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LanguageSponge TAC 2012 Freutsch + Latin | ||
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| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5709 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 11 30 December 2011 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Part One: Introduction
Freunde, amis, amici! Welcome to my new Language Log for the 2012 Total Annihilation Challenge! I warn you now that this first post is ridiculously long, even by my own standards, so the very best of luck to anyone aiming to get through the entire thing. Much of what is written here is for my own reference, to keep me motivated. This is my second year participating in the TAC; my log for 2011 can be found here. As per my focus languages of 2011, I will again be focusing on French and German, with particular emphasis on French this time. The main languages of this log will be French and German, only switching to English when I reply to a comment written in English, and to be honest, I would much prefer to see as little English in this log as possible, besides this first post, fairly obviously. Therefore, I would be very grateful if you could write to me here predominantly in French or German. -My focuses for this year, as I’ve said above, are going to be French and German. -As a side project, I will be brushing the dust off my old Latin books and attempting to resurrect something of my Latin. I intended just to use it to help me cool down after a day of French, German and the CELTA course that I’ll be doing between mid- January and the end of March. Now however, I have bigger plans for it, as I want to eventually be able to read some of the works of Roman historians in the original, in conjunction with my ever-growing passion for the history of the Roman Empire. Part Two: Current Levels All of my levels are self-estimated. I am not even that familiar with the scale used here to estimate levels, so don’t be surprised if through reading my log you find my level to be a bit under- or overestimated. I know very well where my faults are and I will have them rectified by the end of the challenge. German – Generally this is probably somewhere around the C1 mark. I can’t identify consciously whether any of the four skills are weaker than any of the others. Reading I spend a fair bit of time reading German. I’ve just finished reading the first two Harry Potter books auf Deutsch.They were not in any way challenging, in fact I got through them only marginally slower than I would in English and understood it almost as well; I only read them for fun. I read news articles on the German part of Yahoo and often read Wikipedia pages. I have brought quite a few newspapers back from Austria and have also bought a few non-fiction books which I will read through over the year. My aim this year is to read more of anything I can get my hands on. I am pretty well versed in formal German so I will read fiction and try to get into poetry. Mainly I want to expand my vocabulary, but this is becoming more and more difficult as I learn more because I’m not sure what else to learn. Writing My writing is pretty strong and I don’t have any difficulty expressing my thoughts. Rather than translating my English thoughts, I think in German and as a result, I sometimes have trouble rendering my German thoughts in English. I often write emails in German, both formal and informal, but I very rarely do any kind of creative or essay writing. These are two things I plan to engage in this year. Shorter pieces I will post on Lang-8 in hope of correction, and any essays that I produce will be given to some German friends I keep in contact with. I have written a list of topics, which at the moment is floating around the forty questions mark, so I don’t get stuck for things to write about this year. It will expand rapidly once I sit down and add some recent thoughts to it. Listening I spent countless hours listening to German during my time in Austria. I have no difficulty understanding spoken German so long as I’m not spoken to in dialect. I had fun using the dialectal words I learnt while I was in Austria. I listen to German music quite a lot and listen to the news on ZDF. I also watch films with German dubbing or subtitles. Speaking My spoken German is of a high standard and as my recent six week stay in Austria showed me, I usually understand everything that’s said to me as long as it’s in Hochdeutsch. I sometimes wonder whether what I say sounds entirely natural, especially when put on the spot, but those occasions are thankfully pretty few and far between. The only way I can see to deal with those is iron them out over time. As far as speaking German goes, when I am at home in England, I only speak German to myself and occasionally with my girlfriend. This is more than enough to keep it up but I hope to use it a lot more on trips and potentially after my CELTA course. French – My situation with French is a bit more complicated than German, though I have every intention of annihilating the problem by the end of this year’s TAC. My French reading and writing capabilities are not too far removed from my German, I am more than capable of correcting people accurately; it is in my listening comprehension and my speaking that my true difficulties lie. I did French for a long time in school and as a result, my grammar and my general feel for the language are both very strong, but my French suffers from four years of no use whatsoever, from which it still hasn’t quite made a full recovery. I need to spend this year rectifying that. You will see my plan to do this in Part Three. Overall I would estimate my French to be B2, and it will be C1 by the end of the year once I have chipped away at the listening and speaking problems. Reading My reading is strong in French, put simply, and I attribute this to knowing how the grammar all fits together, for the most part. It is however held back by three basic things, which are all easy to sort out. Firstly, I am not entirely comfortable with the past historic, although I can, in 90% of cases, work it out from context if I don’t know the form already. This first problem will be rectified quite easily, especially considering I intend to write essays in French over the year, so I will need to actually use the past historic in my own writing. I was assured when I was in school that I’d never have to actually use it, so I never bothered to consciously learn the forms. This is a bit odd as many people in my class went on to study French at uni. There, lecturers prefer the use of the simple past (otherwise known as the past historic) in place of the passé compose, presumably for the formality factor. Using the simple past actively in essays will surely cement the forms in my mind. My second problem is that my reading speed is a little underwhelming, but then, it is in English. I swear sometimes that I can read faster in German than in English. This will improve as I read over the year. My last problem is that I tend to stick to reading material that yes, I enjoy very much, but does not serve to advance my French anymore, such as Astérix. I am therefore going to discount any time that I spend reading Astérix from my total studying time, as I don’t acquire much in the way of new vocabulary or structures from it. Writing My French writing is pretty accurate and I can write about many different topics, both simple and complicated in nature. My vocabulary sometimes lets me down though so this is one area that I intend to work on during the challenge. I don’t have very much difficulty expressing my thoughts in French although I sometimes have trouble sounding natural. Saying that, I sent a letter to my girlfriend’s mother in French and German (she’s a French teacher) on Christmas Day and she said there weren’t any problems with it. As with German, I’ve written a list of topics for Lang-8 which I will follow. I haven’t used Lang-8 in a while, and the reason I don’t use it is that I find it difficult to know what to write about. I will likely write a separate list of essay topics to follow as well. I might end up translating some of my old history essays. Listening My listening skills were once pretty good but now they’re quite rusty in comparison to a few years ago. I swear that I also have a bit of a hearing problem, although this is probably psychological. I have a plan to sort this out, as you will see in the next section. At present, I am able to watch films, getting the gist and quite a lot more, I listen to any French music I find and listen to the news. However none of this is effortless anymore as it once was, relatively, and sometimes it can be quite a struggle. I plan to quit being a wimp this year and sort this out once and for all. Speaking I still have problems speaking sometimes. On the very rare occasion, I will clam up and not say very much. Those occasions really do have to stop, and I know once I sort out my confidence (I can do it, I know I can), no-one will be able to shut me up, just like in German. I sometimes speak French with my girlfriend, who is from Belgium, and she is very supportive. She and her family were my main motivation for relearning it at the beginning, but now I have other reasons to keep me going. My speaking ability will improve as my listening comprehension and vocabulary improve. Latin I did Latin a few years ago but I haven’t touched it in about as long a time. I won’t even begin to measure it using conventional measuring scales as I never did speak it beyond reading to myself. I didn’t write it very often although I did make a very conscious effort to remember everything grammar-related that I could. I had particular fun writing out noun declensions and writing out simple sentences when I was studying it. I will be using this as my wind-down at the end of the day. This may be replaced at some point during the year with something I want to take more seriously, more about the candidates for that is to come later on. Part Three: Goals and an attempted methodology I have written a study plan for all three of my languages which will be printed out and kept on my desk. They are reasonably ambitious but I don’t see the sense in aiming low this early on. Aim for the skies and if you don’t quite get there, you’ve still accomplished something worthwhile. German I want to write five Lang-8 posts in German per week, as well as one essay on a topic I’ll choose at the beginning of the week. I will post my shorter posts, which tend to be between 250 and 400 words long, on Lang-8 and will have the extended writing corrected by a German native friend, who has been offering to do this for me for years. I imagine the essays will be anywhere between 2000 and 4000 words long, depending on how well I know the topic. At least three full German news programmes per week Thirty new words or expressions per day French So, my listening and speaking are weak, as I have stated above. So I’ll rectify this problem by listening to at least 500 hours of French over the course of the year. This will be through a mixture of French films, music, stories and watching the news or any documentaries I find. I initially wanted to aim for 1000 hours, but I know that after my CELTA course finishes I won’t be able to study to my heart’s content. If I manage to reach my 500 hours early, then I can consider any extra I do bonus points. I also don’t want to aim too high because I succumbed to burn out for a bit last year, but that may have been to do with my hospitalisations. Better to be safe than sorry. As well as my goal for listening, I want to carry on reading to expand my vocabulary. I’ll read Wikipedia in French, read stories such as a favourite that my girlfriend’s mother gave me, called La peste noire. I will also read non-fiction such as a book I bought about the coral and species of fish found in and around the Red Sea. I’ll also read the news and I’ll look into French poetry. Also I’ll probably play computer games in French although I don’t know how much this will figure into it, although it definitely will to at least a small degree. I’ll also write at least 5 Lang-8 posts per week on various topics. My Lang-8 posts tend to be between 250 and 400 words long. I will also banish my fear of extended writing and compose one essay per week on a topic I’ll decide on around the Monday mark. The essays, as for German, will probably be between 2000 and 4000 words long, although I expect they’ll tend towards the lower end of that scale towards the beginning of the year and get longer. I also want to learn 30 new words per day. In terms of speaking, I want to just get to a point where I can talk and not feel self- conscious. Latin My goal for Latin is simple. I want to finish both main volumes of Lingua Latina per se illustrata by the end of the year and perhaps begin reading some of the material in the Latina Library. I’ll keep a notebook of new words and write sentences to drill in words that escape me. As my approach is naturally quite strictly centred around grammar, I will really make sure I hammer home noun declensions, cases with verbs and prepositions and make sure I can conjugate verbs in all the tenses properly. My doing Latin is mainly for fun, but it’s also partly in support of my keen interest in the history of the Roman Empire. Part Four: Potential for Wanderlust The main reason that I am doing Latin is for something to help me wind down after a few hours of studying French and German every day. I wanted this to be something that would, in all likelihood, remain nothing more than a fun wind-down at the end of the day. As the year wears on though, I may replace this with something more serious, and the candidates for this are as follows: -Dutch -Modern Greek -Italian -Russian -An as yet unknown language Dutch nearly came on the TAC Adventure with me this year, but she stayed behind because she knows I love her sister, German, very much, and thought it’d be selfish to come along too. I’ve known Greek’s ancestor, Attic, for a long time and we get along very well, so I may want to get to know Greek a bit better, too. Italian is the native language of my father’s family, and I will have to get to know her properly one day. That, in all likelihood, will be a job for the TAC of 2013. Russian and I have known each other a long time and I was sad to leave her after graduation in June, but I had to devote more time and attention to my true love of German. The as yet unknown language is for a special reason. After my CELTA course is finished, I will be applying for jobs teaching English abroad and as yet, I don’t know where I’ll end up. If I don’t go to a country the language of which I don’t already know, like France, Germany or Austria, I will have to learn the language of the country I go to. One of my massive interests outside of languages is scuba diving, so I may want to go somewhere where I can dive – perhaps Indonesia or Thailand. Part Five: Other commitments From mid-January to the end of March, I will be doing a CELTA course. It’s only two days a week, which is really frustrating as I want it done much faster, but it can’t be helped. I’m a worrier when it comes to my studies, especially when I’ve paid as much money as I have to do the course, so I’ll be reading textbooks meticulously and trying to stretch the creative side of my brain, which I haven’t used in years, for ways to get my point across and keep the class engaged. My father has spent his entire professional life doing presentations for high-pressure companies so knows how to keep people engaged. The course is assessed through a mixture of coursework and assessed classes which I have to teach, as far as I know completely on my own. I was given one of the main texts for Christmas and am gradually working through it. The course convenor has told me that it will be every bit as difficult as my degree (Russian, Slovene and German), but I am a bit sceptical about that. We’ll see. While I was in Austria, I helped my girlfriend, who is acting as a teaching assistant there in two grammar schools, with her marking, which I found lots of fun. I’ll also be contributing corrections on Lang-8 as a way to hone my correction and explanation skills. Any correspondence or advice on this would also be fantastic Part Six: Mini milestone What better way to start the New Year than with a really good omen? I have dreamt in French for the last two nights. It’s happened on quite a few occasions before but these two occasions were both different for two reasons. Firstly, on all previous occasions, I had been with my girlfriend around the time of the dreams, so it’s not particularly surprising that I’d dream in French there occasionally. Secondly, on all previous occasions, the dreams have taken place in my girlfriend’s grandmother’s dining room and have pretty much all been along the same vein. These dreams weren’t very exciting in terms of the content but were fantastic for the reasons mentioned above. The first was about, of all things, my going to open a bank account after having Belgian waffles and hot chocolate in a cafe. I don’t remember whether it was in France or Belgium. The second was about going to the Grand-Place, but I don’t remember why. I find it odd that German is a much bigger, more consistent part of my life and yet I still tend to dream in French over German. Such is life! Part Seven: End of first post Well I guess that’s the end of my first post. Congratulations if you managed to make it to the end. I’d like to say a hearty hello to all my team-mates over at Team Freutsch. Officially, the challenge starts on New Year’s Day for me, but anything I do between now and then will be posted here. At some point, if I get to grips with technology, I’ll use graphs this year to record m progress. It’s a bit more visually motivating than just writing words and numbers. I wish you all the very best of luck this year and I’m sure we’ll all progress quite nicely. Thanks for reading and I am very much looking forward to chipping away at French and German. Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 30 December 2011 at 11:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5277 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 11 30 December 2011 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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No problems getting through this, it was in fact quite entertaining! You do aim for the stars, but if anyone can do it, it must be you. 30 words a day - Wow! I am happy if I do 30 words a month. What is CELTA by the way, is it some sort of teaching course?
Et puisqe tu nous a demandé d'écrire en francais ou allemand, je vais faire un effort, même si je ne sais pas quelle langue me fais le plus peur d'écrire. Französich habe ich seit 30 Jahre kaum geschrieben, und deutch habe ich so gut wie nie geschrieben. Ich soll dieses Jahr mehr Deutch lernen, desvegen sollte ich es villeicht nur wie eine sehr gute Gelegenheit mehr Deutch so schreiben andenken (anschauen ?). Ich werde so wie so dein Blog lesen, es sieht interessant aus. Vini, vidi... - eh no, can't say anything half meaningful in Latin, so I'll leave it there. Best of luck!!! Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 30 December 2011 at 12:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4811 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 3 of 11 30 December 2011 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with your languagestudies !
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4975 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 11 30 December 2011 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bonne chance dans l'année prochaine, vous avez une bonne préparation, et quand vous decider de aprendre plus de néerlandais, je suis là pour vous aider. ;)
Ich werde Ihre Log folgen und ich bin sicher dass es mich inspieren sollte. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tournesol Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5304 days ago 119 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1 Studies: German | Message 5 of 11 31 December 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Bonne chance avec vos études.
A propos le CELTA (que j'ai fait il y a quelques ans) je vous conseille le livre suivant. Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to interference and other problems Vous pouvez le trouver sur Google books. C’est très intéressant de considérer les problèmes de l’anglais du point de vue de ceux qui l’apprennent en tant que langue étrangère. Chaque chapitre traite des problèmes d'interférence d’une langue maternelle. Je ne l’ai pas lu en entière mais le chapitre sur le français m’a été très utile. Edited by Tournesol on 31 December 2011 at 1:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5709 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 6 of 11 03 January 2012 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Hello Solfrid Cristin, thanks for your message, The way I see it, if I aim low, then it will be much more difficult for me to raise my game later in the year. Aiming high now will mean that even if I don't quite reach my goals, I will still have made alot of progress. CELTA is the teaching course that I will be taking so that I can go abroad to teach English. It stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults :] I hope that you find this log entertaining; I myself am looking forward to doing little projects together with my team, as that will add some variety to my studies. Merci pour ton message, Solfrid. Je suis content que mon premier message t'aies plu. Je ferai de mon mieux pour écrire dans mes langues. Mon français n'est pas aussi bon que mon allemand alors je me concentre plus en français qu'en allemand. Danke für deine Nachricht, Solfrid. Es freut mich, dass dir meine erste Nachricht gefallen hat. Ich wäre dir sehr dankbar, wenn du mir auf Deutsch oder Französisch schreiben würdest. Bis denn! Bjorn, thanks for your message. I am looking forward to working with you in Team Freutsch :) ReQuest, danke für Ihre Nachricht. Ich freue mich darauf mit Ihnen dieses Jahr zu arbeiten. Editiert - Ich danke Ihnen auch für Ihr Angebot, mir beim Niederländischen zu lernen. Es tut mir Leid, dass ich diesen Teil Ihrer Nachricht übersehen habe :] Tournesol, merci pour votre message et pour la recommandation. Le livre que vous m'avez recommandé a l'air très utile. J'ai lu les critiques que j'ai trouvées sur Internet et il est probable que je l'achèterai. Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 03 January 2012 at 7:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5709 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 7 of 11 03 January 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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In diesem Beitrag beschreibe ich die Sachen, die ich in den vergangenen Tagen in meinen
Zielsprachen getan habe. Ich bin noch ein bisschen desorganisiert, da ich mich immer noch an meinen neuen Plan gewöhne. Dans ce message je vais décrire les choses que j'ai faites dans mes langues cibles pendant les derniers jours. Je suis encore un peu désorganisé parce que je m'habitue encore à mon nouveau plan. French - 1st January 2012 90 minutes of listening. Listened to children's stories. Explained below. 10 pages of La peste noire Read a long article on the Black Death in French. 30 new words, added to Anki German - 30 minutes of listening to German music 30 new words, added to Anki 2nd January 2012 French 90 minutes of listening. 10 pages of La peste noire 30 new words, added to Anki German Read a few pages on the coral reefs in the Red Sea. 30 new words, again added to Anki 3rd January 2012 French 90 minutes of listening 10 pages of La peste noire 30 new words, added to Anki Read a long article in French on the Hittites. ---- Comme vous voyez, je n'ai pas encore commencé à écrire mes messages sur Lang-8. Je veux m'habituer à faire les autres choses plus importantes, par exemple l'écoute, avant de commencer à écrire de nouveau. J'écoute les choses peut-être un peu plus faciles parce que je comprends très bien les nouvelles, mais pas le langage parlé. Ma petite amie me dit qu'il est probablement normal. Je trouve relativement facile de comprendre les choses plus "compliquées". Wie ihr sehen könnt, habe ich immer noch nicht angefangen, meine Nachrichten auf Lang-8 zu schreiben. Ich will mich auf die wichtigeren Sachen, zum Beispiel Hören, konzentrieren, bevor ich anfange, wieder zu schreiben. Ich höre vielleicht einfachere Sachen, weil ich die Nachrichten schon sehr gut verstehe, die Umgangsprache aber nicht. Meine Freundin sagt, das sei vielleicht normal. Ich finde es relativ einfach, die komplezierteren Sachen zu verstehen. En ce moment j'écris un essaie sur les Hittites en français. Je m'intéresse beaucoup à l'histoire ancienne. Im Moment schreibe ich einen Aufsatz über die Hittites auf Französisch; ich interessiere mich sehr für die antike Geschichte. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5709 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 8 of 11 24 January 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dans les dernières semaines j'ai passé beaucoup de temps à lire et à étudier pour mon
cours de CELTA. Le cours me plaît beaucoup et mes connaissances de langues étrangères m'aident beaucoup. Je n'ai pas beaucoup d'expérience en ce qui concerne les langues alors j'ai écrit à quelques écoles tout près de chez moi. J'ai reçu une réponse d'une des écoles et ils veulent que je dirige un club de russe. On a suggéré aussi que j'aide leurs élèves d'allemand avec leur préparation pour leurs examens orals. J'aurai quelques heures par semaine. Cela me tarde beaucoup. Dans les jours qui viennent je vais essayer de faire un graphique pour montrer les heures que j'ai faites dans mes études de langues. Le lundi, j'ai enseigné mon premier cours pour le cours de CELTA. Le cours est allé très bien et je crois que tous ont appris quelque chose. Mon point faible, c'est que je parle à voix basse et j'ai du mal à être impérieux. In den vergangenen Wochen habe ich meine Zeit beim Lesen und Lernen für meinen CELTA- Kurs verbracht. Der Kurs gefällt mir sehr und meine fremden Sprachkenntnisse helfen mir sehr. Ich habe nicht so viel Lehrerfahrung für Sprachen, und deshalb habe ich an einige Schulen geschrieben, die ganz in der Nähe von zu Hause; Ich habe eine Antwort von einer der Schulen bekommen, und sie wollen, dass ich einen Russischklub leite und, dass ich ihren SchülerInnen bei ihrer Vorbereitung auf ihre mündlichen Prüfungen helfe. Ich werde einige Stunden pro Woche haben. Ich freue mich sehr darauf. In den kommenden Tagen versuche ich eine graphische Darstellung der Stunden zu machen, die ich bei meinen Sprachen verbracht habe. Am Montag habe ich meinen ersten Englischunterricht für CELTA unterrichtet. Er lief sehr gut, und ich glaube, alle haben etwas gelernt. Meine Schwäche liegt darin, dass ich eine zärtliche Stimme habe - durchsetzungsfähig zu sein liegt mir überhaupt nicht im Blut. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful |
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