly than a year if you read in ebook format and use a pop-up dictionary. My first book (about 200 pages) took about a month. It gets a lot quicker after that.
I find the one-eyed doll keeps me in check as I start to slack off. Quite an effective technique!
Edited by patrickwilken on 31 December 2014 at 8:15pm
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4902 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 24 of 73 01 January 2015 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
I enjoyed reading these 3 pages of your log. You seem to be doing well. Is your course in
linguistics?
If you're looking for suggestions for French: try linguist.io for reviewing the basics. And
for a great podcast for beginners, search for L'avis death Marie, aimed at A2/B1, with
transcripts for every episode.
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