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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5329 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 89 of 360 15 January 2013 at 3:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi! 74 consecutive days is quite an achievement! What is the Pomodoro technique?
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| Kez Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4352 days ago 181 posts - 212 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Swedish | Message 90 of 360 15 January 2013 at 8:30am | IP Logged | |||||
Could you give me a link for that? I'll start it today aswell, sounds like a fun challenge. I'm not sure where to post the challenges, but I think the team thread is the best place, maybe we should ask ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5342 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 91 of 360 15 January 2013 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
2 down - 5 still to go in my week of daily Swedish news.
Sorry, Kez, I couldn’t write before, but I only got online to watch the 19:30 edition of Rapport, which I’m afraid you’ve missed. But if you want you can still watch it here. Anyway, there are other news editions still available live tonight. If you want to watch a programme live (today or any other day), go to SVTPlay and then click on the “Livesändningar” button just under the pictures of the highlighted programmes; the direct link should be this (I hope it works). All you have to do is choose a programme, click on its title and then wait until it starts. Good watching!
Thanks Cristina! The Pomodoro technique is a method to curb procrastination and time wasting: two things I normally excel in. Basically you promise yourself to study or work or whatever you have to do without distractions for just 25 minutes and then you can pause for 5 minutes. 25 minutes are such a short period of time that you can generally silence the internal voices that tell you to go do something else, which usually lead to you jumping from one activity to another without ever achieving anything. I read about it on this forum, tried it and found it works. You just need to remember using it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mareike Senior Member Germany Joined 6219 days ago 267 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German* Studies: English, Swedish | Message 92 of 360 15 January 2013 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Emme,
Are you have an interest in bilingual text? I've seen a new small book today. Tösen från Stormyrtorpet is published in Oktober 2012. It's available with German/Swedish or English/Swedish. I know there are some books in German/Swedish, but I don't know if there exist a lot Swedish/English books. Can you buy the lättläst books in Italy? Or do you more enjoy to watch television? Edit I forgott the link http://www.holder-augsburg-zweisprachig.de/bilingual-books/s elma-lagerlof-tosen-fam-stormyrtorped-the-girl-from-the-mars h-croft Edited by Mareike on 15 January 2013 at 9:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5342 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 93 of 360 16 January 2013 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rapport 3/7 done!
--- Thank you, Mareike, for the infos! As I’ve written in an earlier post, I’m actually a book hoarder, and I always buy more books than I should. So one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2013 is not to buy any new book unless it’s really necessary (nice loophole there, don’t you think?). So I must pass on this one. The truth is that I already have a dozen Swedish books (mainly children and YA novels) that I bought in Stockholm years ago with the purpose of reading them as soon as my Swedish is good enough. Until now, though, I’ve read only one, so maybe it’s time I took them down from the bookshelf where they are gathering dust and tried reading them again. Maybe by the end of the year I could have finished them all and so be ready to buy new ones guilt free. Edited by Emme on 16 January 2013 at 8:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Silbermond Diglot Groupie United Kingdom xuexisprachen.wordprRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4351 days ago 64 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 94 of 360 16 January 2013 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Emme! I can't believe I've not been to comment on your log sooner... I am seriously
lapse in my commenting duties right now. I love that you're using the Pomodoro technique! It's one of the links that got lost when I had a fight with my internet browsers a few months ago so also thanks for reminding me about it, haha! Hopefully I'll get back into using it again. How's Assimil going for Russian? I'm getting back into using it because the FSI courses for Russian aren't all that I'd hoped they'd be and I'm not sure what else to use; how have you found it? But anyway, good luck for 2013 :D! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5342 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 95 of 360 18 January 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rapport 4/7 done!
--- Thanks Silbermond! I’ve written you an answer about Assimil, but it turned out to be much longer than intended, sorry! (If you’re pressed for time you can skip everything and just read the last paragraph). I like doing Assimil and I think it has lots of virtues. At the same time I have the nagging doubt of whether it really is a suitable course to start a completely new language with little transparency like Russian is for me. What I fear is that even though I’ve been exposed to quite a big amount of language over just a few weeks, very little of it can actually stick. I find that as a method Assimil is perhaps the one that increases the gap between one’s passive knowledge of the language and one’s active skills the most. Usually with other methods one spends maybe a week or two on beginner’s stuff like greetings and introductions: you get to learn a few words and expressions and the first basics of grammar (maybe the pronouns and the present of “to be” or of some other important verbs), but above all, you are supposed to be able to use the same few items actively from the beginning. Which means that the core of every lesson must be learnt and internalized to some extent (it doesn’t matter if you forget a word here or there) before you move on to another lesson. With Assimil everything is different. You are supposed to naturally assimilate how the language works through exposure. So they make you listen and read a lot, but how you’re supposed to internalize and systematize all of that is a mystery, given the lack of proper exercises and the rather flimsy grammar explanations. Just an example: only a couple of days ago (I think it was in lesson 43) did I encounter the grammar note that says that Russian verbs are classified in types (really? Who knew? That’s the first I’ve heard of types of verbs and I’ve been studying for weeks, now! ;-)) and the first type is made up by verbs that end in -ешь / -ёшь in the second person singular. Then they list the forms of the verb дремать, which happened to be in the lesson, with the advice to “read them carefully”. Of course, I’ve studied languages long enough to be able to work out what suffixes I need to know, but the textbook itself doesn’t bother to tell (and if you are new to language learning that may be a problem), and the chances that I will remember them is pretty low, to be honest. On the other hand, I like the self-sustaining momentum that the structure of an Assimil course gives you. I don’t believe I would have been able to study for 78 consecutive days and counting if I had been using another textbook. The emphasis on learning a little every day is crucial, I believe, even though their proposed amount of daily study (20 minutes to half an hour) is rather delusional. Most days I need 2 ‘pomodoros’ (50 minutes for those unfamiliar with the Pomodoro Technique), but sometimes I need 3, which is way more than what they tell you. Another complication with Assimil Russian is that there are so many different editions that it’s hard to express an opinion on “Assimil Russian” in general. All I’ve said above refers to Dronov et al., Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine. That’s the 70-lesson edition. For all I know, the learning curve, which is normally quite steep for all Assimil courses especially in their second half, is even steeper here because it is such a short course. Maybe the 100-lesson editions are better from that point of view. If you read tarvos’ log, for instance, you’ll see that he quite enjoyed the newest edition (he started Assimil last March), but he had already learnt some Russian with other materials before starting Assimil (which is probably always a good idea). So I think it all comes down to what edition of Assimil you have at your disposal, how much Russian you already know (and having studied Russian FAST– that’s what you mean with FSI courses, right? – is probably a good start), and above all whether you enjoy using Assimil as a method in itself. Have you ever tried one for other languages? Edited by Emme on 18 January 2013 at 2:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kez Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4352 days ago 181 posts - 212 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Swedish | Message 96 of 360 18 January 2013 at 9:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Emme!
How's it going with the news? Since I'm thinking about starting to watch it everyday as well, but i'm not entirely sure if my level of Swedish is good enough. Do you have any problems following everything they're talking about? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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