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Going back to Europe TAC 2014 DE|FR|日本語 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 25 of 142 25 January 2014 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Sunja have you never noticed this happening with native speakers too? I guess it was most obvious when I was a university student, and my friends would return to university after the long summer vacation with strong regional accents, which would dissipate over the course of the semester.
Some people are born with a natural talent for accents. I envy them. But just as I made do in music without perfect pitch, I think I can make do in language without "perfect accent". It's not an excuse not to work at it, but so long as people aren't wincing at my clumsy French, I know I'm heading in the right direction... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 26 of 142 25 January 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been away from English speakers too long to notice ;) I'm not so good as to be able to distinguish between Germans and their regional accents but I'm sure they slip in and out of them. Regional idiosyncrasies are the stuff of conversation here. I can't hear my accent at all and since I'm sensitive about it I enjoy getting feedback on it. The last comment was, "Ooh, hearing you makes me feel like I'm on holiday" which I try to accept as a nice thing :) 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 27 of 142 26 January 2014 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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その計画は ほとんど実現不可能です。 実現の可能性のないことに 時間とエネルギーを使うのは 無駄です。 もっと実現可能な案を 出してください。
That was a gem of an example sentence from my Kanji in Context book. I could already read and understand the whole thing, so it's not finding its way into an Anki deck. However, it can have pride of place in my log instead. I will attempt a clumsy translation as follows: This plan is pretty much impossible to achieve. Spending time and energy on things which are impossible to achieve is a waste. Please come up with a more achievable idea. I swear I have this kind of argument internally all the time when trying to work out a study plan and then trying to stick to it... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chillr Newbie Australia Joined 4026 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French | Message 28 of 142 27 January 2014 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I read your sentences but unfortunately did not have the strength of mind to try to translate them without
reading your translation. I then agreed with the sentiments! I have read your log from time to time and sympathise with how you are torn between French and Japanese. At times I berate myself for starting down the Japanese path. It is a difficult and intriguing language. 頑張ってね。 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 142 27 January 2014 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
I find the same: even though my level's quite advanced, I just never really sound or feel natural in the language. I wonder if it's because the prosody is so different from English's that it just doesn't seem like a natural way to speak for me and it always feels like I'm putting on an act. I've done a lot of work on the pronunciation and accent but never really gotten to the point where it comes naturally, and needless to say, lots of listening isn't the solution either. I suppose you maybe just have to do it so much that it becomes normal. 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 30 of 142 27 January 2014 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Chillr I have to say I'm feeling a lot less torn than I was between French and Japanese. I definitely needed a break from Japanese study, but now I've had my break and returned feeling refreshed, I have no regrets. And as long as I keep a sensible head on regarding how much I can do in a day, I really can find space in my life for both languages. I just need to find space for German as well...
@garyb I think that for an English speaker, French is relatively easy to speak badly, but rather difficult to speak well! The prosody is definitely a big factor, also the fluidity created by the system of liaisons, enchainements and the ə instable, plus the rich range of vowels (including the nasals) which are rather different, at least to my variety of English. I think it must work both ways because I've also met very few French speakers who have developed a convincing accent in English. 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 31 of 142 01 February 2014 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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A Plan for January
So now it's the 1st February, so it's time to look back at the grand plans I made at the beginning of the month for juggling three languages, to see how I got on: German: Study one page a day, 5 days a week, from Begegnungen (1 page takes around 20-30 minutes depending on the type of activity) A grand total of 3 pages completed! Maintain an Anki deck of any vocab I pick up from Begegnungen Still keeping up with reviews Mess around on Duolingo just enough to make sure my husband doesn't get ahead of me (5-10 minutes a day) Gave up - I actually prefer a textbook/self-made Anki deck combination Listen to Deutsche Welle Warum Nicht whenever I feel like it Listened to 3 episodes French: Try to study from Le Nouvel Édito B1 for 30-45 minutes a day, 5 days a week 5 pages plus half a grammar section on the subjunctive and half a vocab section, plus vocab and grammar exercises for Dossier 1 in the workbook Maintain an Anki deck of any vocab I pick up from Le Nouvel Édito Expanded to include vocab picked up from any textbook, still up to date with reviews Get some grammar revision from Grammaire Progressive Niveau Intermédiare if I feel like I have room for more study 8 pages done, worth the effort Study a section of Les 500 Exercices de Phonétique once or twice a week Covered liaisons and most of the section on a/wa. Well worth it. Find a Skype tutor and talk to them once a week 3 hour long Skype sessions complete, again well worth it Watch TV, listen to radio/podcasts, read stuff <-- in italics to remind myself how important it is Regular listening to radio/podcasts, finished Les Révénants, watched a couple of documentaries, making 9h16m of TV in total, read a few pages of Le Monde Hebodmadaire every week plus over halfway through L'élégance du hérisson Japanese: Do my weekly language exchange Done. Do a little kanji study every week with Kanji in Context/Anki Completed review of 3 chapters Watch TV and read stuff Finished watching a couple of drama series I had on the go last year. Started watching プロポーズ大作戦. Also started watching the 日本史 series on NHK高校講座. Read モモちゃんとプー, which I started reading just to time my reading speed, kind of boring as I'm rather fed up of kids books in Japanese, but at least I got another 200 pages under my belt. Other Stuff In addition to the above, I bought myself some more lessons on Japonin to try and give my speaking a little boost. It really helped. I've also started looking back at 完全マスターN2文法 for some extra revision. I managed to write a 250 word piece in French which I got corrected on Lang-8. I attempted to write a 400 character piece in Japanese earlier this week but completely failed, I don't know if this is because I was having a bad day (I was really tired) or points to a more fundamental problem, but I will try again this weekend now I'm fully rested. I also totally failed to memorise the lyrics to a song for the Team Spaß challenge I set up, which is a poor showing indeed... I did, however, write two posts on grammar, which was an incredibly useful exercise for confirming my own understanding. I covered Japanese expressions used when we would use modal verbs in English/German/French etc on kraemder's log and the agreement of the past participle in my own log. I started thinking about some more general goals or targets and the best way to track things. The aim is to have enough information and self awareness that I can honestly appraise how hard (or not) I've worked, what kind of progress I'm making, and where I need to tweak (or radically overhaul) what I'm doing. But not to spend so much time thinking about recording and tracking that I distract myself from the main purpose of language learning! Anyway, I've put some general targets up in the first post of my log, which I will probably tweak as the year progresses and different things become either more or less relevant. I've also set myself up a spreadsheet on Google Docs (as I trust them to be around for longer than my laptop) so that I can record which books I read, which TV shows/films I watch, any conversations/lessons I've had or pieces of writing I've done. I've also got a list of all the textbooks/courses I have on the go at the moment, so I can quickly run through at the end of each month to update how much further I've progressed in each of them. I'm not going to record which websites I read or whether I listen to the radio/podcasts because it's just too hard to measure without getting bogged down in details, even though they are all important and useful activities which I should continue to do! 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 32 of 142 01 February 2014 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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A Plan for February?
My plan for combining three languages, listing a range of textbooks plus a rather more vague pledge to read and listen more to French and Japanese, didn't really work out as I'd hoped, but I've learned a few interesting things along the way: - trying to solve similar problems in two different languages using the same techniques at the same time seems to be more trouble than it is worth - I had totally underestimated the power of extensive reading (probably because reading Japanese is something of a special case) - maintaining my French takes less work (in hours) than maintaining my Japanese So, moving forward into February, what am I going to do? German I seriously considered doing a German 6WC for February and got as far as registering, but in the end I changed my mind. I'm feeling much more highly motivated to deal with French and Japanese right now, so rather than set myself up to fail again with all three languages in February, I'll keep German to one side until I really feel like I need a break from Japanese or French (or both). I will keep doing my reviews in Anki, not because it will make any real impact on its own, but because it takes just 1-2 minutes a day, which I figure is worth it to ensure that I don't forget that Löffel is masculine. Japanese I really want to see the benefits I've experienced from reading French apply to my Japanese as well. Having seen first hand what a difference reading can make, I feel a lot more motivated to try and push on through the kanji barrier and get reading real grown-up books. I think I need some kind of Japanese Reading Support Group, although I'm not sure what this would look like in reality! However, what I definitely can, and think I should do, is as follows: - Keep reading, ideally every day - Dip into online news articles more regularly, the ones on NHK seem to be a bit more comprehensible to me right now - Limit textbook work to things which will directly benefit my reading, such as Kanji in Context, review of N2 grammar (新完全マスター) and possibly a bit of intensive reading with N2 level texts (either 新完全マスター or Unicom) On top of that, I need to maintain my listening and speaking skills, which I will do by: - Regular language exchange - Take a few more Japonin lessons - Watch some more TV drama Plus I need to test, and hopefully recover, my writing skills so I will aim to write: - 2 400 character essays French As with Japanese, I really want to make sure that I am more focused on developing my skills through using them, rather than studying them. This means: - Continue Skype lessons - Aim to write 2 250 word essays - Finish reading l'élégance du hérisson - Read a few pages of Le Monde each week - Keep listening to the radio/podcasts I won't add any goals relating to TV/film as I seem to find it easier to find podcasts I like to listen to than things I want to watch in this language (it's the opposite way around in Japanese, strangely). When it comes to textbook work, I will continue to prioritise the two areas I need most help in right now: - pronunciation (Les 500 exercices de phonétique) - review of basic grammar (Grammaire Progressive du Français) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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