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| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 57 of 151 20 November 2013 at 9:19pm | IP Logged |
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To give an example of what I meant in the previous post:
Say I take the sentence "Dieser Draht lässt sich nicht leicht abbiegen." (This wire does not easily bend.) from The Big Yellow Book of German Verbs. And say I didn't know the words "abbiegen", "Draht" and hadn't seen this usage of "lassen" before. I was so intent on making sure that I learned the two words and the grammar usage from this sentence that I would write it out, read it several times, put it into Anki. Eventually, this sentence along with many others would drive me to boredom after seeing them so many times. The reality is 1) This usage of lasson is common so I'm going to see it a bunch of times. I don't need to SRS anything to learn it. Even if it was uncommon, if I take in enough content, I should still see uncommon grammar enough. The only exceptions to this could be when I come across some really rare usages. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. 2) This sentence comes from the page dedicated to "abbiegen", which has 9 other sample sentences on it. I can just take 1-2 sentences from this page every few days and I should have it. 3) As for Draht, it could be used multiple times in sample sentences in this book or others. It has an entry in Mastering German Vocabulary so that's at least one more sentence I have with Draht. If I have a particularly hard time with it, then I can look it up on a few online dictionaries that provide sample sentences and just keep at it until I finally have it. The geek in me loves SRS though. I love that stats. I love the act of mining for sentences. I just get worn out after a few weeks of SRSing. And it's not even the amount of reviews piling up. Yesterday, I only had 20 new German cards and about 50 reviews. That's nothing, but I mentally resisted doing it. I wish I could keep at it like other people can, but I can't. It's time I accept that lesson and move on. My goal has been to get about 20 words into SRS a day. That would get me to 10,000 after 500 days (About a year and 3 months). Now, my goal is 100 sentences scriptoriumed every day (that I do them). After 500 days, that would be 50,000 sentences so that's my new high end goal. Edited by sabotai on 20 November 2013 at 9:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 58 of 151 01 December 2013 at 2:48am | IP Logged |
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So I changed up a few things, but they're minor changes. Here's my German rundown and then I'll give a brief description of each activity.
GERMAN Full Dialogs: 183/300: 61.00% Intensive Dialogs: 0/300: 0.00% Extensive Dialogs: 0/300: 0.00% Intensive Listening: 18/750: 2.40% Extensive Listening: 36/15,000: 0.24% Written Sentences: 4,014/30,000: 13.38% Original Sentences: 10/10,000: 0.10% Intensive Reading: 12/250: 4.80% DL Reading: 10/1,000: 1.00% Extensive Reading: 0/2,500: 0.00% Minutes Studied: 11,910/45,000: 26.47% (198.5 hours) Decided to expand how often I use the dialogs from Assimil, Teach Yourself and Linguaphone. Full Dialogs: Listen to Dialog at least 3x. Read dialog and translation (intensive reading - make sure I understand every word and all the grammar). Listen to Dialog 3x again. Scriptorium the dialog. Listen to Dialog 3x. Intensive Dialog: Basically the above except I don't scriptorium the dialog. Listen to it 3x. Read dialog and translation (make sure I understand every word and all the grammar). Listen to Dialog 3x again. This is using the same dialogs I used above after some time has passed. Extensive Dialog: After I do the two above, the dialog gets added to a playlist of completed dialogs. I play them on random and when the dialog reaches 5 plays, it's finished. So I added a tiny bit of a system, but to be honest, this is very low on my priority list. It's just an idea at the moment and I may just not even do it down the road. Intensive Listening: Intensively read a passage, chapter, etc. and then listen to the audio 3 times. If it's from a book, I'll count it in my intensive reading section as well. If it's just a short passage from a news article or something, I won't. (measured in minutes of content) Extensive Listening: I count LR under this, as well as listening to audiobooks straight through without looking up the translations. I'll reuse the material I used for Intensive Listening after a good amount of time has passed. (measured in minutes that I do it) Written Sentences: # of sentences I have scriptoriumed (not counting the dialogs from above). Decided to bring that back down to 30k. Original Sentences: Number of sentences I've written on Lang-8 or any other correction website. Intensive Reading: Number of pages I have intensively read (looked up every word I didn't know and all the grammar that was new to me). DL (Dual Language) Reading: Number of pages I have read while using a translation (dual language book or having the same book in my target and native language). I read the native material and then the target language. I'll think about it for a second or two but won't dwell on things like I do with intensive reading. Extensive Reading: Number of pages of material in my target language read where I don't look up anything. Minutes Studied: The goal is set to how long FSI says it takes to learn a language. Keeping track for my own curiosity. Plus it helps motivate me to keep going, like when I see my stopwatch at 22 minutes and I push myself to hit 30. I do other things as well, but some of them I don't feel the need to set a specific goal. For example, audio-only lessons like Michel Thomas or TTMIK. I just keep track of the time spent on other things and add them. FRENCH Full Dialogs: 116/300: 38.67% Intensive Dialogs: 0/300: 0.00% Extensive Dialogs: 0/300: 0.00% Intensive Listening: 0/750: 0.00% Extensive Listening: 0/15,000: 0.00% Written Sentences: 1,392/30,000: 4.64% Original Sentences: 0/10,000: 0.00% Intensive Reading: 0/250: 0.00% DL Reading: 0/1,000: 0.00% Extensive Reading: 0/2,500: 0.00% Minutes Studied: 3,795/36,000: 10.54% (63.25 hours) KOREAN Full Dialogs: 85/1,500: 5.67% Intensive Dialogs: 0/1,500: 0.00% Extensive Dialogs: 0/1,500: 0.00% Intensive Listening: 0/5,000: 0.00% Extensive Listening: 0/15,000: 0.00% Written Sentences: 658/50,000: 1.32% Original Sentences: 0/10,000: 0.00% Intensive Reading: 0/250: 0.00% DL Reading: 0/2,000: 0.00% Extensive Reading: 0/5,000: 0.00% Minutes Studied: 2,565/132,000: 1.94% (42.75 hours) JAPANESE Full Dialogs: 25/1,500: 1.67% Intensive Dialogs: 0/1,500: 0.00% Extensive Dialogs: 0/1,500: 0.00% Intensive Listening: 0/5,000: 0.00% Extensive Listening: 0/15,000: 0.00% Written Sentences: 109/50,000: 0.22% Original Sentences: 0/10,000: 0.00% Intensive Reading: 0/250: 0.00% DL Reading: 0/2,000: 0.00% Extensive Reading: 0/5,000: 0.00% Minutes Studied: 245/132,000: 0.19% (4.083 Hours) Some of the goals are higher for the Asian languages (FSI Cat 5). I also started Japanese over because I wanted to scriptorium the JPod101 Newbie lessons. I still need all of the practice I can get with Kanji. Also, I didn't do anything in Thai all month. Funny how once I give myself permission to indulge in wunderlust a bit, I end up not doing it at all. I was also thinking of switching out French for Spanish. Haven't decided yet... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 59 of 151 02 December 2013 at 4:47am | IP Logged |
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I've doing scriptorium for sentences for awhile, and so far my hand hasn't hurt much. But I started doing that prior to doing it for dialogs as well and now that I am doing scriptorium for entire dialogs as well as a few dozen sentences per language, now it's starting to take it's toll. After a decent day of language learning so far today, my wrist and thumb are really hurting. And I haven't gotten to Japanese or Korean yet.
So I'm going to drop scriptorium for the dialogs. Full Dialogs now will have 2 rounds of reading the dialog slowly to make sure I understand it all instead of 1 round of reading and 1 of writing. In other news, I did pick up Spanish but I'm not going to completely drop French. I don't want to lose anything so I'll keep doing a small amount of French every day. Here's how my priority ranks German, Korean (aim for 1 to 2 hours per day) Japanese, Spanish (aim for 30-60 minutes a day) French, Wunderlust (For December, Russian) (aim for 15-30 minutes a day) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 60 of 151 02 December 2013 at 7:48am | IP Logged |
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Ah, how I wish I had enough time at a desk to do Scriptorium. Sounds so much peaceful and relaxing than SRS.
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| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 61 of 151 16 December 2013 at 4:53am | IP Logged |
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At this point, I'd imagine anything is more relaxing than SRS. I've grown to loathe it, and loathe that I loathe it (I wish I could stand to do it!)
German Dialogs: 193 of 300 (64.33%) Sample Sentences: 6,815 of 100,000 (6.82%) Intensive Listening: 23 of 2,000 minutes (2.30%) Extensive Listening: 36 of 15,000 minutes (0.24%) Intensive Reading: 17 of 250 pages (6.80%) Extensive Reading: 0 of 2,500 pages (0.00%) Dual-Language Reading: 25 of 1000 pages (2.50%) Minutes Studied: 12,395 of 45,000 minutes (27.54%) - 206.58 hours of 750 Written Sentences changed to Sample Sentences. I've stopped doing so much scriptorium. What I do now is kinda emulate it (and my writing hand thanks me for it). When reading sentences from a grammar book, vocab book, language lesson, I'll read it out loud at a normal pace, repeat very slowly and then a third time at normal speed again. Basically, scriptorium minus the actual writing part. I jumped the goal up because I can do more, and I'm allowing myself to repeat sentences. I'll still do scriptorium, but only if it's a drill. If I have the complete sentence, I'll just read it. If it's a fill in the blank, substitution drill, etc. I'll do the exercise if I'm in the mood and then scriptorium the complete sentence. That way if I come back to it, I'll just read the sentence instead of doing the exercise over again. I've thought about not doing that, and redoing the exercise again, but time is a main factor. When doing this, I want to get through as many sentences as I can without rushing myself, and having to redo exercises, even just look up the answer, takes time and slows me down. Another update with German is that I'm throwing the Teach Yourself, Linguaphone and Assimil back on the book shelf and I'm leaving them there. My German is good enough to where I can just use native and more advanced materials. I'm still going to try to pick up grammar and vocab from grammar and vocab books, but the "self teaching" resources like Teach Yourself are now semi-retired for German. Not completely retired because I'm sure there will be days where I just want to relax and do some easy dialogs, but they will no longer be the main focus of my studies for German. My main resources for German right now: Dual Language Reading: The Little Prince, Faust, several books of short stories Intensive Reading: Harry Potter 1, Graded Readers Intensive Listening: Graded Readers, Movies (see below) Extensive Listening: Charlotte's Web (LR) Sample Sentences from: 1001 Pitfalls in German, Mastering German Vocabulary, The Big Yellow Book or German Verbs French Full Dialogs: 118 of 300 (39.33%) Int. Dialogs: 10 of 300 (3.33%) Sample Sentences: 1,771 of 100,000 (1.77%) Minutes Studied: 3,885 of 36,000 (10.79%) - 64.75 hours of 600 Spanish Full Dialogs: 49 of 1000 (4.90%) Sample Sentences: 435 of 100,000 (0.44%) Minutes Studied: 395 of 36,000 (1.10%) - 6.58 hours of 600 Why 1,000 dialogs? That's how many I have when I add all of the dialogs from Assimil, Teach Yourself, Living Language and SpanishPod - SpanishPod having ~650 dialogs (the Newbie ones being very short, which is the main reason why I'm up to 49 already). I doubt I'll get near 1000 though. Much like with German, I'll move on when I feel I can move to native and more advanced resources. Japanese Full Dialogs: 39 of 1500 (2.60%) Sample Sentences: 271 of 250,000 (0.11%) Minutes Studied: 395 of 132,000 (0.30%) - 6.58 hours of 2,200 Korean Full Dialogs: 115 of 1500 (7.67%) Sample Sentences: 1,324 of 250,000 (0.53%) Minutes Studied: 2.855 of 132,000 (2.16%) - 47.58 hours of 2200 Intensive Listening - Movies Here's a technique I've been experiment with. What I do is first go through ~1 minute of the movie's subtitles or transcript. (Most subtitle files are simple text files with time stamps). I'll intensively read it, making sure I know what every word means. I'll then watch that 1 minute clip several times with the subtitles on (or reading along with the transcript) and then several times without the subtitles. I just started doing this with German. TAC 14 Goals Except for taking tests, which I am not a fan of, I can't think of a way to reliably test my ability according to CEFR levels. So while I threw them out there in the TAC 2014 signup thread, they really aren't my goals. I have just one, general goal for 2014. Spend a grand total of at least 1,000 hours in 2014 actively studying languages. That only comes to about 2.7 hours per day, but if I account for missing 1-2 days per weeks, that's more like 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I've broken it down by language, but priorities and focuses change. No matter what languages I am focusing on, my one main focus will remain unchanged. At least 1,000 hours on languages in 2014. Breakdown by language: 350 hours on Korean 350 hours on German 100 hours on Japanese 100 hours on Spanish 100 hours on French 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 62 of 151 30 December 2013 at 4:57am | IP Logged |
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End of 2013 Report
I won't be doing anything tomorrow. The second half of the last season of Breaking Bad is being played on TV tomorrow, and I haven't seen the ending yet, so tomorrow will be a lazy TV day. Tuesday is New Year's Eve, so I don't plan on doing anything more for 2013. I haven't really done anything since the last report, though. Christmas really disrupts my routine. After the new year, I'll get back to it. German Intensive Listening: 28 minutes Extensive Listening: 36 minutes Sample Sentences: 7,009 Intensive Reading: 17 pages DL Reading: 29 pages Minutes Studied: 12,570 (209.5 hours) Only about 3 hours of study in the last two weeks. Much of that was my intensive listening on Die Welle. I've already seen a few new grammar constructions I haven't seen before. Listening...they don't really enunciate clearly. It's been hard hearing the words as they get slurred together. French Full Dialogs: 123 dialogs Intensive Dialogs: 10 dialogs Sample Sentences: 2,086 sentences Minutes Studied: 3,970 (66.17 hours) Spanish Full Dialogs: 54 dialogs Sample Sentences: 1,063 sentences Minutes Studied: 575 minutes (9.58 hours) Japanese Full Dialogs: 50 dialogs Sample Sentences: 1,152 sentences Minutes Studied: 550 minutes (9.17 hours) Korean Full Dialogs: 126 dialogs Sample Sentences: 2,005 sentences Minutes Studied: 2,990 minutes (49.83 hours) 2014 Goals (cause making them are fun despite the knowledge that I'll probably change them within a month) German Goals To be at... 250 minutes of Intensive Listening completed (25% of goal completed) 3,000 minutes of Extensive Listening completed (20% of goal) 50,000 sample sentences completed (50% of goal) 250 pages of intensive reading completed (100% of goal) 1,000 pages of dual language reading completed (100% of goal) 550 hours of study completed (73.33% of goal) French Goals To be at... 300 Full Dialogs completed (100% of goal) 300 Intensive Dialogs completed (100% of goal) 25,000 sample sentences completed (25% of goal) 168 hours of study (28% of goal) Spanish Goals To be all... 300 Full Dialogs Completed (100% of goal) 300 Intensive Dialogs Completed (100% of goal) 25,000 Sample Sentences completed (25% of goal) 110 hours of study (25% of goal) I changed my goals for Spanish. I'm going to save the SpanishPod dialogs for later and just move along with Assimil and Teach Yourself. Japanese Goals To be at... 500 Full Dialogs completed (33.33% of goal) 500 Intensive Dialogs (33.33% of goals) 25,000 Sample Sentences (10% of goal) 110 Hours of study completed (5% of goal) Korean Goals To be at... 750 Full Dialogs completed (50% of goal) 750 Intensive Dialogs (50% of goal) 40,000 Sample Sentences (16% of goal) 100 pages of Dual Language reading (5% of goal) 250 minutes of Intensive Listening (5% of goal) 400 hours of study (18.18% of goal) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5880 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 63 of 151 02 January 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged |
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Had a decent first day of the year, but it's not over. Still plan to do a bit more in Korean before lights out, but here's a bit of a summary.
A2 Graded Reader: Finished this off (intensive reading/listening). Was fairly easy, but it was also my first introduction to the Bavarian dialect, so it was a bit more challenging to me than a typical A2 reader. Die Herren von Winterfell - Dual-Language read the first 3 pages of the prologue but then extensively read the rest of the chapter. I think this is how I'm going to proceed with reading. I'll start off a chapter by either intensively reading it or dual-language reading it. After a few pages, I'll extensively read the rest (Basically, when I get tired of intensively reading it, I'll switch over to extensive reading until the end of the chapter). After I finished reading the prologue, I skimmed through and wrote down the words that appeared several times that I didn't know. I've also been doing this for intensive reading. I've written down the words and definitions I had to look up. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this list though. One thought I had was to look them up in online monolingual dictionaries and scriptorium the sample sentences. And for Korean, I just did some dialogs and read a bunch of sentences. Next, I'm going to try dual language reading, except I'll be using the German version of Charlotte's Web to help me read the Korean version. Hope others are starting off well. Go Teams Spaß und Gumiho! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 64 of 151 02 January 2014 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck with your Korean and German studies this year!
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