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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 177 of 415 03 April 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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Now, back to daily life! The day was special enough (and there is more to come after
work), but there was still so much time for the normal studies. Jeg er ferdig med å lese Beatles Jeg må innrømme at jeg er litt lei av lydbøker. Min neste bok skal ha bare tekst. Det heter 'En annen tid, et annet liv' og det er faktisk en oversettelse fra svensk, men det er ingen problem. I dag har jeg fortsett å se på 'Hjem' med undertekster på svensk, og jeg er glad at jeg kunne forstå mye fra den norske tale, uten å se på undertekster. Jeg har også blitt vant til den svenske undertekster som jeg bruker av og til. Noen ganger forstår jeg enten den norske audio eller den svenske tekst, men det bli bedre med tid. Je crois que je me suis de nouveau habitué au Français parlé dans les films. Aujourd'hui j'ai réussi a entendre des argots comme 'fringues', bagnoles, 'flics', Ce qui me rend heureux dans mes études de Français c'est que j'ai réussi à apprendre un peu sur plusieurs registres de la langue. As for Georgian and Russian, I'm really happy about my current resources. I am learning such a conversational Georgian from Culture Talk which I didn't have in any other textbooks, and I'm starting to see the same words there and in the other resources (the book Na margem do Rio Piedra... and the TED dialogues). I just realized I have to speed up with Kurze Grammatike der Georgische Sprachen, or else it will take me over 5 months to complete it! I am struggling with the German, actually, as the explanations on Georgian are still introductory. So, I believe that when I finish Perfectionnement Allemand I'll be able to tackle with more German text at once. The way it is today, If I read too much from Kurze Grammatik I will go for Perfectionnement Allemand already mentally exhausted with German. I'm having nearly interemediate Russian from Russianpod while I'm consolidating the basics from Russe 90. This time I am really writing down the exercises from Russe 90, and I hope now my Russian is being activated and I'm becoming familiarized with the declensions. I don't really want to progress now until I've mastered this. My Chinese Breeze book is kinda transparent. I don't even have to look anything up. Maybe it means I know more than 300 Chinese characters, after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 178 of 415 05 April 2014 at 4:48pm | IP Logged |
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I'm reporting on a Saturday, which isn't usual, but today I got the time I didn't have
yesterday. I don't remember exactly what I was supposed to report yesterday but I believe there were some important issues to deal with. 'Hjem' is complete now, that is, the first season. I may not feel attached enough to the story to get a second season, but I'm glad I'm understanding more and more from it. I did have a desperate moment with Norwegian when I started reading the book 'En annen tid, et annet liv' and realized I had to look up every other word. I looked up lots of words and would often loose track when I went back to the text. That's what happens when you read material way above your level, and that's why I prefer to stick to translations as far much I am comfortable. Even so, I had just finished the book 'Beatles' and I thought I was ready to read extensively in Norwegian, so, at that very moment I felt devastated. I could only read 2 pages back then. But time is always teaching us lessons, and this time the lesson came quickly. After I was done with everything, I went to the book again and opened it just to stare at it and realize that at the pace of 2 pages a day it would take me 1 year to go through it (considering 200 study days in a year). But then I decided to take a second look at the text and decided that if I went further I'd be able to follow the story. So, it was actually looking up every word that was jeopardizing my understanding. Now I decided to stick to plan as in 'Beatles': to look up mostly the essential words and to stop looking up and going for full sentences instead when it gets too confusing. I have to keep myself committed to 10 pages a day because the Super Challenge is coming and I'm aiming for a half challenge at Norwegian. Back to the series, I will keep searching for more but I won't worry that much. There's always Ylvis as a rather long source. Besides, I think I've reached a level at which it's ok to just watch 10 minutes of a movie a day, as I do with French. That would have the advantage of giving me 10 minutes to use with German. I'll think about it, there's enough time. I will try to read 'Perfectionnement Allemand's' notes in advance this weekend, so that I can focus on the lessons more comfortably next week. I will be done with this course probably in two weeks, then I will decide whether I'm going for native material or for an advanced course from Deutsche Welle. I'm not having an easy time with Kurze Grammatik der Georgische Sprachen, and sometimes I skip some sentences without having understood everything, but it's also because the Georgian content itself isn't relevant. What I will learn the most from this book is syntax, based on the good sample sentences it brings upon. 'Culture Talk' is getting better each day. I can't wait to get to a better level at another less common language so that I can use its resources :-) For greater languages there's just so much out there that I'd stick with TV and movies with subtitles, anyway. Not the case of Georgian. Btw, I think i'm starting to consolidate a second layer of intermediate vocabulary, thanks to the synergy among all three resources. If this happens later this year, I'll have an important goal accomplished. I need to get hold of more Chinese audiobooks, preferably without pinyin but with translation. It works just so well and I'm also at a better level. Reading Chinese does feel like cracking a code. Only my spoken Chinese is non-existent yet. Btw, a friend suggested the cartoon 蜡笔小新 which is translated from Japanese but seems quite interesting. I have so much I want to watch and read for Chinese, that I wish I had more time for it! Working on Memrise HSK3. I decided I will skip the pinyin chapters when the characters are only a review from HSK1&2. I won't water any of the chapters that contain only review either. That way, I'll have a more calm agenda and focus on actually learning new characters that will bring me further, as I'd been spending a lot of time just tapping mechanically on characters I'm already familiar with. Russian is already the language of the year. I finally managed to reach a level at which I start to enjoy it. Can't wait to take more native materials either. OTOH, I just decided to do only 1 lesson a day from Russe 90 and really manage to focus, instead of doing the first lesson in a rush in order to save time for the 2nd. That means it will take me around three months to finish the book, almost as much as an Assimil, but it doesn't matter, because I believe I'm doing the right thing this time. Besides, I'm still learning new stuff from Russianpod, and I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot. So, it's like I'm both reviewing and moving on, which is great. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| glauco Bilingual Triglot Newbie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3880 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese*, EnglishC1 Studies: French, Japanese | Message 179 of 415 06 April 2014 at 12:08pm | IP Logged |
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Expugnator,
How is it going, I am reading your topics and sounds really amazing your experiences and insights, well in other forum I heard your name and some comments make me curious. They mentioned that: Expugnator is a Master of safe time.... What are the techniques to speed up languages studies and safe time? I was Studying in the united states Tongan, English and Spanish at the same time that was one amazing experience of my live a did try not spend time will a fool sacrifice of time and methods instead i Did develop my personal method to learn languages. Best Regards Muito Obrigado de verdade... Abraços 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 180 of 415 07 April 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the kind words, glauco. I don't know what you have heard exactly, but I'm
not really fast at learning languages: I study a bit from each of them each day because that's the amount I manage to take. What I write about is how to use the time of a day to learn more effectively. Ou seja, eu não aprendo rápido, pelo contrário, meu progresso é lento, porque só dou conta de estudar um pouco de cada língua por vez. Mas o que o pessoal comenta é que eu consigo fazer bastante coisa num dia só, e é isso que vou tentar explicar. I try to work on tasks that don't take much long, 15-20 minutes is ok. So, if I'm going to study Chinese, I study 15 minutes from a textbook, then watch TV for another 15 minutes, then listen to a podcast for another 15 minutes, then I read for another 15 minutes. I also alternate between languages, that is, I don't do everything Chinese at once, I do one activity for Chinese, then another one for Russian, then French etc. You should also be sure you have different types of activities according to your availability. Not all activities require me to have a computer with internet and earphones. For example, if I have an appointment at the doctor, I leave the reading activity to be done while I'm waiting. On the other hand, if I am working on a repetitive task I plug in my earphones and listen to podcasts on Chinese and Russian. There are repetition/flashcard softwares such as Anki and Memrise which I leave for whenever there is a break and I can't start/dedicate fully to another activity. At least for myself, when you alternate, you can do much more. I know that I lose focus after 20 minutes of reading, so why try to read 100 pages at once? I'd rather read for 20 minutes then do some listening (also to give my eyes a break) then maybe watch a movie or try to write a paragraph. That why I can always keep myself entertained. It's also wise to have 'extra' activities in case you do have extra time. This happens rather often. So, when I have more time for Chinese, I don't waste time thinking about what to do: I go straight for the TV series I like to watch in such cases. Feel free to ask any further questions. Good luck in the US! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 181 of 415 07 April 2014 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
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The weekend
It was rather intense in terms of reading and stuff. The weather is shifting and so I might have caught up a little cold and a sore throat. Today I am more tired than usual, but still managed to accomplish my daily schedule. During the weekend, I focused mostly on reading the notes from Assimil Perfectionnement Allemand in advance, as I mentioned here before. What I did this weekend was read all the notes plus review lessons from lesson 32 to 49 - enough to finish this week. Next weekend I'll try to do the remaining ones up to lesson 56. Lesson 49 was actually the final reviewing lesson, which means all that is left are the notes from lesson 50 to 56. Reading those notes beforehand was quite good to prepare my spirit for today's German studies. I managed to read a bit longer at Kurze Grammatik der Georgischen Sprache (dorenavant KGGS) without risking to be Germansick. I then studied the Assimil lessons from Perfectionnement German and did the exercises, only skipping the dreadful notes which I went through the day before. I believe I'm not missing important stuff for my current level, but I hope when I reach the same intricacies later I'll be able to recall those from my subsconscious - saw that happen before. When the resource you're using wants to teach unuseful stuff at your stage, you can choose to go for it only at the intensity you feel you need - and that's what I usually do. Still on the weekend, I also did some lyricstraining in Italian and French. This has turned into a good pastime when I've just read enough. I did keep up with Anki, Memrise and Tuttle Flashcards, but no text or voicechat. Today I got up a bit later, waited till I was feeling better, so when I came back from the gym I still had Memrise to do and I had to watch Tutu while having brunch. I missed more than I usually do, but it was still useful. When I run out of Tutu I want to keep working on cartoons of humans in daily life, not of sheep or fairies or dragons or zords. That is always my choice, to go for the daily life story instead of the fantasy. That way immersion seems to work better, at least for me. I can worry less about the plot and focus on using this form of art to understand how a given culture - be it the French, the Georgians, the Chinese - view themselves and the world- what it means to them to be modern or conservative/traditional. I'm having quite an amount of Russian daily - 10 pages of Russianpod's lessons plus 1 lesson from Russe 90 which I'm studying almost intensively, that is, as much close to intensive as my learning style can get. If I notice I'm learning cases satisfactorily, I may feel encouraged to try activating some Russian knowledge. I plan to start parallel reading in a couple of months. Today I became fully aware that the alarm on Norwegian was exaggerated. I can still read Norwegian extensively and follow the plot. Not I'm more familiar with the ambassade issues at the novel I'm reading now. I realized one more technical feature: since the book is an epub, I can just copy/paste it at GT and look at the English translation when necessary. I'm doing it when I really lose track or want to know a specific word. More efficient than looking up individual words. I finished the French film "Tais-toi". I liked the comedy and I liked the use I made of it. Towards the second half I was understanding quite enough. So, I think I just need more practice in order to become familiar with the words and contexts at such films. Tomorrow I'm starting a new one, a drama, which means I need to renew my comedies stock. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 182 of 415 08 April 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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A busy day but nonetheless I could do a lot. Only that I think my study routine wasn't
that much intense: no new materials started, no 'insights'. When you are at earlier stages, it is hard to study a language for a long time. I used to study Chinese from two textbooks, a total of 30-45'. I couldn't take any texts, even translated, or TV series, even with subtitles. Now I'm actually eager to do more. It's not always possible, but when it is, that makes me happy. I either read a short text or watch TV for a couple of minutes. There's also the other side: with languages such as French and Norwegian, I did longer video sessions in the first year (or semester, don't remember) and now I think the amount I'm learning daily doesn't account for watching longer: I can watch videos for only 10 minutes and still make progress (and have fun). As for reading, it's the opposite: I want to be able to improve my Norwegian reading so I can read longer each day, at least 10 pages. Now I can do 10 pages rather extensively. OTOH, I read 20 pages in French and I find it to be boring and tiresome to stop in the middle of the afternoon and focus on reading for that long, especially when the content itself doesn't help much. So, the thing is: I'd like to do even more for Chinese (and I think I'm ok with Georgian, but I'm reading less in Chinese than in Georgian). What I'd like to do: - Watch at least 10 minutes more of Chinese series or cartoons (I'm really enjoying it) - Start watching videos in German - Start parallel reading in German - Start parallel reading in Russian Following on the rant of the previous days, I believe I'm slowly getting used to chatting more in my target languages. Only voicechat has been neglected as I've indeed been busier. I will try to gain more confidence through text-chatting in Mandarin. After all, people are always busy at the voicechat while there are many people at the text chat. On a side note, I read 4 pages from KGGS extensively while waiting. I could understand the explanations and only missed a few examples, that is, words I didn't understand in either Georgian or German. The topic was word formation. I also read 6 pages extensively from the Norwegian novel, wasn't that bad. I finished the reading with the help of the translation from GT, just to make sure I'd keep track. Yet it seems to be getting easier. Once the abstract nouns from politics, public administration, police become familiar, it's much easier to follow the story than at the case of the novel Beatles, which had a lot of slang. One issue that is causing me some trouble are long sentences in either Chinese or German or Georgian. I still believe sometimes I could manage to decode the sentence, had I persevered and tried again. I have trouble specifically at TED-Talk subtitles (Georgian), Travel in Chinese and the Norwegian novel I'm reading (En annen tid, et annet liv). Well, I'll try to get it down little by little: working intensively on each long period that turns up would lead to burnout. I'll keep some more obscure - or more interesting - and focus on them for a while. In the case of Chinese, I lack some grammar, because there are some characters that seem to be "extra" when compared to the translation, and I guess they cover specific nuances such as aspect or even politeness. I'm confident. It's not even three months that I started the current set of materials and I'm seeing good progress, namely from Travel in Chinese, Russianpod, Culture Talk: Georgian and TEDiSubs with Georgian. I wish I could say the same from native-language only materials such as Tutu or the Norwegian series Hjem, but so far my listening progress has been more noticeable only in French: what was good is getting better, while the other languages are still lagging behind in terms of listening comprehension. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 183 of 415 09 April 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged |
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Morning
I've started a new routine since yesterday: I've started listening to the Chinese podcast while still at home, having brunch, getting ready to work. I could even pay a a bit more attention than usual. I should just make sure not to go further from the stereo, because the sound quality isn't that good, since I'm used to listening through earphones. All in all, that means I'm a bit more organized in the morning, even if I'm still not making it to Skype or Sharedtalk. Still not much luck at text-chatting in Chinese...it seems hard to find people to talk to and hard to start chatting. I had a better time at watching Tutu. I did it after Memrise and I could focus entirely on it. That's the way to go, I believe. The episode was about Tutu learning to appreciate his dad's abilities when compared to other children's fathers. Culture Talk With the advance from the morning and no significant interruptions, I managed to finish my schedule after only 5 hours. That leaves me 4 hours for some pending tasks I need to accomplish - and I also expect to watch a bit more of Chinese. I am enjoying Culture Talk a lot - it only opens weirdly at OpenOffice, the characters get crutched in a way I can add spaces between them till they stay at normal space, but when I paste the Georgian text at GT it is normal. So, when this issue happens, I copy/paste the text at GT and mix Georgian and English, so I can follow through the accurate translation from Culture Talk and avoid looking at the automated one from GT. So far, the material is working really well for me. They're giving a sense of coloquialism I wouldn't find on textbooks, on a TV series or a film with a script or on a resource like GLOSS (which doesn't exist for Georgian, anyway). Norwegian novel The Norwegian novel is still hard to find. New characters keep being introduced, and there aren't many dialogues. It still sounds like a university paper about violence. Long paragraphs that are more opinative than even descriptive. I do lose track from one day to another, it seems to be unrelated. Now I start to become aware of some characters, and I hope I can follow a linear plot. Michael Ende I used to like watching The NeverEnding Story. Thanks to Assimil's Perfectionnement, I found out the author of the novels, Michael Ende, is German, and that there are other books such as Momo, which seem inspiring. One more incentive for me to go for German reading - I have as much good stuff I want to read in German as the ones I want to watch in Chinese - materials I'd be interested at even apart from language-learning. I think that's the way to go. Georgian again I'm getting more comfortable with reading KGGS in German, despite having to translate obscure words. Believe it or not, it does happen more often that I know the Georgian word and not the German one - in this case I don't need to translate, of course. I'm going through a sequence of longer TEDs, over 15 minutes, so I don't always bother to pause and follow subtitles in Portuguese and Georgian. I do it better with shorter videos. It doesn't mean the videos aren't being useful - on the contrary. When the sentences aren't that long, I can more or less keep track of the content while comparatively hearing the English and looking at the Georgian and the Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. It helps that now I have a better command of spoken English, that is, I can process it closer to real-time, and so I can really make it work like an inverted L-R exercise. And since I do the 'normal' L-R exercise from Culture Talk, I think my Georgian routine is being productive. Perhaps it's time to resume writing short paragraphs. Edited by Expugnator on 09 April 2014 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 184 of 415 10 April 2014 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
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I will have to start my update from yesterday, that is, after my previous post. I
managed to finish watching my first episode of 后厨, but something worried me. I was following the final soundtrack with subtitles, and when the characters displayed looked like 喜欢, I didn't actually here 喜欢 when expected. I have no (big) reasons to believe it's not mandarin, but it might be a non-standard dialect though, there is, no Beijing dialect. I tried to google for some info, but no luck so far. If anyone is curoius about the series, you can look v=zD7NN1zom7s">here and scroll to the final two minutes to check the final song. Today wasn't a busy day but I decided to go slower. I spent some time trying to solve some issues with my trip to Buenos Aires (which is likely to be cancelled). I also lost some time with Ted videos which weren't loading, thanks to the rather instable connection. I figured I'd try to copy the transcrips and make the parallel texts on my own, even though that means I won't be able to watch the video, only audio (as I'll be reading the transcripts in an OpenOffice document while the video will be played at YT). Today it wasn't necessary, fortunately. I went for another task and, when I returned, the videos were already getting loaded well at the Ted app at my device. I gave an iTalki/Skype class in the morning, from 6 to 7 am. That caused a little bit of delay, but I managed to make up for it. As a result, I could watch Tutu and, although it seemed harder than yday, I could still focus. I also remained logged at Sharedtalk but nothing happened. It seems the people at the voicechat are always paired , busy in conversations between themselves, and there's only one person available at once which usually isn't a Chinese. As for chatting, I didn't find any Chinese people who are studying Portuguese and no one contacted me. Next time I will start contacting people who are learning English or even Spanish or French randomly. Working with KGGS is still being too boring. I'm at a chapter about suffixes and I'm mostly translating a wordlist from German. It's almost like doing SRS. I will stay at this pace for two more days - who knows, maybe if I'm advanced tomorrow I can do 8 pages in a row. On the other hand, I start fo feel there is an important synergy going on among Culture Talk, the bilingual reading of Paulo Coelho's book (just got a new one in Georgian, btw) and the TED Talk. The Culture Talk dialogues are making the language awfully familiar, and now I start to make sense of the sentences on my own - that is, I have few words enough to be able to look up the first one in the sentence and still figure out the whole sentence. That looks promising, and even more so because it is also happening with the TED Talk dialogues! I'd really recommend the Culture Talk + TED Talk combo for a post-textbook stage. You get informal and formal registers, daily conversation and academic/scientific/non-fictional language at once. Adn this for Georgian, a language who has been so short in terms of resources and which possesses a grammar that does bring up some trouble. I will start Indonesian, maybe next year, and I already have an idea of a path for it, and it will involve much less textbooks than for my previous languages: it will go like this: A beginner's textbook -> Assimil/Indonesianpod -> Culture Talk/Ted Talk. Now, TED Talk has the same issue with resources such as book2: you do risk running out of new content for your new language. There are enough translations even for Georgian which is a less-common language, but as you start to make it a main resource for major languages you will have to search harder for dialogues you haven't started yet, or at least to keep track of them. I really dislike having to search for resources on the go, and this is one of the reasons I avoid watching cartoons, for example, which are at YT but not numbered for season and episode (or even a self-made number is ok). In the case of TED, I can always go for 'date de parution', as I'm doing with Georgian, but I'll have to intertwine some languages occasionally, let's say, I decide to watch a dialogue from March 2012 with subtitles in French, then I go for Russian and have to pick another, close to it, I'll have to make sure I'm not repeating it - or worse - not risking skipping a good talk due to this fear of repetition. I'm not saying all this out of a purpose. I've learned the hard way that a good resource management concurs to a good time management and a good productivity. I keep a small phonebook/diary next to me where I write down not what I've done today, but what I'm going to do the next day. So, the next day I read those notes and I know exactly where to start: I know that I'm going to do lesson 40 at the Elementary level of the podcast; I know that I paused the book at page 21 and the audio track at 00:38; that French film I watch roughly 10 minutes a day is now at 32:20. That saves up a lot of time when one is doing over 20 activities, even if not all activities are noted down now (yeah, having all those 20+ activities 'to do' would be a bit scary and make the task seem harder than it is - i do focus on the essential; for example, the epub books I read just keep bookmarked by themselves). Speaking of the French film, today it's 'De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté'. At one scene, a Chinese guy wants to find a piano teacher to the main character; they get to the teacher's apartment and the Chinese guy and his Chinese friend start to talk in Chinese - and I could follow most of it! It didn't sound like a blur in my French comprehensio, it rather sounded like I was just code-switiching ! One thing: the video has hardcoded English subtitles for the French, but the Chinese got no subtitles. The Chinese guy only reports to the French what her pianist Chinese friend said, in a loose way. If I decided to pause and focus, I'd probably be able to understand and even transcribe most of these dialogues. I'm a little caught up by the Norwegian series Hjem now, though I don't think my comprehension has increased comprehensively. I don't know, my next series isn't likely to have subtitles and I don't know if I'm ready for that, even after over one year of watching series over 20 minutes a day. I still don't have reading fluency, anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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