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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5221 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 124 14 March 2010 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||
Just like eating, most of the work when learning a language is done when you digest the information. I see a lot of people on this site do a lot cramming, and maybe it works for them, but I actually spend more time working out the language in my head away from books than I do studying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 10 of 124 25 March 2010 at 7:12am | IP Logged | ||
That's a great point. I've noticed in the past few weeks that no matter how hard I work on a lesson in a given day, it usually doesn't "stick" until I come back to it a day or two later. Even if I don't spend the time consciously thinking about the grammar point or the vocabulary, that time really allows the material to sink in. Unfortunately, I've been lagging a bit in my studies, since I just finished up my final examss last week. With this week off, hopefully I can get back on track! I'm currently up to Lesson 17 of Pimsleur Japanese I. The word order is making more sense to me now, but I am still having difficulty keeping track of the particles. For instance, I've noticed that "wa" seems to be the topical particle, but for expressions of desire, e.g., I want some water, it sounds like Pimsleur uses the particle "ga" instead, and in other constructions like I have money, "o" is used. I hope that there are good reasons for the particles, but right now, it feels a bit arbitrary, although I'm trying my best to match them up appropriate as they come up. I'm also up to Lesson 20 of Pimsleur French II and episode 9 of French in Action. It's going pretty slowly, since I'm prioritizing Japanese at the moment, but I'm really enjoying the lessons, especially French in Action. My passive understanding is okay right now, especially when I'm reading from the transcripts included in the textbook, but converting that understanding into speaking under pressure is still difficult. For example, there are pauses in French in Action where the viewer is expected to repeat a phrase or sentence after a character -- even thought this type of "shadowing" seems pretty straightforward, I'm having a surprising amount of difficulty! My goal is to get up to Lesson 20 of Japanese and Lesson 24 of French by early next week. I need to have finished the 90 lessons of both by end of August, which leaves me approximately 5 months to complete another 73 lessons of Japanese and 40 lessons of French. Hopefully, I will get through Pimsleur French soon enough to get back to Assimil New French with Ease and LL Ultimate French, where I can really sink my teeth into the grammar and a little bit of the reading/writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5221 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 11 of 124 25 March 2010 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Look at the verb/adjective. That's usually what dictates which particle to use. For "I want water", are they saying "mizu ga hoshii"? Hoshii is an adj. and the subject is supported by ga. Are they saying "okane wo motte imasu"? The verb motsu introduces direct objects with o. Just like English, every verb has it's own requirements for the use of prepositions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 12 of 124 30 March 2010 at 8:58am | IP Logged | ||
Ah, that does make a lot of sense -- now, if only it came naturally to me when trying to speak Japanese during the actual Pimsleur lessons! I think I'm starting to sense that frustrating gap between what I understand and what I can actually produce in the moment. I feel that my brain is working with about a 2-3 second delay at times, and by the time I'm ready to spit out the phrase, the answer has already come on. It is incredibly tempting to press pause on my iPod while I grope for answers, but I'm trying to resist that urge, in case it handicaps my progress. I just finished Lesson 21 of Japanese I and Lesson 26 of French II. Right now, I'm doing each Japanese lesson 2-3 times and the French lessons 1-2 times before moving on. I usually play an hour's worth of lessons at the gym (one French, one Japanese) and another hour while driving or walking to class each day, so I've got plenty of exposure. I am cheating slightly for Japanese though; I have been checking up the words that keep stumping me so that I can see them in romaji, which has really helped with my memorazition. For French, I've decided that at my current skill level, it doesn't make sense to continue watching French in Action -- although I get the gist of each episode, I think I should learn more vocabulary before I use FIA for listening comprehension. Thus, I've started back up with Assimil New French with Ease, which I briefly dabbled in back in mid-2009 before my last trip to Paris. Each lesson is very short and doesn't require me to have a computer available (unlike FIA), and the lessons are chock-full of very useful words! Since I'm planning on going to Paris in August and I've already reached Lesson 20 of Assimil on the passive wave, I should have enough time to finish both Pimsleur and Assimil French before I go (at least, I hope). On a related note, I took two on-line proficiency tests in French just for fun this past weekend, and was amused to find that one site rated my skills as "B1" and the other test placed me into second-year college French. Obviously, I still have a long way to go before I am actually at the intermediate-level, but I guess my passive knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary (stemming largely from my knowledge of Spanish/Portuguese) is not too bad. Edited by mike245 on 30 March 2010 at 9:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 13 of 124 08 April 2010 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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School has not been too busy in the past week, but I think wanderlust has been getting the better of me. I was cleaning out my closet the other day and came across stacks of flash cards from back when I was learning Spanish and German. Fortunately, I still remembered most of the Spanish vocabulary even after all these years, but I've forgotten so much German that I decided to downgrade my skills from basic fluency to intermediate. Maintaining languages is a lot of work!
German: I can no longer comfortable read newspapers in German without looking up a large number of words, and my listening comprehension has really deteriorated over the years. Once I get a stronger grasp of French, I do hope to one day go back and really get better with my German and regain fluency. In the meanwhile, I've contented myself with setting up Anki and loading all of my German flashcards (representing about 1500 words) into the program. I've also ordered the Vis-Ed flashcard set for basic German and I've been reading through Langenscheidt's Basic German Vocabulary. BGV is one of my favorite learning resources because it compiles the 4000 most common words in German, sorted out by theme, and with invaluable example sentences that show you exactly how to use the words. I've been been diligent in memorizing the vocabulary, but I try to read a few pages every night to review what I used to know. Spanish: I've realized that I need to put my Spanish in maintenance mode lest it become supplanted by my more recent studies of French and Japanese. I don't have much occasion to speak Spanish, but I have turned on the Spanish subtitles on all of my DVDs. I've learned a few new words, but it's especially useful to remember words that I don't come across very often in Spanish (e.g., rope, syringe, bladder, stocks, etc.). I love watching House MD and CSI, so I've been picking up lots of medical and criminal terms. I've also been reading/skimming 1-2 articles on www.elpais.com each day. Usually, there are anywhere from 2-5 words I don't know in an article, so I've been compiling them into a list and uploading them to Anki. French: I just finished Level II of Pimsleur, and am now on Level III, Lesson 2. I checked out the lessons from www.netlibrary.com, which is a fantastic way to get free access. Now that I've started to get a feel for the language, I onnly have to listen to each lesson once, although I will occasionally review a lesson if it introduces a lot of new vocabulary. I'm also now on Lesson 32 of Assimil New French with Ease. I have slightly modified my approach-- I generally listen to 2-3 lessons in one session, and then spend 2-3 days repeating those lessons, rather than spending 1 day per lesson as instructed. Right now, I'm focusing mostly on listening comprehension, and I think that Assimil is really helping in that regard. When I finish Pimsleur in about a month, this should coincide with the "active wave" of Assimil. I've also ordered a set of Vis-Ed flashcards that I hope to get soon, so that I can start building my active vocabulary. Japanese: I'm now on Lesson 25 of Pimsleur Level I. I suspect it's going very slowly because of all my work in my other languages, but I'm not in a huge rush to learn Japanese right now, so that's okay. I recently injured myself, so I haven't been spending any time at the gym (where I normally listen to my Pimsleur tapes), so I've been practicing mostly while cooking and doing simple, repetitive chores around the house. It's a bit frustrating because I feel that Japanese is not a very efficient language-- compared to Chinese, it requires so many more syllables to convey ideas in Japanese! Granted, the western languages also use a lot of syllables, but at least the ones I've studied bear some relationship to English and are thus a bit easier for me to get used to. Now that my post-bar plans are solidifying, I've been checking up languages schools in Europe. I am very tempted to try to spend two weeks in Berlin (with the Goethe Institut) and then two weeks in Paris (with Langue Onze), but I suspect it will be much more practical to choose one location and focus all of my energy on one language (namely, French). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 14 of 124 15 April 2010 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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This has been a moderately busy week at school, so I haven't had much time to devote to my language studying, but I've made some minor progress. Anki has really been helping me review my vocabulary, which is great. I've loaded flashcards for German, Spanish, and Cantonese (in romanization only), and have been reviewing them twice a day, which is very helpful.
German: The German words in Anki are all culled from my old flashcards, so it's reviewing old words rather than learning new stuff, but it's still incredibly hard. I'm having the most problem with distinguishing between compound verbs with the same base, e.g., aufbring, anbringen, vollbringen, etc. On a side note, I took the on-line placement test on the Goethe Institute's website last week, and placed into the B2 course. I was quite surprised that I was still able to fare okay. Even when I was living in Germany and was fairly fluent in German, I would've guessed that my skills were probably B2 at best, largely because of my mediocre grammar skills (i.e., my inability to use the conjunctive tense, my trouble with double infinitives and passive voice, and my weakness with the genitive case). Its funny how I've lost a lot of vocabulary, but the minimal grammar skills I had somehow remained! Spanish: I've imported about half of my old vocabulary flashcards into Anki (right now, about 500 words), and I've been reading 1-2 articles on www.elpais.com everyday. I generally find between 2-5 words per article that I don't know, and I've been adding them to Anki and reviewing them. I've been learning Spanish for so long that, luckily, I have have any interference with my new languages, but I certainly don't want to forget too much of it. Cantonese: In class, we just finished working through Chapter 17 of Teach Yourself Cantonese and Chapter 19 of Routledge's Intermediate Cantonese Grammar. The great thing is that I watch a few hours of Cantonese television every week, and I can definitely feel that I am understanding more than I used to. I am still probably about 1,500 words short of the vocabulary I need for comfortable comprehension of television shows and the news, but I can usually catch the general gist. For everyday conversation topics, I can now understand about 80%. Japanese: I'm up to Lesson 28 of Pimsleur Japanese I. I moved pretty quickly through Lessons 25 and 26, but for some reason, Lesson 27 was really hard, and I ended up repeating the lesson 4 or 5 times. I think my brain is still trying to make room for the Japanese, and learning new words and constructions is still difficult. The pronunciation of Japanese and the word order are coming more naturally to me now, but there is still a noticeable lag between hearing new words and being able to use them in sentences. Pimsleur likes to introduce a phrase and then, a few minutes later, ask you to recall the phrase and use it in a sentence. Even though there is so much drilling, I think I need more. For once, I'm really glad that the Pimsleur lessons move so slowly! French: I'm up to Lesson 9 of Pimsleur French III, and Lesson 42 of Assimil French. I've been moving pretty fast through Pimsleur, which I suspect is due to the synergies between Pimsleur and Assimil. Pretty much all of the new vocabulary in Pimsleur is stuff I've already covered in Assimil, except that Pimsleur takes the time to really drill down the words and their pronunciations. The more I delve into Assimil, the more I am appreciating the method. The dialogs are generally interesting, the words are useful, and the pace moves pretty quickly. I think it's really improved my listening comprehension a lot, and I hope that the active wave will jump-start my vocabulary. I think once Pimsleur is done, I will use the extra time to start on Living Language Ultimate French. I listened to some of the lessons yesterday on my iPod, and the dialogs move very quickly (even faster than Assimil), so it'll be a good way to continue to build my listening comprehension while learning more grammar. I figure that I'll come back to French in Action later, but right now, spending 30 mins watching each episode doesn't seem like the best use of my time. Also, I just e-mailed Langue Onze last week, and it looks like I can do three weeks of intensive French classes in August. That gives me approximately four months to finish up Pimsleur and Assimil and hopefully, get through at least a third of the Ultimate French course. It's also motivating to have a goal in mind -- I want to learn as much as I can now so that I can make the most of my time in Paris! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 15 of 124 19 April 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese: I finally “graduated” to Pimsleur Japanese II, so I thought it was time to update my language learning log. I must say, finishing Japanese I was a bit anti-climatic. Compared to the amount of material included in French I and Mandarin I (the other two Pimsleur programs I’ve used), the Japanese program moves extremely slowly. I am not sure of the total word count, but I would suspect I only know about 150 or so words in Japanese so far. At this point, I would probably survive—albeit very crudely—in Tokyo, but it would not be easy at all. I’m hoping that Japanese II and III move a bit faster, but I suspect that I might need some additional material before I can even get to the comfortable survival-tourist level that I’m shooting for in preparation for my trip in September. I have been contemplating adding JapanesePod101 to my study repertoire, but I don’t think I have the time for it, since I’m really trying to focus on French. Maybe once I finish Pimsleur French (in a few weeks), I can use the balance of my driving/gym time to listen to those podcasts.
French: I’m now on Lesson 12 of Pimsleur French III and Lesson 45 of Assimil French. The combination has been outstanding: Pimsleur has forced me to produce French on demand while Assimil has been steadily improving my passive vocabulary and comprehension. I tried reading an article on Le Monde yesterday (on the ash cloud in Europe), and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could understand almost the entire thing! Right now, the biggest block I have is dealing with the pronunciation and, specifically, remembering how to pronounce words. For instance, remembering when to use the liaison, remembering when a word uses “é” vs. “e”, etc. Because I’m not yet that comfortable with reading French (because of Pimsleur), I still have trouble connecting the words I can speak and understand with the words I see on the page. This is especially true for verb conjunctions, where so many letters are silent! Assimil has been helping with this (the recordings are a lifesaver), but I am hoping that starting the active wave next week will really activate my knowledge. Spanish: I’ve been listening to Spanish radio stations (from Madrid) for the past few days, and it has been very challenging! Most of the shows I watch are in Mexican Spanish, which I think are slightly slower and use a more colloquial vocabulary that I am familiar with. Iberian Spanish, however, is still extremely hard to listen to, because of vocabulary, some slight grammar differences, and the accent. I also think that my listening comprehension is the weakest of my skills in Spanish, so it’ll be good to continue to reinforce it through more practice. Hopefully, I can tune in for at least 10-15 minutes each night before bed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6812 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 16 of 124 23 April 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve been chugging along the past few days, so I’m happy to have made some good progress in various languages:
Japanese: I’m finally on Lesson 4 of Pimsleur Japanese II. Unfortunately, my progress slowed down quite a bit when I started Japanese II – for some reason, it feels like the speakers are talking much faster and that the response times have shortened a bit! I suppose that it’s good practice, but the first three lessons each took me 4-5 listens to get through. I even rewound some sections at several points so that I could review the material. I haven’t been writing down the romaji for the words I’ve been learning thus far, but I am very tempted to begin doing so, since it’s been so challenging. I suppose I got what I was asking for when I wanted a more fast-paced Pimsleur experience! French: I’m currently on Lesson 15 of Pimsleur French III, and Lesson 51 of Assimil. The pace of Pimsleur also seems to have picked up a little bit, which is good. I’ve been finding the material very helpful, even if the vocabulary words aren’t too challenging. There is still a huge gap between what I can understand and know in theory, and what I can actually produce on demand. Now that I’ve started the active wave of Assimil, though, I can see how focusing on translation and production is really helping me focus on all the little words, the little orthographic details, etc. So far, I’ve been approaching the active wave as follows: First, I re-listen to the lesson while reading the transcript, repeating along and taking especially careful note of various spellings and accents. Second, I read through the English and do an oral translation, checking afterwards to make sure I got everything right. Third, I go through the English again, and do a written translation, trying my best to get the correct spellings, etc. Fourth, I compare my written translation against the book’s translations, marking all of my corrections in red. After every few days, I plan to review over my translations to see what common errors I’m making, so I know what to study. So far, I’ve only been making a few errors with accent marks and sometimes forgetting an “e” or “s” at the end, but I suppose this exercise will be more challenging as I get further into the course and tackle harder lessons. I don’t expect to be fully proficient in reading and writing French, but I am a bit worried that I will need to know how to read and write at least a bit when I attend Langue Onze in August. I figure getting some practice now will be good, since it goes so well with the active wave of Assimil. German: Not much to report here, but I have been diligently reviewing vocabulary on Anki. In addition, every day, I’ve been reading and testing myself from the Langenscheidt Basic German Vocabulary book. Since the book is divided into the top 1-2000 words and the 2001-4000 words, I’ve limited myself to the most common 2000 words first. I cover 40-50 words a day, in a bit of an Assimil-like fashion. That is, in the mornings, I read through the vocabulary, taking note of gender, irregular forms, reflexives, etc. Then I review later in the day, this time reading aloud each example sentence to get a feel for the word. Then, before bed, I go back and spend 5-10 minutes quickly testing myself on the words, and then if I have time, translating the example sentences from English back to German, or reviewing old words. Luckily, almost all of the words are review, so it’s been moving very fast (I would estimate I knew approximately 95% of the words at some point in the past). My goal is just to bring these words back into my vocabulary, so I’m not worrying too much about memorizing them completely. Once I get through the first 2000, I’ll go through the next set of 2000, which I suspect will include more unfamiliar words and thus, may be more challenging. Once I get through the entire BGV book and my Anki flashcards (probably about 4500 words total, given the overlap), I should be in good shape to start reading novels and magazine articles again. That will be the extent of my German maintenance at this point – at least until I’ve reached a good enough level in French to come back to German. Spanish: Not much to report. I haven’t had any time to listen to the radio, but I am still reading 1-2 articles a day and reviewing flash cards with Anki. Hopefully, this is enough to keep my skills fairly fresh. Cantonese: Also not much to report. My listening comprehension does seem to be improving, but I still have a long way to go. I'm up to 243 vocabulary words in Anki -- I think when I hit 1000 words, that'll be some reason for celebration. But right now, I'm still chugging along. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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