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TAC 2009: Spanish, French | ||
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 25 of 120 19 December 2008 at 12:26pm | IP Logged |
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Well I got my computer back from the repair shop today, surprisingly quickly. Anyway:
18 Dec.: As of today, I am on Unit 8. I spent about four hours on it today, so tomorrow (the 19th) I should be able to finish it as I just have a few things I need to review, and then I can probably also start Unit 9. I've kinda slacked on Pimsleur. Without headphones, it just really isn't as easy to force myself to do it. Washing dishes or walking dogs or something was fine, but I find I'd much rather spend my time studying the FSI course than Pimsleur. I'm hoping that when I come back to it I'll be a lot more comfortable with everything and just "soar" right through. I've also got a lot of that chunk of 660 words memorized, but not put into Mnemosyne. Btw, I installed Mnemosyne on this computer (all my old cards are on the other computer, so I'll have to transfer them when I have access to it) and set the default language to Spanish. Every time I click on the deck info button the program crashes for some reason. It wouldn't be too much of a problem, but I hit that button pretty frequently on accident trying to hit one of the other ones, so as my entire deck is probably already out of sync I have installed Anki as well and see about switching. I found Mnemosyne a bit simpler to use when I tested them out before, but I guess we'll see. In other news, I think I've officially started my studies of French early. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep this up though as each day I've been doing on average: 3 hours Spanish, 2 hours French. I don't really mind it, to tell the truth I rather like it, but right now I have a lot of time to myself, which I won't have starting on Saturday now that school is out and people are going to be around the house more often. Anyway, over the past few days I've worked my way to CD 5 of the MT French Foundation course. I was afraid of developing a bad accent, but I can't understand at all what they are saying in the FiA videos when they ask you to repeat, so I decided I would go through the Foundation course quickly and maybe even the Advanced one to provide a small background for the FiA videos. I've also watched FiA episodes 1-5 and tonight I did Unit 1 of the FSI Phonology course. I was hoping it would explain the actual process your mouth goes through producing the sounds, but oh well it'll be good for me anyway. With FiA I've been watching each video twice but without doing the workshops associated with them. I'm planning to go through maybe the entire first section (26 videos) then jump back to the start, this time doing the drills. well, now it's well into the 19th and I haven't yet hit Submit, if I think of anything more to say I'll just add it later. I think I wanted to talk about my pre-TAC goals, but it's time to sleep! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 26 of 120 20 December 2008 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
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I'm just posting right now because I like how Anki is set up but it's formula or something really doesn't do me any good. Today I had less than a 50% recall rate! And reviewing missed cards took forever since unlike Mnemosyne, the cards you don't remember are just shown in the order you didn't remember them in. I think the default is 20. I ended up switching it to 5, but it took me about a half an hour to get enough cards right to bring it down from 20 to 5. Anki has a lot of really nice features, but I see again why I didn't like it much when I used it last, it just really isn't that effective for me (at least for getting new cards started). The synchronize feature was really cool too, but it kept telling me that my clock was off by such and such amount of seconds, so I'd adjust it and it would be fine for a while but then my clock would reset itself. Whew!
20 Dec.: I ended up sleeping through all of yesterday, but before going to bed I watched some French movie online and a couple episodes of Futurama en Audio Latino :) Today I was in the middle of finishing off Unit 8 when I found myself zoning out a bit on the words (I have a lot more trouble concentrating when the sound isn't coming out of headphones in my ears) so I started to do my Anki reviews. I think I'm going to try to transfer what I've got to Mnemosyne again (I'm going to reinstall the English version and see if that stops it from crashing). I'll probably update later on today, hopefully saying I've started Unit 9. That would be great, cause then at least ONE of my pre-TAC goals will have been met, and possibly surpassed. Depending on how many words on the other computer's SRS I still remember, my vocabulary goal may be reached as well. I have enough words gathered to get me within maybe 100 or so of my goal, so a few days of dedication to that and hopefully I'll be up to par and fill in the final 100. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 27 of 120 23 December 2008 at 9:14am | IP Logged |
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21 Dec.:
I don't remember everything I did today, I know I ended up spending another 2+ hours trying to finish Unit 8, the Conversation Stimulus and one of the sets of drills at the end kept giving me a lot of trouble. I also added all my old words from Mnemosyne back over to this computer and had about 800 to review in addition to all of the new words (which I still haven't finished adding!). So I spent a while today and knocked out maybe 300 words. Oh, btw, for some reason Mnemosyne crashed when I clicked on the statistics icon when the language was set to Spanish, but when I changed it back to English no problems. Oh well.. 22 Dec.: Today was just all around a bad day. I finally finished clearing out all the reviews that were piled up (about 600!) and started working on putting some of the words from my wordlists in there. I've got about 400 more to go. Other than that, I tried to start Unit 9 today but ended up getting into other obligations so apart from the moments throughout the day I was able to work on SRS reviews, I didn't accomplish much. I spent a lot of my time trying to remove some spyware that wormed its way onto my computer. What a pain that was. 23 Dec.: SRS and ran through Unit 9 once. Edited by Crush on 26 December 2008 at 3:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 28 of 120 26 December 2008 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
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Yikes the last few days have been pretty awful. I should've started Unit 10 yesterday but I just haven't had as much time to myself. I've gone through Unit 9 a few times (but I'm definitely not ready to move on yet!) and did SRS each day. As for my pre-TAC goals, the only one I achieved was my FSI one. I've only got 1606 words entered into Mnemosyne, but I have a few hundred more on wordlists so I came pretty close to that goal too. The others I pushed aside for the time being so I guess that's ok :) Hopefully I'll finish up Unit 9 tomorrow and get back on track. I also spent almost no time on French.
26 Dec. 2 hours of FSI Unit 9 SRS Reviews 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 29 of 120 27 December 2008 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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27 Dec.:
Today was a bit better, hopefully this will help me get back on track with my goals. Ah! Speaking of goals I suppose I should outline some basic goals for this year to come, I'll type those up at the end of this post. I spent a lot of time working on French instead of Spanish today, which was a bit of a nice break, although I did spend a good amount of time on Spanish also. For French: I reviewed FiA videos 2 & 3, as well as did the workbook/textbook stuff for it. I don't know if the whole course is like this, but the audio that accompanied the workbook I didn't care for at all. The instructions were read really slowly (in English) and the pauses for the responses were very large. I think going through the workbook would really help, but there are a lot of things about them that annoy me. I think I would probably be better off just doing the FSI Basic course with the FiA videos/textbook. Speaking of which I should finish up the Phonology course (really, I should start it from scratch again). I'll try to designate at least half an hour for the FiA videos and an hour for the Phonology course each day. For Spanish: Of course I went through my SRS reviews and really tried to really nail down this group of about 6 words (all starting with an 'a', I don't know why they give me such trouble!) that have repeatedly been in my "Not Memorized" pile for the last 2 weeks, I suppose only tomorrow will tell how well it worked. I also worked on the latter half of FSI Unit 9 for about an hour, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Probably won't finish it tonight but I would like to go through the whole unit start to finish before sleeping tonight to get an idea of where I stand. Unfortunately, I don't think I will as I'm already feeling a bit tired. I'm still feeling pretty motivated though because it felt really nice to study French today. TAC Goals: In Spanish I would really like to be between basic and advanced fluency, as defined by this site. I'd like to be able to enjoy Spanish movies/literature as well as feel comfortable talking to natives in Spanish. I'd like to be able to talk about every day things as well as the things that I am most interested in. I'm hoping to hit basic fluency by April or May, but I think this is really dependent on whether or not I can find someone else to speak Spanish with regularly. After this point I plan to shift most of my effort into French. In French I would like to have reached basic fluency by August or September. I really have only just started learning French so I'm not sure how realistic this is, I may have to adjust this in a few months when I have a better idea of how I'm progressing. French and Russian are really important languages to me because there is a lot of (untranslated) literature in both that I would really love to finally get the chance to read. Another thing about French is that the French hardcore scene of the 90s is really amazing. Their records often had English translations in them, which themselves are beautiful texts, but what I would give to be able to understand what they had to say in their native language! I have a pretty solid beginner's base in German, although I am noticing it start to slip. However, I don't think I really want to focus on German until I get really comfortable with French and Spanish. German is easily my favorite language that I've studied, it's fun to read, to hear, and especially to speak. And for some reason I really like the fact that all nouns are capitalized. :) Anyway, I hope to start intensively studying German beginning in September, and I want to finally climb out of this beginner's level that I've managed to maintain for all these years, but not surpass. I would love to be able to watch/understand German films. Reading German literature is currently possible, but it's a pretty arduous task. I can generally get the gist of what my German penpals write, but last year I tried to work my way through a German book I got from the library ("Drei sind einer zuviel", apparently based off an old German TV show) but my awful vocabulary left me looking up probably 80% or more of the words and there were a few grammatical constructions and especially idioms that I wasn't familiar with. I don't think I finished the first chapter. I would like to start Russian around the same time as German because I am really anxious to begin learning this language, but I know each will require a lot of dedication. By the end of this year I would like to reach an upper-beginner level, namely a familiarity with most grammar topics and a nice vocabulary foundation. I have a lot of friends who live in Russia, so penpals are definitely possible, but finding someone to speak Russian aloud with may be difficult. I do have another friend who has expressed really wanting to learn Russian, so that might be my ticket. To sum everything up, my ideal goals for the end of the TAC are... Spanish: -Basic-Advanced fluency -Read Spanish literature, watch films, and hold conversations with ease French: -Basic fluency -Read French literature and watch French films with ease -Conversational skills German: -Upper intermediate -Reach the 80% comprehension point in reading -Ability to follow along in German films Russian: -Upper beginner -Become more comfortable in writing Russian to my friends One of my next posts will probably include my planned methods for accomplishing my TAC goals. I wasn't going to do this, but I see a lot of other people have done this and I think I would have fun planning things out anyway. Anyway, GOOD LUCK EVERYONE! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 30 of 120 29 December 2008 at 1:59am | IP Logged |
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28 Dec.:
I finally finished Unit 9! It seemed like I spent a lot more time on it but I just added up the minutes and it was only about six and a half hours... Anyway I wanted to learn this unit really well and so Level I is finally through! I also went through my SRS reviews. There are a few words giving me a lot of trouble and I've been a little apprehensive to add more words, but I probably should and hope these words somehow stick over time. For French today I watched two episodes of FiA (4 & 5). I can't wait until it starts focusing more on the actual story than how we want to "inventer" our "histoire". One of the reviews on this site said it was around lesson 6 or 7, so I'm hoping they're right. Overall I felt pretty good about studying today, I got a good amount of French and Spanish studied in one day. I guess I can outline my study plans real quick as well: Spanish: -Platiquemos. I have 46 units left, assuming 3 days/unit this puts me finishing in the middle of April -Penpals -Finally find a conversation partner! -Watching films and audio latino TV shows/cartoons. French: -FiA videos + textbook (multiple times) -FSI French Phonology -FSI French Basic -French films! and TV shows -Books! German: -Michel Thomas Foundation/Advanced as a review -FSI German -Continue writing to penpals Russian: -Schaums Outline of Russian Grammar -My old textbooks 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 31 of 120 01 January 2009 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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1 Jan.:
Well today is the first day of the new year, better make the best of it! I haven't updated in a few days, but I've been keeping up my schedule. Yesterday I finished Unit 10 and today I'll start Unit 11. I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed with the vocabulary, I need to work on getting things into my long-term memory before putting them into Mnemosyne, Iversen's wordlist method worked really well for me but I kind of slacked off on my wordlists. In French, I haven't gone through the Phonology course yet but I've been doing at least one FiA episode a day, I think I'm on video 7 or 8. In addition, I've been watching some TV shows in Spanish and found some Spanish music I like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 32 of 120 04 January 2009 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
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2 Jan.:
Today I did my SRS reviews and finished Unit 11. I also started on Unit 12. 3 Jan.: Today I did a lot of studying. I reviewed Unit 12 for about 3 hours and did another episode of French in Action as well as started reviewing the FiA videos I've already seen. I spent about 3 hours on this as well. I watched episode 11 once and episodes 2 & 3 twice each, plus reviewing with some of the audio materials for both. Also went through my SRS reviews, unfortunately I still don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with my SRS reviews. I also need to squeeze in the FSI Phonology course sometime! Edited by Crush on 04 January 2009 at 4:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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