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Lorren’s Language Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 25 of 212 22 July 2013 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
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I haven't done as much reading over the last couple of days as I had been, which is probably a good thing because my Anki deck seemed to have too many new words in it. I'm reading an article about people killing birds, which is really sad.
I'm running into more new words that I've seen before, which is encouraging. I'm also running into words that I'm not really familiar with in English, LOL, like cormorant. Fortunately, it's a cognate, so in my head it translates to "cormorant: some kind of bird". I'm halfway through this magazine already, and I probably won't get another one until September, so I'll probably spend that time working on my Spanish by 1) finishing Rosetta Stone 5, and 2) reading the newspaper. I really do want to work on my Russian as well. Hopefully by Christmas I'll be able to say more than "hello" "goodbye" and "thank you" to my aunt in Russian. She speaks English, but since she's the only person that I know that I can practice with, I'd like to be able to relearn enough (and then learn more) to actually say something to her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 212 24 July 2013 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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I only managed a few paragraphs today. In those paragraphs, I added 10 new words to Anki. I´m trying to keep the amount of cards that I need to review in a day under 100. I reviewed ahead a bit in order to get that down tomorrow, but if I add new words, then it will go up again. Some of the words are getting easier though.
I'm leaving for my class reunion and a camping trip in a week. If I work at it, I might be able to finish reading this magazine before I leave. If not, I can just take it with me. I won't have Rosetta Stone with me though. After I'm done reading this magazine, I'll start doing newspaper articles. Right now I can understand most of the headlines, but then again, I pretty much keep up on the news in the first place. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4136 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 27 of 212 24 July 2013 at 1:46pm | IP Logged |
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I just read through your whole language log - very interesting! I love the idea of
reading National Geographic in Spanish...I need to branch out and look for some Spanish- language magazines. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Rosetta Stone - for me - but I'm glad that it's working for you! Have you thought about getting a language exchange partner to help work on your fluency? I speak in Spanish with someone over Skype nearly every day, and it's doing wonders for my progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 28 of 212 28 July 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged |
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I'm fairly introverted, so the Skype thing probably won't happen... I get intimidated calling a business about something (and usually leave it to my husband to do). My husband's good friend has a wife who is a native Spanish speaker, so I am not completely without any opportunity to use Spanish. I also run into native speakers occasionally since I live in Arizona.
I'm still working on the same article about birds; I did miss a couple of days, and it seems to be a little more difficult than the articles about Curiosity and the origins of the universe. Perhaps it is because I am more familiar with the Mars landing and of what the editors of National Geographic believe about the universe than I know about people killing birds in Southern Europe and North Africa. This is probably a good thing though, because Anki was getting a little overwhelming. There were too many words that I'd look at and have absolutely no clue what it meant. Some of those words are getting a little easier now. Anki already is going to be a little overwhelming in the next couple of weeks, as I won't be able to do as much reviewing. Probably not. I will be taking my laptop, so theoretically I could practice every day, even when I'm at a hotel or camping in the woods, but I probably won't. I won't even have access to the internet or to a phone for about six days, but I guess I wouldn't need the internet to review my deck. If I did review daily though, it might be a way for me to actually learn some of those difficult words that keep giving me trouble. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 29 of 212 06 August 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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Between driving to my parent's house, visiting grandparents, and going to all three days of my class reunion, I haven't had much time to study languages, and just finished the article on bird hunters today. I have been able to get caught up on Anki, and with all of those days of not studying or adding new words, it's actually down to a manageable level of words to do each day. I'll be taking my laptop with me camping tomorrow, but as I won't have internet access (and didn't bring a Spanish language dictionary), I won't be reading anything new; I'll just practice the words that I am working on now.
The number of words that I'm completely clueless on when I see them has dropped, which is a good thing. Even the words that I seem to have trouble any time I see them don't seem to be giving me as much trouble as they used to. When I get back home, I'll be tackling more articles and will be adding more words. I'm sure that as time goes on, the number of words that I know without looking them up will increase. Obviously, words like "hawk" and "pigeon" won't be used all of the time, but there will be words that I see repeatedly. My Anki deck now has 391 cards. The program considers 51 of those words to be "mature" words, and then there are some that have now become easy to me. I'm not sure how many words I know, considering that there are many words that I didn't need to put into Anki, but I suppose if the top 1000 words are the ones that people use all the time, then perhaps I'm getting close to that level. It doesn't seem like I know most of the words that I run across, but I guess if 1200 words or so make up 70% of the vocabulary, that does leave 30% that would be unknown. Although I am currently working on Spanish, a part of me this weekend wished that I had spent the past month working on a little Swedish. One of our classmates was a Swedish foreign exchange student. While she speaks English perfectly well (as does her husband), her kids didn't speak any. I guess that there will always be another language to work on though. While I would like to finish up Rosetta Stone Spanish soon and start working on a little Russian before Christmas (while continuing to practice and improve upon Spanish through newspaper and magazine articles), I think that Swedish will have to be something to learn well into the future. I've never taken any Swedish, and my medium-term language goals (3-5 years into the future) involve reviewing and improving on languages that I've already studied to some degree. Perhaps Swedish could be a goal to add to the back of that line. Maybe I'll have time to do some work on it before my next class reunion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 30 of 212 12 August 2013 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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I took my laptop camping with me, and was able to review my Spanish words up through Friday, where my laptop died in the middle of reviewing the words for the day. I wasn't overwhelmed today when I got back to a place with electricity today though. I started to read an article about some ancient human DNA found in a cave. I went through the captions of pictures today. I came across some words that I remembered from Anki: words for bones, find, and a couple of other things. I was understanding more than I thought that I would.
I'll do some more reading tomorrow, and then I'll be on the road for two days and won't be doing any Spanish practice. That's probably a good thing, because although I'm enthusiastic about learning more, when I get too many new words at once, it's overwhelming. Perhaps between articles I should take a day or two to work on finishing up Rosetta Stone 5. The introduction of new words in that series feels gradual. There's good and bad to that. The good thing is that I can take a couple of hours, finish a lesson, and I have the material. The bad thing is that while I have the material, it's only a little bit of new stuff that I've learned. Contrast that with translating something I read, where I might come up with 30 new words to learn in a day, and it compounds until it is quite a challenge. I only have a few more articles left to translate in this magazine, and then I'll have to wait until my subscription kicks in anyway. I should be able to finish RS 5 and then start working in Russian, while reviewing Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 31 of 212 24 August 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged |
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I got a lot accomplished today.
Since returning home, I've been practicing my Anki cards almost every day, but I haven't spent a lot of time adding more vocabulary. Today, I worked on another section in the article that I'm reading in National Geographic En Español, about some fossils that they found in Siberia. I only needed to add eight more words from reading that section. That's not all though. I tackled a movie in Spanish, with English subtitles. We have Netflix for a few more days (my husband lost his job and our television set broke, so we won't be renewing it any time soon), so I looked at the movie selection there. I wasn't very impressed with their selection of Spanish videos that weren't rated R, so I settled on some movie about a kid who lived with his grandma. The movie wasn't really that good, although it did have a happy ending. Some of the words were hard to hear (it didn't help that I have to watch it on my laptop, which I set up like a television to watch). There was a lot that I didn't understand, but I did pick up quite a lot of words. I also spent a few minutes listening to a sermon in Spanish. It was a guy interpreting someone else's sermon, and the guy spoke clearly, but you could tell that it wasn't this guy's words. I think I'll pick a sermon from a guy that comes from a church with a Spanish name. I also finished Level 5/Unit 1/Lesson 2 in Rosetta Stone. I'm so close to finishing the entire series, I might as well do it. Since my husband lost his job, going to visit my family for Christmas is pretty much out of the question (even if a million dollars and a new job dropped in our laps today, he wouldn't have the vacation time built up yet). I had been planning on relearning and improving my Russian before the end of the year; while I will be starting my Russian studies as soon as I finish RS Spanish 5, I suppose that I don't have the same incentive to learn it as quickly as I did a couple of weeks ago, when we were planning on going if we could get the money together. However, since the 2014 Winter Olympics are in Russia next February or so, I do have the incentive to study it for that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4243 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 32 of 212 25 August 2013 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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Today I studied my Anki cards and studied the core lesson for RS L5/U1/L3. It discussed farming.
I found it interesting because there were some words in the lesson that I've run across in my non-Rosetta Stone activities, like cabra (goat) and mielo (honey). I ran across goat in National Geographic, and ran across honey while watching the Spanish trailer for Bee Movie on YouTube. It's nice to see things come together like that. I'm certainly not breaking any records over the Six Week Challenge, mainly because I was gone for the first couple of weeks and was a little thrown off my my husband's sudden job loss for the next week, but I seem to have gotten back into studying a little bit more, and should move up in the rankings for the next three weeks. If I work hard, I might even be able to finish (or get close to finishing) Rosetta Stone 5. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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