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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 65 of 120 03 July 2009 at 1:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish:
On Unit 44. French: Watched FiA 15 last night and added Leçon 48 today en El nuevo francés sin esfuerzo. I had typed up a lot more, including an analysis of my TAC goals, but Internet Explorer crashed (why does anyone even use IE anymore?!) and well here is a short something just to let you know I am still here. I'm currently downloading a portable copy of Firefox to fit on a USB drive or something (or to install onto the desktop of a library computer ;-) ). 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 66 of 120 07 July 2009 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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5 July:
Spanish: Reviewed Unit 44 four times and added some words to Mnemosyne. French: Went through half of FSI French Unit 1 but I'm not quite sure how to use this course. I think I'll just go through each part (each unit is divided into several parts, seemingly between 20 and 30 minutes) several times until I have it down and then move on to the next part of the lesson. Thus, do Tape 1.1 until I feel comfortable with it, which really, I already do since there isn't anything new apart from maybe one or two words, though I think I'll try to go through it a couple times anyway as speaking practice or something. After FSI I reviewed my Assimil lessons, adding lesson 51. Then I did the active wave part for lesson 2 (it says to read the lesson and listen to the audio before trying to translate it, but I don't know if it would be better to do that after having translated it?) and added the vocab that wasn't in Mnemosyne already. German: Yes! The language I hold dearest! When I was 10, my dad went to Germany for a few weeks for some business meetings and took me with him. I have always wanted to speak German and actually studied it several years in high school, but it has been several years since and my active knowledge of it has all but disappeared. After this month, I probably won't continue studying German until I have finished Platiquemos. But for now I have the time to spare so I'm going to try to rekindle as much as I can. Anyway, I did one CD (CD2, I did CD1 a week or two ago) of MT German Foundation (I have really never used the formal "Sie" and I keep blurting out "du" instead) and the first several lessons of German Without Toil (up to lesson 9 I think). 6 July: Spanish: Finished Unit 44 (finally!) and reviewed Mnemosyne vocab for French and Spanish. Added some new vocabulary from some old wordlists. French: Did Assimil reviews and added lesson 52. I'll do the active wave later and hopefully review the lessons once more. German: Started MT German CD3 (I'm a little over halfway through) and hopefully will finish the CD and do some more Assimil lessons today. So far everything has been a review (but a necessary one!) and I'll slow down once the material starts to get more difficult for me. TAC: Spanish: Ok, I am starting to get really close to finishing Platiquemos (only a few months late!) which, once done, will mean I have accomplished my first TAC goal!
-Still haven't finished Platiquemos, but for a while (about five months) I didn't have a house or any (indoor) place to stay, so I am not so concerned about that. -I have managed to keep in touch with my penpal (friend!) though now I am less concerned about learning Spanish than improving our virtual friendship :P (though it has helped my Spanish immensely) -I still have yet to have a single conversation in spoken Spanish, really I'm not sure how I'm ever going to break this barrier. Skype seems like a wonderful option, but I don't have a computer. I have been trying to see if the library here offers something similar, but I can't say yet. -Before I left the last house I was at, I was able to watch through some cartoon series (Avatar: La Leyenda de Aang y el principio de la primera (tal vez la segunda también) temporada de Futurama). I also watched a Spanish zombie film with my friend here. French: I've really just started studying French so I can't comment in too much detail on my progress here, but there are some changes I suppose.
-I have the a few of the FiA videos on my iPod which is really convenient, and I've gone through the entire set of videos once already and the first fifteen or so videos several times. Currently I'm at episode 19. I no longer have the FiA textbook (I couldn't fit it into my pack when I left) so I won't be using it anymore. -I've also decided against using French Phonology. I've tried to go through it a few times, but it's too long and slow and perhaps useful but I'd much rather be doing Assimil or the Basic course. -I haven't watched any French films/TV shows (yet!) -same with books. German/Russian: I haven't started these languages yet so their status is still: "Right on track!" (German: "I hope to start intensively studying German beginning in September" and Russian: "I would like to start Russian around the same time as German") EDIT: Oh yea and I wrote a journal entry for Spanish and French which I will post now on lang-8. And one last overview: I feel like Spanish has progressed really well and that I am closer than I have ever been before to calling myself fluent in another language (still a ways off, but getting closer every day!). I'm not sure where to look to find a conversation partner (I hear the language almost every day but I don't want to cut into people's conversations just to practice Spanish or say something like "hola estudio español y quiero practicarlo, puedo hablar con ustedes?" though maybe I really should...) but I feel like that would help me most. I have noticed my French passive knowledge increase, I should try to find a penpal soon. I still can't say very much but I think this is around the time I started looking for a Spanish penpal, despite having greatly overestimated my knowledge of Spanish. I'm excited to progress through FSI French and see how this helps me. German: whoa. I studied German for three years and thought I had a really strong foundation, but after those three years I couldn't make out any words in German films and reading German books was painful. After a month of studying Spanish and a month of studying French books were much clearer already than those three years of German (and for French, films too). I can't wait until German really starts making sense to me, as if I could only speak one language (such as is the case now) I'd want it to be German. Edited by Crush on 07 July 2009 at 1:59am 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 67 of 120 10 July 2009 at 2:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok I have been studying quite a bit lately, I'll try to write it down at home as the library is about to close. A quick summary: I finished unit 45 today, have done some FiA, FSI French, Assimil Francés and Assimil Deutsch. :D
EDIT: Oh yea, I've posted more journals on lang-8 and have a rather long one in Spanish that I will probably post in two parts next time I get on the INTERNET. Edited by Crush on 10 July 2009 at 3:01am 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 68 of 120 11 July 2009 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's what I scribbled down last night, it's a quick summary and hopefully you will have a general idea of what means what :P
==================== ------Sun. 7/5------ ==================== Spanish: Unidad 44 x 4 French: 1.1 x 3 1.2 x 1 1.3 x 1 Assimil #51 et Actif #2 German: Assimil 1-8 ==================== ------Mon. 7/6------ ==================== Spanish: Unidad 44 x ¿3? French: 1.2 x 3 Assimil #52 et Actif #3 German: Assimil 9-15 ==================== ------Tue. 7/7------ ==================== Spanish: Unidad 45 x 3 French: 1.2 x 1 1.3 x 3 Assimil #53 et Actif #4 German: Assimil 16 ==================== ------Wed. 7/8------ ==================== Spanish: Unidad 45 x 3 French: 1.3 x 3 1.4 x 2 Assimil #54 et Actif #5 German: Assimil 17-20 ==================== ------Thu. 7/9------ ==================== Spanish: Unidad 45 x 3 añadí nuevo vocabulario, hice otra lista de palabras French: 1.4 x 2 1.5 x 3 1.6 x 2 written exercises Assimil #55 et Actif #6 German: 22 + vokab von 1-22 ---------------------------------------------- French entry one and two from the other day, and part one of my Spanish entry for today. 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 69 of 120 16 July 2009 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well after spending a total of close to 19 hours the past week on Unit 47 (about the past subjunctive), I've decided to move on. It looks like from here on til the end the units are quite a bit longer, thanks to the "Conversation Stimulus"s in the beginning of each unit lasting far longer. I've been trying to reach 2500 words in Mnemosyne by the end of the month, I started around 2000 and now have about 2250, so I'm about on schedule. I downloaded the Mnemosyne source and hopefully can get it running under Gentoo so I won't have to do all the repetitions at the library.
In French, I'm on the final part (2.6) of the FSI French Basic course and Leçon 62 in Assimil (13 in the Active Wave). The structure of French hasn't started to absorb into my brain yet, I can read it quite well but when hearing it I find myself rearranging the sentences as though they were English. In German, I went over Lektion 30 (lección, leçon, lektion, lesson!). I really really really like the German Without Toil book. I don't know how good it will be in the end, but it has been amazing so far and is incredibly enjoyable. I feel like I am learning far more than in El nuevo francés sin esfuerzo, that each lesson contains far more information. Also, within the first.. I don't know, 10 or 15 lessons? they had already introduced the Akkusativ, Dativ, and Genitiv. I think we covered maybe one case a year when I studied it in High School! Thank you everyone who scanned the book/ripped the records! This is always my last thing to study each night because I spend so much time listening to old lessons and jumping around ahead to new lessons and relistening to the lessons I did that day over and over :P Good luck everyone with your studies and make sure you totally annihilate the TAC! EDIT: Oh yea, I also put up part two of my Spanish entry yesterday. Edited by Crush on 16 July 2009 at 2:55am 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 70 of 120 17 July 2009 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, today I started Unit 48 and while the new material (conditional, which I have been using for a while now in e-mails and IMs and stuff) is far easier than Unit 47 (past subjunctive), but the sentences they are introducing are a lot more complex and you are combining several different grammar elements. It's definitely good practice, but it's quite frustrating at first because I have to think about every single sentence so much! Anyway, I received my laptop today so I've only gone through Unit 48 1.5 times and got distracted by the computer, but now I'm at the library and going to try to figure out how to get Skype to work! Anyone who cares to talk in English/Spanish/French, let me know! Username: soymilkparadise!
EDIT: Here I am, just returned from my first ever Skype (and Spanish) conversation, a brand new person! As I expected there were a lot of times where I was stuttering and couldn't think of anything to say, but there were also times where words just sort of flew out. Also, I was glad to find that I didn't have any trouble understanding my convo partner :) I haven't gotten hardly any studying done today, but that's ok because morgen ist auch ein Tag! Edited by Crush on 17 July 2009 at 4:24am 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 71 of 120 23 July 2009 at 9:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish:
I am currently on Unit 49 (finally into Level VIII!), which is about the future tense. I started it yesterday and it's been a welcome relief after the past two units which have been really intense and difficult (I ended up running through Unit 48 about 10 or 11 times, I think). French: I added Leçon 71/22 tonight. I'm getting pretty close to finishing the passive wave, but I don't really feel that strong in French. I think they say it's normal, and really I feel like I can navigate my way around french websites and stuff pretty easily, there are some things which are just weird for me, like past construction avoir+verb covering the Spanish pretérito y presento perfecto tenses. I am used to a (similar?) construction in German, but for some reason I can only translate it as a present perfect construction in my head. Anyway, I finished FSI Unit 3 and then set it (FSI) aside to be able spend more time playing around with German while I still have a lot of free time. German: In my once-a-day lesson I did Lektion 38 tonight, but have gone over pretty much every lesson up to 57. I might try making a post or two on lang-8 in German to see how much I really remember :) Oh yea, I don't know if I mentioned but my goal was to add 500 words to Mnemosyne (in my Spanish set) in the three and a half weeks I had free, today I added another 50 or 60 words which I think puts me around 370 (or 2870 total). I have maybe another 150 words or so from the 5,000 frequency dictionary I had to add until I've knocked down the entire book (well, all the words that aren't obvious cognates, which seemed to be about 1 every 2 or 3 words). That will be another milestone knocked down on my TAC goals (I don't know if I ever wrote it down, if not then it was definitely an unwritten goal!). Oh, and if you care, I have posted another lang-8 entry in Spanish since my last update to this log. 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 72 of 120 24 July 2009 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I wrote a German entry on lang-8 :)
1 person has voted this message useful |
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