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Hříbeček’s TAC 2012 - Team *jäŋe/*ledús | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 57 of 62 31 October 2012 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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A few small updates to make regarding all of my languages.
CZECH My main focus has remained and will hopefully continue to remain on Czech. Ive managed to design perfect lessons. I describe a story that both my wife and I know and she corrects me as strictly as possible. It works well, because she knows the story and so knows exactly which word fits the context and because shes my wife, shes not afraid to offend me with her harshness! I then have to write a story of 2 A4 pages and again she corrects this as strictly as possible. The intensity of the story telling and corrections really helps me. As Ive said many times, storytelling is my biggest weakness, due to lack of speaking confidence in general and as a result a lack of having done it much in the past in Czech. SLOVAK I learn most of my Slovak from listening to my Slovak students and asking them questions, but now 1 student has taken it upon herself to really boost my Slovak. She brings me Slovak poems, sends me links to Slovak TV clips and songs and teaches me a bit. HUNGARIAN I overheard one of my students telling others that she loves the sound of Hungarian and wants to learn it. She didnt know that I also learn Hungarian and usually I wouldnt tell her. However hearing that she loves the language gave me confidence to admit it and it now looks as though well be talking about the language a lot. Im hoping she gets into it and that I can start to speak to her in Hungarian (when Im not teaching her English of course!) Hungarian will be my focus for the November 6 week challenge, although I know I wont be doing as much as during other challenges. My target is 20 hours. SPANISH Ive started chatting to the secretary at my school in Spanish. A nice little boost, because I see her several times a day usually. ENGLISH Still getting worse. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 58 of 62 19 November 2012 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Update time, because my private student has just cancelled, so I have time to catch up on things like this.
The main update to make is that I can't be bothered to keep track of my times, so I decided not to do the 6 week challenge this time. I'm still working on my languages quite a lot, but have no motivation to keep track of the times. CZECH As usual my main focus. I've received lots of new, very valuable corrections in my lessons and really feel an improvement, at least in knowledge of subtleties of vocabulary and grammar. I've been writing a lot and getting great corrections for that too. I'm still not sure if my speaking confidence is improving. I have some sort of character defect, where I just can't ignore my mistakes. After having a brief conversation on the street, I might realise that I made a stupid mistake and then I think about that mistake forever! I have hundreds of situations in my memory that have taken root and every time I think about them, I cringe. I know that mistakes are good, because I learn from them, but I just can't help but feel bad when making them. I follow the advice of polyglots, that I should fight against my fears, but no matter how much I do it, I still have that ashamed feeling when speaking Czech. I don't have it in Spanish and Hungarian. I think it's because I feel like my Czech should be native-like by now and yet I still make basic mistakes sometimes. Negative self pitying over. I've also started listening to Czech greatest hits CD's constantly, whenever I'm not working and hopefully I'll feel the benefits of this. Overall I've been trying to follow the advice of Luca Lampariello to read a lot, of Benny Lewis to force myself out of my comfort zone as much as possible, and of Susanna Zaraysky to use music. Lets see if their advice works on my dis-functional character and brain! I can't get my head around their abilities to speak 5+ languages at a native-like level. The more I study Hungarian or Spanish, the more I forget in Czech, so I can't imagine speaking all 3 of them at such a high level, let alone one! OTHER LANGUAGES Nothing new, the usual. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 59 of 62 19 November 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I figure that as long as you continue to work on your Czech, that's more important than any second thoughts that you have about speaking it.
A friend once asked me how come my Polish comes out as it does (apparently better than she expects, at the least) despite the mistakes and times that she corrects me (sometimes even mid-sentence!) and I replied that I've been fat, dumb and happy about it. Despite the sting of disappointment or self-consciousness that's caused by the mistakes, I derive a lot more pleasure from just using it and (perhaps a little narcissistically) hearing myself speak Polish. It also means that I happily work on it, listen to it and express myself in it. If I screw up in the language, I know that I have an easy way to negate the disappointment by expressing myself correctly the next time. Working on it or doing some tedious exercises are small prices to pay because I'm fairly confident that it raises the chances of my getting it right in the future and so getting that quick buzz of correctly using a language that's all the while very dear to me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 60 of 62 20 November 2012 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Of course you're right and I can't imagine ever quitting my endless pursuit of Czech perfection. I also experience that very same pleasure when using foreign languages, but with Czech it's a bit different, because I've lived here for over 5 years altogether and so obviously there is absolutely no novelty to the language anymore and everybody is completely used to me speaking it. (I still love it and it's my biggest passion though) When I moved back here 3 years ago, I imagined what a fantastic level I would have within another year or two, but here I am over three years later and at least actively there's been very little improvement, despite the effort. You're right though and I'll try to get back to my first year or two when I was completely unafraid of mistakes and relished every opportunity to speak. I'll try to enjoy every word again instead of stressing over every one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 61 of 62 11 December 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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My main focus since my last post here has been Czech as usual. The lessons are going great; I've made tons of notes on all of my mistakes from the lessons and have begun to prepare flashcards with the correct way of saying those mistakes on them.
To combat my inferiority complex or whatever it is that always strikes me during conversations in Czech (and English!) I am trying to use the advice of my student, who told me that he always tries to imagine that he is the most important person in the room when he feels like that. It could help with my tendency to freeze when nervous, I tried it yesterday with a group of people and it kind of helped me. Regarding my other languages, 'nic moc' is the first phrase that comes to mind - nothing much really. I've written a few emails in Spanish and chatted a little and have written and studied Hungarian a bit. I'm quite excited about the Czechoslovak team for next year, hopefully everybody can stay the course and we can motivate each other. My most exciting language plan for next year is to visit the Polyglot Conference in Budapest, the one with all the most famous internet polyglots. Obviously I'd be going there just as an observer, not as a polyglot! It will hopefully give me extra motivation to study Hungarian, seeing as it will be in Hungary and the pressure of maybe having to speak to other language geeks in my foreign languages will also push me to strongly refresh my Spanish. I don't need any extra motivation for Czech. I'll post here one more time, just to evaluate my year. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5350 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 62 of 62 21 December 2012 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is my last update of this log probably. After that I’ll start my new log for
2013. I'll be in this team again, plus I'll also be in the Czechslovak team. SINCE MY LAST UPDATE I’ve had a week off and have been using my time very productively on languages. I’ve had 2 Hungarian lessons on skype and 3 Czech lessons, as well as speaking Czech a lot and studying lots of Hungarian flashcards. So a nice little boost at the end of the year. I’ve still got more than a week free so hopefully I’ll continue in the same vain. RESULTS FROM 2012 Here are more targets which I set out at the beginning of the year and whether I achieved them or not. CZECH STARTING POINT – C1 (stronger passively than actively) TARGET – Improvement of any kind and to be more actively confident. RESULT – Reasonably successful but still C1 overall. Although I’ve stayed at a C1 level, I’ve definitely improved my knowledge and confidence in Czech. Most of these improvements have happened in the last couple of months with the great lessons I’ve been having – describing film plots in detail for an hour, whilst receiving very strict corrections and getting a list of them to work on after each lesson. I’ve also read about 12 novels this year and have had lots of writing corrected. HUNGARIAN STARTING POINT – High A2/Low B1 TARGET – B1. Main improvement in listening. RESULT – Reading and Writing B1, Speaking high A2/low B1, Listening low A2. Slight improvement. I’ve improved in speaking and listening a little, but I’m still far from satisfied with my listening abilities. My main achievement was to start skype conversations and make friends with a couple of Hungarians, this helped my natural feel the language a lot. I also wrote quite a lot and Maxval helped me no end with his corrections. SPANISH STARTING POINT - B2 TARGET – Maintain B2 RESULT – Slight decline but still B2 I only used Spanish from time to time in emails or reading news stories or chatting occasionally. It would be easy to refresh everything and get back to my more comfortable B2 level with a little bit of study and immersion. OTHER LANGUAGES TARGET – Get some basics in a few new languages and learn the Cyrillic alphabet. Improve casually in Slovak. RESULT – Studied the basics of Northern Saami (via Chung’s course), Polish and Croatian. I only really learned vocabulary and a few phrases for Saami and Croatian and have forgotten most of them now. I learned Polish to at least an A1 level (higher passively thanks to Czech) and was able to communicate with Poles in Polish when I spent the weekend in Wroclaw in June. I’ve now forgotten a lot, but could refresh it very quickly. I didn’t get round to studying the Cyrillic alphabet, on my ‘to do’ list. I’ve learned more about Slovak and learned a few slang phrases and more about the differences between Czech and Slovak and will continue to do so. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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