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BAnna’s TAC 2014 Spaß-Lobo-IndRussian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 177 of 236 11 May 2014 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just a quick update: It's been really difficult lately to catch up on people's logs. Recently I've been getting lots of error messages and slowness, but I think I've done it...quite nice to see people still making progress.
Super Challenge is going well for me, but eating up lots of time. Listened to 3 hours of an audiobook in Spanish called "Los Santos de Aguas Mansas, California", but I can't take any more. The stories just don't interest me. I can't keep going the additional 6 hours needed to finish this one, about the owner of a store that sells folk medicine, religious candles and statuary and the various clients who get help there. I have not had good luck with audiobooks in Spanish, but will keep trying. In German, I'm revisiting reading a play "Die Physiker" that I started about a year ago and at that time, gave up on in the first act. It's so much smoother going this time around. Sometimes as an intermediate, it feels like you aren't really improving, so it's really nice to see progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 178 of 236 12 May 2014 at 8:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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Random thoughts related to the Super Challenge so far:
As a beginner, my stamina for Russian is only about 30 minutes of close attention and listening while viewing a film, then I start to just rely on the English subtitles. So I will just aim for 30 minutes at a time and not try to tackle entire films at this point. I tried some cartoons without subtitles and that was really good, definitely worth repeating. It would be soooo easy to just OD on Spanish since it's my strongest language and I have so much material available (we have 10 cable channels in Spanish, and enough books at the library for a lifetime). This weekend I got caught up in a thriller (in Spanish, but set in Moscow), called Las Tres Estaciones and just kept reading, which was good for my Spanish, but not so good for trying to split up time between the 3 languages...I think I will alternate books in German and Spanish, and try to read a liitle Russian every day since it takes me so darn long to read a page or two. Reading in Russian is getting a little easier (or maybe I've just found things at the right level). Somewhere I may have read that people are counting their textbooks, like Assimil? I haven't done that so far because I can't really figure out how to count it and it doesn't "feel" like reading, it feels like studying. I vow to stay away from all the bickering on the SC thread. I saw about a million messages in my inbox, and took a very short peek. Yikes! The arguments are what almost stopped me from participating this time around, but I plan to ignore it all, keep my head down and just keep going forward, one sentence at a time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 179 of 236 12 May 2014 at 9:53am | IP Logged | |||||
I am surprised you are watching films with English subtitles. I did that for the first German film I watched, but never again. It's just too easy for me to fade into the English and not concentrate on my TL. I actually find subtitles in my TL distracting (esp. when they don't match the spoken output exactly). Good luck with the SC. I am glad I didn't take part this year. The constant bickering is just annoying. As it is I am still doing lots of reading/watching, I just don't have to feel I am competing against other people. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4051 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 180 of 236 12 May 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey BAnna, thanks again for your post. I still have to get through all my team-mates logs.. I also haven't read yours now, just this page, but want to encourage you to go on with the SC. It's my first time participating, but I really like it. Without it and the 6WC I would maybe don't do anything for my languages but only read through this forum ^^
And one doesn'T haave to follow the discussions... The challenge is to have fun and to improve one's language level and not to really compete with others.. Everything we do in the challenges is for ourselves´, so I don't care about all the bickering anymore.. I read it, and sometimes comment (however, I'm really annoyed of the current ranking discussion) and just do my watching and reading and see the twitter bot as a useful tool to keep track of my progress and so on.
:O I envy you. I currently have only German channels. And from Germany most of the stuff on websites of Spanish channels is not available.. Sometimes it sucks to live in Germany... Or at least to have a German IP.. -.- There's only one channel so far, where I can watch some stuff online. And I started with Pippi Calzaslargas. i liked it as a kid and thought that a children's series is a good start. i also bought the HP blu-ray collection, with lots of languages including Spanish. And I know the movies in and out, so why not watch them in Spanish :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4136 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 181 of 236 12 May 2014 at 11:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Balancing multiple languages is really tricky. I'm only learning two, and am finding it a challenge to allocate time to
each in a reasonable way. Watching with L1 subtitles is tricky. I do it quite often, because my husband likes to watch with me, and he doesn't understand Spanish. I can't not read the subtitles…even if I'm watching a movie in English with English subtitles (we used to do that with my in-laws when their English was less solid), I have to read every single word. One thing that you might consider doing is re-watching shows a second time without subtitles - that way you understand everything that's happening, but you also practice listening without a translation. Good luck! Learning to watch TV and films is a challenge - but at least it's a fun challenge! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4614 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 182 of 236 12 May 2014 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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May 12
Re: subtitles in L1 for Russian, patrickwillen, you are right on. They need to go. Thanks for calling me out on that. Basically, these have been a crutch for me because my level is so low. I just learned the days of the week and numbers from 20-100 and I don't even know the past tense yet. My problem is "incomprehensible" input. I really do need to watch stuff aimed at preschoolers (without subs) so I will put aside the cool movies and instead watch cartoons and Sesame Street. I don't use subs for German or Spanish, unless I'm doing something very specific with the L2 subs (intensive watching). I do have a German series with Russian subs, but my reading ability in Russian is also atrocious. Oh, yes, I did say a couple of months ago I would not do the Super Challenge due to the bickering. Yet, I let myself get seduced into rejoining (I really like the twitter bot summary of what's been completed), but the contentious tone hasn't gone away. Alas. I'm also doing the 6wc and there's absolutely no arguing there. How nice. I'm trying to decide: Do I continue to stick with the SC and just ignore the craziness? Do I withdraw? Is there some other alternative that is fun and doesn't make people get über-competitive? I really wish there were an option to just see your own progress, only that and not a bit of what anyone else is doing, but I don't even want to look at the thread on the topic, much less contribute anything, which would probably just add to the dissatisfaction. The "ranking" situation is feeding people's desire to be on top and some of the comments seem to be about the legitimacy of what other people are watching/reading: soccer games, certain languages, etc. Who cares what you are studying as long as you're doing it? If I had to watch 100 soccer games in any language, I would slit my wrists...but more power to those who learn that way. And yes, Mandarin or Arabic is harder for an English speaker than Spanish, but the payoff is also greater if you are interested in prestige (at least in the US). Interestingly, last time, I think you had to be B1 and below in your language of choice? If that were the case this time, I'd only be doing Russian, which is also something for me to ponder. Is trying to do 3 languages realistic? Probably not. But then, the only real goal I've set to is "do as much as you pleasurably can". I don't set myself a goal of read x books or episodes per week or whatever, instead try to have fun and assume the numbers will follow. That worked great last time. I do like to see the graph and list of stuff. Maybe I should just spend the time to set up a spreadsheet/chart to do the same thing so then I would be able to pull out of SC and let the loonies knock them selves out arguing. Komma, thanks for stopping by. Don't worry about catching up on logs, you'll get there. If it makes you feel any better, I envy my fellow language learners in Europe because a lot of DVDs there come with multiple language tracks. In the US, it's typically English and Spanish and sometimes French and that's all. And yes, watching stuff you already know and like is a great way to learn. Stelle, I enjoyed reading your summary of your trip to Spain. I think of you every time I visit my local library since the first shelves when you walk in are the "filipiniana" section, with materials in Tagalog and other languages of the Philippines. EDIT: I don't mean to insult anyone by saying "loonies". I count myself among the loonies, as evidenced by attempting a 3-language Super Challenge. Edited by BAnna on 12 May 2014 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 183 of 236 12 May 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I withdrew from the challenge last time quite early on due to all the long discussions and changes to the form of the challenge which happened. I felt it was exhausting to keep up with. But as things settled down I started to regret my decision. The twitter bot still provides a really neat and simple way of keeping track of the content you are consuming. I think if I'd kept with the challenge I would probably have read a lot more in those 20 months than I ended up doing, and looking at the progress people made who stuck with it to the end, I'm fairly sure I would have hit a higher level than I am currently at.
So my approach right now is to not spend my time on the SC discussion threads and hope that no major rule changes will happen (surely all the big stuff should be settled by now anyway). Instead I'm getting on with reading and watching TV when I have the time, and enjoying watching my own list of content grow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4525 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 184 of 236 12 May 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have never really made up my mind how comprehensible really needs to be. My first German shows were South Park (that's the only thing I could get easily in London at the time). And they were helpful even if somewhat incomprehensible. Of course, everybody's tolerances are different.
I think it would be silly to withdraw now that you have started. I would perhaps unfollow any of the SC threads out of a sense of sanity. Putting aside the idiotic comments that are floating around now, the SC just seems too easy after the last one to really offer much of a challenge. 10k pages used to seem a lot, but I'm currently aiming to read that many this year in German again, and aim to get to a total of 25k pages read by 1st July next year (plus finish 1000 films - which will be more difficult in the time). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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