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TAC 2013 Team PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5685 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 65 of 204 19 December 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll jump on the bandwagon and post an 'official' introduction as well.
Hi everybody, I'm Jinx, a 25-year-old American living in Germany (although I'm home for the holidays in good old New England right now) and currently in my second year of a two-year M.A. program in technical translation (German-English) at the University of Leipzig. My Romance languages I'll be working on this year are at various stages of what might be roughly called 'intermediate'. I've been self-teaching French in a very patchy way for years now, and am somewhere in the huge wasteland between B1 and B2, I believe. I can get by okay in conversation, write journal entries with lots of mistakes but not too much labor, and read novels for pleasure with no difficulty. I'd like to improve my production (writing and speaking) and listening skills this year. I've learned Catalan for one year in a university immersion course and am probably in between A2 and B1 right now. This fall I worked through the entire Colloquial Catalan book and am now halfway through the seventies-edition Teach Yourself Catalan. I'll be focusing on improving all my skills this year. More notes on this coming soon in my log. Go Team PAX! :) Edited by Jinx on 19 December 2012 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4674 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 66 of 204 19 December 2012 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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My turn.
My name is Quique, I am a 40 y.o. computer guy from Spain, and this is my first TAC. I speak Spanish natively, English, some French and Danish, and very basic German. I studied French at school and high school, but that was 22 years ago, so it's rather rusty. A few weeks ago I decided to study it again. My first goal was to be back at B1 around Easter, but maybe I'm closer to that than I thought (at least on passive skills). At the end of the TAC I hope to be able to take (and pass!) the Alliance Française's DELF B2. PaX vobiscum! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5785 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 67 of 204 19 December 2012 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess I should introduce myself also.
I am Russian, 35 y.o., I am biologist and I live actually in France. I guess I still speak Russian (lol), French (with an accent which sometimes make people laugh), English, some Italian and basic Spanish. I am crazy about languages (even if don't feel any progress in learning). I will do my best for achievement of my SuperChallenges, updating my log (doing something funny, like finding anecdotes in any language and traducing to others) as well as following my team-mate log's. Go PAX! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5874 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 68 of 204 20 December 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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My turn. I'm a brazilian 50 y.o. engineer, with a physics PhD, born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, who for unknown reasons lives now in Brasília, Brazil's capital :-))
Portuguese is the only language I speak really well, but I've had very few language problems during a one year stay in the USA, although my accent is still not great and I keep hoping to get rid of grammatical mistakes. I speak Spanish and French at about the same level. I understand almost everything, can read high level literature, talk to people about everything, but cannot write very well. I hope to study again and more deeply the grammar of these languages in the future. I've learned Esperanto and could speak and even write it well, but must say that it is now in a very rusty situation. Anyway, I know that it only takes a few days to get most of it all back, as I've done before. Esperanto IS very easy, and VERY interesting. During 2012 I've studied German very hard, this has been my first TAC, and maybe my level now is B2/C1. I'll soon be able to say something more precise about it. I understand both written and spoken Italian well, but my active skills need lots of improvements. Catalan has been my choice for the Assimil Experiment and now I've decided to learn it, whatever it takes. As I've already said in a previous post, neither Catalan nor Italian will continue to be my main target languages after March '13, but I hope to improve them and Team Pax will certainly make me commit at least some time for these beautiful Romance languages. "Pax vobiscum" seems a great motto for our team!! Edited by Flarioca on 20 December 2012 at 1:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5201 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 69 of 204 20 December 2012 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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A heads up in case anyone's missed it on the General Discussion thread: Wonderful news for all language
learners who like to, or would like to do extensive reading to improve their language skills (or, just for the fun of it!): The Tadoku Contest is returning! http://readmod.wordpress.com/. - And in an improved form, too. For those who don't know it, this is a (friendly) reading competition for language learners. Anyone can take part, and a significant number of Htlal-ers do. (Amazing, how leaderboards can motivate people!) Edited to add (in response to Kerrie's question):
For more details as they become available, check the most recent posts on the Readmod page above (some of the info in the sidebar, e.g. the "how to" stuff, will likely be outdated due to the technical improvements), or follow the Readmod Twitter feed @TadokuBot. Edited by songlines on 21 December 2012 at 8:08am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 70 of 204 20 December 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have never done the Tadoku Contest before.. When does it start? I think I might try it. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 71 of 204 21 December 2012 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone, I decided that even though I am just an associated member of team PAX, I'd still introduce myself.
I am Cristina, I am 50 years old and work with international affairs in the railway sector in Norway, and I have studied Romance languages for almost as long as I can remember. My father was a French teacher, and my first school performance aged 6 was singing "En passant par la Lorraine" in front of a live audience. Luckily none of the others spoke any French, since it was not exactly with a native accent:-) When I was 11 my mother sent me to Spain to live alone in a Spanish family for 6 months, which gave me a very good grip of Spanish, and when I was 14 she sent me to France for a year to live alone in a French family so that I learned French. I then proceeded to study both languages and took my University degrees in them at age 18 (French) and 20 (Spanish). At age 27 I decided that I wanted to learn Italian, and after reading tons of Italian before I left, and knowing Spanish and French, I picked up Italian fairly fast. I taught French and Spanish at high school for a couple of years, before I moved on to the railway sector where I have been ever since. For a very long time I did not practice my Romance languages much. A little French when I went to French speaking countries, a little Spanish when I on rare occasions went to Spain - Italian whenever I heard anyone speak Italian, but I was still able to communicate very well whenever I wanted to. Then a few years ago I got a good friend from Peru, so that I got lots of practice in Spanish. With the Super challenge we started in May, I watched tons of series in French, which did wonders for my French. Italian however, is really lagging behind to the point that where I used to jump into every opportunity to speak Italian, I now hardly do it at all. Last week when I was in my car, trying to speak to myself in Italian (don't even ask) there was mostly Russian coming out. I assume I am a C2 in Spanish, a C1 in French, but just a low B1 in Italian. That needs to change, which is why I am an associated member of your team. So far I have thought that I did not need it, that I did fine, but the last few times I have spoken Italian, it became clear to me that it was not fine, and I need to work on it. Since Italian is one of four focus languages this year, together with Russian, Greek and German, I have not really put together a strategy for reviving it yet. My goal is to be at the solid B2 I once had. The only ideas I have so far are including Italian in the Tadoku challenge, watching some DVDs in Italian, and possibly try to whip up a conversation group at work. I know of a Russian girl who would like to practice her Italian, so that is an option, and I have discussed with my sister taking an Italian conversation course together. So I am hoping to soak up good ideas from you guys, and I will be able to read the logs of most of you I think, I do not really read Portuguese or Catalan, but I assume that I will be able to pick up the essentials. Is anyone else here focusing on Italian? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 72 of 204 22 December 2012 at 12:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe I should introduce myself, too.
My name is Kerrie, and I am a single mom of beautiful 10 year old twin girls. They are my world. I am an English tutor, and I work (mostly) from home. Languages have been a passion for many years, but until last year it was nearly impossible for me to learn anything. That's when I found out that I have Celiac disease, and a whole host of other food intolerances. (Don't worry. All this means is that I can't eat wheat. And rye, barley, gluten. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggs, corn, milk, and bananas. And eggplants, but I don't miss those!) Everything I ate was making me... Sick. Tired. Sore. Sleepy. Unfocussed. Yuck. Blah. Blah. Yuck. Now that I've figured that out after being sick for over a decade, I can focus now. I *finally* made solid progress in Spanish and French last year, and I've almost made it through Assimil's Italian with Ease. For 2013, I want to finish Italian with Ease (if I don't finish it by the end of 2012). I am doing Super Challenges for Spanish and French. I am going to try to do the half challenge in Italian as well, but I know that I will be pushing my limits, at least with the reading part. I plan to go through Assimil's Brazilian Portuguese course and then move on to audiobooks, TV, and native materials. Once I get used to the sound of Portuguese (which I am *still* struggling with), I expect it will be relatively easy to meet my Portuguese goals, since I am only aiming for passive abilities for 2013. I'll also be working on Croatian and Russian, but there are other teams for them. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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