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TAC 2011, Team KEN, Teango | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 6038 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 58 of 130 27 March 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
I set myself a minimum of 15min each day active listening and I find I always do that even when I slack off from more active study. I also do it when I'm ill as well it's suprising how easy a habit it has been to ingrain. Just pick a consistent time in the day to do it personally I pick 10.50am as that's when Popmaster finishes on Radio 2 in work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 59 of 130 27 March 2011 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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@darkwhispersdal
That's really commendable! And 15 minutes sounds like a good minimum in terms of keeping focused and having enough time to get a little bit of study in. I'm actually quite tempted to take up Doviende's idea of marking off each day I simply touch base with the language. Often as not, setting out to do something for..let's say 5 minutes..ends up turning into a much more gratifying hour of study. It's that initial psychological inertia, coupled with a general distaste for routine, that I feel I really need to conquer! And if I can not break the chain (as Seinfeld puts it) on the wall calendar I've printed out today, and just do a little bit, but every day, then I stand a much better chance of building up a real study habit. :) @Medialis, Buttons Professor Arguelles is indeed a true luminary! It's great to see him making videos on language learning once again, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more in this lecture series. Edited by Teango on 27 March 2011 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5965 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 60 of 130 28 March 2011 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||
I have the same problem and have unfortunately been too inert lately - not completely, but just not meeting my goals. I think I had goals . . . I think . . . then all thought dissolves, my eyes unfocus, I slump over and and snooze, eh, something like that . . . . But on the other hand, just as you say, once I get started, I often do much more than I'd planned. I decided to do a German review recently, just for a few days, but I've kept going, slowly, but longer than I'd meant to, just because I'm enjoying it. I have to purposely remind that even a few minutes of review, if that's all I can do, is still better than nothing, and remember that at other times, I'm able to work with a lot of energy and focus, and for a while, it's all I want do, and then I learn a lot. It's just way too easy to berate myself for not doing enough. I shouldn't, because it isn't productive, and I have other times when I'll become really involved and engaged and learing in a way that's not always possible. I think these times compensate somewhat for the periods of low motivation. I like to go to YouTube and watch travel videos from target language locations. It reminds me that these languages are really out there, alive and well and in use, and makes me happy to think that perhaps one day, I'll visit these places, well-equipped linguistically, if all goes well, and that gets me started again. I read a great blog post today about being sure to count all your progress toward a goal as important - it's so easy to forget that the little stuff matters, even if it doesn't seem important at the time. Never despise small beginnings, and don't belittle your own accomplishments. Remember them and use them as inspiration as you go on to the next thing. When you venture outside your comfort zone, wherever the starting point may be, it's kind of a big deal. I'd add not just beginnings, but the middles and muddles and all the other stuff you do on the way to where you want to be. Here's the link: Kind of a Big Deal Edited by meramarina on 28 March 2011 at 5:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 61 of 130 28 March 2011 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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@meramarina
Great link - thanks! I'm going to break out of my comfort zone right now, put in that daily minimum quota, and feel good about the accomplishment. :) Edited by Teango on 28 March 2011 at 7:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 62 of 130 03 April 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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PROGRESS UPDATE, WEEK 13
SUMMARY  RUSSIAN
Active study: 7.4 hours (study-and-click: Евгений Замятин, "Мы" ) Total active study this year: 79.8 hours Current estimated reading level:  B1
Other activities this week: - 3.8 hours of Russian music in the background Total for other activities this year: 23.8 hours * Overall hours this week: 11.2 WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX Arabic caught my eye this week. So one evening, when I couldn't get to sleep, I took the opportunity to skim through "Alif Baa - Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds" and dream up various amusing associations to review all the letters and diacritics. I'd like to follow this up later on in the year by signing up with Natural Arabic and trying out some online listening-reading as an experiment. TEANGO’S WORD OF THE WEEK "сойти с ума" (to go crazy) - what happens after trying to best-guess the stress pattern (i.e. accent) in too many new Russian words. NOTES I indulged myself this week by buying a couple of Russian books ("Russian Grammar in Illustrations" and "Survival Russian") and downloading some new Russian music from the charts to cheer up my already out-of-date collection. I'm not far off 6,000 words clicked now (my next milestone), and naturally eager to test my reading level. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that next week I'll finally break 90% (*nervous smile*)... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 63 of 130 16 April 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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UPDATE, WEEKS 14-15
SUMMARY RUSSIAN
- 10.3 hours of Russian music in the background WANDERLUST CONFESSION BOX I reviewed the Hebrew alphabet again late one late, and have been resisting the ever-so-tenacious pull of Hindi-Urdu recently. Living on the 'burbs of multicultural London, there's never a problem locating native speakers (my neighbour is Pakistani) or catching Bollywood on TV. Temptations, temptations, temptations... I also enjoyed a couple of random foreign films over the last fortnight. The first was a fun, heart-warming movie in Hindi called "3 Idiots". I even recognised one or two simple phrases from my days of watching Mahabharata and late-night Bollywood as a kid, such as "calō" (चलो!) which means something like "Come on!" or "Let's go!. The second was "Infernal Affairs", set in Hong Kong and in Cantonese (although, as in "3 Idiots", there's a fair sprinkling of English phrases throughout too). The funny thing about this one is that I didn't realise until halfway through that I'd seen the Hollywood remake ("The Departed") several years before (although I did have a niggling sense of déjà vu all the way through the first half). TEANGO’S PHRASE OF THE FORTNIGHT "Cпоки ноки!" (Nighty night!, and short for "Cпокойной ночи!" - Good night!) - I found this one on a thread labeled "Russian everyday words" and it instantly made me laugh. My girlfriend swears she's never heard of it before, so it might be part of a more recent wave of Russian slang. "заключается в том" (is) - type this into Google and the screen returns 128 million hits, which means it's probably a very useful phrase indeed. It seems to be used only as an introductory or summary remark at the beginning of a sentence, in the sense of "The situation/problem/secret/thing is ...". NOTES I completely fell off the wagon these last couple of weeks, breaking that promising chain of daily study in the process well before I'd even given it a chance to get growing. Once my hampering hamperful of non-language-related things is out of the way, hopefully by Tuesday afternoon next week, I aim to be back to business as usual. My time away from study has not all been in vain though, as I managed to get my hands on a bunch of free audio and text by Victor Pelevin (originally suggested by masha_light), as well as a treasure trove of extensive Russian interviews with quality audio and full transcripts from Радио Эхо Москвы (kindly recommended by Vlad). I also listened to my new tunes in the background, and spent several hours on a side project in Python, analysing the above Russian interviews from Радио Эхо Москвы and automatically pulling out suitable example sentences containing frequently reoccurring conjunctions, n-grams and sentence connectors. These I hope will come in very handy for chorusing and complement my studies. Edited by Teango on 17 April 2011 at 1:57am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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