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Sizen’s Deuxième 旅立ち | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4345 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 49 of 57 08 October 2014 at 5:13am | IP Logged |
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Busy, busy, busy.
Well not really. Just the normal workload one would expect from a full university schedule. I'm a little late to say this, but my first (real) month of university has come to an end, and I'm feeling very confident. My insecurity had me believing that I would be unable to deal with a full university workload, but I'm proving myself wrong so far. It's a little stressful sometimes because of the little voice in the back of my head, but I've locked him up as best as I can and hopefully won't be hearing from him for a while. Being busier than normal, I've had a lot less time to think or let my mind wander, which has been wonderful. I've been settling down into a somewhat inconsistent schedule that's working for me and I've also been cutting myself more slack in regards to languages and other such stuff. This may sound like a bad thing for my language studies, but I think it's a necessary step at this point. I was starting to feel that I had reached a plateau with my French and while studying in French is certainly helping my academic French, it doesn't really help on all levels. I've been living through French for a while now and have reached a respectable level (in my opinion), but there's still a ways to go. What I need to do now is push my limits if I want to achieve my goal. This sounds contrary to what I just said about relaxing a little, but I'm not talking about my linguistic limits. No, it's time to push myself as a person. (I love how language learning fits so nicely into self- improvement!) I don't regret my past, but these last few years have been filled with a lot of self- doubt and soul-searching that has only gotten me so far. As a result, I've missed opportunities of finding new interests, learning new things, meeting new people and exploring different levels of relationships. There's no way of going back and redoing all this, and I'm not sure it would be a good idea anyway: no matter how many times one tries, the desired result will never be fully achieved. What I can do is pretend to be 16 years old again. Ahhh, what a glorious time. Not a worry for the future, just enjoying the present and all it has to offer. No time spent reminiscing about the good old days and how things have changed in such a short period of time, no worrying that I've spent my time in the wrong way: just focusing on what I can do now. So yeah, I honestly don't think I'll be able to improve my languages much more unless I do this. I've plateau'd and it's not my techniques that are hindering me; it's me and my way of life. Time to enjoy my interests (I mean, I'm already spending enough hours doing serious studies throughout the week), get closer with some of my friends and just see where all this leads me. I've never much been one for keeping a blog or doing any sort of consistent writing like a diary, so I apologize for my sporadic updates. Anyway, see you all next time, whenever that may be! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4150 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 50 of 57 08 October 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged |
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Very interesting update. Thanks for sharing! And good luck with whatever it is that you decide to focus on...I look
forward to hearing how things work out! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4915 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 51 of 57 08 October 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged |
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I'm glad to see you'll be cutting yourself a bit of slack. Getting stressed about study doesn't do much to improve it, in my limited experience. I'm also looking forward to hearing how it goes, but don't worry if it continues to be sporadic. The last thing we want is for your log to increase your stress as a busy student.
By the way, how's the French writing class going? R U riting good yet? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4345 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 52 of 57 08 October 2014 at 10:05pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks all for your responses! It's encouraging to know I'm not just talking with my
screen! Look at that, two days of posting in a row. It's a miracle! @Jeffers I'm writing sew gud thanx fer aksing.:P My first piece of writing has been corrected and I got 98% (lost some points because my teacher wants me to put semicolons before "alors"... Is that... normal?). And oddly enough, this is very discouraging, not because I'm disappointed, but because it goes to show how little this class is going to help me improve my French. The marking criteria is slack because most of the other students are at a level where it would be unfair to take points off for every little mistake or for sentences that make sense but a native wouldn't say. I guess it's my fault if I don't learn anything from the class though. I played it safe with my first assignment because I wanted a good mark so my GPA wouldn't take a hit, but I could probably learn more if I didn't limit myself to sentences I'm sure are correct. But then my GPA... It's probably not worth the hit it'll take. Besides, lang-8 is a safer environment to experiment in. So anyway, just a short* update because I'm a little excited. *(This was my original intention: short. But open rereading my update, it's not so short, is it?) About two(?) months ago, I tried to have a conversation in Spanish with a friend of mine, and it was just an embarrassing experience. I couldn't form sentences and the little I did manage to say was on little subjects like "what I do to study" and "There's a fan in my room. It isn't bothering you, is it?" As a result, I decided that I would maybe do what I did with French: wait until I'm already able to have a decent conversation before I start having conversations. Good plan, right? Well, it worked with French and I don't think I'm any worse off, but it's a little dissatisfying to give up like that. Either way, time passed and I got distracted by other languages, but I've been slowly getting back on track with Spanish. I've been going through Perfectionnement Espagnol slowly (read up to lesson 8 and did various exercises and activities to review some of the lessons) and this week I also read through a visual novel in Spanish (about ~12 hours of reading), so I've been feeling a bit more confident. And just a few hours ago, I skyped with my friend again and decided to just go for it in Spanish without even warning her. It was kind of an amazing experience. I'm so self-conscious when I speak in languages other than French and English because I don't feel capable of having any form of intelligent conversation. So in the end, I usually tense up and don't really get anywhere. But today, I just pushed through and had a lovely conversation about REAL SUBJECTS. Holy crap, I didn't just talk about "how I learn Spanish" and "why I learned French". We actually just had one of our regular conversations, but in Spanish. Sure, I didn't know a bunch of words and I spoke slowly, but I think we both felt that the conversation went acceptably well, especially considering my track record. I always knew it was possible to have conversations at low levels; it's just always been something I felt uncomfortable about, something that other people do. I always preferred making sure I was "ready" for conversation before having that first conversation. And hey, like I said, it's worked out for my French. But today I proved to myself that it's not all that scary to have a conversation where you don't feel at all in control of anything. Okay, I was frightened, but it went well at least! The other thing that I've proven to myself is that "confidence" really does play a big part in having normal conversations in a foreign language. The most I did since my last Spanish conversation was a couple of articles on lang-8, a bit of Anki, an attempt to use Duolingo (1 day), 8 lessons of Assimil and one visual novel. I'm not saying this hasn't helped me improve, but the level of conversation I was capable of today was not thanks to my ~20 hours of study in the past 2 months. The real change was my attitude, which is an amazing thing to have finally experienced. I guess I'll have to continue pushing on like this: even my friend said, "Whatever you did to improve this much, keep doing it." Little did she know my secret was confidence, buahaha! *organ music* Obviously there's still a long ways to go and I wouldn't say I speak Spanish, but maybe in a couple years' time I'll make it happen! Anyway, I was just happy and thought I'd share. Back to the batcave now: I have my French class in a couple hours and I want to get some reading done before that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4345 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 53 of 57 18 October 2014 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
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So things have been going well. I've got some exams coming up in most of my classes,
so I've been spending a lot of time reviewing but have managed to keep up my language studies at the same time. I have a German class now, for those who don't know, and my original plan was to take it easy until next year so that the class itself wouldn't feel too boring. However, my laid-back attitude has got me in trouble, as I'm starting to feel as if I'm lagging behind in class. Luckily, there's an easy solution for this: Duolingo and Assimil. I've been taking some time to go though at least a lesson of each every day and I'm already starting to feel as if I'm back on track. Simply studying the material given in class doesn't seem to do much for me. I just don't remember much. Assimil has never let me down though, and Duolingo, while not the most entertaining method, has definitely helped with my vocabulary. To be completely honest, though, I'm a little ticked off that I have to do this. I love German, and have since I was 13 or so, but I'd much rather just be focusing on French and Spanish right now. Why did I have to go into linguistics where I need to study TWO foreign languages!? I've also been continuing with my Spanish. I've done up to lesson 12 in Perfectionnement Espagnol and have found it very useful. My focus, lately, has been expressions and collocations. I'm usually a word guy, but I had been feeling more and more that I should spend more time on combinations of words. The result is oddly satisfying. I wrote an article on lang-8 in Spanish yesterday, and while some corrections were required, it didn't really bother me. The reason for this is that I felt that the flow of my article and my use of expressions was much more natural compared to previous articles in Spanish where I relied to heavily on my knowledge of French to get things down. I also had another short conversation in Spanish today and I'm pleased to say that I'll be continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. Despite my inability to express myself exactly as I would like to be able to in Spanish, I've shown myself that it's still possible to enjoy myself in this kind of situation. I don't feel ready yet to have long, three hour conversations like I do in French and English, but I'll get there eventually! French, French, French. How I do love you. We've had a really good time lately, haven't we? Lots of reading done (visual novel plus a real novel), lots of free time spent on French activities (browsing the internet, youtube) and, of course, getting through my classes. I've started playing around with Parisian French for the fun of it, as well. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but it's never felt like the time was right. What I mean by Parisian French, by the way, is the way that people my age in Paris speak in general. This includes the accent and the expressions, many of which I was already familiar with. I've had to make some choices (to palatalize or not my t's and d's?), but I'm hoping it'll go well. I've already talked with some of my French friends for some pointers (luckily one of them is studying linguistics too!), and they've been a great help. Right now, my accent isn't... terrible, but I have a hard time using it to speak. Reading texts is a heck of a lot better because I don't have to think about my production. Anyway, I'm still keeping my Quebecois accent, but it'll be interesting to see if it's possible to maintain two different accents and vocabularies in the same language. And once again, this is all just for fun! Oh yeah, and I guess Japanese should be in this post too... but honestly, there's no hope anymore. I'm already rather busy with French, Spanish and German, which are all in some way related to my studies, and I can't really find the time to get any meaningful study done. On top of that, I just have a hard time motivating myself to find stuff to do in Japanese when I have so much to do in French and Spanish. I could probably fit it into my schedule if I really wanted to, but I think I'd just be spreading myself too thin. I'm sure I'll come back to Japanese again one day (I haven't been studying it on and off for the past ~6 years for nothing!), but I think I need to retire it for now. That about sums it up. Hope everyone else has been having a good week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4345 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 54 of 57 31 October 2014 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
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I just finished lesson 21 of Perfectionnement Espagnol, and have been enjoying it
immensely. The course was published in 2011, and I think the original Assimil Spanish course I did was from 1932 or something crazy like that. I have to admit I was a little worried that this one wouldn't be as interesting as the one from 1932 since people mention how newer course aren't often as good as the older ones. This has not been the case though. The lessons are well put together and I feel like there's a good mix of new material that is immediately useful in conversations and everyday reading, and words/expressions that will come in handy later when I start reading more. What's more, the pacing of the grammar notes are just perfect. The notes for each lesson are often for things that are hindering my comprehension, and the points covered in review lessons almost always cover questions that I just started wondering about. I've never felt like any of the lessons have been opaque because of a missing explanation or because of high level vocabulary that's out of my reach. The only fault I've found is that there have been a couple lessons on the autonomous communities of Spain that have been particularly interesting. The one on the Valencian Community was great and talked about some interesting cultural activities, but the ones on Galicia and Extremadura focused too much on the geography and generally touristic stuff. It could have been nice with some pictures and a longer explanation of everything, but Assimil doesn't really have the room for that. I'm one third of the way one, but I'm definitely finding it very useful and entertaining so far. Two thirds to go and I guess I'm on my own! In other news, it's reading week so I have no classes. I've been taking advantage of this break to let loose and indulge in some other language related activities that I didn't really have any time for. Basically, I studied all the languages: French, Spanish, Japanese, Catalan, German and Icelandic. I don't plan on continuing like this, but it was fun while it lasted and was a much needed respite from my regular courses. As a result, however, I'm more and more certain that the next language I'll learn to speak after Spanish will be Catalan. I've already been very interested in the language since last year when I heard a song for the first time in Catalan. I then taught myself to read a bit of the language and have been waiting eagerly ever since to learn the language for real, quenching my linguistic thirst with the occasional glance at the Assimil course I bought for myself. I think it would be a bad idea for me to start learning it now, with my Spanish at such a fragile stage (and because I also have to learn German for university!). And yes, I finally took a real look at some Icelandic: phonology, basic phrases, comparison with other Germanic languages like Anglo-saxon. Makes me wish I knew more from the Germanic language family other than English, a little German and even less Swedish. I also found a new Icelandic group I like: Rökkurró. I used to make the joke that I'd like to learn Irish Gaelic when I retire, but I think Icelandic might have to be my new retirement language! I think my wanderlust has been dealt with for now, though, so it's back to French, Spanish and German. I might have to make a habit out of these week-long stints of language exploration. I feel like it's done me some good, especially for the accumulated stress from my classes. I'll definitely try to do the same during the winter break. And there you have it! The events of the second half of October. Edited by Sizen on 31 October 2014 at 7:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5482 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 55 of 57 03 November 2014 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
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Hi Sizen,
I just read through around 60% of your log. Very interesting journey, insights and experiences. I was genuinely excited at points to see what would hapen next in your journey as I read through. I'm genuinely happy for you Sizen, that you're realizing your goals - it's so cool that you've moved to Québec to undergo studies in linguistics. I must say your style is a little different to mine. In contrast to yourself and Jeffers, I've found that when I 'go with the flow' with relation to my language studies, I don't do enough. I have to be regimented, and despite this requiring me to push myself from time to time, the vast majority of the time I feel compelled to study as I've become 'automated' by my routine and I genuinely enjoy this. An exception as you read was October, perhaps I just needed to lose control for a bit to still feel human. Anyway excellent blog, some realy good links too, thank you for those, i'll be keeping in touch, good luck with your continuing studies Sizen! PM 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4345 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 56 of 57 08 November 2014 at 8:01am | IP Logged |
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@PeterMollenburg My way of studying is far from being the most efficient, but
it appears to be the only way that really works out well for me. At times, I really feel like I should be studying more, but I often burn out exceedingly fast. I used to have much more stamina back when I was studying Japanese, but I haven't really been able to put as much dedicated study time into a language since then. So a little update. Feeling frustrated with some of my classes that I haven't found as interesting as I would have liked, I've started working on a couple of projects in my free time. I don't really know what I'm going to do with them, but for now, they're a good way of spending my free time productively. In the past 3 days, I've already invested something like 15 hours into writing and researching for them (more than I should be putting into a non school related project!) and may very well share them with you all one day. The fun part is that I'm probably going to have to study a little Romanian and brush up on my Korean if I really want a finished product I can be proud of. Anyway, that's it for now. Edited by Sizen on 08 November 2014 at 8:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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