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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 385 of 415 11 December 2014 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I had some extra activities to do and so everything got delayed. It turns out the Estonian in Estnisch Lehrbuch is getting more difficult, even though I do have a better comprehension than in the previous textbooks. I had to read the OCR'ed dialgoues more carefully, and at one point I thought of OCR'ing the exercises too, given the fact that the imperative forms involve both types of infinitives and thus it can be confusing to look up one word and then find the same word in another almost unrecognizable root. Anyway, I kept just typing and translating and it became a bit better eventually, only that it was slower than usual.
As for the Georgian-Russian textbook, the lessons now are particularly short. I read a text about history of Tbilisi again (always that regardless the textbook) and it turned out I understood the Georgian better than the Russian. Finished the book Intermediate Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook, by Routledge. This book was quite helpful, much more than the Basic Chinese one. It deals mostly with sentences and is full of examples. The Basic one covered parts of speech and so we got some examples that were simply word lists,a nd since this one is about sentences there is a good input on idiomatic Chinese - and output too, as the translation exercises are quite ok. Now, what to do next?! I just want another intermediate reader with audio and pinyin. So I am going to do Le chinois par boules de neige. This one has audio, pinyin and the like. Other resources are Practical Chinese for Official Functions, Short Chinese TV Plays (no audio), Chinois mode d'emploi, Modern Chinese Grammar by Routledge, Bescherelle - Le chinois pour tous (I Have to keep writing the list of materials I'm going to use next and even so I still leave stuff behind). At today's Hjem, I heard "Spent" being used to mean "Nervous", and I thought it meant "exciting". The sister was asking the bride if she was nervous. Is it the most common word to use at this case? 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 386 of 415 12 December 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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A corpus of dialogues in Estnisch Lehrbuch. Each lesson now has about three pages of dialogues, that is about 100 lines of dialogues. The dialogues and exercises start to be longer and more difficult. I'm spending a good time trying to decypher the dialogues (OCR isn't working so well now, to make things more complicated) and I decided to OCR the sentences in the exercises, too, as I've been spending a lot of time looking words up.
I'm a member of an active Estonian group for Spanish speakers at FB. I noticed quite a few interesting links and videos. For example, there are the songs for the film Tangled in Estonian with subtitles in both Estonian and English. One of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=263oGRL8UAM Chinese reading went ok and so went the first lesson of 'Le chinois pas boules de neige'. This book claims to bring you from B1 to B2 but that sounds ambitious. Neither I believe I am good enough at B2 nor can I reach B2 from it alone. At least it performs its role well: using a limited set of characters and forcing you to get the hang of the Chinese sentence (there is no translations). Étape par Étape was better but overall the quality of Chinese materials in French is really high, even in terms of book layout which is quite appealing to me. The audio quality and edition is also good, and the continent seems relevant. Georgian reading finally going smoothly, too. Same issues with Chinese: when it's short periods and dialogues I can go with the flow (except that in the case of Chinese I still have to use PeraPera most of the time; the most important to notice here is that I start to figure out how the sentence works, and when I can't say what a word means I at least know its role in a sentence, so, if it is an adverb or adjective I can still figure out what's going on without it and with just a quick glance at the translation later). Tried to watch Deutsch Direkt a little more focused today. I remembered to turn the automatic German subtitles on again: they are sufficiently good. People speak slow, but even the interviewees do so. I wonder if they are deliberately asked to speak very slow or is it just the 1980's and so people weren't as much fasttalkers by that time as they are today. RUssian is a bit stagnated. I think I need similar resources for Russian as for Chinese: short, complete stories. I'm a bit sick of Assimil, sometimes the humor is forced. Besides, textbook still has the issue with adding up too many related words in an unnatural distribution. I was benefiting more from texts from Russianpod. They are actually shorter than Assimil Perfectionnement ones (and I'm not even counting Assimil for the SC; one definitely should). I'm still reading from Divergent and using the Georgian-Russian textbook and I don't see a significant progress when compared to the other languages. Now I also think a mouse-over dictionary would be cool for Russian too. The only resource I seem to be learning a significant amount from is Bednaya Nastya, and for this I'm trying to work on it and on Divergent separatedly now. A co-worker advised me to read Stieg Larsson's trilogy. It is available in Georgian (I wouldn't read it in Swedish, it would confuse my Norwegian). I flipped through it and it seems much harder than the other options I mentioned before (Candace Bushnell and E. L. James). Wonder why. Looks like I'm going to start Turkish much earlier than expected! Taking part in the Turkic challenge organized by Chung, which starts on Monday. Will be just a first approach to the language, and I hope it will be enough to turn me into a false beginner next time I start it for real. We'll see. Three months and a half is enough to have a good overview of a language's grammar. As has been the case most of this week, no time left for watching more series. Now I can blame the Estonian textbook in German, not because of the German but the Estonian itself. At least I finished the Norwegian series Hjem and now I'm going to resume the film Fritt Vilt. There are several other norwegian films with English subtitles which are easily available, even if my priority is still having Norwegian subtitles. Now that I look back I see that I'm writing a lot on a regular basis, and I'm not even repeating myself that much. I wonder where all those impressions are coming from., since I'm not making that much progress and I'm essentially using the same type of resources for the same languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 387 of 415 12 December 2014 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
Why not read it in Norwegian? It's a good read (at least the Swedish original). 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 388 of 415 13 December 2014 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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The thing is Norwegian books are more expensive and I'd better invest on original Norwegian novels then.
Besides, I can already read those, I tend to keep translations for weaker languages. 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 389 of 415 15 December 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Estnisch Lehrbuch - a very focused lesson. I payed attention to the dialogues and noticed there has been a considerable increase in my understanding. I also OCR'ed all the vocabulary and thus it was much faster today. I only happened to be busier than usual, but it is still all right.
I really enjoyed today's lesson from the Georgian-Russian textbook on coordinate and subordinate clauses. It was evident to me that my understanding of complex sentences improved over the year. The book does a good job at explaining too, not overcomplicating stuff right in the beginning. One of the best days in Norwegian reading. Less than 5 words unknown each page, sometimes I'd read three paragraphs in a row non-stop. I am alson watching Fritt Vilt with English subtitles. There isn't much dialogue going on, mostly clipped sentences, shouts at this stage, but I think I could figure out what's going on even without subtitles. The voices are much lower than the sound effects and the sound track, though. Chinois par boules de neige. The selection of characters is indeed limited, but there is consistent repetition. Today I played the text and read the characters, barely had to look up a couple of words. I really like the text on how an average guy observes daily life, economy, cost of living, transportation. All useful words, and the text is written in a neat way, as is the case with most francophone-aimed resources (no, it's not just about Assimil). I started watching Les Femmes du 6ème Étage today. I didn't turn off the English subtitles because it is noisy here and the audio doesn't seem high enough even at full volume. I think I can understand it fairly enough, but if people start talking next to me, for instance, I can easily miss a whole scene. Deutsch Direkt program dreizehn. Payed more attention today. I noticed there is a show called Deutschland von oben and this comes with German subtitles. Might be my next hit. Russian still isn't very much hopeful. I'm picking up and reinforcing expressions from Bednaya Nastya - watched it more attentively today - but it's still far from denoting some evident progress. As for reading from Divergent, it also went better than usual, with more focus, so I'm slightly more optimistic even though I come to realize my Russian reading skills may be behind my Chinese ones. This was about today. If there is time I will start reviewing the year, in general and by language, but I don't promise anything by now. Ideally I'd do it on January 1st, as I'm still unsure about my Norwegian and German skills. 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 390 of 415 16 December 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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At today's Estnisch Lehrbuch: long dialogues. Great exposure to the language. Being used to longer periods right at this stage. Advantage of not having a translation, but then Google translates Estonian into English sufficiently well and there is also the glossary at the book. It wouldn't be the same with Russian, even though I regret sometimes just skimming through a Russian text and then the French one at Assimil, one thing I never do with Estonian and thus my reading of Estonian dialogues is more intensive in the sense that I make a conscious effort to decode the meaning instead of catching the general meaning when I read through bilingual textbooks like Assimil.
Digital Fortress lost synchrony between Chinese and Portuguese. A pity, thereafing was so good. I will keep reading about 1 chapter a day in Chinese while keeping the rhythm for Portuguese (5 pages a day). I hope the content matches again soon. I wrote a three-paragraph post in French in the HTLAL Book Club 2015 thread. Corrections to the French and to the English are welcome. I could see once again how this lack of writing practice hindered my progress in all languages. I used French words I was totally familiar with, and I had to look them up only for confirmation, but since my writing keeps being rusty it took me a long time. Had I practiced more, these words could be automatic by now. 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 391 of 415 17 December 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Expug's TAC summary - post 1 of 3
So, I took advantage of a busy day when I went out shopping during the day, then came back and couldn't focus on studying, and I decided to write my TAC report. I still have to finish at least today's lesson for the Georgian-Russian book as it is the final one and I want to do something calmer tomorrow (probably Learn Norwegian). Here it goes: I will start with an overview of how TAC came along for me. In terms of regularity of studies, I missed only a few days when I didn't study at all or studied only the textbook part, not the native materials part. I put on a lot of "effort", thus, in terms of minutes. About 1 hour a day for each of my languages, of which 30 minutes alone for the reading part. I will write again a summary of my routine: Papiamento video (short 2-5' news clip, but enough to allow for a boost in comprehension) Chinese educational series (currently Travel in Chinese by CCTV Textbook study 1 - Estonian (started in May, 5 or 6 studied so far) Complement for Estonian (resources aiming at sentences or vocabulary, like book2) Textbook Study 2 - Russian (currently Assimil Perfectionnement, studied LL Russian Beginner & Advanced, old TY, Colloquial 2...) Textbook Study 3 - Review: I opened this slot for languages at which I was already working on native materials. I noticed it was important to go back to an explicit learning after receiving the massive output the SC provides, so I'm doing this in cycles: first was German, then French, then Georgian, then Norwegian and then going back when necessary French reading - 20 pages a day, for the SC, from novels to non-fiction, but currently mostly those non-ficiton books I'd like to read regardless of my language studies Norwegian reading - 10 pages a day. I'm relieved to have noticed a great improvement in the last 2 months, to the extent that I've reached basic reading fluency Chinese reading - it's slow, it's with Pera-pera AND translation, but it's the most fun of the day! I've seen a huge progress as well in the last weeks even if I'm still highly dependant on those crutches. The main point is that I've reached a level at which I can absorb new words as I learn because they aren't the majority in a sentence; this isn't the case for Russian, for instance Norwegian video - 10 min a day. I tend to alternate TV and films. I'm far from being able to watch comfortably without subtitles, but I'm confident that I may start to see some huge improvement soon. It's not that easy to find Norwegian subtitles to help, though, at least not downloadable. I have a lot of fun stuff scheduled and most of the times I regret when time is up and I have to do other activities French video - same as above re. fun, even more so now that I have dozens of suggestions from the HTLAL Film Club. As for comprehension, it's not that bad, even if I've been watching more with subs lately (the noise here gives a lot of trouble) Textbook Study 4 - Chinese. One more thing that motivates me is to realize I don't benefit much from beginner Chinese textbooks, and I've been working on either at intermediatebooks like those business or at readers with audio, for which I encountered good titles. I've also kind of started the same grammar consolidation I mentioned above for the other languages, as I worked with Intermediate Chinese and will do Modern Chinese Grammar: a Practical Guide (both by Routledge) Georgian reading - 3-5 pages a day. This was my first SC trap. I should have worked at 1 page a day intensively, instead of (or alongside with) trying to read when my level was still too low. Not surprisingly, in the past weeks when I started the Georgian-Russian textbook I noticed na improvement of comprehension at my current read (Jules Verne's 20000 Leagues) and I'm finally approaching the stage where I can actually learn words on the go, at least in shorter paragraphs and in dialogues. Georgian video - currently the series Shua Qalaqshi. This is where I face the issue of a rarer language the most. I have only found a few videos with English subtitles, and I've already watched them. No Georgian videos with Georgian subtitles. I had a good experiment with TED dialogues (in English) and subtitles in Georgian+Portuguese, but like with other resources I started them too soon, and now they're nearly over. I should have worked on those TED videos intensively, pausing and getting the feeling of how the language expresses what is being said in English. Well, I will keep watching Shua Qalaqshi and keep reading easy literature with plenty of dialogues, in the hope that the forms read in the books will get repeated in the series and I will start to have a grasp of the conversational language. It is already being useful at a lesser extent, as I've realized that when I pay attention I can understand a bit of Shua Qalaqshi even with no subs Papiamento reading - this and the video mentioned above are the maintenance I do for Papiamento. I really think it is enough given the similarity of the language. I've been doing this all the year and I noticed a considerable improvement in a level that was already of basic fluency - maybe I should indeed update my profile detailing what I can understand now German reading - 10 pages with parallel translation (vgl. Norwegian where I use no translation). I expected to be better now, but I'm nevertheless confident. As German is not a TAC language, I should write more here: I noticed great progress this year and I'm still building upon vocabulary units. So I will keep doing parallel reading because I'm indeed learning from that, because my level already allows me so. German video - Same as French and Norwegian. My comprehension of spoken German is not that far from reading, because the German vocabulary tends to diverge from English/Romance in formal, technical writing and I already had a background for the spoken language. So, I actually find it easier to speak and understand German in daily life situations than to read a technical book (the opposite would happen for Italian, for instance). Oh, and I'm travelling to Germany for a couple of days next year! Chinese fiction series - they used to be two, but now I'm watching only a Singaporean one with double subtitles and I'm focusing on that, trying to pay more attention to the dialogues. It's easier to do sound-English correspondence, less so to pick characters. I see that my Chinese slowed down a bit after I reduced my daily audio input by nearly two thirds, but it is still progressing Tests for my intermediate languages - this is an innovation, namely my only output task in my schedule. I use Goethe-Verlag tests available in tons of languages (but Georgian :/). They're not that much proofread-friendly but they helped a lot activate my Norwegian a bit, and they are helping with German, too. I did Russian - the basic ones only, will come back later for the advanced ones - and I want to do Chinese and Estonian as well. Russian TV series - still Bednaya Nastya, as it is a soap opera like the Brazilian ones, with over 100 chapters! I believe I could be learning a lot from Kuxnya and its bilingual transcripts, but Bednaya Nastya also helps me learn conversational Russian. The time of the day doesn't help much, as I'm already tired, but it helped make Russian sound like a living language instead of a bookish language. I do 20 minutes a day mainly because I want to finish Bednaya Nastya one day. Russian reading - 3 pages a day. I may call this my hardest resource. Another SC trap, because I'd benefit from intensive reading more, like the texts I was having from Pod101. If the list is over and I still have time left, I go for an American series in English (lately I had the idea of adding Norwegian subtitles), then a French series, then a Georgian text to work on intensively. 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 392 of 415 17 December 2014 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Expug's TAC summary - post 2 of 3 (or what I did wrong)
As you can see from the post above, I went from a routine of lots of textbook study to a routine of massive input of native materials taken extensively. This results on what I would call a Super Challenge Trap. Why? a) I went for extensive reading for languages I wasn't strong enough at (Chinese, Russian and Georgian). This brought me into long 30 min sessions of reading when even with the parallel translation I didn't manage to make a consistent correlation of words in L2 and L1 that would allow me to actually learn new words. Clearly put: most of the days, I read lines and lines of text in Chinese, Georgian and Russian (even Norwegian in the earlier months) and didn't learn a word. b) That strategy took time for intensive reading which I still badly need for Russian and Georgian (I still do it for Chinese because I still use textbooks for this) and could have used for Norwegian. c) It also took time I could be using for chatting in the TLs and writing at italki and lang-8. As i wrote earlier, the lack of output practice didn't hinder only progress in my output skills, but also in my passive skills, as I failed to internalize even some frequent words. Well, since they are frequent, if I had practiced output I'd be forced to think about them when speaking/writing and thus I'd have memorized them quite likely. d) As I was in a frenesi for reading and watching, I wouldn't look up words when they seemed important. That harnessed mostly Norwegian: had I been looking the main words up, which aren't more than 3 a page, I'd have reached basic reading fluency much earlier e) Another consequence of not pausing and reflecting was that I didn't take note of my doubts. I did ask some stuff out but mostly in my log. If I had taken more notes, I could have asked them in the team threads and thus enriched the discussions. This is true at least for Team Asgard and Team Katiusha. I must admit the perishment of one other team at the 1st TAC fortnight really discouraged me, and so did the lack of replies/discussion at this log here, but Asgard and Katiusha were still in stand-by and saw a revival at the second semester, and I preferred to keep learning individually. As for Georgian, you guys may be wondering, Team Rare's thread was skept active and it was a place for challenges and for overal discussions that were interesting, and as for specific Georgian questions, I can always resort to the Georgian forum at Unilang, but then I didn't do this either and remained with doubts. f) Most of the days, I'd study or read or watch but in a less attentive way, as if I was there but wasn't. You know when the class/lecture is boring and you are reading but not absorbing the words? That was the case in most of my study, especially in the moments of SC Trap's extensive reading when I wasn't understanding much anyway - the less you understand, the more difficult it is to stay focused, and this is a skill you need to train as well. This is consequence about finishing soon and going for a material I'm more excited about or doing an extrapost-schedule task or just finding that specific resource. I know that keeping focused for 8 hours isn't an easy task, but most of the days I'd start out already i a careless way. Paying attention doesn't necessarily mean that activity will take twice as much - it takes the same 10 minutes to watch 10 minutes of a Norwegian series attentively or loosely, and even with reading unless you want to note down about everything the final time will only be 10-20% longer - I tested it in the past days. I've mentioned this before but it turns out I keep forgetting I have to concentrate, and from time to time I have to remind myself of the importance of that. What I mean by concentrating also involves making a conscious effort to make that specific word or sentence part of your repertoire. So, if I learn today that 'Ma armastan sind' means I love you in Estonian, I have to imagine myself saying that in a context it should be said, that is, I have to tell my brain that these words are a valid sequence for expressing that idea/feeling in the Estonian language. This exercise is critical when you are doing - exercises, so I already regret the days I did the Goethe-Verlag tests more in a hurry, because I missed an important chance of activating some Russian or Norwegian or German expressions. So, how to deal with this? I realized that not doing output was bad for my input goals, too. So, I need to write more at lang-8 or italki. I also need to take more notes of my critical doubts and ask for answers, because I'm reaching a level at my languages where the average textbooks won't answer that specific doubt. And most important: whatever I study, I need to study more focusedly. That won't necessarily cost me more time and will save me time in the future doing reviews of stuff I didn't learn because I didn't pay attention or didn't practice through output. Now the big issue: time. My schedule is already almost taken by my current textbook languages (Estonian, Chinese, Russian + the 4th one being reviewed at that specific date) and by my massive input for the SC, which isn't even enough to meet my goals, particularly not the film ones for French, Norwegian or Georgian). Besides, even if I had time, doing this after that long schedule would mean reserving the lowest quality time for the most brain-demanding activities, the output ones. Currently I can't take away any of these activities without putting progress in that language under risk. I am about to finish the book part of French in the SC, so I could reduce my reading and only do it in the evening, relaxed, when I have time. But then my main non-language stuff is being learned through those 20 pages I read a day in French, and I really mean that. As a matter of fact, I refrained from reading more in French at a given day because that would mean turning on the computer in the evening just for updating my number at the SC (seriously, it's a trap). Well, if I get better and faster in German, I can transfer part of my "non-language topics" reading to German and reduce French. I could drop Russian because, as I said, I failed my goal of reaching a level where I could use textbooks in Russian comfortably for learning other languages. Still under study, maybe I will indeed drop Russian textbooks and do only the SC input. I could bring Norwegian reading down to maintenance, like I do with Papiamento, and do those 2-5 pages more intensively. That would help both worlds. Now, as with French and most languages, comes the issue of reading only 5 pages a day from a book that seems to never end, even when it is quite interesting. I could drop Estonian and be happy about what I've reached so far - I didn't make the same mistakes in Estonian which I did with Georgian and Russian. Or I could make output my next activity regardless of the day. Whenever I finished the Russian video, I'd switch straight away to writing a paragraph for italki, no matter how long it would take, no matter if I had loads of posts to read at the forum or reports to make. This seems more plausible. I have to say the list at the previous post used to be longer, with Anki, Memrise, Chinesepod and Russianpod. It was a wise decision not to replace these activities - for example, I found time for the "review textbook study". But looking at the list above, I don't really see how I can cut down on stuff without hindering progressing in my languages. Another hope: activites will just take shorter. This is true for Georgian and Chinese. It took me 40 minutes to read a Chinese page with Pera-Pera and now I'm at about 25, skipping sentences I already understand. Georgian reading went from 30 to 25 minutes, and it may reach the Norwegian rhythm of 1 page in 2 minutes. The French rhythm is clearly higher, but then sometimes I read stuff I really want to learn in French, and I have to pause to understand the content also, not just the French in it. Well, put that way, I believe I am going to start reading Georgian, Chinese and even Russian faster and I may replace use the extra time for reading in another language I might want to add. Yeah, because I didn't even mention the new languages I want to add: Italian (going there next year, too), Turkish (started the Yürükler Challenge) and Indonesian (if there is an Indonesian team; it was my personal choice after reaching textbook study at Estonian anyway). I will see how things will come along when I get back from vacation and things will be much calmer than the last weeks of the year. As I said, I won't make the mistake in Estonian of reading massively extensively before I have a good enough vocabulary. What does that imply: it implies that, if I drop textbook study for Estonian and start native materials, that means I can start textbook study for another language and it also means I won't spend 30 minutes on Estonian extensive reading as I ended up doing for my weaker languages in the SC. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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