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Kronos’ TAC 2013 - Team Nebun | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 1 of 12 05 January 2013 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
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This is my log for the 2013 TAC, Team Nebun (Slavic/Romance).
Spanish, French, Italian False beginner in all three of them. French is a must, and the other two are probably my favorite languages apart from English and German. I've been to Spain, France, Belgium and Italy numerous times, also took language classes in college for all three, but my other and overall attempts at learning them have been altogether cursory and scattered. I know a few hundred words of Spanish and French at least, once managed to ask a girl out for an ice cream in Italian, and often get the gist of conversations and Wikipedia articles, but it does not go far beyond that. High time to get serious - for me these three languages have absolute priority. Portuguese I really 'discovered' Portuguese in the last couple of years only, and was amazed what a beautiful and fascinating language it is, both the European and Brazilian variety. By now I can't imagine confining myself to the aforementioned three at the cost of this one. Russian Did some Eastern European, particularly Polish, Russian and Siberian history in college, and managed to succeed in this without ever studying any of the languages. What really gave me the final push was the incredible story of Mary Hobson. Last year I spent a few weeks learning Cyrillic and some basics, but after that I had to break off my language studies for a while. I will now take it up again. Apart from those five I am interested in other languages too, but I realized that learning too many, no matter in what order or combination, slows down the learning process almost indefinitely and this would be to the detriment of those languages that are most important to me. So I decided to shelve the others for now and concentrate exclusively on my favorite ones first. Incidentally if I had made the selection according to general popularity and global 'usefulness' the choice would have been about the same. I am learning for passive and reading knowledge in the first place. Talking and communicating is also OK, but for me this comes at a later stage or when there is an occasion. For now I am content soaking up knowledge and getting a firm hold on those languages, and this will keep me busy for years anyway. This year I want to engage first and foremost in a systematic study of Spanish, and with lesser intensity also get started with Russian since this is by far the most difficult one and to me more of a long-term project that will bear fruit later on. Among the remaining three Romance languages French has priority, but I want to spend time with Italian and Portuguese on a regular basis too. I will post on my progress or random thoughts whenever I feel like, but I will also subscribe to the other team participants' logs. I really love this sort of open learning community where people pursue common goals and interact or show interest in each other, but where at the same time there is no pressure or fixed learning guidelines. See you later, and all the best for your studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 12 06 January 2013 at 3:07am | IP Logged |
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Good luck with all your studies this year! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 3 of 12 06 January 2013 at 4:51am | IP Logged |
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Hi Kerrie, thanks! If I had just a few drops of your seemingly limitless energy for learning, success in all those languages would probably be a matter of a mere year or two.
As things are, I'm a slacker. But I'm trying to change that. A new year is always a good occasion for a fresh start. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ancpem1 Groupie United States Joined 4389 days ago 56 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Greek, Latin, French | Message 4 of 12 06 January 2013 at 4:52am | IP Logged |
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Hi! I look forward to seeing your progress!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 12 06 January 2013 at 7:04am | IP Logged |
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Thank you ancpem1. Wishing you much success with your languages too.
Just saw the post on your Team Mir/Sparta log regarding re-learning of Russian Script, and put a small response there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 12 07 January 2013 at 2:47am | IP Logged |
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After going through the backlog of posts on the other team members' threads (just getting an idea what everyone is up to) I am now back at my own log again and lay out my learning schedule. [...]
My main focus will be on Spanish. I generally prefer the conventional type of grammar-translation manuals for getting a foothold in a given language, so I will start with those. This has various reasons, one being that the lesson texts are not bilingual. This means there are no crutches, you are forced to thoroughly study and understand all the points introduced in each lesson, and consequently the lesson text itself, before you move on to the next. You are not asked to intuit any meaning, but to learn it. This can be boring or taxing at times, but it is a relatively quick and almost foolproof method which hammers the structure and basic vocab of a language into your mind until they stick. It could be also an excellent preparation for the study of related languages, which should require progressively less grammar study since you have done much of the related structural work already with the first one. At least that's my logic. However I won't set out to learn like this with more than one or two languages at a time. For Russian I have the 1970s Assimil course which is one of their best organized courses, and I hope this will alleviate the influx of large doses of grammar and unfamiliar words - a look into a conventional Russian textbook just makes me shudder, so I will leave those on the shelf for now. As a starter for French, Italian and Portuguese I have deliberately chosen the old Assmil courses, i.e. the German versions of the 'Without Toil' series. These older materials are peculiar. On the surface they do not so much resemble a 'textbook', but quirky theatrical or radio performances of the era they originate from - the 1930s to 40s, sometimes 50s. These courses were not devised to make you order a cup of coffee or hold your own in a job interview, and the grammar also tends to be sketchy. Instead they give you an interesting and entertaining storyline, dealing with bizarre burglary plots, discussions on war strategy, lively family disputes, love triangles, and hundreds of other topics, including a generous serving of traditional songs in the target language. -- Yet, the old Assimils ARE textbooks, but sometimes you are led to almost forget it. Maybe the most outstanding feature are the recordings, executed in a declamatory style and exaggerated pronunciation. These recordings are not "bad" at all, in fact they are highly idiomatic, very engagingly done, and Assimil used to hire more than a dozen native speakers for some of those courses, exposing you to a rather wide variety of voices, minor accents and speaking styles. They are just overpronounced and old-fashioned, sometimes the lines are almost sung. - This is true for the renderings and re-recordings of the 1950s to 70s; the oldest ones issued on 78s were rather bland, at least those few of which I have heard some snippets. I find that these courses from a bygone era with all their idosyncrasies are just excellently suited to my purposes. I won't rely on them too much though, and later take recourse to other and more current material anyway, but they allow you to slowly grow into a language and assimilate it in slices, bit by bit. They are pleasing to the ears, and you can play the lessons as you would do with songs. Most of all, they are of immense help in keeping the Romance languages apart, since the content and recordings of these courses are highly individualistic - which acts as a bar against mixing them up already in the beginning. [...] EDIT Jan 7, 2013 Change of procedure. Originally I planned to split up my languages into two different cycles/days, but after the first and enjoyable day of study I already feel that this will be too rigid a rule and I will be better off remaining flexible - as long as I stay consistent and don't slow down more than is adequate. I will try to post a short report on my progress at least once a week here on this blog. Edited by Kronos on 07 January 2013 at 11:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 12 13 January 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
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Week 1 (Jan 7-12, 2013)
Modernes Spanisch - Lessons 1-3 Russisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 1-5 Französisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 1-5 Italienisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 1-5 Portugiesisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 1-5 ---------------- Time Management The first week was a good start - I managed to study all five languages for five days in a row, only yesterday I was occupied with other things and had to take a break. What I am now concerned with most is time management, since I really want to learn those languages and this will require years of regular study or other activies. And for this I need a sustainable schedule. Throughout the first week I put in 4-5 hours of work each day, and since all of this consists of pure study, this will be too demanding in the long run. I can comfortably deal with two languages each day, and if I put in some extra effort, three. But after that I invariably seem to cross an invisible line - further study is basically doable, but even after a break of several hours or more the level of concentration just falls off perceptibly, at the expense of those two languages that come in last. I like to work for 30-45 minutes on a given Assimil session, and at least twice the amount on Spanish, so four hours for five languages is the minimum, and five hours feels like the optimum. I have spent 23 hours from Mo-Fr, so in the long run this will also be a time problem. I really enjoy working on those languages simultaneously, it stimulates me and keeps me motivated, so shelving two of them would only be the last option. Instead of this I will now consider the languages as two distinct groups - my main focus will be on one language at a time (Spanish for now), and all the others will get equal but consistent low speed treatment. In practice: 1-2 hours of Spanish every day, and splitting the other four into two cycles i.e. on alternate days, with no language study on Sundays. In my previous experience 48 hours after doing a new lesson it used to be still fresh in my mind, but after 72 hours it would be already getting loose and needed some extra reviewing. So this is feasible. With this schedule I am doing only three languages each day, and if I feel like doing more I can better do further review, or put some more time into Spanish, like an additional half hour, speeding things up. Working attentively through an Assimil lesson can take anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes, depending on the language, the course, and the lesson itself. Therefore I won't be able to consistently add a new lesson each day or session. With the Spanish textbook meanwhile I even need three days for each lesson, but I hope to bring this back to two once I can put in some more daily time. So that's my new adjusted schedule, I will give it a try and report on this and other things next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5262 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 8 of 12 20 January 2013 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
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Week 2 (Jan 14-20, 2013)
Modernes Spanisch - Lessons 3-4 of 30 Französisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 6-7 of 140 Italienisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 6-7 of 140 Portugiesisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 6-7 of 101 Russisch ohne Mühe - Lessons 6-7 of 100 ---------------- This week I studied for only 15 hours, and instead of making my schedule too complicated I have now shifted to simply rotating the languages: Sp->Fr->It->Pt->Ru->Sp->etc., trying to put in either three languages or two hours each day at least. Spanish I am using Modernes Spanisch by Wolfgang Halm and José Moll Marqués, a mid-size grammar-translation textbook that originally came out in 1965. The original target group may have been schoolchildren, but I got my copy from an otherwise abysmal and overcrowded language course in college in the late 90s when it was still in print. Luckily I also purchased the teacher's manual with the answer key and additional excercises, and the audiocassette with the lesson texts read by native speakers. This book represents the best type of the good old color-free grammar-translation based manuals, which sadly have become a rare resource these days. Each of the 30 chapters introduces a certain set of grammar points and 50-60 new words, and you are made to learn this stuff by dint of a lesson text, a related grammar section and wordlist, and a good dose of (mostly L1->L2 translation) exercises. Each lesson is of the same length and introduces the same amount of new material to be learnt which results in an even learning curve. Unlike many similar textbooks this one isn't boring. The narratives/conversations are delightful and funny, the few 1960s-type drawings stylish, and the recordings are very good and some of the voices have a soothing quality to them. The presentation of the grammar and of words/constructions that are likely to be confused by beginners is succinct and intelligent throughout, and I realized that some of the exercises are actually drills that make you construct sentences and combine elements in various ways; a few of them were obviously designed to make you commit common blunders which you would possibly not become aware of without active practice. Generally I go through the new grammar and words first before reading the main text. To my big surprise the first lesson text which I could thus read fluently at first attempt, without halting or stumbling over unknown words or constructions, was already that of chapter 4, which I am just in the process of reviewing. I cannot think of a better introduction to the Spanish language. This book in particular should have never gotten out of print. Italian Oh how I like those old Assimil books! L'Italien sans peine first came out in 1935, I don't know if it was later revised, but I would think rather not since in the first set of lessons people are spending their free time going to concerts and on their holidays get up singing "O sole mio", before taking a relaxed walk with other travelers or the host. The advent of the cell phone has acted as a death knell to this sort of enforced recreation. And displaying the right manners in asking to borrow a book was apparently a major concern back then important enough to fill a chapter. All of these old textbooks, even the German one, are also big on lamenting the need for earning one's living and making fun of it; the stories are full of truants, scamblers, men of leisure, and people deploring their miserable fate of having to spend their hours in office all day, but this is always treated in a light-hearted manner, without a denigrating tone. Nowadays language textbooks have all but succumbed to the utilitarian spirit of our age and treat you with nightmarish topics like job interviews and the like. It is no wonder that people tend to leave them on the shelf for good after going through the first two or three chapters. I studied lessons 6 and 7 of the Italian course on Monday and Tuesday. Lesson 7 is a review lesson. Afterwards I didn't touch the book for several days. Yesterday, on Saturday, I turned on the audio, listening once more to the first 6 lessons. After the Spanish experience, this turned out to be the second surprise of this week. Though not always fluently, but with breaks and repeated exposure I could comprehend almost all the text of the first 4 or 5 lessons at first or second attempt. The strange thing is that after finishing the 7th (review) lesson four days earlier I definitely couldn't do so. I have never been an adherent of the each-and-every-day doctrine concerning learning a language, yet I am still surprised. Obviously the break was a real help. Maybe the subconscious needs some time to sort things out and have new information settle and take root. French I went through the first 7-10 lessons of this course already last year, and what I have been doing now so far is reviewing them thoroughly, getting me used to French. This is the German version of French without Toil, a delightful but old-fashioned book with a number of archaisms. The storyline has again the tinge of a bygone era (the course dates back to 1940), starting off with a traveling French lady who has her baggage always carried by porteurs. But A. Chérel managed to cram an incredible mass of information into it. Completing the first seven lessons almost feels like having worked through the first half of a short textbook. Only that this one has another 133 lessons waiting for me. Assimil is a French company, and so it is only natural that the French course should be one of their best. The book looks small on the outside, but the paper is thin and it has about 500 pages. Portuguese and Russian Here I'm clearly falling behind the other languages. There is no perceptible 'flow' as yet, and I am still sort of deciphering the words, rules, pronunciation, and in case of Russian the script. I will have to spend the next couple of sessions on those languages with further review before I move on. That's OK though, since these two courses have fewer lessons than the other two and particularly Russian much more lesson content. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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