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Lianne’s TAC 2011 Fun Times - Team Ŭ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 17 of 49 11 June 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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June 4 - June 10:
Esperanto: 2:51 French: 4:14 Not my best week in terms of time, but I have been studying every day. In Esperanto, I'm starting to feel a little stuck. I'm finding myself lacking motivation. I still love Esperanto, and want to learn it, but I'm just not feeling it. I tried to do an intermediate level course on Lernu, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it. I tried reading La Eta Princo using a dictionary, but just got frustrated by how many words I don't know, and how many of those words aren't in the dictionary. Le sigh. As for French, I've finished up to level 13 of Pimsleur, and that's going well. I keep forgetting to do Assimil for some reason. I'm gonna try to get into a habit of doing that. I also just picked up Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers from the library, both the book and the audio. I just started listening to and reading that today. I'm not sure how effective that'll be. It takes all of my mental strength just to not get lost on the page. It's so fast! I usually know what's going on in the story, simply because I know the Harry Potter books like the back of my hand, but picking up new words from this doesn't seem likely. However, I will give it a chance! Anyway, it's kind of fun. The French narrator sounds funny when he says "Harry Potter!" and "Albus Dumbledore!" Hehe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 18 of 49 15 June 2011 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for another Mid Week Update! Maybe this will become a regular thing? I'm not real good at forming habits, so we'll see!
I am officially done the first half of Pimsleur French 1! Today I'm working on lesson 16. I've been doing a lesson on my walk to work, and one on my walk home from work, and if I have trouble with one say in the morning then I'll repeat it on the way home, so I'm always finishing at least 1 per day (on weekdays). This might be the furthest I've ever gotten in Pimsleur. I might have gone a bit further in Pimsleur German, but definitely not as far as lesson 20. I'm still finding the material pretty easy, though I'm starting to have trouble following the conversations. They just talk so fast! I think that's a problem I often have in language learning: speed. It's the same in Esperanto, not just with listening but even reading. I can look at a page, and although I know all or almost all of the words, it takes me forever to read and understand it. I'm not really sure how to work on this specifically. On the Esperanto side of things, I've come up with a bit of a short term goal/plan. I'm going to prepare for the first Esperanto language exam: Lingvoekzameno, nivelo A (baza). You can see the requirements for all the examshere. I think I could be ready for this exam in a short time, so that's what I'm going to focus on now. This course is described as being for people who have finished Ana Pana and Ana renkontas, neither of which I've done, so I'm now doing Ana Pana. So far, it's almost painfully easy, but that might change later on. Wish me luck! Oh, back to French for a moment! I've been L-Ring Harry Potter à l'école des sorciers (French audio and text), and I've done the first 5 chapters. At first, I was getting lost really easily, but now it's getting easier to keep up, and to find my spot again when I do get lost. So maybe that's something? Also, I am actually picking up a couple of words, at least passively, which I didn't really expect. And now I know how to say You-Know-Who in French! (Vous-Savez-Qui or Tu-Sais-Qui) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 19 of 49 19 June 2011 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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June 11 - June 17:
Esperanto: 2:35 French: 9:18 eo: As you can see from the numbers, Esperanto's been slipping a little lately. However, I have been keeping up with my Anki, and I did the first 2 lessons of Ana Pana, which so far is too easy, but I think it'll help strengthen my foundation. fr: Pimsleur: finished lesson 19! Assimil: finished lesson 9. Harry Potter L-R (french text/audio): finished chapter 7. Beyond that, nothing much to report at the moment. I think I'm getting a bit better at guessing how a word will be pronounced. I'd like to try the FSI phonology course, but I worry about fitting it into my schedule right now. As it is, it seems like I'm trying to do too much at once, to the point where my Esperanto is suffering time-wise. But it will be months before I'm finished any of the methods I'm using right now. I guess we'll see. This coming week is going to be busy, so my study times will probably take a hit, but I'm finding that since I started doing Pimsleur lessons on my walks to and from work, how busy I am makes less of a difference since I always have that time each day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 20 of 49 22 June 2011 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mid Week Update time!
Yesterday I did lesson 22 of Pimsleur French 1. That's the first lesson when they start giving a crazy amount of instructions in French. As in "Demandez-moi comment je vais.", and I have to say "Comment allez-vous?" So I suddenly have to listen really, really hard during these lessons. This means I'm now doing each lesson 2 or 2.5 times to feel comfortable with it. Also, today, in lesson 23, I learned the numbers 70 to 79. I kind of knew them from junior high, but they still make me think "screw you, French language. Sixty fifteen? Really?" But anyway. I also found yet another resource I want to use. It was mentioned elsewhere on the forum today. The Practice Makes Perfect books look awesome. The library has quite a few of them, including French Verb Tenses, Basic French, and Complete French Grammar. So I'll probably pick up one of those fairly soon. They look like they'll really give me the examples I need to understand grammar points. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 21 of 49 25 June 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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June 18 - June 24:
Esperanto: 2:17 French: 5:51 eo: I did lessons 3 and 4 of Ana Pana. So far I've had only a couple minor mistakes, such as forgetting the -n ending in obvious places where I should have remembered them. I also listened to a podcast on Radio Verda, and was pleased to discovered that I understood a lot more than the last time I did that. I still can't follow most of what they're saying, but I can pick out words and sometimes whole sentences. I find the woman easier to understand than the man. I think she speaks more clearly, or maybe just slower. fr: Pimsleur: finished lesson 25. Assimil: finished lesson 10. I really need to spend more time on this. Harry Potter L-R (French text/audio): finished chapter 9. Today I picked up 501 French Verbs. Normally I'd take something like that out from the library, but I checked out the French bookstore today, and it was only $20. It seems like something that will be handy to have. And admittedly, I partially bought it for the opportunity to ask the guy working there questions. I asked him how you're supposed to decide whether to say "il est"/"elle est" or "c'est" when saying "it is". He didn't know. For me it seems more natural to say "c'est" all the time, but while studying I've seen both. Anyway, 501 French Verbs has a huge section at the beginning that really explains all the tenses and their English equivalents, which is really helpful. It also comes with a CD-ROM, though I don't know what's on that yet. In other news, the Pimsleur lessons are getting easy again. I've pretty much gotten used to the French instructions, though sometimes I still miss things, especially when they only give the instruction once. But the vocabulary is pretty easy, and I'm even getting fairly comfortable with conjugating regular -er verbs in the present indicative. I know that's not much, what with those 13 other tenses hanging over me like a storm cloud, but it's something! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 22 of 49 29 June 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mid Week Update time!
I finished Pimsleur French 1! I'm so excited! In the last few lessons I even learned some verbs in the past tense, and they mentioned the informal "tu", which they promise to teach me in French 2. Also, Practice Makes Perfect Basic French is ready for me to pick up at the library, so I might take a look at that tonight. Oh, I asked my dad (a native French speaker) about that c'est vs il/elle est thing. He said that il/elle est is more personal, and you're more likely to use it when referring to a specific thing. For example, talking about "la voiture", the vehicle, one would say "Elle est grande." when talking about a specific car. "C'est grande." would be more likely to refer to that type of car, for example if you were saying that the Ford Taurus is big. You don't mean a specific Ford Taurus, you mean that type of car. If any French-speakers are reading this, does that sound right to you? As for Esperanto, I'm halfway through Ana Pana, and it's going well. I've also started listening to Radio Verda more, because I'm realising more and more that my listening comprehension is utter crap. Even if I hear something in which I know all the words, it won't mean anything unless I hear it reeeeeally slowly. Add to that the fact that I don't know that many words, and it's basically just noise to me. So I'm hoping that lots and lots of listening will help with that. Back to French, but sticking to the same topic, I started listening to some online French radio yesterday, and heard some really sweet music! As it turns out, I'm quite the France Gall fan, so I went and found more of her music. So if I try to play mostly French music when I'm doing housework (which is mostly when I listen to music), hopefully that will help! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 23 of 49 29 June 2011 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for something a little off topic!
I was looking at some old posts and found my list of the 20 languages I'd choose to learn. It was written only 7 months ago, yet now I look at it and think "huh?". So, apparently my priorities have changed. So I will quote it and rewrite it here. Maybe I'll do this every year or so and see how the list changes over time. :)
My list now, somewhat in order but not strictly: 1. Esperanto 2. French (Quebecois) 3. German 4. toki pona 5. American Sign Language 6. a local Aboriginal language (I'm not familiar enough with them to know which would be best to learn) 7. Klingon 8. Swahili 9. Norwegian 10. Ukrainian 11. Italian 12. Japanese 13. Elvish (Quenya or Sindarin, I'm not sure) 14. Irish 15. Indonesian 16. Haitian Creole 17. Ancient Egyptian 18. Old English 19. Dutch 20. Swedish So I think I changed like 6 of them, and moved them around a bunch. I'm still not satisfied with the order, but oh well. My hopes of learning 20 languages (and I didn't even count English!) are not terribly high. If I learn 5 or 6 in my lifetime I'll be thrilled! Edited by Lianne on 29 June 2011 at 9:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5106 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 24 of 49 02 July 2011 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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June 25 - July 1:
Esperanto: 2:34 French: 7:06 eo: Ana Pana: finished lesson 5. fr: Pimsleur: finished lesson 1 of French 2. Assimil: finished lesson 11. Still not spending enough time on this. Harry Potter L-R (French text/audio): finished chapter 14. Practice Makes Perfect Basic French: did lessons 1 and 2. Overall, it doesn't feel like I'm getting a lot done these days, other than in Pimsleur French, since I have such structured time to work on that (my commute on foot). I have done quite a bit of flipping through my new 501 French Verbs book, which I'm finding super helpful. A lot of the tenses are starting to make sense to me, and I already know how to use 2 of them. So, progress is being made, it's just not terribly rapid at the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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