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TAC 2013 Tandem Winnipeg-Berlin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 73 of 137 07 March 2013 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
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These past few days I've been torn four ways:
1) I want to brush up on my spoken Mandarin because of the trip. For this reason I've having conversational classes on Skype every other day, I've written 3 lang-8 texts in Mandarin in the past 5 days and I've started to work hard on the "Elementary Short-Term Conversational Chinese" Anki deck. I already know most of the vocabulary in it, at least passively, but my main Chinese Anki deck contains a lot of advanced written Chinese vocabulary and this deck is much better for a refresher. So far I studied 150 new cards a day but I may have to slow down. 2) As the 6 Week Challenge is drawing to a close, I'm unhappy with only having put in 20 hours of Portuguese and I would like to be more advanced in the Duolingo system (in an unknown language; I am looking at their advanced French lessons) in order to be able to write a better review of it. 3) Graduating has been a long-term project of mine and right now it looks like it might finally happen within the next few months. In fact I only need to write a thesis paper and I have recently had the perfect inspiration for it, so that I've spent rather much time on French. 4) I realize I'm falling behind on my goal regarding book-reading... I recently finished an English book that should be of interest to all HTLAL members: Book 8: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany. This is a sci-fi novel with an unheard-of amount of linguistics in it. No insights that would astonish any of us, but enough to show that the author must have done some studies of linguistics; which are very fun to come across and recognize. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 74 of 137 11 March 2013 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
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I've had reduced internet access and reduced distractions, plus a long train trip - time for extensive reading
and Anki. Book 1: "B.A.f.H. - Das Neueste vom Bastard Assistant" by Florian Schiel Book 2: "Το ταξίδι στη χώρα που δε βλέπουν τα μάτια..." by Αντώνης Καλογήρου Book 3: "Io Alessandro" by Steven Pressfield Book 4: "L'Irak du silence" by Marie de Varney Book 5: "Ramsès - le temple des millions d'années" by Christian Jacq Book 6: "Oni ne pafas en Jamburg" by Mikaelo Bronŝtejn Book 7: "搭车去柏林" by 刘畅 Book 8: "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delaney Book 9: "Without Reserve" by Abigail Reynolds This is a fanfiction written by a friend of mine. I read a lot of fanfiction and don't normally count it but this one is novel-length and published. Book 10: "Eine Billion Dollar" by Andreas Eschbach A fascinating story about a pizza driver who unexpectedly inherits 1 trillion (note the difference between German and American numbers) dollars with a mission to give humanity back its future. Explains the global economy and finance quite well. I especially like this analogy for how central banks create money: Imagine you're organizing a festival at a school. In order to make things easier, you will have people buy plastic chips with which they can then pay for drinks, food and the like. You borrow 1000 red plastic chips from someone, but that person wants you to give back 1010 red plastic chips (10 extra chips as interest). This person is the only one who produces such plastic chips however. There are no such red plastic chips in the world which cannot be traced as originating with him, and everyone else also has to pay interest on their chips. You can trade with each other as much as you like; someone or other will wind up owing a lot of red chips, with no way to find any to pay back the loan. The more people borrow more chips, over time, the greater the gap between the amount of money that is in circulation and the amount that ought to be paid back. If it were plastic chips, nobody would accept to pay back 1010 chips... Book 11: "La ABC de tempoplanado" by Lothar J. Seiwert. This is a short but incredibly dense Esperanto book about time planning. I got a lot of motivations/ideas from it that I shall be trying out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 75 of 137 11 March 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged |
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My turn to update --
Almost finished the passive wave of Assimil Roumain (only 3 lessons left!), but I'm dragging behind on the active wave (about lesson 35). Doing both at once everyday takes too long anyway. Still reading the same German graphic novel I spoke of in earlier posts. I still need to finish the last written part of the mock C1 German exam I began last weekend, but I've been sick for the last few days so that was out of the question. I've also been toying with the idea of creating and teaching a Michel Thomas type French course (adapted to my local needs), or perhaps creating such a course for Esperanto... Consequently, I'd like to share a few links to free Michel Thomas inspired courses (since it took me a fair bit of time to locate them): Icelandic Greek and Spanish 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 76 of 137 16 March 2013 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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Now that I finished Assimil Roumain's passive wave (still at lesson 38 of the active wave), I decided to make a small
recording in Romanian. I'm not reading, but it is rehearsed. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 77 of 137 16 March 2013 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
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The 6 Week Challenge is over and I only reached 21 hours of Portuguese. Oh well. I did
brush up my Italian and Spanish at the same time, too, though, and it's Tadoku time now. I'll continue to pursue Spanish/Italian/Portuguese at the same time for a bit longer. To start off the Tadoku, I just finished a short book (120 pages) in Spanish, an easy reader with occasionally exercises. Book 12: "Spanisch für Büffelmuffel" I read this as preparation for tackling a native-level Spanish book on the culture of the Aymara people. This should be interesting! I'm flying to China on Tuesday. It will either be very good for my reading (flight times) or very bad. Either way, I'm not going to do anything if I don't have a goal, so I might as well set a goal and later worry about feasability. Other goals for my trip are practising a lot of Mandarin and stocking up on Chinese books. After China I will have to write my Magister thesis, 60-100 pages all in academic French, so I have French films and French books on the radar for then. Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 March 2013 at 10:11pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 78 of 137 17 March 2013 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
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Here are the results of the German C1 mock exam I just did. My faithful tandem log partner
has corrected the parts for which no answer key was available (as well as the section on oral production). 60% is needed to pass; a minimal score of 15/25 must be obtained in the oral part, and 45/75 on the written parts. Here are my results: Oral: 23/25 Written comprehension: 18/25 Listening comprehension: 15.5/25 Written composition: 18/25 Total: 74.5/100 Despite the 18/25 I got in the written composition section, it was obvious that there was a lot of room for improvement. I shall therefore concentrate on written production for the next little while. The actual exam is early August; I have to think about whether to strengthen C1 or aim for a C2 I could fail... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 79 of 137 17 March 2013 at 5:34pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations, partner! You wouldn't believe me when I said you were at C1...
I think strengthening C1 and aiming for C2 can look the same in practise, maybe a difference in intensity. Edited by Sprachprofi on 17 March 2013 at 10:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 80 of 137 24 March 2013 at 5:55pm | IP Logged |
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German: I've been stepping up my game and trying to write some German on a daily basis,
which my partner is kind enough to correct. Finding subjects that motivate me to write (despite the abundance of subjects available) is sometimes difficult, but I find writing to my partner easier and more liberating than writing in Lang-8 where I find I'm constantly censoring myself somehow. Romanian: While I only slowly and leisurely continue to make my way through the active wave of Assimil (lesson 44), I've been doing more self-talk and more writing (correspondence). It's getting fun. Distractions are however abundant: between the various online debates (eg. Chomsky- Foucault) and masterclasses (eg. Leonard Bernstein on music) I want to watch and progressing towards the possible writing of a book on pronunciation, squeezing in languages is sometimes a challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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