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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 537 of 706 03 July 2014 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@iguanamon - Thank you for the advice, and the links! I didn't think about looking online for such exercises. I'll give it a go. I'll try some of the things you do in the DLI drills as well. One thing that stands out is that I don't go back and do the drills again, like you. When the drill is done, it's done. That's probably not good; I should go back and at least work on the troublesome drills one more time. But yeah, it will also probably help to just get more exposure reading, listening, etc., and everything will fall into place.
@The Real CZ - I'm also writing. I try to write a short dialogue or monologue about something in each language once a week. I've done that for a while, and it is helping me with vocabulary and finding out my weak points. But I found that although I can write "What did you do yesterday" in Portuguese without thinking, it takes some effort getting it to go from my brain to my mouth when speaking. So I'm hoping that self-talk will help me to say it as fast as I can write it. But it could be because I'm still A1 in Portuguese. I'm still a beginner, so speaking is probably a lot of trouble for me at that stage. We'll see. * * * * * * UPDATE: 2/3 July 2014 Speaking of self-talk (pun totally intended!), something interesting happened... well, interesting to me. Maybe not to you, but anyway... In preparation for a Portuguese self-talk about the Belgium-USA World Cup game yesterday afternoon, I kind of went against the rules and wrote down a lot of Portuguese words I thought I might use while talking. Heck, I even went above and beyond; I looked in a Portuguese grammar and wrote down how to conjugate in the subjunctive, even though I have not yet studied it in DLI! The reason is because I wanted to be able to say "I wanted them to win," and in Portuguese you need to use the subjunctive tense in part of that sentence. (Now somebody is going to write back and tell me that there are ways to say that without using the subjunctive, in which case... DOH!) So, with my notes, I escaped to a place - unfortunately not the cafeteria, because there were food deliveries being made, but instead to a corner of the school's courtyard. I couldn't talk as loud, but I could at least use my voice without being heard, at the risk of being seen by students studying up in the classrooms. Anyway, the self-talk went smoothly, in part because I didn't interrupted the flow so much to look up unknown words in the dictionary. Most of them were on the paper right in front of me. So yeah, I cheated a bit, but I found it to be productive. What's more, this morning I decided to do my usual Friday morning Portuguese writing on the same topic: the Belgium-USA game. The train was crowded, and I had to hold onto a handle, so I couldn't pull out my notebook and write. Instead, I used my Android Walkman with one hand, typing with my thumb. I couldn't look at the notes I took yesterday... but it turns out I didn't need to! I remembered a lot of what I looked up and said yesterday, even the subjunctive. I wrote a nice dialogue without looking up anything. What does all of that mean? Probably nothing. Maybe it just means that I was well-prepared for the self-talk and the writing. But... I don't know... it felt better. That's all I can say. Writing and speaking without having to worry so much about the dictionary... it was nice. But I hope it also helps me to remember more vocabulary and grammar, as well as get more automaticity in my speech. Edited by kujichagulia on 03 July 2014 at 2:45am 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 538 of 706 03 July 2014 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One thing to remember, and I think it is easy to forget as we use these courses for self-learning, is the DLI (and FSI) course was just a part (albeit an important part) of a complete language instruction program. The instructors would have been native-speakers. The students would have actually had to answer that page and a half of questions at the end of the readings, either out loud or as written exercises, or both. Those exercises would have been corrected by the native-speaker instructors. The students would also, no doubt, have been exposed to other native material, speaking exercises, writing exercises, drills, etc. There would have been feedback and correction. They would have lived, breathed and slept Portuguese for the time they were learning the language at DLI in Monterrey.
They also would have had a powerful incentive to do well under the military system that we lack. If you or I "wash out" of Portuguese, we won't lose our jobs or have our failure haunt our career record. A washout in that era could have meant, at least a black mark on their personnel file, at the worst- a trip to a southeast Asian jungle war zone. As good and thorough as these courses are (and the DLI Portuguese Basic Course is the most thorough one I have seen), that's all we have. The rest of the learning package that doesn't come with the course, we must take care of on our own, as best we can. It's not easy to do, given the exigencies of life- job, family, bills, etc. 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 539 of 706 03 July 2014 at 6:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, that is all too true. I always forget that DLI was just part of a complete package. I don't expect it to do everything for me, but I do expect it to do most of the heavy lifting, so to speak. I have to be careful about that. Just doing DLI drills on the imperfect isn't going to make me master the imperfect. No wonder I'm making mistakes. It takes time for me to really let that sink in. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 540 of 706 03 July 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As for the subjunctive, it can be avoided by replacing verbs with nouns. For example, if a match between Vitória Guimarães and Vitória Setúbal ends as 0:0, you can say: "mas eu quis uma vitória do Vitória!" :DDD TBH I suspect that's not perfectly idiomatic though.
*yes, I've seen a match like that. or maybe it was 1:1, but definitely não foi uma vitória do Vitória, nem do Vitória :D BTW, it's o Vitória because o clube. sorry if i screwed up somewhere :P Edited by Serpent on 03 July 2014 at 5:41pm 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 541 of 706 03 July 2014 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In Brazilian Portuguese the most natural way is using the subjunctive, too. Saying "Eu queria a vitória do time dos Estados Unidos" sounds like you're elaborating on words, as if you are writing and trying to avoid repetition (for example: instead of writing "Minha mulher queria que a Bélgica ganhasse, mas eu queria que os Estados Unidos ganhassem" you could write "Minha mulher queria que a Bélgica ganhasse, mas eu queria a vitória dos Estados Unidos"). That sounds quite journalistic, though, to say the least.
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 542 of 706 04 July 2014 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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UPDATE: 3/4 July 2014
It was pointed out to me that I made some mistakes in my Belgium-USA Portuguese self-talk the other day. That got me to thinking about how I do output in my language learning. (And my thinking really went into turbo mode this morning when I saw this thread here at HTLAL.) I like self-talk, because - in lieu of speaking with, you know, other people - I get to speak Portuguese, and when I speak a language (or write it, but I do want to work on my speaking skills), I become one with the language (excuse the new-age terminology). And I feel like I'm battling my fear of mistakes when I do self-talk; I'm just enjoying speaking and not worrying about mistakes, and isn't that kind of the point? But in a practice situation like that - as opposed to a more spontaneous situation, like speaking to someone on the street or at a cafe - should I be more careful about mistakes? This week, I tried this process for output: (1) Think of a topic (2) Think of how the conversation might go, and look up unknown words that I might use during the self-talk, and jot down those words for reference (3) Do the self-talk (4) A day or two later, see if I can write the conversation I had from memory The problem with that is there is no correction. How do I know if I'm practicing mistakes? But what if I did this? (1) Think of a topic (2) Think of how the conversation might go, and look up unknown words that I might use during the self-talk, and jot down those words for reference (3) Write the conversation, looking at my notes if I have to, or even a dictionary (4) Post the conversation on Lang-8 and have it corrected (5) Re-write the conversation using the corrections (6) Do the self-talk while only looking at the written conversation if necessary That way, if I'm repeating myself in the self-talk, I'm most likely repeating corrected language. I'm not afraid of making mistakes. Well... that is not exactly true. I loathe mistakes. I want to be perfect in everything. I don't have a fear of mistakes, but mistakes to me are like cockroaches. If I see one in my house, I won't jump in a chair and scream. I will go after it, but I'm furious because there was one, and the frustration lasts all day. You could say that mistakes really bug me. That said, I don't mind mistakes in spontaneous speaking situations. But I wonder if I should be more careful in practice situations like self-talk, especially when I don't have a tutor. * * * * * Oh yeah, I'm supposed to do an update, right? Yesterday and this morning, I read through an old Japanese article I saved about the Ghana national soccer team's troubles at the World Cup. There you go. Edited by kujichagulia on 04 July 2014 at 2:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 543 of 706 04 July 2014 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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lang-8 is definitely useful, but what's acceptable for a conversation can be less acceptable in writing. I think right now you'd definitely benefit from going for fluency AND keeping your grammar simple/sticking to what you know. learn to use your vocabulary as efficiently as possible. If you want to use lang-8, I suppose the best way is to write something on your commute, double-check it and post on lang-8, then get corrections and possibly do scriptorium.
Also, self-talk is not supposed to be an exercise for learning the vocabulary. I suppose it's a good idea to get some input on the topic instead of looking up isolated words? like, read an article or listen to a podcast and then discuss it. Or read the wikipedia summary of your favourite book. You can even work through different "layers", ie repeat the exercise some time later, actively trying to use even more words from the same text/discussing it in more detail/etc. This way most of your mistakes will happen if you try to use something from your materials but remember it incorrectly, and then going back to the source will fix that. For learning the vocabulary you can also produce simple sentences out loud. It actually seems to me like your biggest discovery here was that self-talk can allow you to by-pass Anki or to add words that are already in your shorter-term memory? Edited by Serpent on 04 July 2014 at 5:45am 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 544 of 706 04 July 2014 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That is why I write conversations instead of essays. I write things exactly how I would say it, not how I would write it formally or for a book. That includes filler words like "sabe" in Portuguese. I want the people at lang-8 to read what I wrote and imagine the conversation.
That is what I was trying to do with self-talk, but my desire to look up unknown words took charge, I guess. I wonder if I could just fill in words I don't know with English words. That avoids the problem of mis-usage, and allows me to just work on making what I already know automatic.
If it seemed like that, that is not what I intended. I simply want to become faster at speaking, and I am hoping self-talk can help me with that. I was quite excited because if I looked up words beforehand, I didn't have to worry with looking up things in the dictionary during the self-talk. It was much easier and more fun to just concentrate on speaking without dealing with the dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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