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Muddling through in TAC ’10 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 49 of 95 05 April 2010 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I had a moment when I was studying Arabic earlier today, and I was like, "Well, this
isn't exactly the most brilliant plan I have ever executed." Now that I'm... um... something like 7 months down the road, ballpark estimate, I can see all sorts of mistakes that I've made and that I wish I hadn't. For example, if I could have a do- over, I'd try to spend this time in the actual Middle East, the benefit there being 1) total immersion for dialect, 2) almost just as importantly the increased likelihood that you will be in a class tailored for your level and circumstances. But do-overs aren't possible. I mean... by disposition I'm not really given to regret and I actually do think that my experience over the last year has been highly valuable to me in terms of personal growth and the like. But I do wish that I had been able to make a little more headway on my Arabic. My biggest annoyance is that I didn't really spend enough time on my listening/speaking skills on my own, and because the amount of time spent on the like during class was negligible, that means that I basically didn't spend any time on listening/speaking at ALL. In the fall I meant to secure an Arabic language partner but life intervened. Now I'm trying to do some amount of patch-up work but at times it feels like going to sea in a sieve. Oh well. I guess I should just keep on going. The only thing is I don't really know what would be the most efficient and effective way towards that end. Right now I'm doing some amount of audio input every day but I don't know really know how to get the most out of it. Ok, wasted enough time thinking about this. Back to study, I guess. Oh, and Chinese is getting interference, but isn't it always? I'm taking a break from my usual diet of literature and news to do some remedial review next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 50 of 95 19 April 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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加油！
Annette, won't you post another update? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 51 of 95 28 April 2010 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry for not posting for a long time. I've had lots of RL stuff to deal with and I also
sadly haven't been studying much at all. (Although I've been listening to the news in Mandarin lately... better than nothing, right?) I'm also sorry to hear that you will be leaving us, Sprachprofi. I read through the last pages of your log and although I absolutely understand your motivation in leaving HTLAL (or at least in not visiting with your former frequency), I will still miss your insight and energy. 祝你好运! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 52 of 95 13 May 2010 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, sorry again that I've been so MIA. I don't actually have internet at home right
now, so it's hard for me to manage updates longer than a quick facebook post or so. I'm probably going stay mostly MIA (from HTLAL though not from study) for another month or so. However, I have designated July-August as Mandarin cramming time for me. I want to spend that month and a half or so to really sit myself down and do some solid review. I also hope to memorize around 2000 characters or so (this figure includes the basic stuff I supposedly already know), but we'll see how much of a dent I make there! Tomorrow, if I have time, I'll construct my character hit-list and update this post with a more detailed plan. I don't know about you guys, but I find that I really need to outline every step of my plans before I can make any headway. Without organization, I am all heart and no mind, and I end up dithering around for months doing very little in the way of actual progress. (This is part of why November-March is very difficult for me - without sunlight and warmth, I go from neat freak to disorganized mess! Too bad those four months alone account for the bulk of my school year!) I'd also like to note that I want so hard to like Anki, but Anki just doesn't like me! I have about 1500 flashcards trapped in my Anki decks but I can't load them without the darn thing freezing on me and deleting my data. So I've been studying my flashcards with more primitive means instead - paper and pencil, mostly, and the occasional non- SRS flashcard website. I still wish I had those 1.5k cards available to me though - the prospect of studying all of them by hand or re-entering the whole mass is just a little daunting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 53 of 95 13 May 2010 at 4:22am | IP Logged | ||
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And I've just thought of something... Deutsche Welle surely has free German lessons in
Mandarin, right? Maybe something for me to look into! Someone has been writing me letters in German lately - I don't know any German, so I've never been able to ascertain just what she is talking about in this correspondence. Perhaps this is a sign that I should learn some Deutsch! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 54 of 95 13 May 2010 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
Have you tried re-installing Anki? If you just delete the program folder, your personal folder with the deck should be unaffected. The only time Anki freezes on me is when I use the 20,000 characters deck, but that's only for two seconds or so when loading. If you want to start on German, I'd be glad to help you. Actually, I recently crafted a 10-lesson "fast track" course for absolute beginners that I'm dying to try out. We could meet on Skype and do that. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 May 2010 at 8:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 55 of 95 22 May 2010 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much for your kind offer! I might take you up on that too, although I'll
be away from the internet until the middle of July so I don't know if that would work well for you. I really feel like I want to at least get started on German this summer. Even if I'm forced to put it on the backburner for Mandarin et al in the fall, at least I'll have made some progress and it'll be easier to start again the next time. I'll try re-installing Anki too. I think that might work. I downloaded the program a long time ago, so maybe there are new updates that will smoothen out the kinks. Chinese characters - was not able to compile great list; I have 500 basic characters from my college's introductory course package plus 500 from an intermediate-level media course package, but that brings me only to 1000 and a lot of it is just review. My new plan is to work through these two texts and then go back to my literature/news diet but work more actively on noting down and practicing new vocabulary as opposed to just reading. I'll probably be using either Anki or smart.fm for my flashcards (I kind of like having them online and easily accessible, but I'm not very familiar with Anki's online component). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 56 of 95 14 July 2010 at 6:30am | IP Logged | ||
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OK - back on track. Sort of. I rather want to start a new log (I hate leaving ugly smears
all over the internet) but shall resist the urge for now. Plan is to review/cram basic character set in as little time as possible and then skip straight to media vocabulary, patching up holes as I go. I don't know if this will work, especially as I am feeling a bit under the weather, but one step is better than none, or whatever they say. Wandered around Chinatown today, had some absolutely and surprisingly disgusting soup (I think the good chef was taking his day off). I am always amazed at how difficult it is for me to understand certain varieties of accented Mandarin... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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