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Russian Read&Speak - TAC 2013 Team Mir

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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fabriciocarraro
Hexaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Brazil
russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4713 days ago

989 posts - 1454 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French
Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese

 
 Message 97 of 142
21 May 2013 at 7:03pm | IP Logged 
If you need any help with Russian declensions and aspect, feel free to ask! I'm far from being proficient, but I think I can help a fellow Brazilian. =)
2 persons have voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 98 of 142
21 May 2013 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
Valeu cara. Eu ainda não tô num estágio nem de pedir ajudar, tô apanhando feito doido! É aquela história, o aluno que não sabe nada da matéria não tem dúvidas. Ma eu chego lá, e vamo que vamo! =D

The king is dead, long live the king. I finished Assimil Russian without toil and started Le Russe right away, not to lose track. I'm afraid it didn't give up on endless notes typical of the other two. Still, those notes are a little more useful, and I also hope the dialogues focus on exactly the typo of vocabulary I need to work on.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 99 of 142
30 May 2013 at 1:34am | IP Logged 
Not much to report other than the fact I'm speeding up with the newest Assimil, which is
indeed the most recommended of all three for a beginner. I'm managing to do 2 lessons a
day, sometimes 4, even if it's just reading and no listening or exercises. I think it
will set the ground for the upcoming book which is Nina Potapova's, which will make me
write down a lot on translations.

I'd like to write an overall post on my schedule, personal pressures and achievements,
but I need a bit more time for that.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 100 of 142
05 June 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged 
I'm trying to move quickly with Le Russe, and it's been working. I do 2 lessons a day even if I don't have time to listen to the audio and write down the exercises, that is, even on weekends. When there are review lessons I do three in a row, that is, the previous two ones and the review lesson. Currently at lesson 43. Don't really want to spend that long on it, maybe by the end of the month I'll be done.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 101 of 142
07 June 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged 
This is the thread I use for reports on my languages, both TAC and TACless. I'm even considering renaming it to Expug's log or something like that. I'm aware that having multiple threads prevents other people from seing the big picture and thus helping me out and getting to know better about my experiences, as well. Still, I feel much better to have one log for each language.

Today I won't do the DREADFUL/FUN classifying. I'll rather describe my routine. It's a intense routine because I have loads of free time during a weekday which I try to fill in with language activities, but having time doesn't mean you call always take more and more activities before you get burnout. And that's what I have been experiencing in the past days. Chronologically I could even add 2 or 3 more 30' sessions of language learning, but my brain wouldn't take it any longer.

So, let's go!

9h30 AM - That's when I usually start my language schedule activities, after I have come back from the gym, showered and prepared my snack for taking to work in the afternoon. In fact, I'll have done one to 5 Anki decks early in the morning after I wake up, just to feel more awake before having breakfast, but I'll talk about Anki later.

My first language is Chinese, and my first book is Peng's Fun with Chinese Vocabulary. I'm currently at the final third of the second volume. I usually do two pages (that is, two character) a day, with all their sample words and sentence; It's usually one sentence and 8 to 20 words and idioms.

After Peng's I proceed to Méthode 90, a book I'm doing for the second time, now taking a better profit of it. It takes me 20 minutes to listen to the dialogue/text and read it again, then do mentally the two translation exercises, from French to Chinese then from Chinese to French.

At about 9:45 am I start doing Russian. I'm currently studying from Le Russe (2008), from Assimil. I'm doing at least two lessons a day because I don't want to get stuck at it for a long time, having done two Assimils without going much further.

At around 10 pm I start Georgian. First is a textbook in Russian. I spend a lot of time translating words from Russian. I was hoping that this textbook would help me with Russian the way a grammar book helped me with German, but it hasn't been the case so. I'm at lesson 13 and I can only read a few predictable sentences about rh Georgian grammar in Russian. The Georgian content itself is mainly a review in terms of grammar with new vocabulary, but not so much the essential one. I like it when there are sentences, though, and the book itself is fairly comprehensive.

Then I proceed to my newly added resource, an online monolingual course in Georgian. I say monolingual because the dialogues aren't transcribed and the texts aren't translated. Only the explanations are translated into Azeri or Armenian, which helps nothing because I know Georgian, not these two languages. I'm having a hard time reading to non-transcribed Georgian with new vocabulary. I can follow about 80% of the dialogues after listening to them for the 3rd time and I can usually pick the missing words from the course's exercises, which consist basically in regrouping the dialogue's sentences. The course is so comprehensive in presenting conversational Georgian, I'm really happy I can use it and I want to stick to it as far as possible.

My next resource is the Georgian grammar in German I mentioned. I'm really glad I managed to learn to read the German on it throughout its lessons (currently #32 out of 48). The quality of the explanations is beyond any similar book published in English. This book, Einführung in die Georgischen Sprache, helped me so much with German and with Georgian. I try to dose German and Georgian for preventing burnout. When the content itself is easy and the German words aren't that difficult, I can read up to 10 pages. I usually do 4-6, though, which means I may split a lessons averagely through 2-4 days depending on its length. As for the exercises, it only gets better, and I do them in one single day or in two days. They usually consist into 50 complex sentences in Georgian translated into German which I read in a way that helps me with both languages.

Now it's time for Norwegian I'm approaching a post-textbook stage with it, but since Norwegian has so many good monolingual textbooks I've decided to stick to them. I'm getting to learn so much about the culture in Norway, ansd it's getting pretty much easy to follow some daily-life subjects. I'm doing an approach with Norwegian I hadn't done with other languages, that is, I have spent so much time on textbooks that cover topics such as asking for directions, talking about food that I don't have to worry about it when I get to the literature stage. I'm using Norsk for utledninger 1, but I only listen to the dialogues so I'm likely to finish it in a couple of days. I'm done with Norwegian at about 11:10 am.

Time for catching up with Anki. I have 7 active decks with languages I'm studying. I normally do 4 early in the morning and 3 before going to work. At 11:20 i leave home for having lunch and going to work.

Post-textbook work

I get to work at 12:15. If I'm already done with Georgian and Norwegian, it's time for watching TV series. Now I consider I'm done with formal textbook studying, and everything else is supposed to be fun, extensive work with native materials. But I'm still so obsessed with completion!

I start with the TV series Ghost Whisperer, 40 min of length for each episode, dubbed in French with no subtitles. Comprehension shifts around 70%-90%. I can follow the plot with no problem.

Then comes Touched by an Angel, in English. I really regret the fact it takes 46 min of average length for each episode. Prior to that I watched Wilfred which took only 20 min. Still, I have to cope with that. I'm really concerned about the issues this series deals with. The problem is that I also startt browsing forums and trying to put in advance my upcoming activities, and I usually just listen to it in the background. My comprehension is thus somewhat lower than in French. If I focus, it gets steady at 90%.

If I hadn't got much distracted, it's about half past 2 pm now and I proceed to my French reading. I'm currently reading a book called Dans l'invisible. The font size is too small, so one page of it equals to 4 of an ordinary ebook. I'm lagging behind my plans of doing 20 pages a day. It is a very meaningful topic, and even though I don't have to look up words that much, I tend to read and reflect a lot on what I read. I better do a normal novel next time.


Papiamentu time. I'm intense on native learning, given that I'm going to Aruba and Curaçao in September. I start with a 6-8' long video from the TV program DC 21, from Aruba, dealing with cultural, linguistical topics. Comprehension of averagely 70.[i/]

Then I proceed to reading one story from the site Jukaproductions. They are not that long, it's the lack of a good dictionary for some obscure words that cause me most difficult. I usually try to translate a word from either Dutch or Spanish according to its look while I can't find it in the two dictionaries I use.

Now it's time for Anki. I'm adding up all sentences from a phrasebook. About to finish next week. I will review those sentences a 3rd and a 4th time by doing them at Anki. The first time I saw them was when I read the book, the 2nd is now when I'm adding them to Anki and then Anki itself will make me review them. I think that's been quite useful. I'm getting the gist of the touristic conversation.

Then I take one news story from Diario Aruba. Those are much easier than the fiction stories, if only for the orthography which is more standardized. I can read them with no problem.

Finally, I read the lyrics and listen to the songs from the singer Izaline Calister, from Curaçao. She got lyrics in Papiamento translated into English at her website, a great learning tool!

Now the schedule is theoretically over. I go back to my previous textbook languages and try to take native materials for the ones at a stage at which they'd already be useful. This is neither Chinese nor Russian's case (if you ignore the textbook on Georgian), it's rather the case with Norwegian. I'm currently reading Kabalmysteryet from Jostein Gaarder alongside with its Portuguese translation.

Next attempt on using native materials is with Georgian. Yesterday I tried to read Lord of the Flies. It's very slow, though, and it's a period of the day at which I'm already mentally exhausted. It's a tough activity to read barely a few paragraphs, but that's what I need if I want my Georgian to get anywhere.

Then if I really have nothing to do and am still at work I pick one novel in English, Jeniffer's Government by Max Barry, which I'm not enjoying that much even though I really liked his book The Company.

No more language activities once I get home in the evening, around 7 pm depending on the day, but I still read on other subjects, like philosophy, spirituality, behavioral economics.

So, this is one day in my life. My main concern is the textbook schedule (from Chinese to Norwegian) then the 2 TV series episodes. Since the Papiamento study consists of several small tasks and there is no sense of "finishing" anything, I don't get much worried if I can't do this or that, as I may catch up later.

I could do this schedule up to the Georgian novel on Wednesday, the Norwegian novel only on Tuesday and Thursday and on Sunday I finished with the Papiamentu reading. Today I'm totally behind due to personal issues, as it is 3 pm now and I have to do Chinese Méthode 90, Georgian, Norwegian and Papiamentu, but I also more or less took the day off for writing at this and other threads.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4705 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 102 of 142
08 June 2013 at 11:47am | IP Logged 
Your routine looks solid and very well planned-out. I envy you actually, because if I had
to plan like that I would feel like I had to enter a monastic order (to speak with
Iversen's words). I actually just use a lot of dead time for Anki. It all works itself
out :)

Edited by tarvos on 12 June 2013 at 11:25am

1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5164 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 103 of 142
11 June 2013 at 10:12pm | IP Logged 
Thanks tarvos. I don't have much dead time, I either have time or I don't. So, I focus on activities that require focus and sitting down on the computer. I am only comfortable with doing extensive activities when my level gets better, as was the case with French.

I'm at lesson 57 of Le Russe. Really hope it won't take long to finish it.
As for my schedule overall, today I could do it in a more or less comfortable way. Sometimes it's fine to reverse order and do short-term activities earlier, so you get the feeling of accomplishment and don't have to worry about what to do next. I did my Papiamentu tasks first, and then I was free for watching series and after that, reading.
1 person has voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4705 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 104 of 142
12 June 2013 at 11:27am | IP Logged 
What method do you use for the Hanzi? I'm interested in gathering Mandarin Chinese
materials. (As in I will actually gather them, I won't put it off).

I think I'll go for Le Chinois and Chinesepod together, plus something for the writing.


1 person has voted this message useful



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