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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5259 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 681 of 706 02 July 2015 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome back, kuji! Good to see you posting again. The thing about achieving without goals is, as Leo says, "not letting goals limit what I do". My motivation isn't goal driven, I just do what I enjoy, which is learning and improving. I do something everyday in my languages because I enjoy it, because I want to improve them and in some cases, learn more. That's more of a "global" goal. I don't need or want a date-driven goal "C-2 by February" for example. Every so often, I work on a specific problem I am having. Because I enjoy Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and Ladino so much, I want to do something every day. Because I want to do something, it happens. It happens because my motivation comes from within. Languages are part of my life and I very much enjoy what I can do with them.
I just finished watching all of the episodes of Toma lá dá cá and have enjoyed the comedy and learned a lot along the way too. I am working my way through Duas garotas em apuros (Two Broke Girls) in Portuguese dub almost finished with the third season. I've only seen the show once in English and couldn't deal with the girls' accents. Now that I've finished TLDC, I have started Magnífica 70. It's kind of like "Mad Men" except focusing on a Censor and the genre of Brazilian Cinema called pornochanchada in the midst of the 1970's miltary dictatorship. The center of this film industry was in "Boca do Lixo" São Paulo. Magnífica 70 has a majorly cool theme song from the 70's- Sangue Latino por o grupo- Secos e Molhados (1973) (got to love the weird "album art"!). What makes Magnífica 70 more relevant to me is that I had already seen a film from just before the era- O bandido da luz vermelha and have been to the Boca do Lixo bairro em Sampa, part of which has become the rather sketchy Cracolândia. Next on the hit list is the second season of "O negócio", "Misterios de Lisboa" and starting the comedy series "Sai de baixo". I'd also like to visit Brazil and/or Portugal again soon. :) I'm still doing a lot of reading and chat online a couple of times a week. I have finally found live Brazilian TV streaming at tamoligado. I still enjoy listening to RFI Brasil every day. When someone is at an intermediate level, it takes a lot to get to where they can listen well enough to follow along. It takes work to get to where listening is effortless. What holds many people back is that they don't listen enough or work at/focus on it enough in order to build a sufficient critical mass to get the snowball rolling. I'm not surprised that your listening in Japanese is improving when you have the chance to focus on it. Keep it up! Know this, kuji, when you get to where you can effortlessly listen to Japanese and Portuguese, you will be able to have a lot more fun, but it's going to take some effort to get there. That's why I adopt Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" philosophy in language learning. If you know that it will indeed get better it helps to get through this stage. Edited by iguanamon on 03 July 2015 at 5:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 682 of 706 06 July 2015 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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iguanamon, as always thank you for the great post! And a lot of links to resources as well! :)
I think I know what you are talking about now. You don't set date-driven goals, but you still have something that you aspire for, which is being able to do lots of fun things in your acquired languages... which is the ultimate goal. I can't wait to be able to do fun things in Japanese, Portuguese, and any other language I decide to learn in the future... but the problem is that I can't wait. I feel like every couple of weeks, I'm saying to myself, "How long is this going to take?" But what I really want to say to myself is "Be patient and keep at it, and your time will come." Malcolm X's philosophy of "by any means necessary" makes a lot of sense when language learning, but when one is far away from realizing his or her vision, I think it takes a lot of motivation, determination and patience to keep going and do anything necessary to get there, so I'm a bit envious of you, iguanamon. I have a problem doing that in all parts of my life, not just language learning, and it's something I'm working on correcting. I feel like I often get into the routine of language learning and then lose sight of the big picture. I don't really forget why I'm learning these languages, but I think the reasons why I'm learning languages get lost or hidden behind everything else that's going on in my head. I get short-term motivation when I can imagine myself enjoying the fruits of my labor. If I spend a few minutes thinking and imagining what it would be like to be fluent in Japanese, and about everything I could do with the language here in Japan, then I'm more able to push myself to pay attention when watching TV, or finish that article, or listen to that podcast, or write in my journal. I think regularly reaffirming my ultimate goal in some way might help me, but I'm not really sure to go about it. Read out a manifesto every week? A pledge every day? Hang a poster on my wall with a picture of myself speaking Japanese? Just spend a little time daydreaming? Hmmm, maybe I should try all of those and see what sticks!
I see. It seems crazy to think about it because I'm in Japan, but yeah, more focused listening will probably do me some good. That's something I'll start working on more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 683 of 706 06 July 2015 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I also can't wait. That's why I do native materials as early as possible :) Japanese and Portuguese are major languages. Life is too short to spend it on materials you don't enjoy.
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5259 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 684 of 706 06 July 2015 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't help you with Japanese, which I know is radically different than anything I have ever tried to learn before. I have read the logs of people here who are learning it and I know it presents special difficulties. Still, perhaps not all general language learning advice is useless. I believe that putting together a chain is important in developing listening skills. Listening to native material, reading and speaking with native-speakers has turbocharged my language skills.
I have tremendous respect for Serpent and her abilities. Though our techniques may differ, we seem to end up achieving similar results. Her singular love for all things football, the world's most popular sport, has served her well. My tolerance for some "pain" (not really pain, just not thrilling and "oh boy, I can't wait to listent to y) in language learning is what helped me to develop listening in Portuguese. The NHK newscast is the single most dry newscast on the planet, barring perhaps North Korea, but it was only 15 minutes long (not long enough to kill my soul) and it had a transcript. I did that for a solid three months by keeping my eyes on the prize. I had my Brazilian tutor sessions three times a week then for three one hour sessions. Of course, I did fun stuff too. Then, I tried a series with no subtitles. As emk describes, it was "mind-melting" at first. I thought "How am I ever going to learn this language?". Then I realized that I could understand most of one episode- I had to watch it four times, take notes and write down unknown words (which you may not be able to do in Japanese because of the whole kanji thing) and talk about the episode with my tutor. My tutor sessions then were two one hour sessions per week- just talking about the series. Then turn around the next week and do the next episode and so on until one week, about a third of the way in, I was able to do two episodes in a single week. Towards the last third of the 79 episode series I was doing three 40 minute episode reviews in two one hour tutor sessions and noticed a huge leap in listening, vocabulary and proficiency. The same may be replicable if you had a Japanese series (perhaps even dubbed- with my caveat of I know jack about learning the much more difficult Japanese) with a transcript/subtitles/closed captions to use as your answer check/tutor consultation substitute. But, you'd have to commit to it. It's not going to be comfortable at first but it will get better. Obviously, if you found a series you enjoyed, it would be much easier. Just don't bite off more than you can chew. Emk started off with Avatar, for example. I don't have the computer skills to do it but Sprachprofi's Understand Your Favourite TV Series in 30 Days with subs2srs was done in Japanese. Emk has written a tutorial in his subs2srs Spanish log. Watching random videos or listening to random podcasts or learner-intended podcasts aren't enough in themselves to develop listening skills and build vocabulary through listening. A series with the same core characters and similar situations provides repetition and the ability to get used to the same actors voices. Whether you use subs2srs or my method, or another method or your own method, "get stuck in there" as the Brits say. Use your learning materials, and especially grammar, to solve problems that you are having with the language in the real world. You've probably advanced enough already in Japanese to do this now but it sure ain't going to be easy at first. It will be uncomfortable (at first), but it will get better the more you do on a regular basis, meu amigo. Futurama and Os Simpsons (for example) have English and Portuguese subs (not exact but close) and the episodes are only 21 minutes long. Perhaps they are available in Japanese too. The main thing with how I learned listening in Portuguese and Haitian Creole is to not worry so much about understanding absolutely everything, just aim for most. The rest will sort itself out later the more you continue to listen and focus on listening on a regular basis. The desire still has to come from within. How you motivate yourself is up to you, of course. Whatever you can do to motivate yourself, whatever you can find that works, I'm all for. If that's the big picture, great. If that's little victories, fine. Just find something. Stick with it and... show up. Malcolm X was determined to free his people from under the yoke of oppression and discrimination. That's what motivated him. I know it's a stretch to equate a great freedom fighter with language learning but a dogged determination to keep going until you can get what want sure is helpful. As Jimmy Cliff sang You Can Get It If You Really Want "but you must try, try and try. You'll succeed at last". Edited by iguanamon on 07 July 2015 at 1:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4844 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 685 of 706 07 July 2015 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||
I agree with this in theory, and it is something I've tried to do. I don't read just anything in Japanese or Portuguese (as much as I would like to!). I try to read things that I think will be interesting. I search news websites and pick out articles with subjects that seem interesting to me, rather than just pick anything. I try to watch things on TV that might be interesting to me. I try to find native podcasts that I think might be interesting. I've bought Japanese comic books that seem like they have interesting stories. I've tried watching shows that I've seen in English and like very much. I think finding native things to enjoy is not very difficult for me. Like you said, Japanese and Portuguese are major languages; there is a lot of material out there. But this is the problem for me: no matter how enjoyable the material is, it becomes significantly less enjoyable due to the fact that I have to look up and deal with unknown words and phrases. If I don't find a way to enjoy, or at least tolerate, that aspect of it, then it doesn't matter how much fun the activity is. Once I get into the slog of looking up words, then it's not fun anymore. Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about, because this is something I feel is holding me back significantly, and it's something I want to solve: (PORTUGUESE) Deutsche Welle radionovela series: "Futebol: Mais do que um jogo" iguanamon recommended this to me a couple of years ago, and I'm still working through the ten-part series. I love the story: three young people in Africa, all with an interest in football and dealing with problems in their country. I've made some bilingual texts with these stories, and iguanamon has given me others. Reading it in English, the radionovela is awesome and enjoyable. So the material is not the problem. I find it to be very interesting, and I often can't wait to find out what happens next. And yet, I'm just on Part Four after two years of this. Each part is not that long - around 10 minutes of audio or so? Obviously I could blow through the whole radionovela in a day in English. This is what I usually do with a part of this radionovela: (1) Read the English first. (2) Listen to the Portuguese while reading the Portuguese. It doesn't matter if I understand it, but I want to get a "feel" for it. (3) Go through the Portuguese and find all the words and phrases I don't know, and highlight them. (This is surprisingly time-consuming.) (4) Look up unknown words and phrases - mainly using the English text, but sometimes the Portuguese and English don't really match well, so I'll use a dictionary and make notes on the PDF. (This is also time-consuming.) (5) Next, I go through the highlighted words/phrases and decide if I want to put any of them into Anki, then I put them into Anki. (Again, time consuming.) (6) After that, I listen to the Portuguese again while reading the Portuguese (but not the English). I try to see how much I know now. If I'm not satisfied, I'll do it again. (7) Now I'll try listening to the Portuguese without the text and see how much I can understand. I give myself perhaps 30-40 minutes a week to work on a radionovela, and that's probably a generous estimate. If I were not working on Japanese, perhaps I could do more a week, but I'm not about to give up either language. Anyway, by the time I do all of the steps above, an enjoyable story has become irritating, and I have to take a break and do some other activities before I return to the radionovela. But the reason I want to do all of those steps is because I want to make the most of the material. I could quickly go through a part, referring to the English when I don't understand the Portuguese, and just get a quick understanding of the story, and just enjoy the story. But then I feel like I would not have learned the new Portuguese that I came across. I feel like I shouldn't leave any stone unturned. But in the process of uncovering every stone, an enjoyable story becomes hard work. The thing is, though, I do gain some things from doing all of that. I learn new words and phrases I didn't know before, and that means less time wasted on those words later. But it takes some mental power to push through that sometimes, even if the story is quite enjoyable. ***** I know I said I'll write a few examples, but I have to get back to work now, so I'll write more later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 686 of 706 07 July 2015 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Damn that sounds like fun :D And I'm not really familiar with African Portuguese... Are they still available somewhere? I know they were supposed to be discontinued.
Anyway, there's fun and there's FUN. I only look up when I want to know the content (non-fiction), or when there's not much to look up. Or when I'm madly in love with something and don't mind looking up a lot (most common with songs). Otherwise I just keep going. You may want to LR each story several times. And don't worry about mastering all the vocabulary from it. Go for the 80% that you can get with 20% effort. Or you can work with a smaller section of a text each time. Highlight the new words in a paragraph - look them up - put into Anki - go to the next paragraph. Or even better, make the Anki decision later. Add the ones that still feel important after one or two weeks. Also, assuming these were written by the same person and narrated by the same people too, it's going to get easier soon. I would recommend you to work less and less on each story. It might also be beneficial to listen to all of them once. Words that are random and irrelevant now may turn out to be more important in the next part. In Portuguese you should be able to have significant gains in your vocabulary just by sheer volume of content. Japanese is tougher of course, although at your level you should be able to have comprehensible input, i+1 or not. Edited by Serpent on 07 July 2015 at 6:45am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5259 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 687 of 706 07 July 2015 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Serpent. You don't need to gather every scintillating detail of the radionovela. The whole point is to progress through it.
Here's what I did when I was starting out: 1) Read the Portuguese with the help of the bilingual text. 2) Listen to the audio while reading. 3) Listen to the audio. 4) Move on to the next episode. 5) 10 episodes = 10 days. 6) Move on to the next radionovela series. The whole point of my step 1 was to familiarize myself with vocabulary and grammar by referring to the English when I couldn't make it out with context. Sometimes, rarely, I might look up a word in the dictionary. Since I don't use srs, if I came across a rare word unlikely to come up again, I'd look it up and go through my mental srs of saying the word aloud in Portuguese 10 times with the English meaning once in sets of five. Then I'd write it in my notes and refer back to it later. "Moving on" is what builds momentum in a language- "critical mass". The more you do, the better you get at it. By stopping to go through the material with a fine tooth comb to glean every possible morsel you can out of it, you can't build momentum. You don't "move on". When this happens, the language becomes more of a "thing" to be studied. It's a trap that I see some learners fall into. Don't get me wrong, study is important. There is a time for intensive learning but at this stage study should be there to help you progress, not to retard your momentum. If you go through one 10 episode radionovela in a month, you will be much further along, building momentum, getting better at listening, learning vocabulary without srs, getting more of a feel for grammar, etc. That's the benefit of "extensive" reading, and extensive listening. That's what I mean when I say that some learners don't do "enough" listening or "enough" reading. The gaps fill themselves in. The grammar and vocabulary become clearer. The learning materials become more valuable because they are helping you to solve problems you are having with the language while you are engaging with it. You may not get all of the story on the first go around, and that's fine. As long as you get most of it and move on you'll be ok. One of the joys of doing this is that after you have progressed through this, through say maybe four of these 10 episode radionovelas (at your current level), you can go back to that first one and be pleasantly surprised at how "easy" it is now compared to when you first did it. In your particular situation with two languages and limited time you could do one episode in three days- read first, next day read and listen, next day just listen- move on to the next one and repeat. That would mean you do one 10 episode radionovela in a month. That's totally doable. By taking soooo much time with it you can't take advantage of critical mass because you can't generate any. Your snowball never gets to roll downhill because you're trying to make it perfectly round with a chisel and a trowel. A big, ugly, lumpy snowball may not look pretty but it will roll downhill and gather more snow, filling in the voids, until it does get nice and round- and bigger. The steps I've listed above gradually whittle themselves down. You get to the point where you don't need to read the bilingual text anymore first. Then, after a sufficient amount of "moving on", you won't need to read the TL text either. That's the point! I know it's difficult to accept that you don't need to study everything and to have faith that gaps will be filled in and that vocabulary and grammar will be learned, but it will- to a quite large extent. That doesn't mean you quit studying but it does mean that formal studying isn't your overwhelming focus. It becomes more focused- and more helpful and a lot less of your time. That's what gets you to where you can have fun. Serpent: the Deutsche Welle Portuguese service for Africa was curtailed but not ended. They had announced the end as I had stated, but gave the service a bit of a reprieve. DW eliminated weekend broadcasts and shortened the transmissions to 20 minutes a day from 30. The Futebol em Àfrica- Muito mais do que um jogo radionovela is still up at the DW Learnig By Ear - Aprender por ouvido site. Edited by iguanamon on 09 July 2015 at 2:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5163 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 688 of 706 07 July 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I third Serpent and iguanamon on this. I may sound like a textbook freak but even when studying textbooks I don't squeeze every drop of juice from them. Anyone who reads my log now will assess that I'm using mostly native material. I felt the need of intensive reading at one point (the beginning of this year, if I'm not mistaken) and so I resumed it and achieved good results, but even so I never went to the level of trying to learn everything in a text, and no SRS either. My personal SRS is writing, and even though I don't prioritize it, I'm seeing more and more progress for the languages I'm really trying.
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