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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4342 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 25 of 57 27 June 2014 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
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@Jeffers
There have been times where I've managed to keep to a schedule. I remember a month last year where I did L-R in French, Japanese and Spanish for 1 hour every day along with 30 minutes of Assimil in Korean, Mandarin and some random Swedish studies mixed in. But that was a one month thing and I didn't feel at all up to repeating the process any time soon. The other experience I've had is when I did Remembering the Kanji in one month or so and I basically sat down for 8 hours every day for 2 weeks and then 4-5 hours for another 2 weeks. I can't really find the deciding factor that gave me the drive to complete these feats, which would take an impressive amount of force for me to complete now. I assume that it has to do with my natural mood swings and the intensity of my interest in foreign languages at the time. I'm sure I'll have other similar experiences in the future where I spend more time than necessary studying an exorbitant number of languages, but I should probably just wait for it to come naturally and not push it every month to see whether or not I'm up to it. I think what'll be nice about studying in university is that I'll be forced to hit the books a bit every day. I feel like at this point I wouldn't necessarily always be willing to do that with German, for example. I have some German friends (who I normally in English with) and have already made arrangements with them to skype somewhat regularly when I start studying their language. The thing is, I'm probably going to be more focused on French and Spanish, so having to study German in class (and picking up a book every now and then when I feel like) will be nice. To be honest, I'm quite excited to learn German. When I was little, I went on a trip to Italy and Austria and remember loving Austria. When I got back, I signed up for German classes at school and bought some self-study material. In the end, I didn't know what I was doing and my teacher wasn't very encouraging despite the good marks I was getting, so I gave up and never went back to it. I've always had the idea in the back of my mind that I'd get back to it, so when I looked at my program and noticed that the only language that interested me or that I hadn't already studied was German, I knew I'd have no problem with that. I'm going to have to contain myself until September, though! I'll hopefully get around to posting about what I've read, watched and listened to in all my languages soon! Until then! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 26 of 57 27 June 2014 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I was never a great student, so for me the motivation was always that I wanted to do
something, and rarely that I had to do whatever it took to get good grades. When you get to German, you definitely have to check out: Deutsche Welle If you scroll down the page, on the right there's a set of links to the different levels, and they have loads of material in each section. For A1, there's a full intro course called "Warum Nicht?", with downloadable PDF and audio files, which is supposed to take you from A1 to B1. It has 4 series with 26 lessons each, so it might be one of the few courses which can truly claim A1 to B1. "Wieso Nicht" is a 20-lesson course for B1 students, with PDFs and audio. The "Audiotrainer" is a load of vocabulary podcasts, while "Mission Berlin" and "Radio D" are both story-based podcasts for learners. I preferred Radio D as it was less childish, and taught some interesting things like listening for clues (not just verbal, but sound effects as well). There's loads of other stuff for more advanced learners as well, such as "Jojo sucht das glück", a websoap with 33 video episodes. In fact, I think you could pretty much find all the self-study material needed for German on the DW site. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5212 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 57 28 June 2014 at 4:39am | IP Logged | ||
No need at all for apologies. - That's great news about Quebec City! I love its older architecture and sense of history. Cold in winter, of course, but you knew that already. Not "a dry cold", as the phrase goes in Saskatchewan. Lots of snow. And ice. And icicles hanging photogenically from roof tops. But also a lot of French language practice use. - People didn't switch to English even when they heard my atrocious French accent. Re your "buckling down, and also with reference to Jeffer's excellent advice: I've quoted it before on the forums (will see if I can find the link), here's a repeat of a favourite quote from AJATT (Alll Japanese Alll the Time): Discipline is remembering what you want. Also very much ike your "curiosity" approach too, by the way. Edited by songlines on 28 June 2014 at 4:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4342 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 28 of 57 29 June 2014 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks you so much for the link Jeffers! That website looks like an excellent resource! I'll definitely give it a whirl once I start studying German.
@songlines Here in Alberta we say the same thing. :P The winter isn't so much what I'm worried about: it's the spring and summer. I don't get along with humidity and heat. The times when I've gone to Toronto and Montreal/Magog to visit my grandparents during the summer, I've always had a hard time going outside. I'm used to a nice dry 25 degrees max. Either way, I'm looking forward to going over there. Ever since I did a 6 week course there with myexplore, I've been dreaming of going back. Alright, so I decided to share with you a very important work of French literature out of my father's library. It's a bit cryptic and I expect even the most erudite French learners here will have difficulty following along. But do not lose hope! I think the editor who brought together all of these fantastic works of poetry has some very useful advice to help you along: "The most fascinating quality of these verses is found upon reading therm aloud[...] These poems then assume a strangely familiar, almost nostalgic, homely quality." Without further ado, I present you "Mots d'heures: Gousses, Rames" A later entry really strikes a chord with me: "Reine, reine, gueux éveille, Gomme à gaine, en horreur, taie." Joking aside, my paternal grandmother has just moved to my city and came with my great uncle and his wife. We've been chatting in nothing but French for the last couple of days and it's been an almost nostalgic experience for me. When I was younger and I went to visit my grandparents, a lot of French would be tossed about and I wouldn't understand much. Now, I follow these conversations without any real problems (minus the occasional expressions I don't know). I'm quite proud of myself for having come such a long way, and even more proud for coming back to my Quebecois roots. With my grandmother in the house for the next month or so as we wait for her condo to open up, I hope to improve my conversational skills a lot (as the house is now a francophone majority if you count me) so that I can go to Quebec with confidence. Edited by Sizen on 29 June 2014 at 8:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4342 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 29 of 57 01 July 2014 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||
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So if any of you were confused about my last post, let me explain. It's a humouristic book that makes me laugh every time I read anything from it. All the texts are Mother Goose Rhymes (Mots d'heures Gousse Rames) written out phonetically in French. I can't imagine the work that went into them as there are clear signs of the author attempting to write something somewhat intelligible. Anyway, I thought I would just share. :)
Otherwise, two years after discovering Groove Grave, I decided to look deeper into Loco Locass. Not bad stuff. I mean, it's all very political and vulgar at times, but it's fun. They have a knack for finding interesting alliterations that make French sound almost like another language: "Ce sonts les mots puisés dans l'encrier par ma plume qui percutent ton marteau, ton étrier, ton enclume. Pan, pan, pan, pan dans tes tympans. Ça tape, ça claque et ça clique sur ta cochlée." A less political song. What's interesting is the mix of sophisticated vocabulary, colloquial Quebecois and sometimes argotic language that they use, which make their lyrics a harder read than your regular pop song. Another song that'll give you a better idea of the kind of vocabulary used in their lyrics. Other than that, I've been rewatching all of Yoshiura Yasuhiro after seeing Sakasama no Patema the other day. I really like this director even if I'm always dissapointed with his works. The ideas are great, but the way the movies are put together is too maladroit. I see him as a kind of Japanese George Lucas. He has amazing ideas, but really needs a big team working around him to help him with everything else. I think Eve no Jikan was his best work because I was actually a little disappointed by Sakasama no Patema. So, Spanish. I'm feeling something here. I watched some videos in Spanish on Youtube. A weird sensation filled me as I did so, and I realized after the fact what was going on. My Spanish feels like it's about where my French was three years ago: limited oral ability, decent sized vocabulary, poor verb conjugation skills. It's funny because where as my French was given a boost by 12 years of French immersion that allowed me to progress comfortably without needing to go through a tedious initial phase, my Spanish was given a similar boost by my knowledge of French. The plus is that I only needed about a year and a half to get to this point with Spanish and not ~14 years. I guess this is the confidence a first language gives you that polyglots always talk about, but it's very reassuring. I can kind of understand documentaries, but can't understand videos about gaming at all. When I was at this stage with my French, it took me a year before I could do both without much difficulty simply by watching more videos. An hour here and there, and after a year, boom. Comprehension. I wonder what'll be like now that I've already gone through the process, though. I would hope faster, but that's perhaps wishful thinking. What I do know, is that if I treat my Spanish as I have my French, i.e. make it an integral part of my life by spending a few minutes with it every day, in three years when I'll have finished my bachelor's degree my Spanish will be about as good as my French is right now. That's pretty nice. That means I'll be able to live my life comfortably in 3 different languages! The trick now is to not be frustrated that my Spanish just isn't as good as my French at the moment. I like this language learning thing. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4342 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 30 of 57 29 July 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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The last couple weeks have been full of doubt, confusion and infection. A nasty oral
infection that I thought was simply caused by my wisdom tooth pushing against my molars. I couldn't find any signs of infection in my mouth so I thought I was safe. However, a few days after the initial pain, I experienced the second worst pain I've ever had the displeasure of having to endure in my life. Luckily, it's easily treatable and I'm already feeling little to no pain anymore. Needless to say, this disrupted with my regularly scheduled skype sessions, but I'm already making up for lost time. So yeah, no one cares about that. Doubt and confusion? Well, as I've been known to do, I started freaking out a bit at the idea of going to Quebec to study. I won't go through the details, but in the end I decided I just need to man up and get on with it. I'm also not trying to think too far into the future either, as that can be a great source of anxiety for me. At the same time, I am looking at the current state of affairs with regard to my languages and keeping some ideas in the back of my mind for future trips abroad and the likes. I will more than likely have the opportunity to go to Spain or Germany for one or two semesters during the last year of my studies, which is fine by me, especially given the proximity of both countries to France! Ah yes, France. I've been noticing how much I have to pay attention to my speech to avoid more European expressions when I'm speaking. But at the same time, there's a part of me that wants to unleash this unbridled linguistic knowledge and have a go at European French. Most of my francophone friends are from Belgium or France and a large portion of the media I consume is produced in France, so it would only be natural for me to adopt a more European accent and lexicon. As I've already mentioned, though, I'm very attached to Quebecois as I grew up hearing this variety of French my entire life. Heck, I had never even heard European French before high school. Nevertheless, there's a part of me that would like to dabble in other "dialects" of French for the fun of it. I think that once I reach a higher degree of proficiency, I might attempt to learn a Parisian accent so that I can use all the expressions I've been holding myself back from using. In other news, I've been finding it hard to activate my Spanish. I always thought that the reason I couldn't activate my Japanese was because it was a difficult language that required a larger time investment, which I was already investing in French at the time. But now I'm noticing that the same applies to my Spanish, which is definitely an easier language for me. I'm starting to wonder if my language learning skills still aren't developed enough to handle two active languages at the same time. I've got plenty of passive languages up to an intermediate level, but I can't seem to ever speak any of them because French is hogging all of my time/brainpower. Perhaps learning other languages to some form of fluency will have to wait until I've reached a higher level in French? Maybe my time would be better spent learning more languages passively on the side until that day? Who knows. God knows the other languages that I wish I had a passive knowledge in are plentiful. Icelandic, Korean, Norwegian, Ukrainian, German... Actually, I think my list has gotten shorter over the years. I suppose my desire for perfection is what's holding me back at this point, really. I've been living through French for the past little while, so it's only natural that I want it to be "perfect" in that language. Looking at my other languages, though, I have no real reason to speak perfect Spanish or perfect Japanese for the moment. I guess this is my next challenge: accept the fact that I'll never be perfect in every language I learn. I like how my posts have become random musings on my mood and thoughts rather than what I've been doing in my languages. I don't think it's very useful or interesting for all of you, but it definitely helps me separate myself from my thoughts and look at things more clearly for a while. A final remark. I think I might try experimenting a bit as I wait for the 18th, the day I go off to Quebec to start my new francophone life. :) I've got to keep in mind that the whole point of this is most definitely not to become an amazing polyglot that everyone admires or anything like that. It's to have fun and make new discoveries. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5644 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 31 of 57 29 July 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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That all sounds very exciting, I wish you bonne chance! Indeed, focus on having fun with
French and there will come a time when you feel ready to go all the way in another language as you have done with French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4342 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 32 of 57 30 July 2014 at 8:28am | IP Logged | ||
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@Ionlanthe Thanks for the encouragement. I'm looking forward to the that day. :)
On to today's topic: Sizen's Guide to Becoming an Outstanding Language Learner 1. Pick up a book 2. Read 3. ?????????? 4. Profit Okay, let's be serious for a second. While I do believe the above methodology is one of many possible ways of improving one's language, it's a little open to interpretation and doesn't always work when applied incorrectly. What I want to talk about today is more along the lines of how I think I've become a better language learner. Before I get to that, I need to talk about who I am and who I used to be. I was 15 when I embarked on my first journey to learn a language outside of school. I was actually surprised when, after a year of haphazard study, I actually started to understand a foreign language outside of French. In fact, I was so impressed with myself that I went to Japan so that I could impress myself some more when I got back! The result after 5 months in Japan? Sure, I had improved, but something was wrong. My trip to Japan wasn't the amazing experience I had dreamed it to be. Not only that, while my Japanese comprehension had improved, I had made little progress with the spoken language. Well now, this wasn't very pleasing news to me. I had put so much work into it! I spent hours studying everyday using methods I had meticulously researched on the net! I had seen how experienced language learners climbed to levels of fluency beyond my grasp in the same time period that I had spent learning my Japanese! How could I have failed when I had been applying the advice THEY had given me? This is where it all began. I didn't just want to learn a language now; I wanted to ACTUALLY learn a language! To fluency, at that! One of the things I quickly realized was that my methods weren't faulty. I was faulty. This meant I had to improve myself. My personal motto since then has been something like: improve yourself to improve your languages. So have I improved myself? I guess so. But what's been important? Let me just preface this list by saying it obviously doesn't apply to everybody. These are just points that I've had to work on in order to enable myself to learn a language well. This is also kind of the rewrite of a post I had posted a while back. I still don't think I've developed enough to express my thoughts in quite the way I'd like to, but I've acquired the experience necessary to give me confidence in what I'm saying. 1. Learning to be social, i.e. making friends with people that I have to go out of my way to befriend. One of my weaknesses was that I found it easy to make friends when I was tossed into the same situation as other people who spoke the same language as me. Going to Japan on an exchange, I easily made friends with the two American kids at my school but I had a difficult time befriending my Japanese schoolmates. I mean, when you think about it, it makes sense. The American kids and I have every reason to be friends: we're all in a country whose language we don't speak, we're both from very similar countries where the same language is spoken, we're about the same age... The Japanese kids, on the other hand, we're all different from us. Different language, different heritage, different language. I mean, can you blame us for not making friends with them? Nowadays, I go out of my way to message people I don't even know from countries I've never even been to, whose languages I don't necessarily speak well or confidently and who are not always in the same age group as me. And you know what, it's not as scary as I thought it was back when I was 15. In fact, the best friends I've made in the past 2 years have all been made in this way. They haven't been people I've gone to school with or people I met in Taiwan on my exchange. They've all been complete strangers who have all the reasons in the world to ignore me! 2. Being curious. This one's been a doozy. It was easy for me to be interested in things, but it was hard for me to motivate myself to learn more. A part of this was due to the fact that I had a hard time concentrating which made it difficult for me to learn when the going got tough, but also because I was embarrassed to ask question when I didn't understand. The other problem here was that my range of interested was rather interested. I liked math. I liked "language", whatever that even meant. Too general to be of any use. I like games, too, I suppose... I might have liked music too. Movies were nice sometimes too. Boring, right? Two things had to change. One, I needed more interests. Making new interests was easy. Find some books, watch some videos, try what my friends were doing, etc, etc. Easy. The second has been harder: learning to appreciate my interests. What I mean is that I needed to develop an actual interest for the things I like. I needed to want to understand them. And for that I needed to want to analyse them. And for that I needed to want to enjoy them... Then the list keeps going on like that for a while it gets harder and harder to understand the mechanics of "being interested". Nonetheless, I've slowly been developing a feel for what things will potentially interest me, and then I just have to work on "liking" those things. 3. Wanting to be happy. This one's even worse because it deals with a dilemma most of us face during our lives. It's also troublesome because it forces us to make compromises where we'd rather not. Do I want to speak fluent Russian in just a year by dedicating 8 hours to it every day and being miserable in the process, or by enjoying the journey and not caring about the time it takes and, ultimately, being happy no matter the outcome? What's worse is that this applies to things outside of language learning: family, education, employment, life skills, etc. Finding a balance between all of these so that I have a reason to get up in the morning while also living a life that I'm proud to live can be somewhat challenging, I have to admit. I'm not a sad person, but I probably have a minor depression of sorts. I've never had absolutely no reason to get out of bed before, so that's good news. However, some days I feel like I'm not excited as I should be to face the day. I have to say that this has been one of the areas I've improved the most in by simply working on the last 2 points. Having friends and interests is enough to get me out of bed on the worst of days. Anyway, before I start really making no sense, I'll try to sum up my thoughts on language learning and self-improvement: everything has to be genuine. If you're not making genuine friends, have genuine conversations/discussions, reading things you're genuinely interested in, working in a position that genuinely interests, what's the point? Happiness should always come before anything else, even languages. I suppose in a sense, language learning has been my salvation as it has led me to want to be the best and happiest person I can be. (I'll apologize quickly for the rambling feel my posts have. I don't like spending too much time on them because there are other things I like to do. These posts already take me long enough to write in the first place. This is just a log and I like to write as my ideas are forming. Maybe one day I'll take more time and be able to write a little more eloquently!) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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