bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 49 of 160 07 August 2009 at 4:24am | IP Logged |
Now I have but $450 in my free funds account. Oh well. On the other hand, that's totally
enough to buy the Gardiner...
Have some of my essay written but not all. Will disconnect from the internet to get it
DONE now.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 50 of 160 07 August 2009 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
Why is it so hard to format things in Arabic? I don't understand why Microsoft Word is
doing this to me. Looking for a better word processor now.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 51 of 160 07 August 2009 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
I realized the problem is that I do not have Arabic installed on my computer and my
computer refuses to recognize any CDs/files that might aid in the process. So I'll just
continue typing Arabic via online keyboards for now. In the end I had to make a PDF file
of my essay. But my printer is broken so I still haven't printed it out...
TO BRING
USB drive
notebook
CREAM PUFFS
Cell phone
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 52 of 160 07 August 2009 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
Okay, now that I've completed my course, I really AM on my own, and I need to come up
with a good study schedule pronto. If possible, I hope to hasten my improvement in Arabic
over the next month, as I've heard the students in the class I will be taking in the fall
largely have just returned from the Middle East in addition to having a full year of
study, so you know, I don't want to be constantly left behind. If it isn't possible,
though, it just isn't possible and I'll survive.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 53 of 160 07 August 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
Ok. Small steps.
1. Enter all vocabulary into Anki
2. Use Anki
3. ????
4. Profit
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 54 of 160 07 August 2009 at 10:59pm | IP Logged |
I thought I'd take the time and construct some short-term goals.
Obviously my long-term - long, long, long-term - goal in Arabic is to achieve fluency.
I'm interested in both MSA and dialects and I hope to be able to one day read my
favorite books and maybe even my favorite qasida in the original. But that's far off.
For now, I want to define some very basic, short-term goals that I can reach, thus
improving my morale for the long trek.
In a year, I hope to:
- be able to speak/write grammatically on basic topics with fluidity
- improve my pronunciation, especially of ghayn
- begin learning some dialect
- be able to free-read most texts I encounter (note I didn't say "most texts that
exist") with ease
In a month, I hope to:
- finish reading at least 20 pages in my book - I am not free-reading but instead
looking up every word, copying the sentences to improve my handwriting, and translating
everything as well as I can, so this will take me a very long time.
- do a few chapters of my new textbooks, so as to be ahead
- read a little bit every day
- know most of the words I've put into my Anki
Not sure what I'm going to do about my listening, which is still my weakest point, but
I figure it'll come with time and practice.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 55 of 160 08 August 2009 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
I'm saddened by the difficulties faced by our fellow student of language J-learner as
mentioned glancingly in his thread. I hope that he feels better soon and that he manages
to find that elusive balance.
I had a long post here before about my own experience with mental illness and how it
affects my language learning, but it was really too long. Essentially: I haven't crashed
yet, am worried that I might. However, as there is nothing I can do about it, I can only
continue to live and continue to learn.
Today marks, exactly, the end of my tenth week of Arabic study.
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bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 56 of 160 08 August 2009 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
It appears that inputting all my vocabulary into Anki is going to be more than just an
one-day task. Now, I type slowly, but so far I've done four chapters (five, but I
accidentally put the fifth in a different file so I'm going to have to re-enter it),
which is about 160 words. I have 16 more chapters to go.
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