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The drunk snail’s journey (TAC14) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 33 of 161 25 January 2014 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I suppose you have realised a thing called the internet exists?
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| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 34 of 161 25 January 2014 at 2:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Not really until 2001. I used a 1985 Intel and a typewriter beforehand. I am the only one
who uses it at home anyway. The rotary dial, record player, knob television, and 1983 Volvo with cassette player set serve us quite well. Edited by 1e4e6 on 25 January 2014 at 2:06am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4227 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 35 of 161 25 January 2014 at 9:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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And I think that's very much the point why European textbooks focus on the EU first! There is still so much unawareness around the EU and about what is happening in other states! While the political process is continuing with rapid speed, population is somehow left behind. Just in the past couple of weeks I heard two Germans refering to Czechoslovakia - a chemist (even a Bavarian!!!) and a teacher, so you could expect some basic educational background...The teacher even wasn't aware that Czech Republic is an EU member state!! And someone else wrote ČSSR on a package for Christmas, wondering why it took weeks to arrive in Czech Republic :-)
Personally, my knowledge on the EU Member States is also very limited, and I hate that. It doesn't matter that 99 % of the Europeans probably know less than me. I definitely see the need for more EU-related education for EU members if we really want to become a real community. BTW, also the only atlas I have is from 1986. I remember we got us a new one in the 90s, but it was less handy. So we continued to use the old one instead.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 36 of 161 25 January 2014 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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I should also mention that my only world globe (the one that spins on the axis) is from
the 1950s or something. In addition to almost having its paint being faded or falling off, French Indochina is a big country still present thereon. Also what looks like French North Africa, the massive British India that seems to cover Burma as well, etc. I suppose that this is unsurprising--my mother used this as a child. It stands on a table next to our record player... It depends--I like reading almost exclusively about the EU for news. I know that there were 27 member states, with Norway and Switzerland in the Schengen but not EU. I tihnk that Latvia joined the euro recently, but one would only know this by following the news. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 161 27 January 2014 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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This discussion actually reminds me of something interesting that's happened to me with people from areas that were a different country until recently: deliberately mishearing me when I said something about their country and trying to make me look ignorant. I was speaking to a Czech woman a few months ago and I said something about "the Czech Republic", and she "misheard" it as "Czechoslovakia" and then made some smart comment on how it doesn't exist any more. I thought maybe it was just a simple misunderstanding, despite the two sounding quite different, until a Lithuanian pulled the same trick on me a couple of weeks later although in an even more ridiculous way: she creatively interpreted "eastern European countries" as "Soviet countries". I mean, it's not like I had even said "ex-Soviet" or something like that. She did have a strange sense of humour in general though.
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| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5044 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 38 of 161 27 January 2014 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cavesa your log is awesome, so far you are totally living up to the log's title.
Did you name your log after Futurama's Grumpy Snail or the party Slurm by any chance? Anyway kudos on the title, and good luck with your studies, Cavesa. And keep the discussion going, very interesting so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5224 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 39 of 161 27 January 2014 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
It doesn't really matter, given how most people follow Donald Duck's dietary principle: if a slice of dietetic bread is good, the whole loaf will be much better ;) Wrt to 'new' countries and such I tend to pay the minimal attention required not to be chased with pitchforks, and that's it. I think we should have ever less, bigger countries, and not more, smaller ones, but what do I know. This BTW is just a matter of efficiency that shouldn't be mistaken for some creed/world vision where we all should form one 'multicultural' mosaic of tree-hugging, free-loving, recycling hippies just because a bunch of idiots say it would be so cool. I really hate how these tend to just be waiting to pivot and turn into all sorts of anti-capitalism and more generally anti- pamphlets, instead of acting as platforms for what could actually be constructive change. Which leads me back to textbooks. There's much fluff and propaganda / preaching and little humour in most textbooks of today, and certainly TA runs circles around all of those, but how much *language learning* is there even in cream-of-the-crop TA? I don't mind the occasional discussion about something in the news, but to me even the best modern books like TA feel like they're more interested in getting you to go through some stupid 'contents', er, I mean, all-relevant and current topic from the press, day after day, than in actually teaching you stuff you'd need to know before can properly discuss whatever you may want to discuss. I *used to like* TA. But it's designed for a class model where students can be anywhere from 15 to 75, i.e. all of them are expected to advance at the lowest possible speed, need to constantly 'be motivated' by stories in the textbook, etc. I don't know if I ever was like that, but I'm not any more, that's for sure. My 'Concise German Grammar' covers practically everything you'll ever need in orderly, organized fashion, and has explanations, dialogues and exercises nicely interleaved so you can process it all linearly. It even has some humour in a few dialogues, but it generally just expects you to use the stuff you're taught on your own. And it's less than 300 pages. I think there must be a reason why this book has been regularly re-edited at least from 1961 to 1999 (I have a 34th edition from 1992). A friend of mine put his finger on the main problem I see now with TA. Even if it somehow acknowledges that learning in the TL is not the way to go (In my workbook, all explanations are in Spanish) it still clings to it too much. How are you supposed to read stuff in German from lesson 1, if you're never taught to read? [Not that reading in German is very difficult, but it's way far easier if you're taught how to do it.] When my friend mentioned it, I remembered how I had originally learned the basics of reading in German for a week or so before we could even start with the textbook (Themen Neu at that point I think). From that point on, I started noticing how besides the other problems, I get a general feeling that the learner is expected to learn stuff somewhere else in order not to struggle while going through the book. And you'll think I am a weirdo, but if I have to learn somewhere else to follow the book I am supposed to learn from, why bother? I'll go somewhere else and stay there :) My CGG, OTOH, has a 20-page leading section 'Prosody and orthography': "The alphabet", "phonetic symbols and pronunciation", "vowel and consonant pronunciation", "division of words into syllables", "use of upper case", and "stress", followed by a one page grammar summary, "parts of a sentence", before even going for lesson one "the definite article" :) The one thing I don't take issue with, however, is
Multi-culti, PC, or anything else that we specifically dislike may be an artifact of publisher perception, i.e. they publish contents that they think their public will happily swallow and/or applaud -- which may be a wrong assumption depending on the learner. But language textbooks publishing is an enormous industry, and they generally get it right when targeting demographics, or we'd see more changes of direction. So, if the industry target most of their business at foreign immigrants who will be learning in classes of international origins, I take that's actually the most likely scenario today. That same scenario was the axis of my TEFL qualification course and it couldn't be further away from the reality we'd immediately face (homogeneous class of nationals attending classes in a foreign language school). Still, I think that's where most (just obviously not all) language classes are imparted nowadays, so no wonder (and no offence) they're not targeting me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 40 of 161 08 February 2014 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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First things first:
I was a bit busy with school but I managed to squeeze some things in. I am late on 6wc (hopefully the bot will still accept me), I need to catch up on my teammates. And on the log. ASCR: French books: finished 0,3 Chattam:Carnages. If you don't believe a full value thriller can be squeezed under 100 pages, try this. It's awesome. finished 0,6 La reine des vampires. Another by Charlaine Harris. It's fun. I've recently seen another (not Sookie) series by her in sale (huge sale) but only in English :-( I want those books in Spanish! French movies: +1, Asterix et les jeux olympiques. Thematic and fun. Even though I really prefer the original Asterix actor. It is probably difficult to take a role after someone, the new one isn't bad at all. SWEDISH! reviewed Pimsleur lesson 3. Not bad, I just really need to learn both the sound and the written form at once. But I'll chew threw this. And I accidentally found five books in Swedish in a second hand bookshop. So, they are waiting here. SPANISH! Began my review of the first volume of coursebook (I need to quickly review and to finish the last two lessons). I'm going through the gramatica and vocabulario by anaya. The first volumes (A1-A2). They are quite good but I had expected more from them. I have as well listened to some new music in Spanish. I found some new and awesome salsa, bachata and other latina bands and artists. I've found out that Spanish 80's are a nightmare! While the Italian 80's added in something "italian" and they have become famous (even though most people wouldn't say out loud they like the songs), the Spanish 80's are mostly really bad copies of the angloamerican genres :-( I've as well listened to lots of Italian music. I needed something not in my current target languages as background for studying (got some classics, jazz, metal, rock'n'roll and lots more. It doesn't mean I know all these genres well, sometimes I just turn on a youtube playlist and enjoy not having to type something every few minutes). And there is an awesome list Canzoni Italiane! There is a lot of contemporary Italian pop music, even some rock bands and so on. Most of them might make you need to go to the destist's more often but some are totally awesome. I like for example Emma, Rito Pagano, Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini, Syria, Baustelle, Il pan de diavolo.... At least some of their songs made my day better. :-) Reactions to replies since the last post will be in the post to come. I am just paranoid to write too long posts at once, just in case they could disappear due to a glitch... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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