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Gary’s TAC 2011 - Team Œ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 41 of 104 21 February 2011 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week plans/goals. I'm hoping for another fairly productive week as I don't have much planned for the evenings or during the day at the weekend!
RU - Keep doing one Pimsleur Russian lesson per day, and one Princeton/MyRussianTeacher lesson, and revise previous lessons by re-listening while on the bus, at the gym, etc.. - Learn the numbers 1-100 and how to tell the time, inside out. This keeps coming up on Pimsleur and I can just never remember them. FR - Lesson on Tuesday. - Meetup on Tuesday maybe... it's the very hit-or-miss French/English Exchange meetup so chances are I could use the time more productively. - Yakety Yak on Wednesday. Again a maybe. - At least one Skype conversation. - Watch more TV episodes. - Start on another bilingual text. 1984 perhaps, or Harry Potter if I can figure out a way to make a parallel text of it without hours of copying/pasting or programming. I'm feeling like I'm in a plateau again with Russian; vocabulary just isn't sticking. I anticipate that there will be a lot of plateaus along the way. Unless I succumb to the temptation to give it up and focus on Italian instead, which is possible but I'd like to at least make a good effort first. Last week I achieved all my goals apart from the catching up on sleep one :P I just don't know where all my time goes; my time management skills still need work. I've started making daily to-do lists which is helping. Edited by garyb on 21 February 2011 at 12:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 42 of 104 23 February 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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French lesson was good, we had some very challenging conversations about current events, as well as more small-talk type stuff which is now seeming fairly easy in comparison.
I've been thinking a lot about Russian and whether I want to keep at it, and my longer term study plans in general. It isn't the difficulty itself that bothers me, and I do love the language, but the perceived return on investment is causing me to lose motivation. I don't see the point in spending hours and hours studying a language that's only going to be useful to me for two weeks of my life (and I just say useful, not essential) and quite possibly never again. As I keep saying, free time is a precious resource to me, and spending more time on French or Italian or music or socialising would give me a lot more benefit in the long run. And if I do want or need to learn more in the future I can pick it up again, having already laid the foundations. I'm happy with what I've achieved so far, and there's still a few things I want to get better at to "round off" my current knowledge, in particular the numbers and reading the script. I'll be quite happy to just be able to get by; actually being capable of proper conversations would be nice but it's just not realistic given the situation. In CEFR terms, I'll be quite happy to get to an A2 level:
I'd say I'm almost at that point, and a bit more Pimsleuring and other study should get me there fairly soon, after which I think I'll just move onto Italian and put Russian into maintenance mode. Perhaps if I find out that the Ukraine trip is definitely happening, and when, I'll find a bit more motivation and be able to come up with a sensible study plan as opposed to my original "learn as much as possible before the trip" idea. TL;DR: I plan to reach about A2 in Russian, which I should do quite soon, then move onto Italian. Edited by garyb on 23 February 2011 at 12:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 43 of 104 25 February 2011 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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After making my decision, I'm actually enjoying Russian much more again! Perhaps it's just the motivation of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and having Italian to look forward to, but in any case I'm happy and I seem to be pushing through my plateau and learning the numbers. I also read the chapters of Penguin Russian on numbers and the genitive case which helped me understand exactly what's going on in Pimsleur with the ending changes. It confirms my philosophy towards grammar study: get exposure first, then learn the grammar to see exactly what's going on and why.
I'm considering "annihilating" Yakety Yak from my learning, but I'm unsure. I went this week and again the conversation was mostly uninteresting and I didn't have much to contribute so it felt like a bit of a waste of time, but at the same time I really do need as much conversational practice as possible. J'ai regardé quelques vidéos de loki2504 sur YouTube ( que j'ai découverts dans le registre de magictom123, merci ! ) et il a dit qu'on doit réviser la leçon précédente d'Assimil le lendemain, afin de se rappeler le nouveau contenu. C'est logique, donc une révision courte de la leçon précédente fera partie de ma routine d'études. J'ai aussi l'intention de feuilleter de temps en temps les livres pour revoir des leçons anciennes, comme la fin du French With Ease conseille. Je sais que les livres Assimil contient plein d'expressions utiles pour la conversation et je n'ai que s'en souvenir. Il reste moins qu'un mois jusqu'à ce que je parte en France, à Tignes ! J'attends avec impatience le snowboard, les beaux paysages alpines, la langue, et enfin et surtout la bouffe : la tartiflette, la viande, le pain et le gâteau ( j'évite d'habitude la nourriture riche en blé et en sucre, mais quand en France il faut y goûter ! ), le vin et le vin chaud... Alors j'espère que j'ai beaucoup d'occasion d'utiliser tout ce que j'ai appris. Je trouve que, même aux stations touristiques tels que Tignes, alors que les barmans et le personnel d'hôtels sont presque tous anglais, la plupart des commerçants ne parlent pas beaucoup d'anglais. Mais ce voyage ne servira qu'à un « échauffement » pour le grande - le Hellfest en juin. Edited by garyb on 25 February 2011 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 44 of 104 28 February 2011 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not the most productive weekend; on Saturday I was tired and slightly hungover and not in the mood for doing anything for most of the day. I went to a death metal gig which seemed to wake me up and make me feel a lot better, after which I returned home and watched La Haine, with no subtitles. I understood most of it but there was some colloquial language and fast speech that I didn't quite pick up, so I'll probably watch it again with French subs sometime soon. On Sunday I got some of the usual stuff done- Assimil, Simpsons, South Park, Pimsleur Russian.
Weekly plans/goals... Nothing hugely exciting really, just a case of continuing with what I'm doing. Russian: - Keep doing one Pimsleur lesson per day, and re-listening to previous lessons in idle time, until I finish Unit 1 (the first 30 lessons). - Read more of the Penguin book, and maybe actually do some of the exercises for once. - Read more Russian text, just to get faster at reading the alphabet, even if I don't actually understand much. Once I've finished and internalised the Pimsleur Unit 1 material, revised MT basic and advanced, and done some reading and grammar study, I think I'll be at a satisfactory level for my goals. This should be done in two weeks if I can keep up my 30-60 minutes a day of Russian. French: Only 3 weeks until Tignes, so I want to get plenty of French work done. - Main goal: speak French every day, be it with others, over Skype, or to myself. - Go to Meetup on Wednesday. And turn up on time for once, rather than an hour after the beginning as usual! - Keep up the daily Assimil and TV episode... but if I don't have enough time, speaking will take priority. - More reading if I can fit it in. I'm possibly playing a gig next week or the week after so I'll need to practice, and I'm moving house soon, so I'll lose a bit of free time. Current plan is to actively study Russian for two more weeks, then put it into maintenance and focus on French the week after (before I go to France), then probably (re)start on Italian when I'm back, around the start of April. Or maybe I should just focus on French and learn as much as I can before June, but I'm not sure if I can wait that long until starting Italian :) Edited by garyb on 28 February 2011 at 12:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5707 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 45 of 104 28 February 2011 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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You know what I think :)
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 46 of 104 03 March 2011 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I'm sure :)
Hier soir j'ai passé une bonne soirée au Meetup. Je profite de plus en plus des Meetups et je suis sûr que mon français parlé s'améliore au fur et a mesure. Les conversations me semblaient assez facile ; nous avons parlé des sujets très variés et pour la plupart je n'avais pas trop du mal à m'exprimer. Cependant je n'ai parfois pas su comment exprimer quelque chose, mais je pouvais toujours poser des questions. De plus, j'ai beaucoup aidé un débutant en français. J'aime bien l'enseignement ( j'aide aussi de temps en temps des amis avec l'informatique ou la guitare, par exemple ), ça m'aide à comprendre moi-même, bien que je n'aie pas pu trop aider parce que mon français n'est pas parfait du tout ! « Alors, tu travailles ET tu joues de la guitare avec ton groupe ET tu apprends le français... oh, ET le Krav Maga... tu dois être très occupé ! » Oui c'est ça ma vie. Sans parler du russe, de la vie sociale, du gym... Et si vous vous demandez, je trouve le temps de mettre à jour ce registre au travail. Pendant l'heure de déjeuner bien sûr ;) ). With all that French speaking yesterday I completely missed my daily Russian session. It was bound to happen sooner or later. This evening I'm hoping to get some French Skyping done and get back on Pimsleur Russian and pick up my guitar for the first time in several days... bit ambitious maybe; tomorrow I won't have time for much. Then I have a fun weekend of packing and cleaning and moving; hopefully I'll fit some studying and practising in around that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 47 of 104 07 March 2011 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I had a busy week as anticipated. Russian wise I did keep up with Pimsleur as I was able to do it at the same time as the relatively mindless packing. No Penguin or other course work though. In terms of French I went to the Meetup, had a Skype chat, did a couple of Assimil lessons, watched a few episodes. So not too bad really considering how busy I was. I haven't picked up my guitar for about 5 days now, which never usually happens unless I'm on holiday. Although I find that I often actually play better after a short break, perhaps partly due to the enthusiasm of playing again after the break (and I keep wanting to type "enthusiasm" the French way, with "ou", that must mean something!).
This week's going to be similarly busy, so my goal is really just to keep up with everything. Hopefully I'll be finished moving by the weekend so I'll be able to make up for lost time then. Apparently CERN are recruiting software engineers, and the job specification sounds like it would suit me: not only is knowledge of Java and web development technologies an advantage, but so is knowledge of French. And the salary's almost double my current one, and I can think of far worse places to live than Switzerland, being a keen snowboarder and language learner... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5707 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 48 of 104 07 March 2011 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Definitely apply! Sounds like a dream job mate.
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