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Assimil x4 for Film Studies - TAC’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 65 of 99 16 March 2014 at 3:36am | IP Logged |
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Last 2 weeks have been pretty solid, I decided to read a book in English, so that cut out significantly from my supplemental courses, but the Assimil routine marches on as always. Realizing I need to incorporate more (non-blind) shadowing back into my routine has changed a lot, but it's a bit too early to comment accurately on how big a difference it will make. So far the effects feel fairly huge, but I find that's a common feeling whenever I start incorporating a certain aspect of study that I'd been missing. It probably will start leveling out once all the semi-learned words floating around my head get appropriately reinforced.
Team Start French Completed: Pimsleur Plus, Advanced Michel Thomas & Foundations, FSI Basic Course I, French In Action (1 Pass), Assimil French Without Toil, Using French Current Tools: Franciául Könnyűszerrel Lesson 73, Französisch Ohne Mühe Lesson 41, French For Reading Chapter 12 lesson 83 Subs2SRS Films *Le Grand Jeu (Jacques Feyder, 1934) Thoughts: Enjoying reading in French. Nothing much else new. German Completed: 5 years of public school German, Assimil Les Nouvel Allemand Current Tools: L'Allemand Sans Peine Lesson 73, Немецкий без труда сегодня Lesson 73 (2nd Wave), Németül Könnyűszerrel Lesson 24 (3rd Wave) German For Reading Chapter 3 Lesson 14 Subs2SRS Films *Der Kongreß Tanzt (Erik Charell, 1931) Thoughts: Earlier I had though the slow filling gaps in my German was having completely memorized certain aspects and others being completely ignored or forgotten. But now I'm realizing I've never done any sort of intensive shadowing for German, so I will try to incorporate some and report back. Also my L'Allemand Sans Peine is an older edition so it switched over to having all the German dialogs in Gothic text. Will be fun to practice reading, even if I don't have much opportunity to use it. Team Катюша Russian Completed: Pimsleur III, Michel Thomas Foundations, Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian, Assimil Russian Current Tools:, Le Russe Lesson 63 (2nd Wave), Le russe sans peine Lesson 74, Beginning Russian Volume 1 Lesson 3, Modern Russian Lesson 13 Subs2SRS Films: *Строгий юноша (Абрам Роом, 1934) Thoughts: Assimil Le Russe Sans Peine lessons have been much more interesting lately. Overall difficulty has been getting a bit easier so I'm doing less scriptorium than usual. Feels like the core vocabulary is really taking root, so now each lesson I'm mostly just focusing on the newly introduced, usually topic-specific, vocab. Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Completed: Pimsleur I, FSI Basic Course I, Assimil Hungarian Current Tools: Assimil Hongrois Sans Peine Lesson 56 (2nd Wave), Ungarisch Ohne Mühe Lesson 7, FSI Basic Course II Unit 15 Subs2SRS: *János Vitéz (Marcell Jankovics, 1973) Thoughts: Started out as a slow study period for Hungarian, because I didn't make time for FSI. But actually now that I think I have a lot of core grammar concepts down, I think most of the help I was getting from FSI was the extensive practice. So now I'm going to focus on doing more intense shadowing for Assimil Hungarian instead, and perhaps go back to FSI later for review if I feel its necessary. Experiments and Wanderlust Romanian Current Tools: Assimil Le Roumain Sans Peine Lesson 41 Subs2SRS: *La 'Moara cu noroc' (Victor Iliu, 1955) Thoughts: Starting Subs2SRS has been fun so far, some vocab is sticking, and some basic grammar structures are finally taking shape. Going to try and fit in some shadowing before starting my second wave of the Assimil Romanian. Italian Current Tools: Assimil Italienisch Ohne Mühe Lesson 31, Итальянский Lesson 20 Thoughts: I think my Italian might be surpassing my Romanian, thanks to the more intensive study methods and the multiple courses. Since I've decided to do more shadowing recently I decided to temporarily drop Olaszul Könnyűszerrel until I have finished some of my other Assimil courses. Edited by YnEoS on 16 March 2014 at 5:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 66 of 99 16 March 2014 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
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Did a bit of self-reflection today about my shadowing habits and my language process and I came to several conclusions. Now course it's really difficult in language studies to say I did ____, and because of that _____ happened. But I think it will be useful to analyze my progress in my languages so far and try to draw some conclusions about the methods I used. These of course are just hypotheses, so I'll make some modifications of my routine, see how it affects my progress and post more thoughts later.
French - It's hard to attribute any single method to my french progress, because I tried out so many methods in it. What seems fairly clear though, is first I memorized most of Assimil French Without Toil via shadowing, but had a lot of gaps in my knowledge for less obvious aspects of grammar. Then going through the course with scriptorium seemed to help fill in a lot of these gaps. Assimil Using French was transparent enough for me that I seemed to be able to understand most of the dialogs through blind shadowing, and then worked through them more intensively later. Russian - My methods in Russian have been varied a lot so this is another one that's difficult to analyze. Last year I also did a lot of shadowing with the Assimil Russian (3rd gen) course but didn't do much practice with reading Cyrillic. After a bit of a break, this year I focused much more heavily on reading, but also got a lot of extensive practice through Modern Russian. I also noticed that due to the joke structure in Assimil Russian (3rd gen) I was able to figure out a lot of vocab with blind shadowing. Assimil Le Russe Sans Peine seemed to get less benefits from blind shadowing, but I also started that course a while after working through other materials. So far there don't seem to be any issues with the languages development, but to be safe some extra (non-blind) shadowing of Le Russe Sans Peine will likely be beneficial. Hungarian - With Hungarian I actually started with a lot of shadowing of the Assimil course, but due to the complex grammar it quickly started showing diminishing returns. I saw much better progress when I switched to FSI, but I still had difficulty with the late Assimil lessons. I think if I had continued shadowing the Assimil course while doing FSI, I might have made better progress and not needed a 3rd wave. So I will definitely add more shadowing into my routine, and see if I can finally move on from Assimil Hungarian. German - My German has a strong foundation thanks to the many years I studied it in highschool. I've done very little shadowing or extensive study with German and my progress has been slow. While it hasn't cause me too many difficulties using German as a base, I think it might be useful to add in a bit more shadowing here and there to see how that affects my progress. Italian & Romanian - Haven't done any shadowing with these, though I think their transparency has helped me keep up with the Assimil lessons, and I've gradually absorbed some frequently repeated vocab. Still I think shadowing will definitely be necessary for these languages to really take root. So at the moment I think it's appropriate to do some heavy shadowing for Hungarian and a moderate amount for Russian and German. To make time for this, and to make sure that my Italian and Romanian develop strongly, I think it will be useful to go back to Lesson 1 on all my Italian and Romanian Assimil courses, and try and stay ahead of them with shadowing and then use scriptorium for any missing gaps that develop. Edited by YnEoS on 16 March 2014 at 7:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 67 of 99 19 March 2014 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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Now that more active shadowing is becoming a staple of my routine again it's greatly changed my attitude towards a lot of things. It's been helping a ton with Assimil Hungarian, and now I'm much less interested in jumping around in a number of different courses, and I really want to focus on absorbing my main Assimil courses.
So for the moment I think I'm going to drop Italian from my routine. I was having a lot of fun with it, but I think it's a bit too tempting to try and sink a ton of time into the 3 generations of Assimil available. I think I'd rather focus on completing my Hungarian and Russian Assimils, and then once my coursebooks have been cleared out a bit, then I'll consider picking up Italian again. Can't take away Romanian from me though. 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 68 of 99 19 March 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged |
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Am fost surprins că înveți română și tu (e ok dacă tutuiesc?) Ce impresia ai? Pentru
mine, e o mare plăcere. Ce țeluri ți-ai pus? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 69 of 99 19 March 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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Unfortunately, I don't think I can formulate a response in Romanian just yet. My Romanian studies have been fairly light and only passive up til now. But hopefully I'll be able to write back to you in Romanian sometime in the future.
So far I think Romanian is the nicest sounding language I've come across. Not sure how far my studies will go just yet. At the moment I'm only planning to complete Assimil and to use a Subs2SRS deck in Anki to study Romanian film history while learning the language. And probably enjoy some good Romanian music and literature along the way. Hoping this will also set a good foundation in case my future self acquires the urge and means to travel. 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 70 of 99 19 March 2014 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
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Romania has been putting out good films recently, I hear.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 71 of 99 19 March 2014 at 6:14pm | IP Logged |
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Indeed, the Romanian New Wave, as I've heard it referred to, has been doing pretty well at film festivals the past decade or so. I've only seen "Marti, dupa craciun" so far, which I thought was really good. But more well known are "Moartea domnului Lazarescu" and "4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile".
One of my friends has been following it much more closely than I have, and keeps prodding me to watch more of them. So I'm using Romanian study as a sort of round-about motivator for me to watch them and get some linguistic benefit at the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 72 of 99 22 March 2014 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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Did a lot of experimenting and thinking about methodology this week, and I think I've come to some useful conclusions about how to make myself learn more efficiently. I'm somewhat disheartened, because I feel like a lot of my study time these past few months could've been used better. That said, I did make progress in all my languages, and I think knowing more about how I learn will be more valuable in the long run. Can't figure out a better method without trying out some less effective ones first right? Anyways, this post is going to contain a lot of stuff about my thoughts on methodology up to this point. Of course I won't really know the full validity of these statements until I've tested them out over a longer period. But I think it will be useful to sum up my experiences and lay out the principles that will govern my study methodology in the future.
Assimil Methodology: So pure extensive shadowing seems to be the quickest way for me to learn from an Assimil course. Though it seems that certain gaps in knowledge can still develop with only shadowing, as certain aspects of a language require more thought and analysis. Scriptorium is a useful way to work through a lesson more intensely and understand it more clearly, but this understanding is temporary. I think extensive shadowing a lot of content is a key component for retaining what I learn through intensive study. So I think from now on I'm throwing out the idea of doing multiple waves with Assimil. Rather I'm going to start each course with extensive shadowing to pick up whatever I can, then begin a single wave of 1 lesson a day intensive scriptorium to study the lessons in more detail once I have the gist of them. Then I can focus on details that aren't sticking and once I get them down, use more shadowing to make that knowledge more permanent. Shadowing L2 Audio L3 Text -or- Reading Listening: This is probably one of the most exciting personal discoveries I made this week. For whatever reason I never considered that using familiar audio and unknown text would be useful. This is possibly because I don't do much silent reading, so the idea of understanding and not speaking seems a bit strange to me still. But when shadowing Assimil Le Russe Sans Peine I realized that I was reading the french text quite comfortably. I did a bit more research on the topic and realized that Professor Arguelles mentions that this method is actually one of the quicker ways of developing reading skills. Anyways I tried it out with some of my other L2->L3 Assimil courses, and it it seems to work really really well. Especially courses where I know the audio inside and out already. So now I'm planning to basically drop all my 1 a day L2->L3 Assimil waves and just stat shadowing these courses more extensively so I can encounter more vocabulary and review it more often so it sticks better. To Sum Up: Basically I started my language learning by using many of Professor Arguelles' study methods, but then spent a year of mis-using them and developing my own inefficient modifications before realizing the importance of why they are each used and ending up in a very similar place as where I started. Though now I think I know a bit more about what benefit I get out of each method and how to use them together more effectively. So now onto my log. I'm going to start doing a large update every week instead of every other week. The main reason is because I'm dropping a lot of the lesson counting I previously used. I'm no longer going to list any "completed" courses because I plan on using and reviewing many different resources rather chaotically. I'm going to have 2 type of activities, intensive and extensive study methods. I'm only going to track my intensive methods from now on, and only the ones I'm presently using. Then I'll provide a summary of my progress for the week and what sort of extensive methods I'm using and to what ends. In all my languages I've now reduced my routine to 1 or 2 essential courses to use intensively. I'll still be using the other courses, but more extensively and I'll be focusing on only a few select courses in any given study day rather than bouncing around and doing a single lesson in each one. Team Start French Intensive Study: French For Reading Chapter 9 lesson 60 Subs2SRS Films *Le Grand Jeu (Jacques Feyder, 1934) Thought & Extensive Studies: Recently I've been neglecting French for Reading because I was focused on maintaining large assimil routine. But it's really one of the best courses I've used, so now that I've stripped down my routine a bit I'm going to make sure I dedicate myself to doing 1 lesson a day again. I've also jumped back a few chapters because I haven't been so consistent, so I want to review a bit. French continues to play a key role in the study of my other languages, but I'm still not focusing on pushing it forward too much yet. I'm hoping to start doing some L2->L3 listening reading when my other languages have caught up. German Intensive Study: German For Reading Chapter 3 Lesson 16 Subs2SRS Films *Der Kongreß Tanzt (Erik Charell, 1931) Thought & Extensive Studies: Focusing on German for Reading as my main study tool now. I've also been working pretty heavily on shadowing the 2nd Generation Assimil course to try to better familiarize myself with all the lessons. My hope is I can then shadow it in the Russian and Hungarian base to develop my reading skills in those languages. Also did a bit of shadowing Französisch Ohne Mühe to improve my German reading, and found it to be quite beneficial. Team Катюша Russian Intensive Study: Le Russe Lesson 70, Le russe sans peine Lesson 82 Subs2SRS Films: *Строгий юноша (Абрам Роом, 1934) Thought & Extensive Studies: I've been shadowing Le Russe Sans Peine a lot to better absorb all of the content of the course. I would say I've retained most of the content of the past lessons, but there are usually a few words here and there that I've forgotten even from the early lessons. I'm going to focus on shadowing the later lessons for now though to make sure my intensive study sticks. I'm also hoping to start practicing reading in Russian doing (R-L) shadowing in familiar Assimil courses with a Russian base. Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Intensive Study: Ungarisch Ohne Mühe Lesson 14 Subs2SRS: *János Vitéz (Marcell Jankovics, 1973) Thought & Extensive Studies: Shadowing Hungarian has revealed some really big gaps in my knowledge. While overall I felt like I had a pretty strong understanding of most of the lessons. My understanding of certain specific lessons seems to have never moved anywhere. For example lesson 19, which is one of the most difficult lessons in the course despite how early it appears. I had never worked too heavily on this one lesson because I was always intimidated by it, and I figured that it would be easier after I'd worked through later lessons and used FSI, that was not the case. Anyways after a lot of intensive study, I finally got it down and I would say I now understand lessons 1-35 completely. My comprehension of later lessons is somewhat erratic. Basically my plan from here on how is to 100% focus on memorizing Assimil Hungarian. I'm focusing my intensive studies on the earlier portion of the course, so I can revise what I mostly know, and to give myself time to finish my Russian courses before working through some of the more challenging later lessons. This will also give me more time to shadow the later half of the course and learn as much as possible that way before I go through it with scriptorium. My Hungarian studies have probably made the slowest progress due to the methods I was using. I feel pretty strongly now that if I'm going to learn this language, I need to focus on learning 1 resources inside and out and then move on to another. Experiments and Wanderlust Romanian Intensive Study: Assimil Le Roumain Sans Peine Lesson 7 Subs2SRS: *La 'Moara cu noroc' (Victor Iliu, 1955) Thought & Extensive Studies: Basically I've just reset my Assimil course to the beginning, and now I'm using it according to my new plan. Shadowing ahead, using scriptorium for the parts that don't stick, and then more shadowing of previously studies lessons to make sure what I learn sticks. We'll see how it works out in the end. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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