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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes  5 sounds | Message 33 of 127 08 April 2009 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I still feel crappy, but I'm out of bed and have already been racking in the listening hours. I've been enjoying a podcast about babies and moms - I learned some essential parenting words, and I get the impression that I committed them to memory successfully, as the moms hosting the show have been repeating them so much. I had a hunch that dealing with different themes - typically a couple of themes a week - would really boost my efficiency, and I guess I was right. I took my loudspeakers and actually set them up this afternoon, which is good because I'd like to limit the time I spent using my earphones, for obvious reasons. I mean, if I go out, I'll take an mp3 player anyway, so that's enough. I dreamed in English again last night, and I wake up and just think in English, it's so weird. When I was playing rap all the time, it never ever happened to me! At some point, I have to willingly switch back to French, and I have to do that more and more, because concentrating for a few seconds isn't enough for my brain to lapse back to its native language or whatever. A lot of people would say "but that's awesome, just think in English and that's it!", but I'm not going to do that, as it may just be harmful to my pronunciation. I need to get a lot of nice exposure to American English, and *then* I'll re-start producing sentences of my own. I wanted to sort of fill my hard drive with podcasts, but the hassle of downloading kind of prevents me from doing that. I need to bite the bullet when it comes to that vocabulary issue. Honestly, I feel so bad because of that, especially because the listening challenge is going sooo well it's crazy. Like, I was losing a lot of time just staying in bed and not having the willpower to turn my mp3 player on, and today I've managed to wake up to the sound of the podcast I was listening to.
Incidentally, I have less and less insomnia issues. Something tells me that not taking advantage of the time I had made me really depressed and messed up my sleeping patterns. Having canceled my appointment, I have this whole free time slot. Waking up earlier is definitely good - it allows me to save more time for some reason, maybe because I'm less stressed out. One big incentive for me is to dream in English, it's happening more and more and I know that building up a habit takes around a month, so after that it be just be natural for me to dream in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 34 of 127 08 April 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I made some flashcards, so I'm quite happy about that, but I didn't catch up on all the work I haven't been able to do lately. Moreover, I discovered The Apprentice. This show is really interesting (althought the commentary part that they broadcast after the challenge bit is a bit boring) and I seem to be more and more attracted to British English on a whole, even if I swore I'd go that extra mile and find a lot of instructive American podcasts. My behavior's a bit contradictory - that most likely stems from the fact that I'm a bit of a rebel! Sadly enough, that attitude will only backfire on me. I have an issue with ESL podcasts - the content is lively and the dialogs very realistic, but the people who host the podcast speak so slowly that they could lull me to sleep, and it just sound really forced, and it becomes quite painful to listen to. I know I could get a handful of good words from each and every single one of these shows, but I just can't be bothered to listen to a guy who sounds like he's suffering or trying too hard. It's a shame, and I think they should provide a faster version, just so that their speech flow better. When I do go into the trouble of playing one of these ESL lessons, I learn quite a lot, but I don't find it enjoyable.
I'm caught in a dilemma. Flashcards are quite boring to make, but extremely entertaining to use, so I don't feel like I'm losing my time when I'm writing words down, even if I think I wrote the same stuff several times (I have a stack of 1K flashcards I made last year, it's all put away in a nice shoe box, but I'm making new ones). The main flaw of the system is that I used to do my reps with 3 boxes and a system based on traffic lights, really. Green was good to go, orange so-so, and red meant stop. (This system is based on the French traffic lights color and I had to keep it that way because the boxes that I had to do the drills had colored covers (that, oddly enough, were red, orange, and green). The crux of the matter is that as long as I can't find a reliable rotating system that allows me to deals with the flashcards jutting out from the boxes, I won't be able to set up a manual spaced repetition system. I'm losing less and less time on MSN or on the computer, and that's a good thing, but I should limit the amount of things I post here daily. Listening hours: (roughly, because I'm starting to lose track of the exact number and it's bad) Started listening at 11:20 am, it's now 11:35 PM, so roughly 11 hours as I wasn't listening the whole time, 8H of American English (which is the bare minimum, but whatever.) Edited by fairyfountain on 09 April 2009 at 12:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 35 of 127 09 April 2009 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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This was supposed to be an edit but it was too long, so I thought that posting a new message would be more appropriate.
One more thing: I noticed that any audio file that has a poor sampling rate (that is, below 55 kbits or so) is not that enjoyable to listen to. That's why I ditched out most of the "bad quality" podcasts. A better sampling frequency means a bigger file, but that's okay with me. I decided I'd delete the podcasts I've already played one or twice to save some space. I also know what shows I wouldn't dispose of anyway, so I'll keep them and see what I can do with the rest. That's the beauty of technology. I made a quick appearance on the "penpal market", but realized that I'd suffer from having more friends to chat with. The sole reason why I'm still logged on almost all the time on MSN is the counter I've installed in my "share a quick message" box. The figure doesn't look that impressive yet (it's not like 50 hours is the end of the world or a life-changing amount of time) but a couple of friends know what the counter stands for, and would like to see that number soar in the next year. I have made a commitment, and I want to turn my life around before it's too late, so I hope I'll get there. I do have a traditional diary of my own, but keeping people posted with what you do, as egocentric as it seems, is sometimes more helpful than just talking to yourself. I said I wouldn't produce anything in English until I felt confident with my overall skills in English, but writing has got to be the exception to that rule. In December, I was fed up with English and decided I wouldn't practice my English for a full month - I still watched some TV and listened to music, too, but that's all - and I'm still feeling the side-effects of that stupid decision. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 36 of 127 09 April 2009 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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This will be the only entry of the day.
I mapped out a vocabulary schedule - listening to a podcast about babies really inspired me, because apparently, babies learn around 10 words a day (with its pronunciation, that makes sense) and I'm not even able to do that so something's deeply wrong! I took out the flashcards I neatly put away in a shoebox last year, and I'm using them right now. They aren't what you could call perfect, especially because I haven't included the phonetics with the words - this would take up too much time anyway. I also force myself to jot random things on paper while watching a TV show, since it seems to help me with the memorization process. By random, I mean anything off the top of my head, like a word I forgot and just remembered, or a sentence taken from the show. My listening marathon is going really well, so nothing to say about that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 37 of 127 09 April 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is technically the end of the day (midnight), so I wanted to add a couple of things to my last post. First of all, I'm pretty much done with the babies and childhood department. This kind of podcast is very soothing to listen to, so I'll keep on downloading stuff about toddlers and what-not. However, I'm experiencing technical problems with a website about babies - their links are all screwed up, thank God I was a webmaster before, or I could just wave goodbye to these awesome audio files. Some files won't load or aren't downloadable for some reason, so I'll just have to suck it up. I find the source files and then firefox download crashes. Anyway, I have nothing to add concerning my listening goals, it just works out really well, even if there's some gnashing of teeth still ahead because I suddenly became very loud (indirectly, mind you, since I'm not talking and the radio is, but you know how it is you live with other people). For example, someone requested I wore my earphones tonight. Well, that's okay, but it just proves that sometimes, folks just don't like to listen to English or the radio, especially when they're trying to go to sleep - and that's totally understandable. I'm going through my flashcards awfully quickly and it worries me a little. You know, I don't have the phonetics that go with the word, but I'm making up for that thanks to the podcast themed around cars, babies, animals or whatever. However, I have that habit of writing words I already kind of know, and that's because I want to include them in my active vocabulary. That said, I still haven't solved the pronunciation problems I'm faced with. My R isn't one bit better, and I had better not talk for a few weeks anyway. It sorts of frustrates me - I'm aware of the fact that the 50-something hours I've racked in so far aren't enough at all, but I'd just like somebody to tell me "oh, by the time you hit 10K hours, you'll sound (almost) native and won't be struggling with this word or that letter any more". I'm sure that English shows prevent me from learning some sounds of American English, but even if watching Doctor Who hampers my progress, I'm still going to do it. After all, I can learn new things from every single show I watch, and I'm not ready to make big sacrifices for the sake of a particular type of English. My internet is crappy, probably because people are having a day off for Easter weekend, so I'll have to make do with the podcasts I already have.
In other news, I kind of caught up with my flashcards making, but it's still not enough (which is logical, considering how many books I still can't read, etc). I intend on doing more drills tomorrow, along with flashcard making. A handful of cards is going to be my minimum "review homework" for a day, and you can fit quite a few words in a hand! I have a 1460-day plan, and should be able to crank some time for vocabulary every single day. You need around 10 reps per word if you want to memorize it, and if you go over 50 words a day (or learn x number of words 50 times, same difference), you'll have memorized 7.3K words in 1460 days. While this may not seem to be a lot, this number can easily be doubled or tripled (it's not like doing 100 or 150 reps is extremely hard). In any case, you're that bit better at your target language at the end of the day. Edited by fairyfountain on 10 April 2009 at 12:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kuronue Groupie United States Joined 6007 days ago 45 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 38 of 127 10 April 2009 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
Do you have a link to that statistic? I'd love to see the theory on that. Also, it's "doubled or tripled". And if I haven't said it before, your English is amazing. Congratulations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 39 of 127 10 April 2009 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the correction and for the compliment, trebled might have worked too, but there was one b too many anyway!
I did have links to that statistic, but I don't remember where I read it. Googling "vocabulary" and "10 repetitions" may lead you to the answer you're looking for. The heart of the matter is that you have to see/hear/read the word several times over a given period of time. That is, repeating the same word over and over again won't work. You may be interested in articles about spaced-repetition systems softwares like Supermemo. I hate these programs with a passion, but the principle isn't flawed. A former teacher of mine told me she and her husband learned Spanish thanks to boxes that worked like a home-made spaced-repetition system. You are supposed to do reps according to a precise schedule that expands over months and even years. I never attempted to stick to that timetable, mostly because I already encountered a good half of the words I'm learning through flashcards. However, the rotating system that I mentioned a few posts ago works quite well. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the enormous number of flashcards I have to monitor, but I'll use a new technique to ease the burden a bit. I have a blue box that I use for the words I know, and I'll just put away in a plastic blag the flashcards that are really easy. Don't get me wrong, I won't throw away the bag per se, but I'll sort of put it somewhere and forget about it. I'm taking a controlled risk - there are most urgent matters that I have to attend to, and I can always refer to the vocabulary I banned for my boxes. I also like to wait a day or two before promoting a word to the next box. This ensures that I actually memorized it at least partially. However, it sometimes is a waste of time. I mean, I know how to translate words like "a dog" or "a cat". The system is still quite ingenious - I try to refrain from cataloging the really obvious aforementioned words. Most of the time, that mean I'll omit 1 item out of 100, which is not a lot! Anyway, I hope I answered your question. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fairyfountain Senior Member Zimbabwe Joined 6136 days ago 254 posts - 248 votes 5 sounds | Message 40 of 127 10 April 2009 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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My downloads work today, which is great news. I still feel queasy - it's okay, my body's just testing my will of iron :p
I managed to do some reps - I went through some of the words I added to my boxes yesterday. Not having the phonetics along with the vocabulary sort of drives me up a wall, but I know that listening to lots of English will make up for that, eventually. Moreover, my first goal is passive understanding - I have a bunch of books that I really want to read but that are too difficult for me, so hopefully 5K words onwards they will seem easier. I'll probably be done with the baby topic in a few weeks, and incidentally, I'll be done with the human body and quite a few diseases and what-not. I'm still reluctant to go out of my way and find new things - I'd rather use the old stuff over and over again. I need to get out of that habit, but I don't wan't to make any big changes, because I don't feel so well and a couple of things are eating me. When I go past the 1K listening hours milestone, I'll know I've included the immersion environment into my daily life. Until then, I have to watch out for the problems that might catch my attention and force me stop my challenge. I still have some English in my dream, but French reclaimed its territory. That said, I still experience these "Oh, I'm thinking in English!" moments. I think that by now, my brain's pretty much used to living in an immersion environment, especially because it was in the same situation before, so that's also why I have to use a wide range of podcasts and resources, otherwise I just get used to it too fast. I planned on downloading some American podcast about cars, but I'm still taking care of the cute baby department. Sadly enough, most of the podcasts I find were recorded in New England or something, and the characters in Family Guy are from Massachussets. I like their accents, but I need people who pronounce their "R"'s all the time. Anyway, it's just my luck! I suppose that balancing these resources with some Californian radio (hopefully, the bad commercials are gone!) would help. I'm starting to get the hang of the Fahrenheit system. I know roughly know whether it's hot or cold outside when they play a weather forecast, so it's good. I also made around 50 flashcards centered around temperatures. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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