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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 1 of 25 30 March 2015 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey everyone! This is my first post here. I'm a 15 year old student and I'm obsessed with
language learning. In the past few months I've improved my B1-ish French to a near C1 level (B2 oral, C1 comprehension). I've dabbled in Japanese, Polish, Indonesian, Esperanto and a bunch of others before, but I've decided that for now I'm going to concentrate on improving my French and learning German! So here's where I am so far: French: I'm reading "Soumission" by Michel Houellebecq right now. It's been pretty controversial in France. It's about an Islamist party winning the 2022 presidential election and all the stuff that comes with that. It's surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. I'm around half-way through and I've been able to understand 90% without a dictionary so far. I'm hoping to finish it by the 4th April, that is, in five days. I've also been watching a lot of YouTube videos recently. Like, a lot. I've pretty much replaced my English YouTube and idle Wikipedia browsing with French, so that's good. I can feel myself improving quickly. German I'm at a much lower level in German. I started a little over three weeks ago, and in that time I've managed to get a very basic overview of the grammar, cases etc. I've been doing 3 Assimil lessons a day for the past 11 days. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep this pace up in the future, but for now I don't feel it's too much. I spend 1 to 1 and a 1/2 hours a day on Assimil. I've been trying to watch YouTube video and read Wikipedia articles in German. My listening comprehension is currently around the 5% level, haha, but Wikipedia is getting easier. I still need a dictionary to understand anything but the most basic texts. I have an Anki deck with 220 words, but I've decided to give up Anki for a while and I've been using Iversen style wordlists. They've been working pretty well for me. I'll keep this space updated with my progress. Thanks for reading! Edited by Lundrum on 30 March 2015 at 4:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 2 of 25 01 April 2015 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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31/03/2015:
I read 30 pages of Soumission today. I'm 2/3 of the way through, and I find it fascinating. I'll probably pick up some more books from Houellebecq after finishing this one. He's a very interesting character, I saw an interview with him the other day about the Charlie Hebdo attacks and he comes across as very much the tortured artist type. Soumission is an incredibly pessimistic book, almost to the point of absurdity, but that doesn't take from its appeal to me. I also watched some videos and read Le Monde for a good half an hour. I did my 3 Assimil lessons in German today. I got about 40-50 words out of them, because I don't learn every single new word there is in each lesson. I also watched Toy Story 3 in German, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I understood! It's probably because I know the plot so well, but I would say I understood maybe 30% of what they were saying. Very motivating. I didn't do much else today, as I went out with my friends in the evening. I hope to do a lot more tomorrow. 01/04/2015 I got up pretty early this morning and read 30 pages of Soumission in bed. I'll probably read some more later, before I go to sleep. I'm pretty close to the end now, actually. I'll need to start working on getting some more French reading material. I've decided to migrate my wordlists to Anki because I find that Anki gives me much better retention (who would have thought). I did half of my wordlists earlier and I'm going to do the rest right after I finish writing this log. I'm gonna try to play some Morrowind auf Deutsch after that. Wish me luck :D I'm pretty happy cause I got everything I "needed to do" done before 1:30 today. Now the rest of the day is open to have some fun with my languages! I feel like I might just be starting to run out of steam on the Assimil. I'm on lesson 39 and I've been using it for 14 days (I skipped one day a week ago). I think I'll keep this pace up until the active wave and then maybe reel it in a little. Edited by Lundrum on 01 April 2015 at 2:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6097 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 25 01 April 2015 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looks like you're making good progress, keep going, I wish I'd started at your age! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 4 of 25 02 April 2015 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks! I'll do my best haha. 02/04/2015: French: I decided I wanted to finish my book today so I read the last 80 pages, 40 before breakfast, 40 after. Oh God, it doesn't get anymore optimistic, I'll say that much. I'm now going to start reading Nos étoiles contraires, a translation of The Fault in Our Stars. I bought it in France last summer and ended up abandoning it. I also ended up watching 82 episodes of a series called Bref on Youtube. It's a series where each episode is 1:30 - 3 minutes long and it's absolutely hilarious. It's also quite touching in parts. The main character talks very fast, but I understood pretty much everything he said. Fun times. I also talked with a French relative on the phone for 20 minutes about the book, and I found that my conversation abilities seem to have improved dramatically! I only paused to think of a word once or twice and I could say pretty much everything I would have wanted to in English. Great day for French. German: I did my daily 3 Assimil in German today, as well as watching the first hour and a half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Harry Potter und die Heiligtümer des Todes Teil 2). My comprehension was... pretty variable. I understood whole sentences at a time at some points but at others I only caught the occasional word. Still very enjoyable. I'm going to watch the rest tonight before bed as well as intensively reading a page (a page mind you) out of a book of German short stories I bought at the start of my German learning (I was a little bit optimistic when I bought it haha). I ended up losing two hours today to watching the UK General Election debate. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow. See you then! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 25 03 April 2015 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with your studies! It's nice to see someone starting early and with a lot of enthusiasm. I studied French at school when I was 15, I enjoyed it but didn't do any more work than was required, and it was only after school and university that I picked it up again seriously.
I'm also a fan of Houellebecq. I've not yet read Soumission, but I'm making my way through his novels. His writing style is quite modern and direct so it's easy to read. I also don't mind all the pessimism and the criticism of modern society in his books: even if you don't agree with everything, it makes you think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 6 of 25 05 April 2015 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been pretty sick these past two days and haven't gotten as much done as I'd have
liked. But I'll make up for it in the next few days! 03/04/2015 French: I didn't do very much in French at all today. I watched some stuff, read an article or two, but nothing for more than a few minutes. German: Did my 3 Assimil. There seems to be a pretty huge rise in difficulty in these lessons. It went from pretty easy to not so easy in like 5 lessons. I'm gonna keep at this pace for now. I think I can keep it up for quite a while. I also finished the rest of Harry Potter 7 pt 2. 04/04/2015 French: Had a long conversation with my French relative today, which went pretty well. I also watched the first hour or so of Boyhood (I love that movie) in French. I read a few articles on Le Monde as well as watching a couple of pretty interesting interviews. I've decided to read Harry Potter 5 instead of Nos étoiles contraires. I'm kind of sick of the Fault in Our Stars after having read it 5 times haha. German: I only did 2 Assimil today, bringing me up to lesson 47. This means I'll start the active wave the day after tomorrow, giving me a little more time to recover from my illness haha. This is pretty much all I did unfortunately. Not particularly productive :( I've decided that I'm going to compile each week's progress in its own post showing exactly what I did that week. I'm also going to post what exactly my goals are, because I think I've got a bit of a problem with vaguely defined goals. Hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow, I can't wait to get back into the game! Edited by Lundrum on 05 April 2015 at 1:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 7 of 25 07 April 2015 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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05/04/2015:
French: I watched an hour long interview with Michel Onfray on the subject of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It was pretty interesting, but some of the people on the panel (or whatever it's called) were really annoying and didn't let him speak very much. I also had a 20-30 minute conversation today. German: I watched the first 1 and a half hours of Harry Potter 6 as well as doing 3 Assimil. 06/04/2015: French: Didn't do very much besides a short chat and an hour or so idly browsing in French. German: I did the first three active Assimil and no passive! Not so great D: 07/04/2015: French: I read the first 50 pages of Harry Potter 4 on my newly bought Kindle (!). There's gonna be a lot more reading going on now! I also talked for a few minutes, and spend a worrying amount of time reading Wikipedia articles about the history of Germany. German: I did 3 Passive Assimil and 2 Active Assimil. I think I'll stay at this pace until I'm done the Passive and then I'll try to finish the Active more quickly. Hopefully I'll have the course fully finished and SRS'd for the first time before the end of May. I'm having a bit of trouble with doing as much as I want to do due to the fact that I have an awful lot of studying to do for my state exams this year along with a couple of other obligations that are taking up a lot of my time. I know this sounds very excuse-y, but it's kind of valid haha. I'll have to start getting up earlier to get more done each day. EDIT: I'm gonna keep a scoreboard of sorts from now on :p ACTIVE: 5/100 PASSIVE: 53/100 Edited by Lundrum on 07 April 2015 at 11:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lundrum Diglot Newbie Ireland Joined 3521 days ago 20 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Polish | Message 8 of 25 20 April 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't posted in quite a while because I stopped suddenly due to a combination of
starting school again and some pretty severe emotional problems which made it difficult to progress. I feel pretty terrible that I haven't done so much in the past week or two. I'll try to update each day again from now on. ACTIVE: 9/100 PASSIVE: 63/100 1 person has voted this message useful |
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