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Assimil x4 for Film Studies - TAC’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 99 21 December 2013 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is primarily my log for Team Start, but I'm also going to include my Russian and Hungarian logs here since I'll be using similar methodologies and I'm only observing for the other groups. I'll link to my Cantonese log when it goes up, but I'm going to keep that one separate. Anyways below I'll go over my background and motivations for each language. This weekend I'll start doing updates with my actual progress.
I'm calling this log Assimil x4 because I plan on using lots of Assimil courses and so perhaps a lot of course reviews will come out of this log. However I'm not going to d any kind of special objective "Assimil Challenge", I fully intend to supplement my studies for other materials when I feel they're more appropriate for acquiring certain skills. Since I'm primarily trying to learn languages for the purposes of studying film history in more depth, I'll also post a bit about the films I like from each language. Team Start French Background: I started studying French last year using a variety of methods of varying levels of effectiveness. Though perhaps I didn't get quite as far as I known what I was doing, I do think I made some pretty significant progress and did it rather painlessly. My reasons for studying French are because it's a (comparatively) easy language for English speakers, and because it plays a very important role in film studies. In addition to there being lots of great French films there's tons of French books about film that I would love to be able to read. Goals: Be able to read a French film history book by the end of the year. Some Favorite Films: Le voyage à travers l'impossible (Georges Méliès, 1904) Les vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915) La roue (Abel Gance, 1923) La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) La chute de la maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928) Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945) Les Enfants Terribles (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950) Le salaire de la peur (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953), Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (Robert Bresson, 1956) Vivre Sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962) Le soupirant (Pierre Étaix, 1962) Judex (Georges Franju, 1963) Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Jacques Rivette, 1974) L'important c'est d'aimer (Andrzej Zulawski, 1975) L'hypothèse du tableau volé (Raul Ruiz, 1978) Les maîtres du temps (René Laloux, 1982) Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983) Sans toit ni loi (Agnès Varda, 1985) German Background & Interest: I started studying German in high school and continued to take classes in it for 5 years and haven't done much with it since. Although I want to continue my German studies, its not really an urgent matter for me so I've usually kept it on the backburner. This year I'm going to try to re-activate it using mostly L2->L3 so as to make sure it doesn't interrupt my other studies, so we'll see how far that gets me. I'm mostly familiar with German silent films, but there's of course plenty of good films to explore way after that. Goals: Re-activate skills. Some Favorite Films: Ich möchte kein Mann sein (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) Die Austernprinzessin (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) Nerven (Robert Reinert, 1919) Hintertreppe (Leopold Jessner, 1921) Dr. Mabuse: Der Spieler (Fritz Lang, 1922) Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924) Jenseits der Straße (Leo Mittler, 1929) Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (Hanns Schwarz, 1929) Die 3 Groschen-Opera (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1931) M (Fritz Lang, 1931) Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Werner Herzog, 1972) Team Катюша Russian Background & Interest: I actually originally wanted to study Czech before taking on Russian, but decided to begin with Russian because it had a lot of great resources available to learn it, and it would probably be a long time before I could focus on Czech. I studies a solid amount of Russian the past year, but dropped my studies after a while. Now I've picked it back up again and am going to try to stay consistent with it. It's not my main focus this year, so I'm focusing mostly on passive abilities this year. I'm not as familiar with Russian film history as I would like to be, but what patches I am familiar with are incredible. Евгений Бауэр is easily one of the best directors of the 1910s, and Андре́й Тарко́вский is a strong candidate for favorite directors ever. Goal: Passive Intermediate Some Favorite Films: После смерти (Евгений Бауэр, 1915) Третья Мещанская (Абрам Роом, 1927) У самого синего моря (Бори́с Ба́рнет, 1936) Баллада о солдате (Григо́рий Чухра́й, 1959) Андрей Рублёв (Андре́й Тарко́вский, 1966) Ёжик в тумане (Ю́рий Норште́йн, 1975) Сказка сказок (Ю́рий Норште́йн, 1979) Сталкер (Андре́й Тарко́вский, 1979) Иди и смотри (Эле́м Кли́мов, 1985) Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Background & Interest: My main reason for studying Hungarian now is because it's got my two favorite courses an English based Assimil and FSI and its not related to any of the other languages I'm studying. There's also not a whole lot of Hungarian cinema available to English speakers, but the stuff I've watched has been incredible so I'm excited to explore deeper. I'm especially interested in Hungarian cinema from the 1910s, because a number of great classic Hollywood directors were Hungarian and made their first films in the 1910s in Hungary, though I'm not sure how many films survive from this era. Either way it's a wonderful language that I hope to improve my passive skills in this year. Goals: Passive Intermediate Some Favorite Films: Így jöttem (Miklós Jancsó, 1964) Apa (István Szabó, 1965) Csillagosok, katonák (Miklós Jancsó, 1967) Szindbád (Zoltán Huszárik, 1971) Sátántangó (Béla Tarr, 1994) Werckmeister harmóniák (Béla Tarr, 2000) A torinói ló (Béla Tarr, 2011) ------------------------------------------------------------ Additional Resources ------------------------------------------------------------ Assimil Course Order of Completion In this section I've listed all the Assimil courses I've worked through in the order I've worked through them, including how many waves I've done and from what base. 1. French Without Toil (1st gen French, English base) 2. Le Nouvel Allemand Sans Peine (2nd gen German, French base) 3. Hungarian with Ease (2nd gen Hungarian, English base) 4. Russian (3rd gen Russian, English base) 5. Using French (2nd gen intermediate French, English base) Assimil Course Rankings and Reviews This section I've ranked every course I've gone through according to how useful and enjoyable I thought it was, and include a short review on why I thought so. 1. French Without Toil (1st gen) - Tons of content, lots of songs, humor, plenty of useful extra exercises. Most uniquely it starts giving grammar notes in French as the course progresses, which is incredibly useful practice for anyone who wants to use French based Assimil courses in the future. My only slight issue, is I wish it incorporated more native content outside the songs, but still one of the best beginner courses I've used. 2. Using French (2nd gen intermediate) - Nice long dialogs and tons of excerpts from literature and interesting information about the country. 3. Hungarian with Ease (2nd gen) - I found this course very frustrating to use as a beginner because it moves quite fast. But the dialogs are long and humorous, and there's lots of great native content like Hungarian songs and poems and history. It might be necessary to start with another Hungarian course, but I think this one will still be incredibly useful for anyone trying to learn Hungarian. 4. German with Ease (2nd Gen) - Solid course but nothing terribly special, very funny with a bit of native content. Recycles several jokes from the 1st gen course. 5. Russian (3rd gen) - Really funny course, that starts out nice and slow for beginners. I think the content is a bit thin at times to work effectively as a standalone introduction, but definitely worth using from the beginning in conjunction with other materials. Lyrics Training Uploads Hungarian Besh O Drom - Meggyujtom A Pipam Besh O Drom - Ha Megfogom Az Ordogot Magdolna Rúzsa & Felix Lajko - Lassan Kocsis Magdolna Rúzsa & Felix Lajko - Még Azt Mondják Napra - Pici Ház Napra - Ugrós Russian Ма́рк Нау́мович Берне́с - Тёмная Ночь Other Course Reviews Russian Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian - A very slow beginner course stretched out over 40+ lessons. Uses lots of English cognates to teach very basic grammar similar to Michel Thomas, but this isn't mean to be a comprehensive course. I think it's very useful for learners who decided to start with audio only courses like Pimsleur & Michel Thomas to slowly and easily introduce the cyclic alphabet, and will be good prep for moving to more faster paces written courses Edited by YnEoS on 11 March 2014 at 10:17pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5327 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 99 21 December 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Interesting angle. I'll watch out for any Russian films, since I am also interested in both films and Russian.
Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 99 22 December 2013 at 7:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks, best of luck with your Russian studies as well!
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| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 99 22 December 2013 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Alright, here's my first progress update
Team Start French Completed: Pimsleur Plus, Advanced Michel Thomas & Foundations, FSI Basic Course I Current Tools: Assimil French Without Toil Lesson 99, Französisch ohne Mühe Lesson ~30(via Anki deck), French In Action Lesson 45, Duolingo Thoughts: Previously I had been doing scriptorium on all my Assimil lessons, and it was starting to feel like a bit of a chore. So now I've switched to more selective scriptorium method where I only write out sentences that have vocabulary or grammar I want to focus on. I also allow myself to do more than 1 lesson a day if I think a lesson was too easy. I should be finished with French in Action come next week, I definitely want to repeat it a few times, but I'm not sure if I should start again right away, or give it some time to forget a bit and focus on other methods of study. German Completed: 5 years of public school German Current Tools: Assimil Les Nouvel Allemand Lesson 28, Lyrics Training Thoughts: This week I've started reactivating my old high school German skills full time (I had previously been incorporating a little bit of German base for my French studies). So far no big hiccups, but we'll see how I fair towards the later Assimil lessons. Also decided to try out Lyrics Training with German, and its really fun and addicting. There were a lot of songs I wanted that they didn't have on their, but they make it really easy to put up your own lyrics, so I've been doing a lot of that as well. Team Катюша Russian Completed: Pimsleur III, Michel Thomas Foundations Current Tools: Assimil Russian Lesson 28, Le russe sans peine Lesson 16, Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian Lesson 28, Anki Thoughts: Nothing too exciting going on with Russian this week, just continuing with the Assimil lessons. Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Completed: Pimsleur I Current Tools: Assimil Lesson 21, FSI Unit 5, Anki Thoughts: I had a bit of a hiccup in my Hungarian studies the previous week, when going through Assimil lessons 15-20 the learning curve got way to steep for me. So this week I decided to review lesson 15-20 instead of trying to move forward and spending lots of time being lost and confused. I also supplemented my Hungarian studies with some FSI practice to try and help get myself more comfortable with the grammar. I'm really surprised that the FSI seems to actually be much more leisurely paced than Assimil at introducing suffixes and grammar points, and I think its helped a lot. I have to say, so far FSI Hungarian is the best formatted FSI course I used, and I think it will be really invaluable to my studies. I'm feeling comfortable with lessons 15-20 now, and I peeked ahead a bit, and it doesn't look like there's anything too worrisome up ahead, so hopefully I'll continue at a normal rate at least for a little while. Hungarian continues to be by far the most challenging of my languages, but its also been quite a lot of fun. Edited by YnEoS on 29 December 2013 at 3:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 99 02 January 2014 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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What a great idea! Will follow your log attentively for reviews on the films.
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| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4000 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 6 of 99 02 January 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Kannst du etwas moderne deutsche Filme empfehlen?
Can you recommend some modern German films? Dieser Log ist ziemlich interessant, ich werde er folgen. This Log is pretty interesting, I'll follow it. Edited by Tollpatchig on 02 January 2014 at 6:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CongerConger Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 3976 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 99 03 January 2014 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Interesting project and a very nice list of quality films! I very much like the Herzog-Kinski films, Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde especially, and Иди и смотри forever destroyed any hopes of me having an optimistic world view (along with some of the New French Extremity films).
If you haven't seen it already you might want to check out Кин-дза-дза! A Russian film from 1986, fastidiously described in its Wikipedia-article as a sci-fi dystopian black comedy cult film. It is a humorous film, and in some ways reminiscent of Fellini's Satyricon. Best of luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 8 of 99 04 January 2014 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks, there not be a whole bunch of film watching activity earlier in the year, but I'll see if I can sneak in a few reviews here and there. Nice assortment of languages you're studying by the way, I wish you the best of luck this year.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen very many modern German films myself. The only one I can think of would be Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run), which I haven't seen outside of a few clips, but it has a pretty strong reputation.
Yeah, I remember one of my teachers in film school showed us a clip from Иди и смотри without any warning about the tone, and I think the whole class was pretty well scarred by the experience. I'll definitely check out Кин-дза-дза!, especially because I'll be focusing on watching more 1980s films in a month or so. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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