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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 393 of 415 17 December 2014 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Expug's TAC summary - post 3 of 3 - THE ACTUAL SUMMARY
Now what really matters: reviewing my goals. I will be quoting from my post from the beginning of the year: Russian - Team Katiusha
More or less what I wrote at the team thread: I didn't reach my goal of basic reading fluency. I started native materials in May, with the Super Challenge. i'm less resistent towards the language now, and much of this is credited to the encouragement from my team members that wrote all the time how cool it was to interact with Russian. What I wrote holds true: I'm just going through textbooks in a loose way, and I need much more vocabulary till I can start bilingual reading. Also, I still can't use a Russian textbook in a comfortable way for learning Georgian, leave alone Turkmen or Uzbek. What were the main reasons: the extensive reading at the wrong time and the not-so-focused study (now I realized I could have studied less each in Russian but with more focus; even Assimil Perfectionnement lessons are too long in the sense that they have more unknown words that I can learn comfortably on a day, but I'm guilty for this because I didn't learn the previous levels well enough, in a vicious circle). So, basically with long Assimil lessons and some extensive read pages I got large input that I couldn't absorb in a consistent way. Norwegian - Team Asgard
The advent of December brought good news to Norwegian: I realize I can read comfortably and figure out what's going on, also for the news, thus reaching basic reading fluency. I'm also optimistic with talking though I lack practice, and I think I can have fun watching a TV series with no subtitles, but this has still to be tested, so I won't update my profile by now. Norwegian is one of the reasons I need to practice more, because it costed me another language at 'Speaks'. I practiced mostly through chatting and this isn't to be neglected because I'm at that stage where words and complete sentences keep popping in my head. Mandarin - Team Magpie
Goal reached =D I just mentioned above that the CHinese reading part is my favorite activity of the day. I could never imagine I would reach a level at which I'd have fun with reading those characters. Also, I've learned so much about the Chinese culture from my resources that I just want to learn more, in depth now. I didn't work on the news especifically but I'm learning intensively from my daily reading with Pera-pera. And I talked in Chinese at the bus, with a Chinese that was going to my home state. No visiting shops yet, but I'm quite confident about having an A2-level conversation slightly into B1 and my tones aren't that bad. Passive skills are at a good B1, but a B2 next year would be too ambitious, I think. Georgian - Team Rare
Basic fluency is far away and the lack of subtitles or even dialogues was one of the main hindrances. I'm trying to work it out by reading novels with plenty of dialogues. I'm also going back to textbooks after sessions of massive input that weren't so efficient, and I see a better scenario with this synergy now. I'm quite close to a level where I know enough words in a sentence to learn the remaining ones from context and parallel text, so I'm confident and satisfied even if my goal isn't that far. And Team Rare was such a find, it was really nice to be part of it (don't be jealous Russians and Scandinavians because I was already a member last year, so the novelty here is Team Rare). Estonian - Team *jäŋe / *ledús
I assume my goal was reached, or at least close to that. I started in May, went through several textbooks, some of which were hard, with longer lessons, but I learned much more consistently than I did with my previous languages. That is, I didn't waste my Estonian resources the way I did with my Georgian ones back in 2013. I really enjoy the grammar of the language. Team *jäŋe / *ledús was virtually non-existent, other than pointing me out to Radioclare's great log, so I consider it more as an individual TAC I did (I forgot to mention Team *jäŋe / *ledús when I mentioned Team Exploradores as one that melted down at the first fortnight, at the other post). Papiamento - Team Exploradores
If I'm not mistaken, I ended up making Papiamento part of Team Exploradores. Same as above, it was more of an individual TAC. I believe I was consistent in maintaining the language, and saw great improvements even with low activity each day (3 min news video, 2 pages in a novel). I'm a member of a few Papiamento groups at FB and I posted some replies there, but I could have written a bit more and pray for a native speaker to make some remarks. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 394 of 415 18 December 2014 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Great summary Expugnator and congratulations on everything you have achieved this year
:) It is fascinating to see your routine written down, although I seriously do not know how you managed to keep that up! I think that is a massive achievement in itself! Really interesting to read your thoughts about the Super Challenge too. I feel similarly that I have focussed too much on reading and listening for the second half of the year to the detriment of my active skills. More writing practice is a big goal for me next year. I agree that team *jäŋe / *ledús didn't really do anything! I have joined it again because there isn't any other team that fits my languages, but that's the only reason. I guess it's hard to have a real sense of team effort when everyone is learning such difference languages eg. I know nothing about Estonian at all, but then it seems like Team Rare did a good job this year despite all members having such different languages, so perhaps we just need to try harder for the 2015 TAC :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 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 395 of 415 18 December 2014 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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You (ie Radioclare) are here and me too. Expugnator, Chung and I - we all read your log. The team definitely existed, whether you felt the bonding or not :)
(let's conveniently ignore the fact that you'd be likely to have us as readers even if there wasn't any team...) Edited by Serpent on 18 December 2014 at 1:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 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 396 of 415 18 December 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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And now I've read about the super challenge trap too. Reassuring to see that I'm not the only one who's been struggling with the priorities. The main thread tends to dismiss that as "we're all adults and we can plan our studies effectively"...
Interesting about output. I can see how it may be more important in non-transparent languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4246 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 397 of 415 18 December 2014 at 3:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I similarly found *jäŋe / *ledús to be rather inactive as a group, though I suppose the individual members were all quite active in updating their logs so it ended up functioning a lot better than some other teams I was in where most people stopped posting entirely.
At the moment I'm not signed up for next year, but I realize since I'm already going to be following everyone's logs again anyway I guess I might as well join again for next year. Looking forward to following your log again Expug, it's been one of my most frequent reads this year. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7148 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 398 of 415 18 December 2014 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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The lack of team spirit is on me in that I held the reins loosely but I was still happy that about half a dozen of us updated our logs regularly. Team Rare's postings of occasional summaries on some feature in target languages could have worked in *jäŋe / *ledús too as a kind of team-building exercise although it hadn't occurred to me. On the other hand I effectively was doing that kind of philological exploration by comparing Czech and Slovak throughout the year in my log.
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| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 399 of 415 18 December 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I didn't mean it to sound like I wasn't grateful to people who have posted advice in my log :) And I agree with YnEoS that it seems a lot of us been quite active individually, which is more than can be said for some teams. I guess it's just that our team thread was quite dead (apart from Chung's updates); I think we've just had more team discussion here in Expug's log than we have managed for the entire rest of the year :D But I haven't been in any other teams so I don't really know what we could do differently.
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| 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 400 of 415 18 December 2014 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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It is an interesting discussion, guys! Thank you Radioclare, Serpent, YnEoS and Chung. You guys are right, I did get in touch with most of *jäŋe / *ledús' members, we actually 'meet' all the time through the forum, it's just the team spirit that lacked, maybe some common discussion going on. Interesting that Serpent, Radioclare, YnEoS and I all tried the massive input approach but noticed its shortcomings. YnEoS was responsive enough to change his methods and make a consistent path based on Sub2srs, but I'm reluctant to do SRS so I'm still trying to find the right balance so I can reap better results in 2015, given the amount of investment I make every day.
Today I finally managed to finish all my tasks on time. Still later than I'd have expected, but this is mostly due to Estnisch Lehrbuch. Now I have at least 1 1/2 hour left, and I want to read the forum and then I may even start Learn Norwegian, as I was supposed to start today. It turns out tomorrow is my last day before vacation, and it's likely I am going to spend at least 2 weeks with little to no studying. Estnisch Lehrbuch: today the dialogue was a bit more boring, and I skimmed through some parts. I believe the overall result is quite effective but I need to practice output to consolidate what I learned especially in terms of grammar/declension. A follow-up on what I wrote in my summary about the importance of graded materials for non-transparent languages: when the materials are way over your head, you try to learn all the words at once and end up learning almost zero. I'm still suffering with Russian because of that. Published my post in French from The Book Club at Lang-8 and italki. Finished Gruzinskij jazyk. Samouchitel', the one I referred to as the Georgian-Russian textbook! I was planning on finishing it yesterday, but I took my time for writing the summary, and so there were still a few pages left for today. I bought this book even if my Russian isn't optimal so as to follow the explanations. My idea was to have a new source of introductory dialogues for Georgian, because most of the resources we have are grammar references and pay little attention to the spoken language. In this respect, beggars can't be choosers. I believe this book has a learning curve way too steep, and Basic Georgian by Tamar Makharoblidze is more learner-friendly, but the source of dialogues at Gruzinskij jazyk: Samouchitel' is unique, and the grammar explanations were satisfactory. I'd recommend it as a sequel to books like Beginner's Georgian by Dodona Kiziria, as this one here goes much further in grammar. Unfortunately there is no accompanying audio. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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