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20 in 20 - learning log of the deranged | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 73 of 138 09 July 2009 at 8:29am | IP Logged |
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I will be away from the internet likely until the end of the month. I have loaded a bunch of Pimsleur II and III units as well as Michel Thomas Advanced French onto my mighty Creative Zen and should be able to get through much of that before the begining of August. I have already worked through unit 27 of Pimsleur II, and have been watching more of Non, ce pays n'est pas pour le vieil homme:
Loretta : Sois prudent. Sheriff Bell : Toujours Loretta : Te blesse pas Sheriff Bell : Jamais Loretta : Et blesse personne Sheriff Bell : Si tu le dis. _________ Wendell : Si ça se trouve, il n’y a même pas eu d’argent. Sheriff Bell : C’est possible. Wendell : Mais vous n’y croyez pas. Sheriff Bell : Non. Pas vraiment, non. Wendell : Sacré merdier, hein? Sheriff Bell : On peut déjà dire ça en attendant le prochain. ___________ Chigurh : Tu sais ce qui va se passer maintenant, Carson. Tu devrais accepter ta situation. Ça aurait un peu plus de dignité. Carson Wells : Va te faire foutre. Chigurh : Hein? D’accord. J’ai une question à te poser. Si la règle que t’as suivie t’a oû t’en es, à quoi a-t-elle servi? Carson Wells : Est-ce que tu te rends compte à quel point tu es fou? Chigurh : Tu parles de la nature de cette conversation? Carson Wells : Je parle de ta nature à toi. _____________ Il faudrait accepter de jouer son âme. De dire : d’accord.. j’accepte de faire partie de ce monde. Edited by Spanky on 09 July 2009 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 74 of 138 27 July 2009 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
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Back to regular once a week posting.
Since last post, I have worked carefully and repetitively through the first two discs of Michel Thomas Advanced French as well as the end of Pimsleur II and the beginning of Pimsleur III through unit 4. I had an opportunity of briefly speaking simple French in Alaska with a couple of tourists from Quebec, très cool. I sounded suave et débonnaire I'll bet; not sure what the misplaced looks of pity and confusion I received from both women from time to time during the 15 minute chat were about. No significant French language media exposure over the last few weeks. I have made a vow as of this very moment that I will henceforth be dramatically restricting my media exposure in the English language in favour of French language media. This is fairly significant for me as I am a media fiend, and hopefully it will take this time (it did not when I tried it almost a year ago - gave me a headache). I have ready access to plenty of French language TV and radio programming and am plenty motivated this time, so hopefully this will be a piece of gâteau. Edited by Spanky on 28 July 2009 at 12:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 75 of 138 04 August 2009 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
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Action-packed week, partly involving Pender Island: the usual car chases and international espionage work on a level so secret that even I did not really know what I was doing. Another movie will likely be made of it all, so I do not want to say too much for fear of jeopardizing the screenplay rights.
All of which to say, I did not have a whole lot of time available for language study (though honestly, doing verb conjugations mentally during the tougher periods of the interrogation is the only thing really that kept me sane - but I have said too much already). I did manage to get through some of disc 3 of Michel Thomas Advanced French and through Pimsleur French III, unit 7. A fair bit of French-language television - particularly useful were game shows such as "Pyramide" - where one contestant provides a second contestant with examples of things that fall within a particular category ("things that dogs like" for example) in the hope of having the second contestant guess the appropriate category, or where the first contestant tries to get the second contestant to say a particular word (for example "salsa") by providing clues ("you put it on chips, it is a type of dance"). Awesome for language learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 76 of 138 10 August 2009 at 8:05am | IP Logged |
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You think I don't know the law? Wasn't it me who wrote it? And I say that this man has broken the law. Right or wrong, we had a deal. And the law says: bust a deal and face the wheel.
The above Auntie Entity quote from Beyond the Thunderdome plays a central role in my decision to begin studying German now in place of just concentrating on French, pursuant to my original plan of spending one year only per language before moving on. It is very tempting to defer moving on to a new language, as I am nowhere near where I had hoped I would be with French by this time. My original hope twelve months ago had been that within a year, and before moving on and confusing my woefully over-taxed brain with something new and distracting, I would have internalized enough basic French to very comfortably support my continued casual learning through books, other media and conversations. I do not feel that I am at that point yet, although I have been successful in getting my French up well above where it has ever been before. In particular, I am much more comfortable in both listening to and speaking French and I no longer get panicked by either. That is a huge step forward for me, so many thanks to the motivation provided by this site. Even though my accent remains grotesque and it still sounds like I am on the verge of choking when I put too much enthusiasm into attempting a proper "r" sound, at least I know what words and phrases I should be saying, and if I were to encounter a French-speaking person with a sufficient level of either patience or pity, I could likely be understood much of the time. I do not believe I have much improved my ability to read and write French, because I really focussed on oral French this past year. I will be reading more French this year than I did last year (I have already put Tin-tin, le capitaine Haddock and that mangy mutt Milou on notice), and may attempt to write some journal entries partially or completely en français. But a deal is a deal, and my deal was to commit to a changeover of principal language of study after one year, and as I do not want to have to face the wheel, I'll be starting up with German tout de suite, but will be dragging French along in the background (for more than just maintenance purposes). Perhaps not actually the smartest move I have ever made, sacrificing common sense and some momentum in French language learning in favour of an overly-rigid adherence to an arbitrarily-determined schedule, but there you go. Edited by Spanky on 10 August 2009 at 8:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 77 of 138 10 August 2009 at 8:17am | IP Logged |
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I will be starting German on August 11th. Anticipated German language study materials include the following:
Michel Thomas - Beginner and Advanced (and time permitting, the Vocabulary course) Pimsleur German - levels I, II and III FSI German - Programmatic and Basic Deutsche Welles - Warum nicht (all four series) and time and ability permitting, Wieso nicht German.about.com - the twenty lesson beginners course and additional materials as needed Der Kleine Prinz - book and audio Fokus Deutsch - depending on time and interest Germanpod101.com - at least all the beginner lessons BBC: German Steps; Talk German, Deutsch Plus I will try to study German at least a little bit each day, with the intention of averaging ten hours per week of study time, to see where approximately 500 hours of dedicated study over a year will get me. I have put perhaps 5 hours into casual German language study in the past year several months ago, so I'll start the clock at 5 hours already accumulated. My (largely unrealistic) goal for German by the end of the coming year is to develop basic conversational comfort (tourist-level stuff), understand most of a German television program such as an interview or newscast, read and be able to understand orally Der Kleine Prinz and (most importantly) never ever get caught singing "99 Luftballons" in public. Will be sneaking in French study each day only provided I have first met the self-imposed mandatory German expectations. Assuming my laziness does not win the ever-ongoing battle (and it is the odds-on favourite at this point), I will post weekly as to progress (or immediately in the event of a 99 luftballon incident). Auf Wiedersehen, à la semaine prochaine. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5957 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 78 of 138 17 August 2009 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
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German
Off to a comfortable start, so far German has been as easy as eins, zwei, drei. Turns out all those years of doing Rainier Wolfcastle (McBain) impersonations from the Simpsons is finally paying off. Unlike French, one gets to pronounce all the letters (seems so much less subversive this way). Spent a fair bit of time exploring various materials, loading up mp3 material, etc. Learned that German.about.com relies a fair bit on the RealOne player, malware which I refuse to download, so I had to find alternate sources of alphabet and other sound files. For the alphabet, I used : http://www.languageguide.org/im/alpha/de and http://www.alphabetpage.com/german/alphabet_for_english_spea kers I hope to be ruthlessly methodical with German, studying at least six days per week and Anki-ing up everything as I go, with lots of continuous review. My current study plan involves three concurrent streams as set out below, listing the material to be studied in roughly the order I will approach it. By squishing in lots of German from different courses, this will hopefully generate some synergy and present lots of variety to prevent the humdrums. Stream A - Michel Thomas (Beginners), Deutsche Wells (Warum Nicht) BBC (German Steps and Talk German), Michel Thomas (Advanced), Deutsche Wells (Wiseo Nicht) and Germanpod101 beginners lessons Stream B - Pimsleur I, II and III, Der Kleine Prinz (text and audio) and Fokus Deutsch Stream C - the 20 lesson German.about.com beginners course, followed by the FSI Programmed German and FSI Basic German courses. French I am trying to spend at least 30 minutes per day moving through the French study material I had previously identified, in addition to watching lots of French language television. At this point, my intention is to move through the remaining material in roughly the following order: Pimsleur III, FSI Basic, french.about.com beginner’s lessons, Le petit prince (text and audio), French in Action and finishing off the Complete Idiot’s Guide to French. Japanese I have decided to re-introduce 15 minutes per day of Japanese kana and kanji study on a trial basis. Am looking to Japanese as a year 3 language, and would like to bring the kana and some kanji tucked firmly under my belt as I go into that study year. Tried writing out all the hiragana and katakana from memory, after a number of months away from it – reasonably good for the hiragana, atrocious for the katakana. Worked on these this week, but really strictly keeping to a 15 minute daily limit, which is not much time once daydreaming and a short nap is factored in. Will keep working on the kana, working on words spelled out in each (just to drive in the kana) before going back to the kanji. Edited by Spanky on 17 August 2009 at 4:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Smurf36 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5850 days ago 57 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 79 of 138 17 August 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Spanky,
Nice to see that you're still working at a good pace on your languages, I think the way that you're doing it is just right, focusing maily on the target language, with set-aside time for reviewing the previous language, and a few minutes a day to prepare for next years language (whilst curing the wander-lust at the same time). Keep going at it, and you'll do great. My most recent venture is Portuguese, it's my new favourite language and I highly recommend it. Is it on your list? Smurf 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5995 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 80 of 138 17 August 2009 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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G'day Spanky,
Good to see you powering along your journey. Keep up the good work. I notice that you're not using any Assimil. Any reason why? Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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