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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 9 of 69 02 January 2014 at 9:04am | IP Logged |
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@druckfehler: Yes, isn't it? By the way, I picked page 20 because it's quite early in the book but not right at the beginning. I always need a few pages to get into the story. I can't wait to finish a few more books to see the statistics developing :))
I'm a big fan of books for young readers as a stepping stone to proficiency, but I usually balance that with podcasts aimed at an adult audience; after all, I'm grown up already. Here's a list of Polish podcasts I listen to on a regular basis: Polskie radio dla zagranicy - Aktualności Polskie radio dla zagranicy - Klub Trójki Polskie radio dla zagranicy - Nasze magazyny Radio TOK FM - Pierwsze śniadanie w TOK-u Radio TOK FM - Homo Science Radio TOK FM - Post Factum Radio TOK FM - Światopogląd Trójka - Raport o stanie świata As you can see, there's a lot of politics. I particularly enjoy learning about Poland's Eastern neighbors Belarus and Ukraine which get little attention in French, German and Thai (ha ha) media. Homo Science is an hour-long discussion on science, quite interesting, and Pierwsze śniadanie and Światopogląd report on topics other than politics as well, for instance what people in Warsaw keep in their basements, or the Polish tradition of bimbrownictwo (moonshine). Edited by Bakunin on 02 January 2014 at 9:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 10 of 69 02 January 2014 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Bakunin, loving your log so far (especially everything Polish related!) and hope you make some great progress
this year. All the best 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 11 of 69 02 January 2014 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
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@Vos: thanks :) Polish rocks!
Nobody cheering for Thai? Need to change that… so here comes another installment of my little New Year series on current language learning activities … :) -- this time about Thai. There are three things I do on an almost daily basis: I listen to Voice of America's 30-minute news update, usually during my commute to work; I chat on whatsapp; and I copy (type) a few pages of a schoolbook, add them to my private corpus, read them intensively with FLTR, and create a few Anki cards… I also read books, call and meet friends, and write emails, but usually more like once or twice a week. I have been working with schoolbooks for many months (or years?) already, and I still think it's a great method to get familiar with the language and the culture of these people so different from me. Firstly, from the point of view of a language learner, I obviously want to know all the vocabulary a primary school kid knows. Secondly, and even more importantly, I want to be familiar with all the cultural concepts they teach those kids in primary school. How can I even begin to understand the culture if I don't know the basics of Thai music, Thai dance, Buddhism, geography, history, science (as relating to Thailand, e.g., seasons, typical animals and plants, soil and forest types, agriculture etc.), typical professions etc.? Currently, I'm working on a second grade schoolbook on 'health and physical education' (สุขศึกษาและพลศึกษา) - it's the last of the second grade books I have, I'll be graduating to grade three in a few days :)) I have quickly realized that each subject has interesting and important content I need to study, even subjects like 'health and physical education'. Here's an example of a paragraph I worked on this morning. It's from a chapter on basic care and pretty representative of what it's like to work with second grade schoolbooks. The chapter covers 'red eyes' (not a basic disease I was familiar with, but obviously important enough in Thailand to be taught in school - related to poor hygiene and the tropical climate), diarrhea, cuts, skin abrasion, and insect bites. The paragraph I took the picture of is about bee and wasp stings (the preceding paragraph is about ant and mosquito bites). 
There's quite a lot of interesting stuff, language-wise. First of all, we see that ants and mosquitos กัด 'bite' (A, caption belongs to the preceding paragraph about ants and mosquito bites), but bees and wasps ต่อย 'box/sting' (B). Then we have two animals แตน (C1) and ต่อ (C2) I hadn't encountered before, both sorts of wasps. There's also the interesting expression ปวดแสบปวดร้อน (D) describing the pain caused by bee stings. Then we have the basic but important words 'itchy' (E) and 'swollen' (F). There are three instances of the construction โดน…ต่อย 'stung by' (G1-G3), good candidates for Anki cloze deletion cards. Last but not least, there's the relatively rare but important word เหล็กใน (H1, H2) referring to the organ that delivers the sting ('sting' or 'stinger'). Apart from the two wasp-like animals, none of the words were new to me, but as you can see from my brief discussion, I still get a lot out of such texts. Ah, and if you wonder why there's a key in the picture - they recommend to use a key, press it down around the sting so that the sting comes up and can be removed. Should I ever encounter a situation where someone has just been bitten by a bee and asks me for a key, I will now know what to do :) Here's the full content of that particular book: - important internal organs - nature of human life - roles and responsibilities in the family - gender roles - basic movements, basic exercise - rhythmic exercise - playing games - keeping good health - basic care - common prescription drugs at home - drugs and other dangerous substances - how to avoid accidents 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 12 of 69 03 January 2014 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
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Here's an update on my little extensive reading experiment (see here) in Polish. I would have loved to continue with Przygody Trzech Detektywów, but my order hasn't even left Poland yet. So I've read another detective story for young readers instead: Marta Patton i uzdrowiciel z Bombaju by Aleksander Minkowski. Wow, that was quite a different experience! Written for a slightly older audience and by a Polish author, I was quite often lost. Lots of descriptions I couldn't understand, and the complex plot didn't help either. I had the impression that many of the words unfamiliar to me occurred only once or a few times, not often enough to be guessed from context and acquired. The statistics I collected on pages 20 and 21 don't show this, though, and the coverage ratio seems to be on the high side, too. But whatever, I'll just stick to that page 20 thing, it'll balance out over time.
Here are the numbers: 20 unknown words out of 478 on those two pages, coverage rate 96%. Having finished the book, I now understand 5 of those 20 words. Edited by Bakunin on 03 January 2014 at 9:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 13 of 69 05 January 2014 at 5:15pm | IP Logged |
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Since I'm going to Warsaw next weekend, I've asked on lang-8 for some bookstore recommendations. As a note to myself here's what I got back:
Empik Megastore, Warszawa, ul. Marszałkowska 116/122 (see comments 1, 2, 3, 4) Empik, Nowy Świat 15/17 (see comments 1, 2, 3, 4) Księgarnię Naukową im. B. Prusa, Krakowskie Przedmieście 7 Arkadia, Aleja Jana Pawła II 82 (see comment 5) Czuły Barbarzyńca, Dobra 31 (see comment 6; bookshop with coffee shop) Mito, Ludwika Waryńskiego 28 (see comment 6) Tarabuk, Browarna 6 (bookshop with coffee shop) Comments: (1) "Największy chyba jest w Domach Centrum na ul Marszałkowskiej ale ten przy rondzie z palmą też jest spory; w sumie wszystkie są prawie takie same" (2) "Empik jest wszędzie i myślę, że tam znajdziesz dużo ciekawych tytułów" (3) "Empik jest spoko ale nie zawsze ma niskie ceny" (4) "Jeśli chodzi o księgarnie w Warszawie to sama korzystam z Empiku; jest tam duży wybór i ceny w miarę przystępne" (5) "Jest kilka innych księgarni w dużych centrach handlowych jak Arkadia ale też sporo rozsianych po całej Warszawie" (6) "Wiem też, że jest sporo kawiarni z książkami (Czuły Barbarzyńca, Mito) ale nie wiem czy można tam kupić książki" Edited by Bakunin on 12 January 2014 at 8:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Duan Newbie Canada Joined 4797 days ago 36 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish, French | Message 14 of 69 07 January 2014 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
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Hi Bakunin, thanks for checking out my log! The only times I've been in Warszawa were both on a layover
to Gdańsk, so I couldn't comment on that. But I did visit an Empik in a mall in Koszalin just last March, so I suspected that Empik would still be around. Glad to hear I guessed correctly! I hope you have a good trip! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5131 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 15 of 69 07 January 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
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@Duan: thanks :) Empik got recommended quite a few times, I'll certainly check it out.
Here's another update on my Polish extensive reading experiment (see here). I've just finished Zagadka Diamentowej Doliny from the Kroniki Archeo series. It's a series of Polish adventure stories for younger kids, 200+ pages each. The story was implausible and the characters rather shallow, but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of being able to follow along. This book was much easier to read than the last one, but, again, the statistics don't really show that. The numbers: 22 unknown words out of 404 on two selected pages, coverage rate 95%. Having finished the book, I now understand 4 of those 22 words. By the way, here's a rough estimate of how many words I've learned by reading this book: 240 pages x 2 words/page x 0.5 x 1/3 = 80 words. (The factor 0.5 accounts for the fact that new words occurring at the beginning are more likely to be acquired than at the end because they have more opportunities to reoccur. The factor 1/3 is a correction for overlap and other effects reducing uptake and is just a wild guess.) Edited by Bakunin on 07 January 2014 at 8:59pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5729 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 16 of 69 08 January 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged |
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Enjoy your weekend in Warsaw. As you seem to be interested in politics and what's going on in the world, I recommend that while browsing in bookstores in Warsaw, you maybe look for books from a publishing house called Czarne. They major in non-fiction and have an excellent array of titles by Polish (but not only) journalists.
Czarne 1 person has voted this message useful |
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