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| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 49 of 124 25 April 2013 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
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About a month ago, I stumbled across Wannabefreak’s Cantonese learning blog, which is an excellent resource (and inspiration!) for anyone learning Cantonese. In one of his posts, he mentioned that early on, he prioritized learning vocabulary, sometimes learning as many as 200 words a week. When I first saw that statistic, it was daunting to say the least. But now that I've gotten into the swing of daily Anki use, I realize that I’m also learning between 150-200 Cantonese words/phrases every week.
I have three Cantonese Anki decks, each which I’ve set to add 10 new words per day. Additionally, I have decks for French (10 new words per day), German (10 new words per day) and Spanish (8 new words per day). So in total, I’m learning more than 400 “new” words per week. Some of these are review words or sentence patterns, rather than new vocabulary, but I would guess even accounting for those, I am still learning at least 100-150 new words a week between these four languages. The wonderful thing about having Anki on my iPhone is that it really doesn't seem like that much study time. I generally use it on the MTR, but also at the gym and when I’m walking around. Hong Kong is so noisy that I can’t listen to language tapes via headphones, so this is the best use of my free time. Since I spend at least an hour a day on public transit, it’s a lot of study time that would've otherwise been wasted. About a month and a half into my Anki use, my retention is still pretty good. I usually fail fewer than 5 cards in my review. If I notice that I am failing a card consistently over several days, I generally isolate that word and drill it separately over the course of a day or two, until I've got it down. I am less concerned with active recall of the French/German/Spanish words, but for Cantonese, if I have any doubt that my recognition of a word is only passive, I’ll write down the English equivalent and practice active recall over the course of a few days. It’s been the best way I’ve found so far of drilling down hard words, such as “dish soap,” “flying a kite,” “bookkeeper,” “electric razor” and other words that I was a bit iffy on. This huge vocabulary dump is taking its mental toll though. I've been getting more tired during the day and sleeping more at night. Long-term, I don’t think I’d be able to sustain this pace of vocabulary study. (Too bad… if I could learn 58 words a day, every day, I could become super advanced in so many languages!) Once my Cantonese vocabulary gets up to a solid level, I’ll reduce the number of new words to 10-20 a day, rather than 30. I have 81 days left to clear out the backlog of unlearned words in German, and 61 days to finish clearing out the French backlog. At that point, I think my study load will lessen considerably, especially since I am not actively adding any new words to the German deck. CANTONESE I’m still slogging through Chapter 27 of Intermediate Cantonese. The sentence structures have gotten more challenging, but also much more elegant and useful. I am definitely learning a lot from reading out the drills and getting used to the tones. One issue I've been having is that I sometimes mispronounce a low rising tone when it is in conjunction with a rising tone, usually because I am rushing the pronunciation. For instance, I tend to pronounce “yíh túng” (headphones) as “yih túng.” I think I just need to take my time in pronouncing these words more slowly, so as not to compromise the pronunciation. FRENCH I am now about halfway through my issue of Les Echos. It’s not as painful as before, although still very hard. I read four additional articles, and only added 16 more words to my Anki deck. I am also now up to Lesson 28 of Ultimate French. I am still adding a lot of new words to my Anki deck, such as “cavity,” “haircut,” “limelight,” etc. Some of these words are more essential than others, but I think all of them are useful enough to be worth learning. The grammar explanations continue to be extremely helpful, and Ultimate French also has a smattering of idiomatic expressions that don’t appear in Assimil. SPANISH I am about halfway through my “chick lit” novel. I've been keeping a list of new vocabulary and interesting, useful sentence patterns that I’d like to learn. So far, I’ve added about 100 words and phrases to Anki. This is a very enjoyable and low stress way to keep up my Spanish. I've been reading it on my iPhone, usually whenever I am finished with my Anki review for the day but still have otherwise unused free time. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 50 of 124 30 April 2013 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I haven’t made much progress this week, and have no other excuse than laziness. I am still slogging through my Anki vocabulary deck and have now reached Chapter 29 of Intermediate Cantonese. I am definitely feeling that my Cantonese is improving a lot, especially in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but it nevertheless feels like the progress isn't fast enough. I’ve been here for approximately a month and a half now, and there are still days when I feel like a rank beginner. I think on my best days, I speak as if I were a high A2 or even a low B1, with accurate tones, a fairly broad vocabulary, mostly correct grammar and particle usage, and a convincing accent. But other times, I can’t even string together a basic sentence! I think my vocabulary is now approaching 2,500 words, but it’s still not enough to comfortably understand the news. I think I’ll need to get through the rest of Intermediate Cantonese and both volumes of Interesting Cantonese before my listening comprehension really gets up to speed. I continue, however, to be glad that I am learning massive amounts of vocabulary every week. Just these past few days, I used all sorts of new words that I learned from my Anki study, such as: yaht gei (diary), tói bou (tablecloth), mān (cook over low heat), fūng fu (abundant), daaih bahn jeuhng (elephant), jyūn sām (attentively), dihn wá bóu (telephone book), paak sáu jéung (to applaud) and gōu sāan jing (altitude sickness). FRENCH I am now up to Lesson 31 of Ultimate French. The grammar discussion is moving very quickly, and the book is now covering future and conditional tenses. Even though I am very comfortable using those tenses in Spanish, I have a lot of difficulty using them in French. I think I am going to need a lot of drills to get this down, since having a conceptual understanding of these tenses just isn't cutting it. I think I might have to resort to FSI to get a firm handle on this. I still have 18 pages left of Les Echos before I finish this issue. Given this agonizingly slow pace, I don’t think I will have the energy to get through issues of both Le Figaro and Le Monde, but I’ll wait and see when I’m done with Les Echos. However, this newspaper reading exercise has been extremely helpful. Even if I become less of a stickler for checking up every word and adding them to Anki, I think it’s still helping a lot with my reading comprehension. Also, since all three issues are from the same day, I suspect that most of the news overlaps, which hopefully means a lot less new vocabulary. OTHER LANGUAGES Out of curiosity, I took two online placement tests today: one in German on the Deutsche Welle website and one in Spanish on the Cervantes Institute’s AVE website. For the Deutsche Welle test, I took the B1 level and got 26/30 questions correct (86%). With that score, I would place into a class working towards B2 level. I think that assessment is a bit optimistic since it doesn't take into account active skills, although I do think my grammar, vocabulary and comprehension are in the high B1 range. For Spanish, the AVE test placed me at C1.3-4. There wasn't any explanation as to what this means, but I think it means that my tested passive skills (grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening comprehension) are above B2 and somewhere in the “working towards C1” range. That test started off fairly easy, but quickly got harder, since I think the difficulty adapts to how many questions you answer correctly. By the time I reached the listening comprehension, the interview snippets I listened to were almost impossible to understand, with lots of fast talking, static/background noise, and very precise questions. I can only imagine how much harder it would be to do that listening comprehension part during an official exam in an exam room! As with the Deutsche Welle test, I think this was optimistic since it didn't test any active oral/written production skills. Also, I think I really need a comprehensive Spanish grammar review before I can tackle some of the more advanced questions. I still have some difficulties with subjunctive, preterite vs. imperfect, and prepositions. I am still reading my Spanish novel, and am now about 80% through it. I should be able to finish it by tomorrow or the day after. I think I’ll end up with a total of 200 words/expressions to add to Anki by the time I’m done. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 51 of 124 03 May 2013 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I have finally made it through Volume I of Intermediate Cantonese! The last two chapters were really challenging, since they used constructions that I was completely unfamiliar with: discussing advanced causation/conditional clauses and describing addictions/cravings. I did all of the drills, but I think that I am still going to need a lot of time and practice to get used to these constructions. Rather than getting hung up on these details, I am going to move on to the next book and come back to review these later. With just ten lessons left in Intermediate Cantonese, I’m looking forward to graduating to other, more interesting material. The Sidney Lau series is like medicine. I know it’s been super helpful for my learning and I know I am speaking a lot more correctly and with more complex sentence structures than I did before I started using it, but it is extremely dry and boring. My vocabulary has continued to grow by leaps and bounds, but I still think I am going to need a LOT of words before I get to where I want to be. I have hours of exposure to native materials every day, but I do think most of the real learning takes place when I hit the books. Even with someone as close to me as my partner, I feel bad having to ask every two seconds what something means when we are watching television. I think I am starting to hit that stretch where the most common 75-85% of words, I can easily recognize and understand. But that last 20-25% that actually provides specificity, meaning and color to speech still often escapes me. I have gone through approximately 80% of Interesting Cantonese Volume 1, so I should be finished with the book soon. I estimate that there will be anywhere from 400-600 more words that I'll cull from it for my Anki deck, since the last few chapters are much more advanced than the beginning chapters. FRENCH I just found out that our Parisian friends will be coming to visit Hong Kong later this month. Although I haven’t been that diligent about studying French in the past week (mostly to focus instead on Cantonese), I think I’ll at least try to finish Ultimate French and my issue of Les Echos so that I can keep my skills fresh for when they arrive. SPANISH I have finished my chick lit novel. I ultimately culled 190 words and patterns from the book, which I added to Anki. I have moved on to a science fiction novel, La Guerra de los Cielos, also free from the Kindle store. So far, I’ve read about 20 pages. It’s been interesting. I will try to read at least 100 pages a week. It’s a fairly hefty novel though, so I think it’ll take a long time to finish. After a lot of frustration, I have reset the study history on my deck of old Anki cards, to make it easier to review those words. The 3 year gap in my review was creating all sorts of weird review schedules that just wasn't working for me. Current ANKI deck counts: Cantonese: 1709 words (225 not yet studied) French: 1171 words (602 not yet studied) German: 1432 words (734 not yet studied) Spanish: 1196 words (775 not yet studied) Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 52 of 124 09 May 2013 at 7:09am | IP Logged |
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Several years ago, I read a very interesting book on language learning called “Success with Foreign Languages.” The book is from the 1980s and fairly outdated, but has some interesting interviews with various “successful” foreign language learners. I remember at the time that one of the interviews struck me in particular – a young woman who worked in Brazil and Germany, and learned Brazilian Portuguese and German almost entirely through socializing with locals.
According to the book, she was effectively basically fluent in conversational, spoken German after a few years, even though she never paid attention to grammar rules or vocabulary study. When she returned to the US, however, she struggled to feel comfortable in formal classes because all of the other students had learned German in school and knew more grammar/academic language, even if they didn’t have the same level of ease and fluency as she did. The author/interviewer noted that those other students would have a much longer time reaching that level of fluency or interactive competence in German because they were so focused on grammar, pronunciation, etc. rather than just taking in the language as a whole. Further, the author contrasted the experiences of the above interviewee, “Carla,” with another language learner, “Chuck,” who also learned a language largely through informal means but with much greater success. The difference was that Carla never formally studied the language but only relied on her natural acquisition abilities, whereas Chuck combined natural acquisition with structured study. The upshot was that you might want to lay a strong foundation in speaking correctly before letting your natural abilities take over. I think I’m starting to reach the stage of Cantonese learning where my focus on grammar study is starting to impair my spoken fluency. As I start to worry more about whether I have the correct word order or the correct classifier or the correct final sentence particle, I’ve been losing some of the rhythm of the language. I don’t know if and when it’ll come back, but I hope with enough practice, I’ll reach the point where I don’t have to think about these things anymore. Maybe then, as the book suggests, I can just relax and listen, observe and chat, and allow the spoken fluidity to come back. CANTONESE I am now on Lesson 34 of Intermediate Cantonese. This is another tough chapter covering the grammatical constructions for “unless” and “except.” I have been going through the drills, but the patterns still aren’t sinking in, so I think I need to give it some more time. I have noticed that previous lessons get easier with each revision. After I reach the end of Intermediate Cantonese, I will take a break from explicit grammar study though. There are a lot of other fun books I want to turn to before I get back to studying grammar. I have finally finished going through all of Interesting Cantonese Volume 1 and adding new words to Anki. The last few pages were a killer, since it covered professions and types of businesses, going into all sorts of words like “physical therapist,” “cobbler,” “beautician,” and “hardware store.” The book covers 3,000 words and phrases, and in total, I added 884 entries to Anki (still 240 entries that I have not yet studied). Between this deck and my other two Cantonese decks, I think it is safe to say that my current vocabulary is now somewhere in the 3,000 to 3,500 range. That sounds like a lot, but it still feels extremely deficient. I notice that as I watch television, I am catching a lot more words than before, such as “fire truck,” “mustard seed,” “flat-soled shoes,” “cargo lift,” “toenail fungus,” “legislative council,” “dirty/smutty magazine,” and “nutritionist.” But there is still a LOT of words that I don’t know. FRENCH I’ve read four more pages of Les Echos and am now up to Lesson 35 of Ultimate French: Beginner-Intermediate. I have noticed that Ultimate French is helping me clarify some issues with my grammatical knowledge and improve both my writing and speaking. For instance, I am getting a little better at future/conditional tense conjugations, and I can now construct hearsay statements in the proper tenses. SPANISH I have been reading La Guerra de los Cielos in my spare time. It’s hard to figure out where I am in the book (since Kindle uses strange page counts), but I have probably read about 30 more pages since my last point. There have been a few new words here and there, but I have mostly been jotting down interesting phrases or sentence patterns that I would like to incorporate into my active vocabulary. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 53 of 124 16 May 2013 at 11:10am | IP Logged |
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I’ve been sick with a cold these past few days, so haven’t had the energy to study as much as usual. But nevertheless, I am slowly making progress!
CANTONESE I am now on Lesson 36 of Intermediate Cantonese. I still have approximately 275 pages to go before I finish the book. Given my current rate of study, I think I can get through it by the end of the month, if not sooner. Rather than engaging in a comprehensive review of past chapters, I am planning to take a temporary grammar break and focus on more interesting Cantonese sources, mostly to improve my listening comprehension and expand my vocabulary. I have briefly dialed back my Anki studying to only introduce 25 new words/expressions a day, instead of 30. My previous pace was higher because it included some words that I sort of knew, but wanted to add to my active vocabulary, whereas now, there are more words that are actually new. Scaling back the pace keeps me from feeling so overwhelmed. FRENCH I am up to Chapter 37 of Ultimate French: Beginner-Intermediate. I’ve noticed that I am having difficulty with a few things, including when to use the future perfect tense and how to conjugate certain subjunctive forms. I think these are things that I can, with enough pondering, resolve, but I haven’t developed enough automaticity to be able to use these forms in live conversation. After I finish Ultimate French, I am planning to take a brief grammar break and delve into other, more fun resources before I return to grammar. My goal is to work on improving vocabulary and listening/reading comprehension before I get back to oral production. My latest discovery is Think French audio magazine, to which I recently subscribed. I’ve only listened to two issues so far, but it seems to be a wonderful resource. The magazine is intended for high-beginner to intermediate-level learners. Each month’s issue contains 8-10 articles, covering such things as cultural discussions, travelogues, myths and legends, profiles of French-speaking cities and countries, biographies and even recipes. I found the balance of articles to be very broad and the few that I’ve read so far are very interesting. The articles do not include an English translation, but rather a glossary-sidebar defining most of the vocabulary. Each article comes with an MP3 with a very clear recording of the article text. Additionally, each issue includes a section with useful tourist-level phrases and vocabulary, as well as a few grammar pointers. The articles incorporate lots of idiomatic expressions and vocabulary. Generally, I am finding approximately 5-10 new words or expressions per article. Because the recordings are read, they are easier to understand than full-speed conversation (such as with audio magazines like Fluent French Audio). I think the speed of the Think French recordings is fairly similar to Assimil. However, I find that the articles are an excellent bridge into thinking in French and getting ready for other, more native-speed resources. As an added bonus, a subscription includes access to all four years-worth of back issues, which means that you get 40+ hours of French audio and 50+ back issues. I am not sure how I will use Think French going forward, but I am thinking of taking a Luca/Assimil-style approach of translating the articles into English, and then back-translating to French again. Each article is about 1-2 pages long, so this isn’t too bad, but it would be a challenging exercise. In the meanwhile, I’ve put the MP3s on my iPod so that I can listen to them whenever I have a quiet moment. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 54 of 124 21 May 2013 at 8:18am | IP Logged |
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Cantonese is starting to intrude on my other languages. Yesterday, my partner and I finally had lunch with our friends from Paris, who are here visiting family in Hong Kong. They are bilingual Chinese/French, and speak minimal English. Usually, our conversations are an interesting mix of languages, where I speak with the friends in French, my partner speaks with them in Cantonese, and I speak with him in English. But yesterday, every time I opened my mouth to say something to them, Cantonese came out instead of French. I finally did manage to dredge out a few sentences in French, but it felt awkward and foreign. Never mind that I have never really spoken to these friends before in Cantonese, or that I just saw them two months ago in Paris, and spoke with them for hours in French back then. I think the combination of being here in Hong Kong and focusing largely on Cantonese in the past few weeks has temporarily suppressed my French. It’s a little frustrating because I have been studying French during these few weeks, although all of this has been passive studying, mostly of grammar and vocabulary.
After some thought, I’ve decided to upgrade the Cantonese language rating on my profile from “beginner” to “intermediate.” I’ve hesitated up until now because I feel like I still have a long, long way to go. And I do. I still can’t understand the news, my comprehension of TV shows is still so-so, and I still can’t use some grammatical constructions or sentence patterns. But I think I am roughly to where my French was a year or two ago. My vocabulary is now in the 3,000+ word range; I've studied almost all of the grammar of the language; and I do a lot of things in the language – from discussing cuts of meat with the butcher to buying voltage converters, from sympathizing about sprained ankles and cancer diagnoses to giving college admissions advice, from talking about travel plans to listing out my favorite restaurants and favorite dishes. It’s not always perfect, and I still often stumble while searching for the correct classifier, the precise word, etc., but I think those are things to iron out before I reach basic fluency. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 55 of 124 04 June 2013 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I finally finished Volume II of Sidney Lau’s Intermediate Cantonese! I actually finished the volume a few days ago, but just yesterday finished inputting the remaining vocabulary (about 50 words) into Anki. It was a very wonderful, comprehensive course, even if I didn’t repeat all of the drills ad nauseum the way that they were supposed to be done. I can’t say that I’ve mastered everything in the book, but I now have a great grounding in the way Cantonese works, the major grammar points and the most common sentence patterns. The only issue with such a comprehensive set is that you can sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees. So I’ve started two much smaller Routledge Grammar/Workbooks: Basic Cantonese and Intermediate Cantonese. These two slim volumes offer some advantages/complements to Sidney Lau – the books are very recent and feature very modern, up to date language, there are literally thousands of wonderful and useful sentence patterns, and the grammar explanations are concise and easy to understand. So far, I’ve made it through approximately 75 pages of the Basic Cantonese book. I have been reading the grammar explanations and noting the new vocabulary words (of which there are a lot). Then, I usually cover up the Cantonese and try to back-translate the sentences from English into Cantonese. If I am successful, then I move on. Otherwise, I consider adding that sentence pattern to Anki. The only problems I see with the books is that they don’t have any audio and they do NOT have Chinese characters. Also, the romanization is a little bit funky (an adapted Yale style), with new colloquial sounds (use of “l” rather than “n”). But those things don’t bother me much. I actually prefer this romanization to Yale or jyutping. FRENCH I have really been dragging my feet, and still have one more lesson to go before I finish Ultimate French. I should hopefully get through it by today or tomorrow. I still have 500+ new French vocabulary words in Anki to study, but my excitement about French is waning, as the likelihood of going back to Paris anytime soon is minimal. As much as I am a fan of studying multiple languages and prone to wanderlust, the truth is that I need to get my Cantonese better now, and the other languages can wait. So French is going back into maintenance mode after I finish with Ultimate French. I will continue to study Anki words, listen to podcasts on occasion, and read some ThinkFrench articles when I have the time, but I won’t actively study it or try to learn more. I am also going to stop putting new words into Anki (unless they seem really useful) to give myself time to digest the words I still have backlogged. I’ll revisit French later this year, after I get my Cantonese up to a comfortable level. SPANISH I am also reviving my Spanish Skype lessons. Years ago, I signed up for 30 hours of Skype lessons, and only made it through 8 hours before work got too busy and I indefinitely postponed them. I enjoyed the lessons, but simply was too busy to carve out time every week for the lessons. Now that I have more free time, I am resuming these lessons. Based on online tests including the one offered by the Cervantes Institute, it seems like my passive skills are roughly the same as they’ve always been: roughly C1 for listening and reading comprehension, and a good, broad vocabulary. However, I have barely spoken Spanish since my trip to Spain in 2011, so I think I need a refresher in speaking Spanish and using it actively. An hour or two of Spanish lessons every week would help keep the language alive in my head. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 56 of 124 08 June 2013 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I have made it through about 120 pages of Routledge’s Basic Cantonese, noting down about 60 sentence patterns that I plan to add to Anki. I have another 40 pages or so to go before I finish the book and move on to the Intermediate volume. None of the grammar points are new to me, but I find that the explanations are very helpful refreshers. A warning – this book isn’t really meant for beginners! If you are just starting out, you will find it pretty challenging, especially because they toss all sorts of vocabulary words at you, move very quickly through the grammar points, and assume in the exercises that you have some outside knowledge of the language. For instance, they will discuss five classifiers in the grammar explanations, but then the exercises will ask you for 5 other classifiers that are not introduced in the book. I think this is best for someone who is at an intermediate level of Cantonese, rather than a basic level. I have finally finished going through all of the vocabulary from Interesting Cantonese 1. I definitely feel like the work is paying off. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with friends where we used words like “hōn gāang” (watchman or doorman), “yáuh gēi” (organic), “maht gwā” (honeydew), “AA jai” (going dutch) and “gūng jung ga kèih” (public holiday). These words, and so many others, would’ve simply flew over my head without my intense vocabulary work in recent months. It’s a bit funny/frustrating that full comprehension always seems just out of reach. Months ago, I thought that if I just knew 1,000 or 1,500 more words, I would be able to watch tv, for example. But I would estimate that my vocabulary is now somewhere around 4,000 words, and I am still having trouble understanding television. Now I am really appreciating the input of other learners who say that you have to get up to 8,000 – 10,000 words before you can really understand most native sources. I think it will take at least another 6-8 months before I get to that level. FRENCH I have finally finished both my issue of Les Echos and Ultimate French. The former started to become a drag as I lost interest in the exercise, and the latter felt a little anti-climactic at the end, when they rushed through some short poems and a cursory discussion of the literary simple past tense. Assimil books tend to have a grand finale with a letter to the learner, encouraging them to continue on the path of language learning, so maybe I was expecting more fanfare? I have yet to add the remaining new words to my Anki, but I am not in any hurry because I still have 500+ words in the backlog. SPANISH I had my first Skype Spanish lesson yesterday. It was tough! I haven’t spoken Spanish for years, and usually, when I speak, it’s about the same generic topics like how I learned Spanish, family and my work, what I think of Mexico/Spain/etc., and immigration issues (if I am using it for work). But my new teacher was great about pushing me into slightly unfamiliar territory. We chatted about everything from the finance industry to thrift shops in the US, from restaurants here in Hong Kong to the horse meat scandal in Europe, from environmental conservation efforts in Mexico to “blue” cheese in Italy. My comprehension is still very good, and I generally still remember my grammar, but the oral fluidity is very rusty. I felt like my adjective use was especially weak, and that I kept saying that things were “interesting” or “good,” and that some of my use of the past tenses was all over the place. I am sure I sounded like a blathering idiot at many points. But I think the session helped clear out a few cobwebs and rust in my Spanish. Going forward, I am planning to do two 1-hour sessions per week. I think I’ll focus first on conversation, and as I start to recover my Spanish, I’ll ask to target specific grammar points and speaking tasks. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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