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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 41 of 160 06 August 2009 at 1:35pm | IP Logged |
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That's interesting. I'll try to remember s novym godom for next January!
My usernames are usually nowhere near as exciting on the foreign language front. I tend to choose either names from books I like (which are largely foreign) or obscure English words (which are usually archaic). So most people just assume that I make them up, and sometimes, such as with this username, that might be true. However, I actually realized via Wikipedia after I chose this username a couple months ago that in Ethiopia, bouda are the werehyena form of blacksmiths, who all are wizards and rob graves at night, which obviously describes me right down to my grave dirt-stained nails... TO DO TODAY - work out basic outline of presentation - write essay, then edit down to about 2.5 pages double-spaced Edited by bouda on 06 August 2009 at 1:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 42 of 160 06 August 2009 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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Okay, I worked out my essay outline - now I have to write and double-check it! That
should be easy given all the practice I've had. I'm a little more worried about my oral exam. I don't even know what I'm talking about yet. So far I'm thinking that I want to do something light or humorous with photographs as props. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 43 of 160 06 August 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
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I will start writing my essay now.
Then, I will do a preliminary memorization of my last four (!!) chapters. After that, I'll outline my presentation briefly (I'm winging it anyway, so whatever). I think that's all I have to do today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 160 06 August 2009 at 11:35pm | IP Logged |
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So, as NEEDING to do X piece of work always inspires me to work on completely unrelated
Y, I decided to think a bit harder about what direction I want to take my as of yet uncreated Chinese language blog in. I've decided that I will not be putting up grammar lessons, unless I feel especially drawn to elucidate one piece of grammar, for the following reasons: 1) I don't want to put my teaching materials online where they can be easily plagiarized, 2) there are sites aplenty that do that already so if I wanted to be truly helpful, I'd have to start from a not-quite-beginner level, which is harder to do, 3) while I am confident in my listening and reading skills, I know that my output is not always native-level, so while I'd probably be teaching things I do have a good grasp on, I wouldn't want to chance accidentally modeling an incorrect pattern. And running all my grammatical materials past a native speaker friend is just too much to do. I will definitely be putting up transcripts of clips already on the internet, as well as basic dialogues/monologues for low-intermediate listeners and readings of my favorite texts for high-intermediate to advanced listeners. All sound clips will be accompanied by pinyin as well as simplified characters. I will also be putting up vocabulary lists with accompanying example sentences/paragraphs, which I looooove to do. Questions I have not answered to my satisfaction yet: - the name of the blog ;) - whether I will be putting up traditional characters as well as simplified - whether my focus will be on low-intermediates or high-intermediate/advanced learners. I'm defining low-intermediate here as someone who has completed maybe one or two years of study - someone who hasn't quite made it to reading original texts with fluidity, who perhaps can understand only 80% of an average conversation. I see a lot of people who are at this stage but who can't seem to find or maybe don't want to find resources appropriate to their level. For the latter case, I'm thinking of those people who think that just because they've completed one textbook, they'll be able magically to read classics and watch the news without dictionaries. Now, I don't want to discourage reading or listening "beyond" your level, because I think it's a great exercise and I do it all the time. But I do want to produce some materials that will help ease that transition between beginnerdom and relative fluency. On the other hand, I myself am not in that valley and have reached the high- intermediate/advanced plateau (more on my thoughts on this plateau in the future) where I can essentially say anything I want in Chinese, excluding situations that require specialized language of the discipline, and even then I can make myself understood in an unprofessional manner. And so I would want to use this blog to keep track of the vocabulary and materials that I am studying, too, putting up for example lists of technical terms that would be largely anomalous in the vocabulary of a low-intermediate beginner. I suppose I could just play both sides of the field, but I don't want to be in a situation where my blog becomes inconsistent and confusing. I will be recording a short clip later tonight, from which you will be able to hear my pace, pronunciation, and tones. I hope that some native speakers will be able to give me opinions as to how to convey myself more clearly, so that I will be more coherent on my blog. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 45 of 160 07 August 2009 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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No time to do anything!!!! Must write essay. Printer broken, computer refuses to type in
Arabic... Edit: I finished preparing my presentation somewhat (I haven't run through it yet, but since we're supposed to ad lib it, it's not that big a deal) - now to write my essay and hope my printer works it out... Edited by bouda on 07 August 2009 at 3:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 46 of 160 07 August 2009 at 4:01am | IP Logged |
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Given that today was my last day of class (man, every time I talk about class on this
website, I feel like I'm cheating or something), I need to figure out a study schedule for the next few weeks until the school year starts. Depending on whether or not I manage to score tickets to Taiwan, my schedule might change, but it looks like this might work: - read at least a paragraph a day (low standards just means that you have more opportunities to amaze yourself!) - do at least a chapter of my textbook a week - review everything - enter all vocab words into Anki and review - finish listening to all the Ahlan wa Sahlan clips; start Pimsleur Arabic and whatever other learning materials look good for review Edited by bouda on 07 August 2009 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 160 07 August 2009 at 4:10am | IP Logged |
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Languages that I want to achieve fluency in, not strictly in order but tiered. I am
putting this here to increase my morale and because I don't have anywhere else to put it right now! TOP TIER - current Mandarin MSA Ancient Greek (I've been losing interest lately though.) SECOND TIER - in the future, maybe next year after my Arabic stabilizes various dialects of Arabic Hittite. Oh please, Hittite. I actually applied to my college specifically for the Hittite, which is silly, I guess, seeing as it's not THE college known for Hittite or anything - so maybe Hittite wasn't the deciding factor, but it was definitely an important one. Akkadian! I love Akkadian. Ancient Egyptian. I've forgotten it all. Russian Spanish - probably the one I will do next, not because it's the language I want most to learn but because I feel it would be most useful for me to know it. THIRD TIER Hindi Persian Turkish Korean Japanese (I'm not that interested in Japanese though - I took it for a few years before and was so unexcited that I promptly forgot it all. I regret that now, but I still don't have as much drive to learn Japanese as I do to learn Mandarin.) So as you can see, in terms of languages, my interests focus primarily on the far and near East. I'm partial to the ancient world, but I want to be able to speak with people, which is why I'm learning largely modern languages right now. I'm not that interested in French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc except in terms of literature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 48 of 160 07 August 2009 at 4:19am | IP Logged |
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Speaking of Ancient Egyptian, my university bookstore actually has a large pile of
beautiful Gardiner grammars RIGHT NOW. RIGHT THIS SECOND. I don't know how much they cost. His Egyptian Grammar is $56.70 on Amazon, and I doubt the bookstore is much cheaper than that - it's probably much more expensive, actually, but I kind of like supporting my uni, so I might shell out the extra dollahs anyway. We'll see. In the meantime, I'll salivate. I also need to buy a paperback Hans Wehr because I'm sick of lugging my hardcover around all the time. Also, I occasionally look for words in my hardcover (1st edition, fourth printing, I think) that I then find only in my friend's paperback (fourth edition). $36.45. I think I'm going to buy a book now. (A less expensive one. $100 purchases can wait until September...) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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