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WingSuet’s log (TAC 2015 - Team Rätsel) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5343 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 33 of 116 13 March 2012 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Takato! Sorry for the late answer, but for some reason I didn't get a notification
from this thread, though I've turned it on many times already! To answer your questions. Before I came here I thought the English situation would be better in Hong Kong. I guess this totally depends on where you go. In central Hong Kong almost everyone speak English, though they are certainly not bilingual. When you go outside that area though, for example north Kowloon, where I live, you meet many people who don't speak English, or have limited knowledge, including waiters, shop owners and clerks. You never hear Chinese people speaking English on the streets, it's always Cantonese or Mandarin. I don't think of Hong Kong English as a dialect, it's more like a foreign language to them. I haven't watched much TV, except when they show it in restaurants, and I have only seen Chinese dramas with Chinese subtitles. I'm sure there are English channels though, although I don't know if there are any dubbed shows. There are classes conducted entirely in English, so that's not a problem. Some of them are held as a lecture, some are more like lessons with smaller classrooms and more interaction between the teacher and the students. I'm not sure I understand your question about the emphasis on major language skills... I came here as a part of my university program in Sweden. When you go through your university you will get a lot of help with applications etc. and you pay the same price as in your own country (which is zero for me :)), but you do have to pay for and book the plane ticket yourself. I'm studying at Baptist University and here we can get reserved rooms at the universisty dorms for about 6500 HKD per semester. Just let me know if you have any other questions. Hopefully you'll have the opportunity to go on an exchange yourself, this is the best thing I've ever done in my life! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5343 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 34 of 116 13 March 2012 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now for an update. I haven't written anything for about three weeks, mostly because
I've been very busy with exams and travelling and haven't been able to study as much as I would have liked to. I made up for it this week though :) Total study time: 20.35 hours. Cantonese 7.05 hours I've decided to pay more attention to my Cantonese now. I have only two more months in Hong Kong and I feel like I haven't learned much during the time I've been here. This week I have relearned a lot of forgotten vocabulary and watched some Cantonese movies, some of them from Disney as it helps that I already know the story. Tomorrow I have a Cantonese test, so we'll see how that goes. The classes are still fairly easy for me, so it shouldn't be a problem. Mandarin 5.32 hours This week I've mostly been working on vocabulary I learned in my class. I needed to memorize a dialogue to present in front of the class with another student and today I had a listening test. I think the test went very well, the tones at least are not so difficult to me since I already learned to distinguish between different tones when I learned Cantonese. Spanish 7.98 hours I had a mid-term test last week which I think went pretty well. We had to write some texts and I think my writing has improved a lot. My speaking is still pretty bad though, when I try to say something the grammar comes out all wrong and I can't remember the correct words. I should work more on that and I intent to be more active during classes and speak more in Spanish. Goals for this week: Cantonese: Learn more vocabulary for food, start using Teach Yourself again and start going through the Chinese characters again. Spanish: Review the pronouns. Edited by WingSuet on 13 March 2012 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 35 of 116 14 March 2012 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for your answers! ^^
These skills are writing, reading, speaking and listening (at least I think so). I'm mostly interested in whether you learn Hanzi or speaking the most. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5343 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 36 of 116 19 March 2012 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Takato: I see! So you mean the Cantonese classes. Unfortunately we don't learn any Hanzi
at all during classes, although we learn a few in Mandarin. In Cantonese the emphasis is on speaking (pronunciation) and learning to read and write in romanisation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5343 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 37 of 116 19 March 2012 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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This week I didn't reach my goal of 5 hours per language because of inactivity during
the weekend. Total study hours: 12.22 Cantonese 3.82 hours Not much progress here. But I finally started going through the Chinese characters again. I had forgotten most of them, so now I'll have to start relearning them all over again. It should go quicker though, since I still have some memory of them somewhere in my brain. Mandarin 4.55 hours I haven't been very motivated to focus on my Mandarin lately. Maybe it would help if I had more learning material, right now I'm just using the class text book which is really boring. I'd like to try out Teach Yourself sometime, but that will have to wait for now. Spanish 3.85 hours I've been working on some grammar, going through the pronouns again and the differences between preterit and imperfect. These are rules I used to know some years ago, but forgot when I stopped studying Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 38 of 116 26 March 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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You haven't made an update in the last week, so do some update on your progress, please. I'm interested in your log! Keep up the good work! Edited by Takato on 26 March 2012 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5343 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 39 of 116 26 March 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Takato: I was actually going to update today ;) I try to update every Monday about the
past week. But thanks for reminding me! Always nice to know that someone is following the log! I wasn't anywhere near my goal of 15 hours this week. Since the end of 6 Week Challeng my motivation has gone way down and I don't study much on my freetime anymore. This week I need to get back on track! Total study time: 8.3 hours Cantonese 1.33 hours Only 80 minutes of Cantonese last week, not good! Not much progress in other words, but I got back the results from the test we had two weeks ago and I got 96 points out of 100, best in class, so I'm still happy :) I also had some use of my Cantonese when trying to find out which bus to take and from where. Always a good feeling when you manage to have a successful conversation, even if it's short. Mandarin 2.68 hours I also got back the results from the Mandarin listening test and it turned out even better than the Cantonese one: 100 percent!! But I must admit, it was very easy. This week we going to have a conversation in Mandarin in pairs in front of the class, although it's not very long. Spanish 4.28 hours We have been going through past tense in Spanish during the lessons and I finally feel like I'm getting better at using this in spontaneous speech. Last week we had presentations for five minutes where we talk about any topic, but in a fun way. I described the cultural differences between Hong Kong and Sweden, including how Hong Kong people talk really loud compared to the Swedes and how they walk so incredibly slowly! I think it went alright, but I wasn't as prepared as I would have wanted to be. Funny thing is that I got back my written composition from two weeks ago and I noticed that I made lots of mistakes on the plural s-ending of adjectives describing a plural noun, but didn't do this mistake when writing my presentation. I don't know what I was thinking at that time, but I do know the rule for this! Goal for this week: Simply study more, especially Cantonese, and get back on track! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5040 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 40 of 116 28 March 2012 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
These last days seemed to be like weeks to me, but then it looks like they only made up a week. o.o Congratulations for having got so good results in these two tests! Even if the Mandarin test was easy, it's a good thing to have it done without any mistake, because it means that you could concentrate on it well, so it didn't went like the plural endings in Spanish. I have some problems with writing, too. I sometimes write one instead of won and make other such mistakes... What causes me to study less is nothing else than browsing the Internet too much. I don't have a definite solution for it, but it helped me to learn using the Internet. The other helpful thing was browsing the net for one hour, using my language book for another, and doing these things consecutively for almost the whole day. I learned 7 hours one day this way. I don't know if it works for more days in a row, but I hope this helps you somehow. Edited by Takato on 28 March 2012 at 2:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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