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What Expug is doing in 2015 (TAC n more) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3854 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 185 of 364 03 June 2015 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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You LRing for Norwegian is what encouraged to properly start with Swedish and German. I always meant to, but your log has been the catalyst. Like you, I am also seeing progress already, so thank you very much for inspiring me to spend time listening and reading, and good luck with the rest!
EDIT: Fixed a silly error Edited by Elenia on 03 June 2015 at 2:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 186 of 364 03 June 2015 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Elenia, I'm glad it worked at least to inspire you! People say a lot about this method but I'm more comfortable doing it for my not-so-weak languages...and then for my strongest languages it would be too slow to do L/R when I can already understand full speed dialogue as well as read faster than the audiobook reading speed. Which reminds me I should probably start this L-R for Russian and German soon.
It turned out yesterday's disaster wasn't so disastrous as I had thought. I managed to listen to a new meditation video through 40 minutes and so almost made up for the unwatched 'Fais pas ci, fais pas ça' episode. Then I managed to finish at least the reading part of Russian (Divergent). Only the three Chinese exercises from Goethe-Verlag and some 10 minutes from Bednaya Nastya's daily quota were left behind, and I have to make up for them today. Plus, the forum. What a calamity. I have several logs to answer and fix up the Team Sleipnir's challenge(s). I am travelling tomorrow so I might have to count on the weekend to resolve everything, as it was the case last week. The set of lessons from 'Happy Journey Across China' at the Confucious Institute has no review lesson. Not my favorite anyway, but that means 20% less material. Today's Georgian L-R was a bit more comfortable, thanks to the shorter sentences and the dialogues, but not only. I'm starting to be familiarized with some key words and so I'm reading and associating the sentences fast enough. Started Karl & CO. The voices are rather creaky but it turns out that after the first twenty minutes I'm already being able to follow a lot of what's going on! It only gets better. Since there are so many episodes, maybe I can try the non-focused listening to see if I do start to internalize some patterns. One of the best days of German film. It is true that such films have little dialogue, but yet I'm understanding a lot and looking up important words that I didn't know before. Today I may have understood the most out of 'Fais pas ci, fais pas ça' even if it was mostly unfocused listening. I see some real progress here. I didn't forget about Mandarin - neither the tests nor the shoret story were forgotten. I managed to read the new topics at the fora and started posting at some logs, but there is still a lot to check. No time for Turkmen or Italian whatsoever. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 187 of 364 09 June 2015 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I had a nice holiday at Monte Verde, a small town in the mountains with a German flavor and ecotourism. We did ziplining back and from a valley and walked to a rock on top of a mountain. And we ate a lot. We came back on Saturday to avoid the traffic jams on the highway, and as a result I had time for doing a lot for the SC. I decided to go for German since French is almost assured. I had 46 hours logged for German and my goal is 75 hours (a half challenge). I managed to watch over 4 hours, which is much more than I do in a week (usually 50 minutes), so it more than compensated for the two days on holidays. I watched the film 'Tornado' on the Brazilian Netflix and finished the neverending 'Die Vampir Schwestern'. Then I noticed how much there is on the German Netflix. I picked the dubbed Sense8 first episode, but I didn't like this series that much. Seems to be a good idea that has been wasted, or so they say. Most important, I nearly solved my problem of German materials. I got dubbed Futurama from the start, which I had always been willing to watch, and a good list of films to bring here to watch as I usually don't have time for Netflix apart from the weekend (but then 1 hour at a weekend is more than I do at the whole week, so maybe it's better not to worry so much about only having material I can only watch at the weekend).
According to my stats and considering 120 workdays until December 31st, at 10 minutes a day I'm going to have 20 hours more for German or Georgian. I'm at 50 minutes at German now, so that would make it 70, which means I don't need to do much at weekends to reach my half challenge. For German I'm nearly 53 hours, but then I plan to resume some Kuxnya after I do enough Futurama for German (both activities are going to replace the extended post-schedule 50min I do for French everyday on my attempt to finish the SC, which is going to be over soon as I'll take a break from Fais pas ci fais pas ça as I complete the SC). More important than the numbers, though, is this extended video with comprehensible input. I also plan to make part of it unfocused listening. I noticed a significant improvement on my French even after having reached a comfortable understanding of enunciated language as I started to understand non-enunciated language quite easily after working more massively on the SC. I believe that's the way to go for all other languages, especially German and Norwegian (to which I have no issues with the SC btw, since I'm at near 60 hours now). This weekend I tried German + German subtitles and German + Portuguese subtitles. Both are necessary, but I'm starting to believe having subtitles in Portuguese helps me aprehend the meaning first and focus on decyphering the German later. This worked well with Russian and might do so with German as well. Watching with L2 subtitles, on the other hand, helps enhance vocabulary and understand how spoken language works, even the particles. I'm going to do so because Futurama has hardcoded German subtitles, and so it will go like this: during the week I am going to do L2 audio + L2 subtitles and at the weekends I will try L1 subtitles, to make sure I can benefit from the techniques at their best. This for German; as for Georgian, L2 subtitle is virtually non-existent. I also read 8 pages of Russian, more than the 2 aVerage. Reaching 2500 pages in Russian is still a distant dream as I am far from being able to read comfortable. Even worse in Georgian. I will focus on Chinese first - I need 492 pages and I'm going to do 480 at 4 pages a day, so I need to do some extra. If I notice my reading speed and quality will have improved, I might do some binge reading of 10 pages at least for Russian, which would be enough to finish my half (currently at 1482 pages). Georgian is almost a lost case (1160 pages), even though I read better in Georgian than in Russian and also have easier books. Speaking of which, I just received an ad for Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood in Georgian. Now I am unsure about what to do. I have the audiobook for Norwegian and was planning on doing Norwegian audio + Portuguese or English, but that goes against my philopsophy of saving the coolest books to the hardest and less profilic languages in terms of materials. Anyway, I'll see what I can do. At the weekend I also catched up with the forum posts and updated Team Sleipnir's roster with links to May's Challenges. Then my fellow teammates already did the June Challenge. Way to go, Team Sleipnir! I'm excited about doing L-R for German. I should be doing it for Russian too...where to get Russian audiobooks? Anyway, for German I'm probably doing my next book from Eckhart Tolle. I really expect to see some improvement from it. I need to bring German to the next level as it's taking me too long. Richard Simcott will be in town. Just signed in, will do it mostly for the networking. This will be my first encounter with a polyglot webcelebrity, I have no idea what questions to ask or whatever. Finally German is starting to click, as I had a better reading experience today. I'm having some synergy from all those videos I'm watching in different audio+subtitle combos plus the reading. I'm pretty aware that 10 minutes + 10 pages a day isn't enough to make noticeable progress, but since I like to study several languages at once and this is unlikely to change, I can keep juggling all the ones while doing a little more for a couple of them once in a while, to which I activate and consolidate what I learn, or at least this has been the case with French and now it seems to get better with German as well. I'm enjoying Fais pas ci, fais pas ça a lot. I've already noticed some more improvement. I understood much more from today's episode than usual while I was paying a lower level of attention (was reading the forum and doing some other minor tasks). Three hours to go to complete the SC =D . The sad news is that I still can't make it to finish it soon enough to have time for Italian and Turkmen. Well, tomorrow is the last day of the Estonian textbook so perhaps that means more time in the morning and in consequence at the end of the day. Well, at least I finished a course for work and this means more time left...until next week when another, tougher one starts. I still hope that, all in all, I'm going to have more time after finishing the Estonian Lehrbuch and the French SC, because I have several topics to deal with, like getting back to Kuxnya and to my output paragraphs (to which I'm a bit more discouraged now that my Norwegian challenge hasn't been corrected yet). It turned out I had time for Turkmen. Well, at least I'm halfway through the lessons, that's enough to have an idea about the language. I believe by the end of this month we move onto Uzbek. Then I had to work overtime, but not much, and could work on lesson 20 from Perfectionnement Italien, not bad! It's a lot of fun to learn the Italian idioms and their French translation (which I often don't know either, but can still get the meaning most of the times after reading both expressions). Now we can call it a day. Wanderlust: Greek, Czech (no wanderlust for Turkish, despite - or maybe due to - the Turkmen). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4519 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 188 of 364 09 June 2015 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||
It's a nice exercise to correct other's texts, so maybe this helps. You can obviously not use my correction as a model, but maybe it helps you anyway to see where things go wrong.
Edited by daegga on 09 June 2015 at 1:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4871 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 189 of 364 09 June 2015 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Noe småpirk som Daegga ikke nevnte: (Selv om jeg er morsmålsbruker er ikke norsken min
heller feilfri, ihvertfall ikke med tanke på at jeg har bodd i utlandet en stund og snakker og skriver på dialekt i hverdagen.) - kun den siste "til"en skal fjernes. Tilsvare er ett ord. - ett = 1; et er en artikkel (samme som en/én og ei/éi ("éi" er ganske sjelden!)) - "ikke minst" brukes ikke slik; du kunne ha brukt det slik hvis det var snakk om å ha hatt mer tid til overs i mai. - "jobbe ekstra" eller "jobbe overtid" kan man si. "Jeg oppfattet mer utvikling i norsklæringen min da (!) jeg pleide å skrive nesten hver dag." Merk deg dette: den gang da, en gang når - fremmedspråk er ett ord. - ...samme som man... Jeg ville selv ha latt den preposisjonen være, Daegga, men selv norsken min er ikke perfekt lenger, så det er mulig du har rett. "...men jeg bruker også den franske oversettelsen fordi det hjelper å forstå straks ordene jeg fortsatt ikke kjenner på norsk. " Forstår ikke helt hva du vil si med den "straksen" der... Edited by stifa on 09 June 2015 at 2:13am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 190 of 364 09 June 2015 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tusen takk daegga og stifa!
I really need to write more often in Norwegian and get rid of those insisting mistakes. Accomplished Language Book: Lehrbuch der estnischen Sprache This book was a good outcome of my trip to Germany. I had to order it in Munich and fortunately managed to receive it on time. This series from Buske deserves its reputation to get better and better, because it is really well-produced. The lessons are long indeed, but you learn so muhc in so many meaningful dialogues, useful grammar explanations and diversified exercises that they are worth every cent and every minute spent on them. I had already used the Georgian one at this series but this one seems of even better quality, as the Georgian one made the usual mistake of Georgian books of going too deep in literature too early. Anyway, Estonian was quite good, one of the best textbooks I've ever used. At first I panicked there was no translation, but you just have do download the supplement. Another advantage it has is not throwing too much grammar at once (especially morphology). Now for my next book, I want some shorter lessons since I've spent a lot of my daily time on E nagu Eesti and a little more, but still a lot on this one. Fine, I'm going to try my second Russian-based textbook: Eesti Kell ma armastan... If it doesn't work, I will probably review a grammar-heavy textbook. Actually what I need now is a grammar-heavy one with translation exercises, but these old ones are in Russian as well, and represent much more to read in Russia, like УЧЕБНИК ЭСТОНСКОГО ЯЗЫКА by A. VALMET, E. UUSPÕLD, E. TURU. I think I can wait a little more. Finished the first story in Georgian from citybooks, 'A Song for Tbilisi'. I wonder if there are other stories which aren't about Tbilisi but which have been translated into Georgian as well. It went quite well with German reading today. I think the Estonian Lehrbuch helps as a war-up and but I'm also familiarized with the book. It was also good with the film. Internet was not working so I could look words up from the subtitles, but I barely needed it anyway. Russian also went well, and I managed to finish it a couple of minutes earlier before starting 'Fais pas ci, fais pas ça'. That's a good sign, given that it's still the last day I'd be spending almost one hour on Estonian and that Tuesdays are specifically busy days. So I finished both Turkmen and Italian much earlier than expected, and I technically ran out of activities! It's time to dig back into the schedule to see which other activities were left behind. Kuxnya is one of them, Revolution with Norwegian subtitles is another. There are also series I had been watching in English, such as The Big Bang Theory (stopped somewhere in the 8th Season) and Once Upon a Time (stopped midway through the second season, and I was supposed to start using German subtitles, but then I'm already boosting my Georgian half-challenge with Futurama anyway. Not to forget output for all of my languages. I really got stuck at the fable I was trying to write in Georgian, more due to the fable itself than the Georgian. I tried to come up with a plot too complicated. And I'm writing here till the time for a snack comes, because it is hard to concentrate when I'm hungry but it can be worse to eat too soon and then become hungry again later when I may not be here or at home. Today the most unlikely and yet the most important option prevailed. I wrote some Chinese which was Team Asia's June challenge! I'm really happy about this. I picked up some rather complex clauses which might have resulted into clumsy Chinese, but at least it was a good exercise and I hope to get inspiring corrections as usual: 开始学中文的时候，我不太有兴趣中国文化。 我从来不是像一个宅男或者一个对东亚文化的 狂热爱好者一样。还有许都其他语言我在学习 或者想学习。事实上，我开始学汉语时因为我 以为中文将对我生涯有很多效用。 我职业生涯还没用过汉语，可是现在我对中国 文化非常感兴趣。在过去三年我读了很多书， 也看了很多关于中国文化和地理的电视节目。 我真的想去中国！我的汉语还不太好，可是我 觉得我已经能跟普通人关于游客的情况说话。 我也对古典文学有兴趣，可是这是一个在将来 的问题. When I started learning Chinese I wasn't very much interested into the Chinese culture. I have never been like an otaku or an aficionado of the East Asian culture. I am learning or want to many other languages. To tell the truth, when I started Chinese I assumed it would be useful to my career. I still haven't used Chinese in my professional life, but now I am very interested in the Chinese culture. In the past three years i've read a lot of books and also watched a lot of TV programs about the Chinese culture and geography. I really want to go to China! My Chinese isn't very good yet, but I think I can already talk to the ordinary person about tourist issues. I'm also interested in the classical literature, but that is an issue for the future. The same at italki . 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 191 of 364 10 June 2015 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, I started 'Eesti Kell Ma Armastan...". No breathtaking feelings. It's mostly an audio course, so the actual lessons are short. There is a dialogue, a nice one, plus drilling sentences the way I like it. I barely need the Russian and sometimes I understand the Estonian but not the Russian. The rest are audio drills I'm skipping, which means I'm only doing the initial dialogue at about 5 minutes. Today I was busy and it took me long to start, but I believe from now on I can work on it at 1/4 of the time I used to spend on LES. Then I'll have to think about what to do, because this book is only going to take me 5 days to complete.
I'm starting to get the hang of Karl & Co, after only three days (=30 minutes). The DVD files are rather chaotic to use, because they give false length and time positions. I ended up watching 8 minutes from episode 2 and 2 from episode 3, I know this will make it hell to remember, but it's better than doing much less than 10 minutes a day. Yet I need more suggestions of Norwegian series with subtitles because I feel I need some comprehensive input again. At Modern Mandarin Chinese a Practical Guide (a series I can never recommend enough), I finished grammar description and started the situational part. Looking forward to it! At the ver first page I am reminded of the word I would have liked to use yesterday at my challenge. 老百姓 (ordinary people). It seems 普通人 isn't totally wrong, I just wanted to make my writing less common and more idiomatic. Ideally, I should write a lot to practice each topic I read at this grammar, but I don't know if I am going to have the time right away, and there is also a workbook that follows. Started Futurama in German with German subtitles. Since I'm doing only 30 minutes or less instead of the 50+ for French, I decided to watch it intensively, pausing to look missing words at the subtitles up. This worked for Norwegian (to the extent that I'm willing to do it again), so it might work for my conversational German as well. Things were going well so far but somehow I got lost. I spent a good deal of a time at the forum and also had a bit more work, and in the end I managed Turkmen and Italian but not any output activity. 'Ragazzo comes from Arabic 'raqas'. This is striking me, I thought the Iberian peninsula had many more arabisms. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 192 of 364 11 June 2015 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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And it does have more :) But aww cool about raqas!!!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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