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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 529 of 706 27 June 2014 at 3:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, certainly improvement. I've noticed while watching World Cup games that I can pick out certain words now. I didn't even try to study soccer-related vocabulary before the World Cup (although that was a plan), but I could understand more than I thought. What made me happy was when I listened to part of the match between Japan and Greece on FM radio on the way to work one morning. My cell phone has a TV, but the signal was very weak. I didn't think I would understand much, but I decided to try the radio. I found that I could understand enough to follow along! The radio commentary was very fast, so I only picked up words instead of sentences most of the time. But radio commentary is also very descriptive compared with TV commentary, so that helped me a lot. So the World Cup has been a big boon for my Japanese confidence. In the simplest form, it has been a success because I'm better at it now than I was before. It has become easier to read sports articles as well, but I think the jump is not as big as listening to and watching sports. I still have to look up lots of words when I read articles. Thank you for finding that, Serpent! I forget what I wrote. I should probably re-read my own log; I might find that I have made a lot of progress! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 530 of 706 27 June 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't do this, maybe only once or twice accidentally, but I often take such pauses and
reflect on how far I've progressed. If you don't do this, it just looks like one day is following another and nothing is happening. Now, for example, I realized I've progressed a lot with reading skills for my languages. There was a time I could understand as much French as I understand Norwegian now, for instance. And my Norwegian was like my Georgian. And my Georgian was like my Russian. And my Russian was like my Estonian which just started. So, comparison is something wise to do once in a while (just not all the time because it becomes obsessive). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 531 of 706 30 June 2014 at 4:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Expugnator - Yeah, I don't do enough reflection. It is certainly not easy to see progress sometimes, and I need to make more of an effort to do so - without, as you said, becoming obsessed.
* * * * * This past weekend was a lazy study day. Well, almost every weekend was like that, but this weekend was particularly like that. I just watched World Cup in Japanese and listened to Portuguese radio about the World Cup. That was it. I didn't even do any Anki. I realize now that I need to speak Portuguese. My Portuguese is atrocious. I'm beginning to understand what I hear, but replying takes a while, because I'm thinking too long about how to say things. Words I know passively are not easily activated. Obviously the key to getting better at speaking Portuguese is to speak Portuguese. That said, due to my home circumstances it is not easy for me to regularly do voice chats on the computer. A better situation would be to find somebody around here and do some kind of language exchange in person, although it doesn't seem easy. Most Brazilians in Japan don't live in these parts. So, in lieu of that, I'm thinking about doing something like Arekkusu's Self-Talk exercises. There are times during work hours when I can take a break and get away from everyone for 10 minutes or so in one of the courtyards or near the athletic ground. That would be ideal for Self-Talk exercises - as long as I don't speak so loud that students in the buildings look outside and notice me! I just need to think about how it works. Yeah, it is not as good as live conversation, but it's better than nothing. At least, in theory, I can activate a lot of the passive Portuguese vocabulary that I have in my head. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5156 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 532 of 706 30 June 2014 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Looking forward to hearing about your experience, kuji. Your level of Portuguse already
means you've progressed a lot! I'm close to this level at a lot of languages and I have the same difficulties. Now that I'm working fulltime, the odds aren't much high that I will find time and company for a voicechat. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 533 of 706 01 July 2014 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Expugnator - Thank you! I think the challenge will be finding a dependable time to do self-talk every week. I suppose it doesn't have to be every day, but right now I'm aiming for twice a week.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 534 of 706 02 July 2014 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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UPDATE: 1/2 July 2014
Let me begin by noting that I finished DLI Portuguese Basic Course Vol 4 Lesson 33 at the end of last week. I forgot to mention that before. Actually... I almost finished it. There is a narrative at the end about the Brazilian banking system. I'm still wondering if I want to finish that reading. :P I've been doing DLI for a while, but I wonder if I'm doing the pattern drills correctly. For example in Lesson 33 there is a substitution drill like this: (o depósito) Quanto tempo leva para efetuar o depósito? And then you have a list of words like a transferência, o negócio, etc., and the narrator says one of those words, and you have to use the model sentence and replace the underlined word with that word. What I currently do is: (1) listen to the model sentences (2) try to memorize the parts of the sentences that are not underlined (using the above example: "Quanto tempo leva para efetuar ___?"). This allows me to do the drills without looking at the page (3) start the drills. I listen for the word, then I say the sentence, replacing the blank with the word. Then I listen to the answer. There are different kinds of drills in DLI, such as transformation drills (you have to conjugate verbs) or sentence-building drills (sort of a repetition). But I try to follow that pattern. The drills go well, but I wonder if they are working, because I don't see immediate progress. I've done drills with the conditional or imperfect tenses, and they went well, but I still make mistakes when I'm writing and trying to use those tenses on my own. Any advice would be nice! * * * * * Yesterday I had a bit of free time at work in the afternoon, so I escaped to the side of the cafeteria. There are benches there, and the cafeteria, like most of the high school, sits on a hill overlooking the school's athletic ground, but also the rest of the town and all the way to Osaka Bay. On clear days, you can even see the international airport and as far away as Kobe. Very beautiful, and yesterday was one of those days. But I digress. Anyway, I escaped there to do some self-talk in Portuguese. The topic was the Brazil-Colombia World Cup game, and I had a conversation with myself about it... a very short conversation. If you strictly follow the rules for self-talk that Arekkusu wrote, you can use a dictionary as often as you want to look up unknown words, but you can't write anything down. Everything must be oral. But I wonder if it is okay to write down some words before starting the self-talk. I had an idea in English about what I wanted to say, but there were many words I didn't know and had to look up in my Walkman dictionary. Not really a problem, but I wanted to limit the amount of time I was out at the cafeteria. It is a little distance away from the main school building (which allows me to talk out loud as much as I want if nobody is around), but it is not a private area. I could still be seen from some of the windows of the main building, and I didn't want my bosses to see me spending too much time out there instead of working. If I had a list of words already written, I could just quickly look at my paper when I need it and not skip a beat, allowing me to concentrate on the speaking, repeating troublesome words/sentences, etc. Other than that, self-talk was somewhat refreshing! I don't get to speak Portuguese much at all, so even speaking to myself was fun. And I think it helped put some new words and some sentence structures into my head. Hopefully I can continue to do this on a regular basis. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 535 of 706 02 July 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmmmm, it's been a while since I did DLI, but what I would do with the drills is this:
Stay within the time provided and not pause. Try to say the sentences as fast as possible (not so fast as to harm pronunciation but I tried to be fast enough in order to get in as many repeats as possible before the next prompt), i.e as soon as the voice stopped. If there was enough time, I'd say it twice. Then, the audio would repeat the sentence and I'd try to repeat it before the next word given. I could usually get in three repeats on the transformation drills. Depending on the length of sentences in the pattern drills, I could often get in at least two and sometimes three repeats there too if I could say the sentence/word in the space after the confirmation audio and before the next prompt. It was quite intense, but with practice I got good at it. Doing it in this way certainly helped me to focus and kept me alert and on my toes. The DLI course reinforces the concepts with the dialog and reading. After the last reading, I would go back and do the drills one more time, concentrating especially on the ones that gave me trouble. What helped most to reinforce this all was using Portuguese outside the course. Of course, at the same time, I had help from my tutor. I read everyday, listened daily, spoke and wrote as often as possible. I also did written drills from a $1.99 textbook I bought used from Amazon.com- Para a frente and would consult my grammar book for the relevant concepts being drilled. One of the websites I found most useful back then is dark now. One last thing I did with DLI was to have a quick look at the previous lesson after finishing the current one to make sure I had it down. In your situation, with limited time and opportunity to speak, seek out written or computer exercises by searching Google Brasil and using grammar terms in Portuguese to search. For example, here's what I found for imperfeito vs pretérito exercícios Here's one of the links I followed with an online test for the concept. In your particular case, I would search for pdf exercises I could do away from online, or a workbook or equivalent. I'll see what I can find. Edited by iguanamon on 02 July 2014 at 2:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5639 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 536 of 706 02 July 2014 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Kuji, you might want to try a lot of writing in addition with self-talk. You don't have
to exclusively to self-talk. I honestly try to do self-talk/thinking in the language when I'm away from all of my learning materials (i.e. I'm at work doing menial tasks). Even in my strongest language (Korean), where I could probably say I'm at a B2 level at least in terms of understanding (and probably B1 in output), self-talk is still fairly difficult, so I try to incorporate a lot of writing when possible. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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