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Splog at University | ||
Tags: Czech | College/University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7104 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 17 of 72 07 October 2010 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Well done! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 72 14 October 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the professors was sick today, so my tiny group was merged for the day with a
group at a slightly lower level. However, I was astonished by the abilities of the students in that group. They spoke so effortlessly - lacking only vocabulary and making only a few minor declension errors. It turns out, they were almost all from Russia and the Ukraine and they were soaking up Czech like sponges. Given the thousands of hours of hard work I have had to put into Czech, I must admit to being somewhat jealous of the advantage people have when they come from a background in another Slavic language. The last couple of weeks at university have strengthened my realisation that the "natural approach to acquisition" that I have mostly been following has been both an advantage and a disadvantage. Certainly, I have picked up lots of idioms and a lot of general vocabulary, but there are simply thousands of words I have ignored due to having only seen them a couple of times. I contrast this with the rich vocabulary of the Italian priest in my group, who studied extensive word lists for hours a day for almost two years, and he has a massive vocabulary. Now I wish I had balanced my approach with more word-list study. Over the past six weeks, then, I have added around two thousand words to my vocabulary, and it certainly adds oil to my linguistic wheels. I will keep at this. In addition, on the recommendation of one of the professors, I have started to watch a daily soap opera. Unfortunately, it is hardly gripping stuff, and I have to hold back my yawning while watching it. I am assured that it will pay off if I can just stick with it. Edited by Splog on 14 October 2010 at 9:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5833 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 20 of 72 15 October 2010 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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What is the name of the soap? I'm at an intermediate level myself and one of my weaknesses is definitely comprehension of normal speech. I also need this kind of input. On Czech TV they often show news programmes first broadcast during Communist times (not sure why, nostalgia perhaps?) and it's interesting to note that the newscasters speak much more slowly than they do today.
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| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 72 15 October 2010 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
Ulice, which plays on TV Nova each day at 18:25. The language isn't very complicated, so you should be fine with it. The plots are typical of soaps: people having affairs, colleagues betraying one another, and similar domestic dramas. The old news broadcasts you mentioned are indeed for nostalgia. What interests me about them is the complete lack of facial expression on the newsreaders, and the monotone with which they read from their scripts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5833 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 22 of 72 16 October 2010 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, I've seen Ulice a few times but I can't watch it here in UK online. Have you heard of Vyprávěj on CT1?
http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10195164142/ It's a 'retro' soap about a Czech family. The first series was set in the 60s, there was one episode about the 68 Spring Uprising. I think they've now reached the early 70s in the present series. It's a nice series, quite humerous and you get a glimpse of what life was like under Communism. They start each programme with a couple of news reels from the period. Unfortunately I only understand about half of what they say, but can more or less follow the plot. They have released the first 2 series on DVD, which I think have Czech subtitles, which would help me enormously. However on my last 2 visits to Prague I've been unable to find them anywhere. I could order them online but I'm not sure how reliable the Czech postal system is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 72 21 October 2010 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are now four students in the class. The new addition is a Japanese Woman who is
training to be a court translator. She already has an astonishing knowledge of Czech grammar, but has joined us to get in lots of conversational practice and to overcome some apparent shyness. She is a welcome addition to the group. One side effect is that she has stimulated the professors to test our knowledge of grammar more than before. This only takes about 30 minutes out of each day, but is confirming how endlessly complicated Czech grammar is. As mentioned earlier, I have never bothered to learn declensions for rare words, since they are of little use to me. The professors, though, are not letting us get away with such laziness. Hence, I find myself hitting the grammar books trying to find obscure rules for tiny details. Although this is painful, one nice side effect is that the few things that are comparatively "normal" in the grammar now feel much easier than ever before. It reminds me of when I took exams as school, and found them hard. Only to look back a few months later and wonder why I didn't get 100%. So, the advantage of pushing yourself into seemingly useless advanced stuff seems to be that it makes the useful stuff feel much easier. Besides this, the University has decided to enter me into a national speech competition. Hence, a couple of weeks from now I will be travelling to another city and making a fool of myself in front of a panel of judges and dozens of spectators. There doesn't seem to be much in it for me in terms of prizes, but the professors seem keen on it - so I thought "why not?". I do not expect to do well, since I am sure other competitors will take it more seriously and put more effort in. Perhaps their own fine examples will motivate me to strive for ever higher levels of achievement. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5472 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 24 of 72 23 October 2010 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
I faced the same challenge when it came to sharpening my English listening comprehension. I recommend watching TV, not just fiction, but talk shows, i.e. live people. Also, listening to talk/news radio - extensively. Talk radio gives you a good balance between clear, but not stilted, voices, from the presenters (which sometimes also have a regional accent) and unfiltered, accented, untrained voices from the interviewees and callers. In addition to that, there's a good balance between colloquial and 'technical' vocabulary. When I started listening to American radio, I found my listening comprehension improved significantly within the year. Given enough exposure, you can get used to any accent. The first time I watched 'No country for old men', at times I felt like my ears were drowning in a sea of West Texas mumbled cowboy speech. The third or fourth time I watched it, I could understand it. Keep on truckin'. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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