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Expug’s All at On(c)e Log - TAC14 | ||
Tags: Papiamento | Estonian | Georgian | Native Materials | Norwegian | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Mandarin | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 153 of 415 12 March 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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When reading the Georgian grammar, I found an interesting feature, that one of
performing the action described in the verb 'just a bit'. In Georgian, it is rendered by a preverb. I had read about this in Chinese before. Chinese uses reduplication. Georgian verb prefix - Chinese verb reduplication წაითამაშებ - you'll play around (a bit). Reminds me of Chinese's wanwan (yidianr). In portuguese we have a nominal construct which is very common at the spoken language: 'dar uma olhada' for taking a short look at something. Frustration with Tutu.I decided to stay longer at home today just to watch a full episode, but it crashed in the middle (when a new file is supposed to load) and wouldn't load. I'll have to resort to watching only halves. I was actually enjoying it! It wasn't just a language learning task. My comprehension was also improving, as well as my reading speed. Well, it's frustrating to find the ideal resource and not have access to it, but life goes on. Yesterday I found the NRK app. It would theoretically work here, but I can't install it at my old device. I will give it a try at home later, though. It would be nice to be able to follow up-to-date TV and it would be a good activity for dead periods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 154 of 415 13 March 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today was a happy day! I had some improvements in my languages, but, most of all, I
learned (from) interesting stuff. It deserves an update per language. Chinese First of all, 大耳朵图图. I gave it a second try and I could watch the 2nd part of episode 2 early at home. I'm considering seriously the idea of cramming it into my already busy and unpredictable early morning schedule. I could follow the second part much better now, and I could actually laugh! I think it was the first time I watched something in Chinese/Chinese subtitles/no English subtitles and I actually laughed. That means a lot to me after some moments of despair and struggle at the early A2 stage. |I am starting to feel a connection to the language and the culture, as if I was reconciling with one part of my viewing of the world that was missing. Now I think I can even take Classical Chinese one day and actually understand something, both linguistically and culturally. I am more and more convinced and excited about doing the long journey into the Chinese culture. I'm thankful to all the people at this forum (vermillon, my teammates lorinth, Ninibo - Crush and Bao, are you teammates?) and at other places. Learning Chinese is now no longer at the 'obligation' stage. Even though I plan to stay with textbooks for longer and longer, I'm more and more confident that I can manage to find a way through the script, while the spoken language becomes natural. I can see myself planning a trip to China and visiting picturesque landscapes while trying to take to native speakers or maybe, in more distant sites, people who aren't native but can speak Mandarin properly. I'm also enjoying 后厨 and actually understanding a bit of it, even if I have to pause for the subtitles. I believe my learning happens in an organic way. I don't notice the evolution of character learning, but I know one day I will pick an ordinary Chinese text and get the gist of it even with no access for translation - pinyin doesn't really matter here, when I don't know the pinyin I do read the hanzi in context and sometimes I know its meaning but don't remember its sound, but it's no problem for the understanding then. I want to be able to talk in Chinese and this may include some incursions into Sharedtalk early in the morning again. I really have to organize myself to take my best out of the mornings. German is on hold and so is Georgian somehow, and those can be replaced by Chinese. I don't know, I'm really happy about Chinese now. I know that using Memrise also helped a lot. Georgian I'm relieved to realize that Georgian: a structural grammar is so complete in terms of morphology that it can be used as the reference for Georgian verbs. I don't have to worry about getting another title that is available or waiting for the publishing of yet another title by another author. I just have to get used to searching - there is indeed a remissive index at the back. I really enjoyed reading on the indirect verbs and realizing I have conjugation patterns for them. They account for a large amount of the ones used in daily conversation, such as want, love, like, need, be cold, be warm, hate etc (not that I use 'hate' in daily conversation hehe). Now the film მანდარინები/Mandarinebi. It was a GREAT film, linguistically and socio- culturally. I realized I could follow a TV show with subtitles in Georgian (if I had the chance to). I learned a lot from intensive watching/subtitle reading but I could get by with just pausing for reading the subtitles on my own. The plot is great and deals with human values on war, religion, friendship and I won't give any spolier here. As I said before, it is spoken in Estonian and Russian and there is a reason it is so. I could also understand a lot of the Russian being spoken while comparing it to the Georgian subtitles. Tomorrow I will try watching the TED dialogues. It's not Georgian audio, only subtitles again, but I'm confident that I will be able to learn quite a bit from it. I'm getting a bit lost sometimes with reading Paulo Coelho's book because some translations in Georgian are rather loose, but maybe I'd try reading them longer first before being too picky at the fact they don't match the original. I'm learning to enjoy the process. Russian The main lessons of my old TY Russian are over. Now there are some texts to read. All of them have translations. Maybe I can finish tomorrow or sometime next week. Report will come rightafter. I'm happy with russianpod lessons, btw. As a matter of fact, having a pod course is an important factor when deciding which language to learn in terms of resources. So, I'm much more confident about Indonesian, Turkish or Greek later because I know they'll have those comprehensive podcast lessons. Norwegian Svarte penger, hvite løgner ends tomorrow. I don't know which one I'll pick later. Maybe Nattskiftet. It won't be now that I will try a subtitleless approach, though. Will save it for moments of necessity. For the moment, I'm happy with being able of getting a lot from the missing speed when the subtitles are too economic, which is the case for several excerpt from Svarte Penger, Hvite Løgner. French Started watching "Caché", suggested by Cristianoo. A break from comedies, even though I enjoyed these a lot. I'm really enjoying French media as a whole. It is a language I'm using, not studying, to quote someone from one of those threads I've been reading since yday. German 'La Pratique de L'Allemand' is a bit boring. Notes on vocabulary always annoy me. Vocabulary, just like morphology items, should be assimilated. Having notes explaining them and even adding further examples totally defeats the point of Assimil. I'm getting around, though. Just reached the half of the book. Duolingo is ok. Much easier at these final stages, thanks to synergy. After all, I'm pushing myself into intermediate/advanced German from Assimil. I'm really happy with progress made in the past months. I only hope my Russian could get envious and try to progress itself as much as the Russian did. That's all, folks! Wish everyone a nice weekend. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 155 of 415 14 March 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm glad I went through a new day of good studies. I'm particularly happy when there's
new resources going on. I don't know how, but I'm managing to wake up earlier and actually do something in the morning. I watched Tutu's episode 3, and while I didn't pay as much attention as yesterday, it was enough to make me satisfied with my small progress. I also finished Memrise, listened to a Papiamento news clip as usual. I noticed Tuttle's Flashcards is coming to an end, but volume 4 is big, so it will take me longer than 2 months to accomplish this task fully. TY Russian might take a few days longer. Texts are longer than I thought, and t only gets worse. I don't have parallel texts to compare as the one text is in the lessons section and its translation is in the exercises' answer key section. I'm still enjoying the warm-up for further bilingual reading, though. La pratique de l'allemand is boring, I think I can admit it now. As much as I'm enjoying some literary excerpts, I'm always for contemporary literature that deals with the way people actually live today. I hope Perfectionnement Allemand is better. As for the vocabulary, there are indeed many unknown words, but there's some sort of synergy that keeps going on between Assimil and Duolingo. Btw, I managed to find videos of Brazilian lecturers in a topic that interests me subtitled in German. Not bad an idea for a to-be-watched list, though there are also the videos from easy-languages.org . I'm afraid I will have so much to watch and read in German that I may feel the same pleasure and delightment I feel with French now. Speaking of subtitles...just had the first experience with my TED Subtitles app! It satisfactorily overcame the block and it is going to work wonders for my Georgian! I loaded a video that had subtitles in Georgian and while I played it I could read them as well as the English ones. At halfway, I switched the other subtitles to Portuguese to check if they were accurate. Well, since the Portuguese ones are accurate, I can only hope the Georgian ones will also be. I can follow and understand the TED speech better than Paulo Coelho's book, but I hope this is not thanks to the Georgian subtitle being a calque of the English audio. Anyway, what a nice addition to my learning tools! I can only compare it to Assimil and the podcast lessons. I can see the future when I will be playing videos with subtitles in Estonian, Indonesian, Turkish. Watching TED means I found a compromise between my language-learning mania and the need to be informed about whast's happening in the world. There are good books form TED authors but I end not reading them because it's just English reading. Now I can at least watch the talks while doing my most time-consuming activity which is language learning. I plan to watch all the videos in Georgian and if I want to start other languages I will try to pick different videos. Will leave it mostly for languages with less resources, though having bilingual subtitles is still important for Chinese, for example. The Norwegian series Svarte penger, hvite løgner is over. I definitely preferred the comedy ones such as Dag and Lilyhammer. At some points the dense atmosphere of lies, intrigues, corruption was getting on my nerves. As the ordinary Brazilian I watch fiction in the hope the corrupts get punished, as it is seldom the case in real life here. So, as far as the criminals go unpunished, I feel anxious about it. Anyway, I still recommend it though it seems too long. The story could have been told in half the time. Edited by Expugnator on 14 March 2014 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 156 of 415 17 March 2014 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I have much to report but little time. I'll try to sum up the main facts.
The weekend was quite productive. Not exactly the Saturday, a busy day when I only kept up with Anki and Tuttle's Flashcards. But then I made up for that time on Sunday: kept up with both Memrise and Duolingo, to the extent that there are only two units left at Duolingo! Then I'll resist starting Italian and wsit for Duolingo Russian instead. On Sunday I also managed to restore my library at both devices. I had to restore it manually at the computer first because I switched computers last year, so the files weren't to be found at the same location anymore. Now I have enough to carry on. I had lost sight of some important books and I will have them in mind for a later incursion. I also took the time to download everything Georgian from Culture Talk as well as the Russian Course from Princeton again. No excuses now. Most important, I could read 4 pages from A Georgian Reader, that means I will finish it 2 days earlier. About 3 weeks left. Today started with Memrise accomplished early. I managed to watch Tutu's cartoon once again - 4 days of consistency. I'm really happy about that. I tried to get my headset to work but the mic is definitively damaged. Bought a new one, though cheaper, and will give it a try at Sharedtalk next morning - I won't join the voicechat before I can have the mic working properly. I had to see the eye doctor because my glasses weren't made properly. That meant an interruption in the middle of the afternoon. It was hard to catch up, but I managed it (technically there's still the French film but I can do 20 minutes tomorrow. I liked the series Nattskiftet. It's humor, and I'm seeing words I wasn't at my previous series that dealt mostly with police and family issues. Ted Talks go smoothly, though my brain is kind of having enough of my daily Georgian reading quota, flipping from Georgian into translation back-and-forth. My step English series now is The Big Bang Theory, and I'm happy about that. It was the first time I watched it without subtitles, and I was afraid I'd understand much less thanks to the nonsensed scientific jargon, but I could get by. Today it didn't work properly as a step resource, as I'm actually behind at schedule, but I'm happy I can insert it at my routine and have some more fun. I had stopped at the end of Season 5 so there's a lot to catch up, even at a 1-ep a day rhythm. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 157 of 415 18 March 2014 at 8:41am | IP Logged | ||
I love The Big Bang Theory, it's very funny. The English series that helped me with the language in a way I cannot measure was Blackadder. That was years ago but I still like watching it. Everything comes with subtitles in Greece, which is great because you get to hear languages. Except some latin american/brazilian soap operas many years ago. Fortunately they went back to subtitles! Great log, as always! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 158 of 415 18 March 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, I didn't know you watched Brazilian soap operas in Greece, renaissancemedi. As
a matter of fact, I'd rather Brazilian soap operas got dubbed, thus I could benefit from the context and learn the dubbed language :) Here in Brazil things are usually dubbed at the open (non-cable) TV, and now even films at the cinema are getting dubbed too, which is a pity. We have good dubbing but I find always easier to follow when there's subtitles - I'd even like Brazilian films to be dubbed so I could understand them no matter the noise at the projection room. Today's post is mostly about time management. First of all, the mornings. I have started to squeeze a lot of activities into it and it's not always that much productive. Oftentimes I have to drop by somewhere before going to work, which reduces my mornings even more. Today after coming from the gym I had over an hour ahead but, besides preparing my snacks, I also spent around half an hour at Memrise. That's too much for an SRS activity. I didn't even touch Duolingo or the Papiamento videos this morning. I decided to stick to the plan and watch Tutu, and I don't regret it. It was just about time. I could drop by the eyeglass shop and deliver my new glasses to get corrected. In the morning I also finally tried Sharedtalk's voicechat. I can't thank fellow teammates enough. There are more people from Asia and Russia, like fabriciocarraro said. I invited a Chinese woman but she didn't know much English and wasn't understanding my Chinese either - well, she kinda understood it but tried somehow to reply in English. I suspect her English is worse than my Chinese. A pity. Better luck next time, and now I have to get organized to make use of this quality time So, that's my quality time, the early mornings, at least for voicechatting, Skyping or using other resources that require my internet connection at home, such as Memrise. I shouldn't really push anything into the evening. At most I'd do something in advance in the evening, like Memrise or Duolingo (as a matter of fact, it turned out worse to do Memrise in advance yesterday, as today I had to continue the new chapter and already water the first words from it). I have the following activities: * Anki - Chinese and German * Tuttle Flashcards * Going to the gym * Memrise * Preparing snacks * Papiamento video * Tutu's episode + voicechatting + going downtown once in a while before work time So far the voicechatting has been the most sacrificed activity. It shouldn't be so, as I need conversation now that Chinese, German and Georgian reach a better level. I'm trying to think about ways to get my morning more productive. Ideally, I'd drop some activities. But there are some I can't do any other time: - Tutu, Memrise I can do Anki and Tuttle Flashcards during the day, but I really find them so boring that they would rather slow me down for other activities. The way I deal with them today, I use them as a wake up tool. Having to tap at the screen and flip through the pages help me awake. I really spend a lot of time getting ready for going to the gym. I do need to wait a little to make sure I ate enough and won't have any hunger low sugar issue while at the gym. I don't know how I can optimize this process. The only solution would be waking up earlier, but I already wake up early enough for someone who only starts working at ten. Anyway, Tuttle Flashcards will be over in no longer than 50 days (I'm at the final section) and even though my Anki decks are a lifetime worth, I may just decide to delete the app for good if I have to format my device, and stick to Memrise. I may give a try with Memrise, even though it's not ideal as the very first activity because it involves audio. As for the Papiamento video, it's so short that it doesn't really make a difference and it's nice to be able to focus on it. I could skip the gym once a week in order to do Skype sessions, but that's not the tradeoff I'd like to lead myself into. I'd rather take those mornings I wouldn't make it to the gym anyway and use them for voicechatting. Going to the gym after work is out of question now that I work till early in the evening. All day long My schedule has already plenty of activities, though I'm getting rid of Duolingo as of tomorrow and I may drop Anki and other Flashcards eventually and stick to Memrise. What I'm missing during the day is quality time for doing active tasks: writing in my target languages, translating songs both from TL and into them (I enjoy doing this with the weirdest Brazilian songs, I know this sounds crazy). There are also some passive-skills activities I could be doing if I hadn't risking burnout: - Reading native materials in Russian (currently doing textbook studying and podcast lessons); - Watching more native Chinese media, like the series 后厨 (I'm currently watching 图图 and Travel in Chinese); - Reading native materials in Chinese (I'm currently reading none, only textbooks, and I'd like to read short articles as well as the stories from Chinese Reading Practice, which I was enjoying so far) - Reading and watching native materials in German (none so far, I'm only studying from La pratique de l'allemand). So, to sum up: I have some activities I'd like to get rid of soon: Duolingo, Chinese Flashcards. I also want to finish my Georgian textbooks asap so I can start Estonian, as I'm already taking a good amount of bilingual reading for Georgian. I want to resume writing in my native languages, even if freely, without looking words up or proofreading, and I want to translate songs and share lyrics I find interesting. There are also several other activities I'd like to do. At the moment, I can identify some activities that, even though I wouldn't drop for good now, [b/at their current form are time-consuming, both within the day and in the long run. These are: the two Georgian study books: Georgian: a structural grammar takes me half an hour and there are still two weeks left till I can replace it; A Georgian reader, still three weeks left; La pratique de l'allemand, which also takes nearly 30 minutes but will end soon;the French reading, which takes place in Middle Age and will end in about two weeks. As soon as I can replace them with more effective activities, I may have more time at least for the writing tasks; I don't think it's wise to add another task of textbook/reading/watching at my schedule now, though. I really work better with short tasks that correspond to my attention span. So, when I read only 2 pages from a Georgian novel it's because I can't take more than that in a way that would still be optimal learning and that wouldn't make me tired for the other activities. Tasks do get shorter with time: I can read Norwegian much faster now, not to mention French - except for an ocasional text that deals with anacronic events. So, in the long run, if my German/Georgian/Russian textbook studying starts to occur more smoothly (as it's happening with the Chinese), I may be able to add one more reading task to my scheudle, for example, German. Talking about these issues makes me a little anxious but I'm quick at attempting to overcome it, as it helps little. As much as I'm eager about reading in German or watching more Chinese media, I know my limits. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 159 of 415 19 March 2014 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even though this was supposed to be my last Duolingo day, I decided to take a breath so I can try to write my thoughts in a more coherent way.
So, the morning. I still got stuck at Memrise. It does take at least 20 minutes. I didn't manage to watch Tutu because it crashed. I will try other sources. Maybe I can try watching it this evening, even though I get home a bit late. On the other hand, I finally had a nice conversation with a Chinese who knows English. We didn't actually talk in Chinese, but she helped me pronounce some sentences. She corrected mostly the tone contours. There were some tones I did recognize I got wrong, but overall it wasn't that bad. She's from a city near Hong Kong, but her pronunciation sounds quite standard, as far as I can tell. She said I could Skype her anytime, so I hope I can have more opportunities. I could spend quite a few minutes I could have used for talking in Georgian at Skype if I hadn't had luck with Chinese at sharedtalk. I'm relieved I got Georgian: A Structural Grammar. It focuses on morphology and that makes it a good reference work. I can easily access the most important verbs with all their paradigms. Today I was reading on the complete, pluri-rooted charts for give and say. They are among the trickiest ones in Georgian, and it's nice to have a quick reference. TY Russian will probably be over tomorrow. I had a look at Schaum's Outline of Russian Grammar but it is not the type of exercises I'd like to do. Anyway, I hope I can take a more careful look tomorrow to decide if I'm picking a textbook that focuses on grammar, an intermediate textbook or the Princeton course. So, I got more chat in Georgian - textchat again this time, this is what I can get from sharedtalk and it's working. I'm really enjoying chatting in Georgian, it's getting easier. I can even say I have some islands. It's noticeable how I can make myself understood but, since the vocabulary is totally alien, can't understand much apart from those conversational contexts. Today's TED talk - which I watch with subtitles in Portuguese and Georgian - was the longest one but it was great. It was about the educational system. I'm really glad I'm going for those TED talks. I'm getting the chance to have access to over-the-edge information while studying Georgian. At moments today I started to feel a bit anxious about so much effort put in for Georgian and Chinese and so little concrete result - that feeling language learners do - but I'm still getting to do so many cool things. Besides, I'm at a routine at both languages at which I'm constantly adding a context-rich corpus of native material sentences, and I believe it will soon start paying off. I can't evaluate days or weeks: I believe in a few months I will get used to much of the vocabulary I have access to in my most recurrent resources, which are the intermediate-designed travelling sketches in Chinese and the non-fiction speeches in Georgian (as much as I'm also reading fiction in Georgian, too, but this time a translation from Portuguese and a story that happens in Spain and France, to the extent that there's plenty of vocabulary that deals with ordinary life). My book Everyday Chinese Fables and Anedoctes is also coming to an end and I still haven't made up my mind. I have one book from Chinese Breeze, 'I really want to find her', but I'm not sure it will be that 'breeze'. There are the options I discussed at the Team Thread: Speak Chinese, some business ones. I'll see how my spirit will be next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 160 of 415 20 March 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Things are getting a little more on track. I'm still overwhelmed by my daily Georgian reading - and the apparent lack of progress thereof.I keep working on TED
dialogues and they are useful, but I can't keep focused on all of three resources - the Georgian Reader, which includes the shortest excerpt but also the most irrelevant one; the TED dialogue - it's quick for me to follow and I'm not always in the mood to pause, not when the dialogue is a bit uninteresting; and the Paulo Coelho book, which is supposed to be the easiest one, and it is, but sometimes when I get to it I'm approaching Georgian reading burnout, and so I do skip a deeper analysis of a few subjects. TED is forcing me to read subtitles fast; in the case of the Georgian Reader, sometimes I skim parts I don't get any words from; as a result, my reading speed in Georgian is improving, even it means just decoding letters and not meanings! That's fuel for further improvements such as becoming independent with the subtitles in TED and not having to pause when I want to process the language. Yeah, reading two subtitles at once in two different scripts while paying attention to the audio in a third language can be tricky but it is not only effective; it can also be done efficiently in real-time after some practice. This morning I had a little more free time and I could do Memrise and Tutu in the morning. I found an alternate source for Tutu: it has at least the first season! I'm relieved now. Nada como um dia após o outro, as we say in my native. Memrise is still a bit irritating regarding the time the sessions take, but I can't complain about its efficiency. It's just that I have the feeling all cards at HSK2 have already been shown at HSK1; I'm about to start the deck HSK3 and I'm wondering if I will have to review everything! That will mean a lot of boring sessions for cards that are indeed already mastered and don't need this daily refreshment. That takes me out the chance of progressing faster. Overall, I'm happy with studying Chinese. I still have to find the fine tune between studying effectively and having fun with stuff. Like I said, I really enjoy 图图 and i'm itching for watching whatever contemporary series. I saw some titles like 真爱惹麻烦 and 爱情面前谁怕谁 at a Youtube channel I access and I wonder how helpful they can be. They use simplified characters in the subtitles, so I assume it's standard mandarin. I'm really hooked up by Chinese media and lately I know I will be by Chinese reading too, when I get my schedule structure for doing it more often than when there are some 15 minutes left. It's getting addictive. I'm having busier times at which I do repetitive tasks and thus I'm having time to watch my French film, Norwegian series (Nattskiftet is quite funny, btw, and I'm understanding about 90% of the subtitles and I bet some 55% of the audio only), listening to the Chinese and Russian podcasts and, when it's all over and I still have to work and can only listen/watch, I then run a new episode of The Big Bang Theory. It's just enough fun for an ordinary weekday! ------------Russian starts here-------------- Teach Yourself Russian old edition is over. Some thoughts: - It didn't work the same as the old TY French or even the old TY Norwegian. I wanted to learn grammar by translating into Russian while using useful vocabulary. The problem was the exercises weren't good enough. The sentences got too long (or the exercises themselves with over 50 sentences to be translated each way) and the vocabulary wasn't the most useful; they were the ones typical of such books and which account for their biggest flaws, despite their usefulness. So, the exercises more or less lost me in the middle. I didn't reach my goal of becoming familiarized with Russian declensions at least a regular paradigm, and I didn't learn that much useful vocabulary either. An evidence of that is that the final exercises which consist of short stories or articles wee still far from transparent: I looked at the Russian and got less than 20% of the words and when I looked back at English I didn't have enough corpus to actually associate the Russian and the translation in an effective way for my learning. Well, I did learn more about grammar in spite of not having learned the endings; I learned quite a bit on syntax and now I can at least situate each element in a Russian sentence more clearly. If the vocabulary was renewed and so were the exercises, the book would turn into a consistent tool. Anyway, that leaves me with the task of finding still another book for learning grammar while reading short texts and translating from source language into Russian. I still am not ready for an intermediate textbook. So, I checked New Penguin but the exercises are not that appropriate. What will make the difference now are indeed the exercises, as I really am familiarized with the whole concept of declensions. What I need now is a way to assimilate the case endings - but Assimil is long over and wasn't that much helpful either. Méthode 90 comes up as a good opportunity. It is the equivalent of Assimil but working from the point of view of grammar instead, it's just a matter of focus. Grammar takes a central point at the lesson (YnEoS ought to be reading this) instead of being scattered through endless notes. The dialogues are short, which means just enough to give me my daily practice - they're about the same as Russianpod's lessons. The exercises, then, they are as short as the dialogues - 10 sentences at most. That means I will get just enough pratice with no burnout. There are fill-in-the-blanks too but answers are at the same page, so that saves a lot of flipping back-and-forth time. Before that, a pit-stop though. I was browsing through the Princeton course and at a given moment I thought of starting from lesson 5 in order to overcome my shortenings at the phonology. I'd have to go through all the explanations on palatalizations, but now I realize it's not worth going through loads of easy dialogues just because I want to start at one point that covers phonology with the depth I need now. So, I found the book 'How to pronounce Russian correctly' and this, indeed, will be my next Russian resource. Then Méthode 90, then Princeton at the appropriate stage, then I'll see if I'm going to need more on declension, then maybe it's time for intermediate textbooks with longer texts. I haven't forgot the need to start reading, as much as the final texts of TY Russian discouraged me by showing me my level is still behind. I bought that translation of a Brazilian book and I'm putting my hopes on it. ----------Chinese again---------------- Still trying to make up my mind about my next Mandarin resource, too. I really enjoyed reading short stories. Chinese Breeze still seems long. As for longer textbook lessons with typical dialogues, I'm afraid they may not teach me much apart from the occasional new words introduced at each dialogue, and this I already get from Travel in Chinese and the podcast. It's funny how for both Chinese and Russian the more 'interactive' tools are fulfilling the role a textbook would have done so far. Even funnier how, as much as I am an advocate of keeping it safe by working with textbooks, I'm actually delving into immersion-like native materials in a very loose, extensive way for Georgian and for Chinese. I'm fully aware that I'd be making next to no progress with watching Chinese and reading Georgian if I weren't backing those efforts with progressive, graded studies from other sources. In the case of Georgian, I'm currently in the lack of texts aimed at my intermediate level, and I can feel the consequences by having burnout. Georgian doesn't have many choices, though. For Chinese, I do have choices. So, I think my corpus is not that badly chosen. I'm actually eager for more just because I'm really enjoying the process, with SRS, audio-SRS, cartoon, TV series aimed at learners, podcast aimed at learners, TV series when possible. Ah, and yeah, I'm missing a reading resource. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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