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Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 9 of 76 15 January 2011 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
Gosh, I have been so busy lately! I am teaching English in the mornings and then going to class in the afternoons. I am usually out of the house from 7AM-6PM. And when I get home, I have to spend my evening making lesson plans! I am having a good time, but this teaching gig is giving me major wanderlust. I hear my students speaking Somali to each other and think "Hmmmm.......!" Bad me! I have students from more than 10 countries, so class time is very dangerous. :P
Luckily, I finally had some time to study Persian last weekend. I completed lesson #5 of Living Language Farsi and added a ton of cards into Anki. This lesson included practice with prepositions, which is especially fun since that's what my English students are doing right now too. Right now I am working on lesson #6, which is about giving directions.
On a "cultural note", congrats to Iran's soccer/football team for getting to the next round of the AFC Asian Cup. They beat North Korea 1-0 this morning. My phrase of the update, which uses a preposition AND soccer vocab, is:
توی دروازه - in the goal (tuye darvazeh)
Iran's announcer shouted this over and over when they scored the goal, which you can see here. It's the first video--just click "Skip Advertisement" to watch. Hopefully someone else enjoys listening to foreign-language soccer announcers as much as I do.
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| 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 10 of 76 27 January 2011 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
عصر بخير همبازى جان! حال تو چطوره؟ از بيشتر از ده روز هيچ ننوشتى. درسهاى فارسى تو چطور مى روند؟ انگليسى درس مى دهى؟ دانشجوان يا دانش اموز هستند؟ شاگردان از ايران دارى؟ مادرم هم يک معلم مدرسه ابتدايى است. اميدوار هستم، که حالا تو بيمار نيستى و که خيلى بهترى
Edited by ellasevia on 27 January 2011 at 2:05am
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 11 of 76 29 January 2011 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
Thank you for writing to me, Philip! I am feeling a bit embarrassed because I have not made any progress this month. Now it's time to study, though! Yesterday was the last day of college for me. I'm a college graduate now! It was bittersweet, though, since it was also the last day of my teaching practicum. I have been teaching English to adult refugees and immigrants. No Iranian students, though. :P
Like I sad, I'm feeling very down about my lack of progress this month. I have been so very busy. :( Now that I have a lot of free time, I want to set some goals. During this week, I would like to:
-Reach 400 sentences in my Anki "Full Sentence Deck" (375/400)
-Reach 400 words in my Anki " Individual Word Deck" (226/400)
I'm trying to set reachable goals so I feel like I'm making a little progress.
To work on speaking, I am going to write small dialogues each weekend that I would like translated into Persian, then practice the translations with my partner. I can write sentences like "The prime minister has just resigned.", but I have trouble saying basic conversational phrases like "How was sleep?"
I plan to work with more authentic materials to practice reading. So far, I do most of my reading in textbooks. I will spend more time reading authentic materials (news stories, Facebook status updates) for gist.
Oh, and I want to update this log more! :) Hopefully I will make tons of progress this month.
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 12 of 76 31 January 2011 at 3:14am | IP Logged |
Today was a very good day!
I worked on listening for 2.5 hours using matching quizzes about the following topics:
-Formal versus informal yes/no questions
-Deletion of ayn (ع) in spoken Persian
-Deletion of he (ه and ح) in spoken Persian
-Stressed and unstressed final ye (ی)
-Adjectives versus adverbs
I also took about 30 minutes to add some of the sentences into my Anki decks. Now I'm up to 395/400 sentences and 274/400 words and short phrases.
Last night, I had a short conversation with my partner (him speaking Persian and me speaking English). It helped my confidence and made me want to focus on listening and speaking even more. I also learned some new words like "پیشرفت" (pishraft) - progress.
My sentence of the day:
من از پله افتادم - I fell down the stairs.
It really happened to me today!
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 13 of 76 02 February 2011 at 3:28am | IP Logged |
Yesterday was another fairly productive day. I spent 2 hours reading and listening to a short story in Persian, then shadowing it sentence by sentence. I did this over and over again. :)
Today I finished lesson 7 from Spoken World/Living Language Farsi. It was extremely boring (boo travel agent and post office lessons), but I got through it. I added the unfamiliar vocab from lesson 8 into Anki already, so I can start it tomorrow.
My flash-card counts stand at 409/400 and 311/400. Yay, I reached one of my goals early! As a reward for meeting a goal early, I am going to watch "House of Sand and Fog" tonight. One of my favorite Persian singers, Andy, is in the movie.
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 14 of 76 04 February 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
The last two days were pretty decent! I made an Excel-style file where I can track my progress. I started keeping track from January 30th, since that's when my life went back to normal. So far, I am at 10.5 hours. I think this total could be much higher, I just need to find more enjoyable ways to study. Also, I must put in a minimum of 4 passive hours per day (through music), so I will have to see if I can channel some of that time into active study time.
I have started doing Pimsleur Persian from the beginning again. Although I have done these lessons once before, I think doing them again is a good way to keep myself speaking a bit. I am also stepping it up a notch by typing up the most important phrases from each lesson so I can add them to Anki. If any new Persian learners see this and would like a copy of the sentences, feel free to PM me your email.
Every day, I have been shadowing the same children's story whenever I get a spare 5-10 minutes. It has helped me with intonation, although the story uses some very outdated words!
My new useful phrase of the post is اینهاش (inhaash/inehaash), which means "here it is". In a formal setting, you would say اینجاست (injaast) instead. And my (least) favorite word of yesterday is سوسک (soosk), which is "roach". Yuck!
I know everyone has been waiting for my review of House of Sand and Fog. It was so sad! I really enjoyed it and would love to have a house with that view. What a tragedy, though. :( On the bright side, I could understand most of the Persian dialogue in the movie.
Edited by Élan on 04 February 2011 at 10:35pm
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 15 of 76 05 February 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
Ah, Saturday! Time to set some new goals for the week. Unfortunately, I only met 1 goal (out of 2) for last week. My current Anki totals are:
411 sentences
348 words and short phrases
I am still pleased with my progress since I added 36 sentences and 122 words/phrases this week.
Since I spend so much time listening to Persian music, my goal for this week is to translate 3 Persian songs into English. This number is kind of low because I am having my wisdom teeth removed on Monday and I am not sure how the recovery will go. I would also like to finish my goal from last week of having 400 sentences/short phrases in my second Anki deck.
I've spent the morning cleaning and preparing for a guest to arrive, so I will try to get some studying done before she comes. Felan khodafez!
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| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5446 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 16 of 76 09 February 2011 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
I'm back... I got my wisdom teeth removed & I haven't studied much for the past 3 days. It's been either the pain bothering me or the Vicodin making me too loopy to study. I have been keeping up with my flashcard reviews, though.
On Saturday, I found a couple hours to study (between cleaning and my house guest). I was able to complete Unit 14 from TYMP and translate my first song. I chose:
"Cheshme Siat" by Mansour
This is an older song as you can tell by the video (he autographs a fan's cassette tape). I really like the song, though, and I think the video looks like a lovely Iranian party!
The song is very sweet and simple. I was mainly confused about part of the chorus: "امان از اون چشم سیات / aman az oon cheshme siat", which can be translated as "oh what your black eyes did to me". The second line of the chorus (شیشه عمرمو گرفت شکست و ویرونم کرد / shisheye omramo gereft shekast o viroonam kard) also confused me. I am so used to hearing "omr-e man raa" instead of "omramo", meaning "my life". Once I figured that out, I realized that the second part line of the chorus meant "took the glass of my life, broke it and destroyed me".
Other than that, the song is very straightforward and perfect for beginners, with simple lines like these:
میگم بهارو دوست دارم بنفشه هارو دوست دارم
بدون تو بهار من بوی بهارون نداره
(I say) I love the spring, I love the violets
without you, my spring doesn't have the smell of springtime
Well that's about it! I'm finally getting back to my studying after 2 days off. Yesterday, I finished lesson 15 from TYMP and I'm anxious to finish the book. I would like to try to translate another song today. However, it's a bit painful since I love to sing them aloud but my mouth is not allowing it!
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