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Ellasevia’s TAC 2011: Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 97 of 392 11 February 2011 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||
To steal a phrase that one of my friends used to describe herself a couple days ago, I am a "lazy hard-worker," meaning that I have trouble beginning things because of my laziness, but end up working really hard at them once I can get myself to actually start. And once I start studying a language on a particular day, I immensely enjoy it; it's just the business of actually starting that is the problem for me. If I weren't hard on myself with setting goals, I'd never do anything at all. Languages are definitely still fun though; the only time I view languages as a chore is with regard to reviewing, particularly Anki and kanji. I never like reviewing things that I should theoretically know already and languages are no exception, but as repetition is necessary for progress I just have to deal with it. Edited by ellasevia on 20 February 2011 at 2:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 98 of 392 11 February 2011 at 7:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just a quick note saying that there will probably be no update tomorrow. I'm very disappointed in my lack of
progress this week (only about 10 hours so far), and would like to blame it all on having been busy with schoolwork, but unfortunately there has been a fair amount of pure laziness too. At the very least I thought a lot about studying, but it never quite materialized like I had hoped (see above post on "lazy hard-workers"). As such, I'd like to dedicate the little time I have after I finally get home (rather late-ish, because I always spend the evening with my grandparents on Fridays) to actual study rather than writing a long and detailed post about how I did virtually nothing. Next week's update shall include information for this week. On a brighter note, I just worked on German for the first time in several weeks and tomorrow in my Japanese class we are going to start translating a Japanese folktale into English, which sounds really fun. Good night! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 99 of 392 12 February 2011 at 9:44am | IP Logged | |||||
Hey, 10 hours of study is great, ellasevia!This is what I mean with you being too hard on yourself. If I had actually had 10 solid hours of studying under my belt this week, I would have been dancing ot the table from pure joy. (Ok. Perhaps not on the table, but at least a little jig on the living room floor :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 12 February 2011 at 9:46am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 100 of 392 12 February 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Okay, fine. But compared with the almost 25 hours of a couple previous weeks (which seems to have become my overly optimistic new standard), 10 hours seemed rather disappointing. But now I've raised my total up to about 14 hours anyways because I managed to work on Greek, French, and Romanian this evening. The only languages left untouched this week were Swahili and Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 101 of 392 12 February 2011 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, the old "the new record becomes the new standard" racket. You have to watch that one. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 102 of 392 15 February 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged | |||||
True, although I believe 24 hours per week was the goal I actually set for myself at the beginning of this log anyway. Of course my goals have changed from how I laid them out originally, but the number has somehow managed to stay the same (three hours every weekday, and four hours on the weekends). Edited by ellasevia on 15 February 2011 at 6:42am 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 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 103 of 392 15 February 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Goals are a bit like house-hunting...you see something you like and have your heart set on it, but then something even better comes along. Sometimes you're just happy to keep a roof over your head. As long as you're heading for home, it's all good. :) Edited by Teango on 15 February 2011 at 1:45pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 104 of 392 19 February 2011 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
Quarter 1: Swedish, Persian, Dutch   
Weeks 6-7: February 5 – February 18 Total Study Time This Week: 34.5 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 129.5 hours Average Study Time This Week: 2.46 hours/day (combined average) Average Study Time in 2011: 2.64 hours/day 
Last week, as I said, I was a bit disappointed with the amount of studying I had done and wanted to instead focus on catching up a little bit instead of updating here. This week started off very good, but quickly worsened as it went along. To put it shortly, I was overloaded with schoolwork this week and did not deal with the stress well. In fact, this was so much so that my mother suggested that I simply not go to school today so that I could rest, which I did. By some miracle, or perhaps a scheduling error on the part of the school district, we have two three-day weekends in a row; no school on Monday for President’s Day, and no school on Friday for…well, I really don’t know why. But I’m certainly not complaining. Oh, and after that nice three-day school week there’s the CSAP, which is a time-wasting standardized test that children in Colorado take in March from third through tenth grade. Since I’m now in eleventh grade, I don’t have to take it anymore and on the days when it’s being administered I’ll only have an hour and a half of school. After those two weeks, there is one normal week and then Spring Break. Because of all of that, I’m hoping that March will be a much better month for me than February has been thus far. Despite the lack of time, I managed to scrape up about 20 hours of language study this week, focused primarily on Dutch. I had huge motivation for Dutch all week and ended up working on it every day. Dutch is quickly becoming one of my favorite languages, and I was having a mental battle with myself about whether or not I should keep it as a focus language for the rest of the quarter. Technically this week was when I would finish my six-week Dutch challenge and then continue to focus on just Swedish and Persian until April. But Dutch is really calling to me, and I’m probably within a week of finishing the passive wave for Assimil, so I’ve decided to just make Dutch a focus language along with Swedish and Persian for the rest of the quarter. After this update I’ll repost my schedule, with some modifications, which I’ll continue to use through March.  SVENSKA
Total Study Time This Week: 5.5 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 25.5 hours - Assimil Lessons 49-53 (passive wave), 1-4 (active wave) - Swedish Radio I didn’t spend much time on Swedish these past two weeks because of a combination of lack of time and low motivation levels. I can really feel a difference between the Assimil Swedish and Dutch courses, with the Swedish being at much higher level and constantly using words and expressions that I don’t know in French, and often English. The concept of using a Romance language to learn a Germanic language also isn’t working as well as a Germanic-Germanic combination would; oftentimes I read an explanation of something in the grammar notes, saying how such an word or expression doesn’t exist in French but it might correspond roughly to so-and-so, but when I look it up it turns out there is a direct English equivalent. The French translations are sometimes misleading, because some of the same nuances can’t be expressed the same way as in Germanic languages like Swedish or English, so I misunderstand what they’re trying to get at. Nevertheless, I’m now over halfway through the passive wave and into the active wave, so I’m committed to finishing this book although it is quite aggravating at times. I am wondering about the level that the course is supposed to take one to, though. Le Suédois Sans Peine is split into two volumes and on the first one it has a note saying it should bring one to a B1 level, but there is no such note on the second one. I wonder if that note is meant to apply only to the first volume, or to the entire course. I find it slightly hard to believe that all of this would only be a B1 level though… On a more positive note, I had a breakthrough in my radio listening this week. I noticed that suddenly I could understand long stretches of speech without any major lapses in my comprehension! Considering that several months ago I could only understand a couple words or sentences here or there, this is quite good progress! While still not entirely comfortable or easy to listen to, it’s improving, slowly but steadily.  فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 4 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 26.25 hours - Assimil Lessons 34-42 Still not much to speak of for my Persian learning. I’m still progressing along with the Assimil course, which is working out quite nicely so far. About the actual language, I learned that it forms the diminutive in the same way Greek does. In Greek, you usually take off the ending of the noun and add –άκι (-áki). For example, αγόρι – αγοράκι (boy/little boy), κορίτσι – κοριτσάκι (girl/little girl), σκύλος – σκυλάκι (dog/puppy), Γιάννης – Γιαννάκι (John/little John), Φίλιππος – Φιλιππάκι (Philip/little Philip). In Persian you add َک- (-ak): پسرک/پسر (boy/little boy). I’ve only come across that one example so far, so I don’t want to create other incorrect ones. And now for some Persian sayings: پله پله رفت بايد سوى بام (Pelle pelle raft bâyad suye bâm.) = “You must go step by step up to the roof.” اگر صبر کنى از غوره حلوا مى سازى (Agar sabr koni az ghure halvâ mi sâzi.) = “If you wait you can make halva from unripe grapes.”  NEDERLANDS
Total Study Time This Week: 10.5 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 28 hours - Assimil Lessons 49-71 (passive wave), 1-21 (active wave) - Bought La Pratique du Néerlandais Like I said, I’ve had huge motivation for Dutch lately. I worked on it every day this week and I made quite a bit of progress. The Dutch With Ease lessons are really quite addictive… Since there are only 84 lessons in the book, I think it’s quite feasible that I could finish the passive wave within the next week or so. Of course the active wave will still need to be finished, but I should be able to move through that quickly as well. I also bought the follow-up course to Dutch With Ease, although it was only available in French. It’s about the same length and is supposed to bring you to a C1 level, if the Assimil product descriptions are to be trusted. I’ve read that a lot of the course focuses in on Belgium, and is recorded by Belgians. I want to speak standard Dutch, so I hope this won’t negatively affect my accent too much.  Français
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 3.5 hours I really should do more French, but the activities that I should be doing for it are just so unpleasant (writing essays, practicing speaking exercises, typing up vocabulary, bleh). Last week I spent an hour adding vocabulary to Anki which I had been collecting from my various Assimil courses in French. I was listening to the radio at the same time and understanding most of it without much effort. No French this week though.  Deutsch
Total Study Time This Week: 1.75 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 5.75 hours - Internet reading and writing - German Radio I wasn’t feeling up to doing any real study for German this week or last week, so instead I just read random things in German on the Internet for a while (taking note of new vocabulary), and wrote a little bit. I don’t remember what I was reading last week, but this week I was reading a little bit about Lithuania and the Lithuanian language. However, I had German radio going at the same time, and unlike Swedish radio I could understand the majority of it for most of the time so it proved to be a bit of a distraction to my reading because it was more enjoyable to just passively listen to the radio than read about die Geschichte der litauischen Sprache. At least I could understand the radio though!  Română
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 5 hours - Wrote a longish email to my friend in Romanian I didn’t have time to work on any Romanian this week, although I had intended to. Last week I didn’t get a chance to either, so instead I just wrote a longish email to my friend in Romanian. She said she was quite impressed and said there were just a few errors, so that was happy. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Or in the week, for that matter. I will do some actual Romanian study in this next week though.  Ελληνικά
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 5.25 hours - Reading Greek stories/mythology I read several stories last week with my grandmother, but I didn’t have the chance to work on Greek this week. I had the best of intentions of reading from my Greek Harry Potter book (which I hadn’t so much as looked at since the beginning of December) once I finished studying German, but I was too tired. Better luck next time.  Polski
Total Study Time This Week: 3 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 13.5 hours - Finished MT Foundation - Studied vocabulary for Spoken World Polish lesson 1 - Teach Yourself Polish lesson 2 Not very much exciting going on with Polish either, although I managed to study it for a few hours in the past couple weeks. I don’t really have anything to say, so I’ll just include ten thrilling sentences which I wrote down while doing MT. 1. Dlaczego on ci nie powiedział że to jeszcze nie jest gotowe? (Why didn’t he tell you that it’s not ready yet?) 2. Dlaczego ona ci tego jeszcze nie powiedziała? (Why didn’t she tell you that?) 3. On powiedział że ona nie będzie jutro zajęta. (He said that she wouldn’t be busy tomorrow.) 4. Czekaliśmy na nią. A my czekałyśmy na niego. (We [m] waited for her. And we [f] waited for him.) 5. Wczorajśmy musieli być w domu, aleśmy nie musieli być dzisiaj w domu. (We had to be at home yesterday, but we didn’t have to be at home today.) 6. Jeszcze się nie dowiedziałem. (I [m] didn’t find out yet.) 7. Wracacie do Polski. (You [pl] return to Poland.) 8. Myślę że też umiem już mówić po polsku. (I think I can already speak Polish too.) 9. Gratuluję panu! A ja gratuluję pani! (I congratulate you [m]! And I congratulate you [f]!) 10. Wracamy nie długo ale teraz jedziemy na wakacje. (We will return soon but now we’re going on vacation.)  Русский
Total Study Time This Week: 1.75 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 5.75 hours - Studied vocabulary for Teach Yourself Russian lessons 8 and 9 (part 1) I didn’t get the chance to do any Russian last week, but this week I returned to the long-lost TY Russian course which I hadn’t done anything with since October and studied the vocabulary for the last lessons I had done back then.  Kiswahili
Total Study Time This Week: 1 hour (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 3.5 hours - Assimil Lessons 1-10 I did no Swahili last week, but this week I finally got everything organized and starting going through Le Swahili Sans Peine. It’s still very easy, but it should be a good review of grammar and vocabulary in context. While assembling the audio files I listened to the 100th lesson from the course and understand nearly everything on the first try... So I don’t know how much it will have to offer me, but it should be good practice in any case and there will probably be some new vocabulary in there somewhere.  日本語
Total Study Time This Week: 3.5 hours (combined total) Total Study Time in 2011: 6.5 hours - Reviewed Ultimate Japanese Lessons 10-12 - Smart.fm vocabulary (200) I spent a fair amount of time on my beloved 日本語 these past two weeks. Last week I reviewed some more lessons from Ultimate Japanese and this week I started going through the Smart.fm Core 6000 vocabulary list. I went through the first 200 words using the example sentences and lingering on each sentence until I knew the meaning of every word if there were any unknown ones, could read it fluently, and could say it with the same intonation and speed as the native speaker’s recording.  漢字
Total Kanji Reviews This Week: 551 reviews (combined total) Total Restudied Kanji This Week: 250 characters (combined total) Total Restudied Kanji in 2011: 250 characters I’ve decided to make a separate section for kanji so as to keep up my motivation. Last week was when I came up with my new plan of attack for (re)studying the kanji and since then I’ve restudied 250 characters and kept up with all the reviews. I’ve actually tweaked my original plan slightly because I didn’t realize how long it actually takes for all of the new cards to reach the third review box, so I’m instead waiting until they reach the second box. For example, only 66 of the original 100 I put in last week have reached the third box so far.  ITALIANO
Questa settimana ho deciso di finalmente leggere la prima parte del libro (“L’Ombra del Vento”) che ho comprato nel principio di gennaio di quest’anno. Ero sorpreso da trovare che non era così difficile come mi immaginavo, e ho capito quasi tutto senza cercare nessuna parola nel dizionario. Credevo che sarebbe molto più difficile, perché non avevo fatto pratticamente niente con l’italiano dall’estate, ed il mio Italiano non è mai stato così forte come il mio spagnolo, francese, o portoghese. Avrei letto più, ma ero estremamente stanco e non potevo mantenermi gli occhi aperti. Adesso, mentre scrivevo questo messaggio, non ho avuto tante difficoltà come pensavo, ma è ovvio che ho bisogno di prattica per l’italiano e sono sicuro che ho fatto degli sbagli stupidi. Fa molto tempo da quando ho scritto in Italiano! [No idea why I randomly decided to write that in Italian. It just means I now have to spend more time on this update in order to translate it into English.] This week I decided to finally read the first part of the book (“The Shadow of the Wind”) that I bought at the beginning of January of this year. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined, and I understood almost everything without having to look any words up in a dictionary. I thought that it would be much more difficult, because I hadn’t done practically anything with Italian since summer, and my Italian was never as strong as my Spanish, French, or Portuguese. I would have read more, but I was extremely tired and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Now, as I was writing this message, I didn’t have as much trouble as I though, but it’s obvious that my Italian needs practice, and I’m sure that I’ve made some stupid mistakes. It’s been a long time since I’ve written in Italian! OTHER Not much else to say here. I’m slowly getting caught up on Anki and have been able to get up somewhat earlier, although once I got loaded down with work this week I again started waking up later… In a little bit I'll post my new(ish) schedule for the rest of the quarter. Edited by ellasevia on 01 March 2011 at 7:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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