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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 97 of 160 15 August 2009 at 4:36am | IP Logged |
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It struck me today that my lack of knowing French/Spanish is really unfortunate, mostly
because these are such common languages for people I know to take at school or to speak at home, so knowing these would really be a boon. So although I would much rather do Russian or Hindi or a language from the ancient Near East next, perhaps I should focus on French after my Arabic settles down a little bit. Of course, that's a long while off yet, so this is just idle speculation. I'm much more fascinated with the Cyrillic alphabet, but maybe learning a language whose characters I can already read would be nice. I think I've been so restless lately in terms of languages because I know now that I will probably be focusing on Mandarin and MSA for at least the next five years with academic pressure and/or easily available native speakers. For example, I will definitely be taking MSA next year as a course and Classical Chinese + Mandarin as self-study with tutor (following course materials but not in the class itself). The following year, it seems almost self-destructive to NOT take MSA; ditto for the year after that. There are also three Chinese courses I hope to take at my college, although we'll see if I manage to fit all of them in. So as you can see, it's very likely that I will be sticking with the two languages I am focusing on now for a while yet - and that makes me want to pick up something new, something that I don't know for sure I'll have a chance to study, something to play with in my free time. I read for about 45 minutes today but did not get very far because I looked up almost every word (!!!). I think from now on I will only look up those words I don't know or can't guess from context. I find myself double-checking a lot, which is fine, but I get more than enough words for my flashcards without pausing twenty times in one sentence. Edited by bouda on 15 August 2009 at 5:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 98 of 160 15 August 2009 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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Okay, reworking my schedule to allow for the possibility of dabbling in - not studying
seriously, just playing with, as a respite from the "have to"s of Arabic and Chinese - the as of yet unknown third language X. For the last few days, my schedule has looked like: 1 hour - Arabic Anki upon waking 45 min - Arabic reading 30 min - Arabic listening 20 min - Arabic grammar 45 min - Classical Chinese poem translation 45 min - Mandarin material writing 30 min - Arabic Anki before sleep (inconsistently) Not all necessarily in the same day, although I try to keep my Arabic studies steady; I do rotate. I would insert third language X at 30-45 minutes a day between bouts of Arabic. I haven't worked out the details yet, but best case scenario would go something like: Arabic Anki - wake up Arabic grammar Arabic reading Classical Chinese poetry Arabic listening Mandarin materials Arabic reading Third language X: break! Arabic reading Arabic Anki Arabic listening - going to bed Obviously, as mentioned, I'm not studying lang X intensively here; I'm thinking probably 10 min to 1 hour a day, probably veering on the longer side for the first few weeks and the shorter side thenceforth, likely stabilizing at 30 min. I'm not deluding myself that I'll magically gain fluency in lang X in a short time from just doing this meager bit. However, I do hope to learn some basics, so that when I've reached the breakthrough point with Arabic (if that ever happens) and have time to devote to X, I'll be able to start from somewhere that isn't ground zero. Edited by bouda on 15 August 2009 at 8:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 99 of 160 15 August 2009 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
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During the school year my schedule will probably look more like:
Arabic Anki - wake up Review of yesterday's work Arabic class Third lang X Arabic homework Mandarin/Classical Chinese Arabic reading Arabic listening - bed Looks like a lot but because I currently don't spend a lot of time (at most about 45 minutes) on any one task, excluding class and homework, I think it's feasible. Still very attracted to the idea of studying a third language to take a "break" with. I've found that when I do Arabic for too many hours in a row, I get a little burned out, and breaking with Chinese doesn't help much because I've lost the adrenaline/wonder of a new language. Breaking with Chinese is a little like breaking with English for me, although obvs I'm not native-level yet - I'm good enough that I just lapse straight into the language and for some bizarre reason I generally don't learn a lot for the amount of time I spend on it (Classical aside), whereas with Arabic, every time I read a sentence, a little bell goes off in my head - so THAT'S what you do with this verb! My current list of third lang X possibilities, unordered: French or Spanish. I keep on having this suspicion that I should learn a Romance language, but I'm not incredibly motivated, so this might not be a great idea. Russian. Probably will be the hardest language to progress in with the amount of time I am able to devote to this side project, but I know that I want to learn Russian one day in the future, so it would be good to start early and have lots of time to use on it. Akkadian or Ancient Egyptian. I still have my eye on that Gardiner... and there're a beautiful Akkadian textbook & dictionary at my bookstore too, although I can't remember the authors quite right now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 100 of 160 15 August 2009 at 4:25pm | IP Logged |
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Incidentally, turns out that I already have a book in Russian (contemporary poetry).
However, I also have many books in French as my father initially thought he might be a French major and I sort of stole his books indiscriminately by the armload when he moved out. I have a couple books in Spanish, too... so really, I'm not too wanting for resources. Ancient languages aside. Going to record a new basic entry for my Chinese learning log (because at heart that's what it is - just another learning log) later today. ETA: I was reading through old posts in this forum today - I'm having a very hard time focusing on things I should be doing right now, in case you haven't picked up from my wanderlust and all that - and I came across this sentiment several times, quoted here from the admirable Iversen: "I have noticed that those who put up such high criteria for basic fluency typically are Westeners who have chosen to study East-Asian languages. Have you chosen these languages because you were more ambitious from the beginning, or have the difficult languages (or maybe rather scripts) you are studying forced you to become more severe with yourself, and by implication with the rest of us poor lazy people? ... and here I should put a smiley, because somewhere I do admire people with high goals. " I'm requoting this here because I really don't know what I think about it. This is certainly a pattern I frequently see, but I don't know why, and I don't know if I am only noticing this pattern because I am particularly attentive to fellow learners of East-Asian languages. Edited by bouda on 15 August 2009 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 101 of 160 16 August 2009 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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Okay, so I still have a lot more flashcards to enter. Thought I was going to do it
today but just slobbed around instead. I did however finish about half of a Chinese translation that I'm pretty happy with, so today wasn't totally wasted. And it's only 6:30, so I have lots of time to finish doing Anki. I think from now on, I'm going to keep editing more updates into the same post until it reaches a couple paragraphs before posting anything new. I'm a little trigger-happy about the post button right now, and I'm not sure how good that is. ETA: Okay, trying this editing thing out. It's not too alien as I am always editing my posts anyway! Anyway, I've been thinking about my Chinese language log and the direction I want to take it in. To recap, I've kept track of my Chinese on my long- defunct personal blog for a while now, and now I want to keep all my Chinese stuff in one place. Initially I thought I could start a teaching blog for learning basic things (the things I know I can teach), but I do enough explaining to people I know on my own - I don't have to spend even more time typing it all up and putting it on the internet too. Then I thought that I would simply put up a lot of recordings. My accent is not too bad if I say so myself - I'm happy to provide an example clip if you think you can give me advice or corrections - so I think these recordings might be useful to someone else. But I'm not that excited about that either - it feels too textbook-y for me, and if I wanted to write a textbook, I'd just grab a native speaker friend (to make sure everything was right; I'm very fallible) and write a damn textbook. So now I'm thinking I'm going to veer more towards personal blog again, but with recordings of varying lengths and transcript, sorted into appropriate level. So essentially the second idea with the listening comprehension monologues/dialogues, but about me. I know it's hard to tell, but I like talking about myself. So I think this idea might work out well. We'll see. Edited by bouda on 16 August 2009 at 12:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 102 of 160 16 August 2009 at 1:20pm | IP Logged |
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So I didn't record myself yesterday because I didn't really have anything interesting
to say - nothing that I WANTED to talk about and definitely nothing exciting for anyone else to listen to. But I'm driving 1.5 hours to visit a couple of long-time-not-seen friends today, so I'll probably do something quick about that. I also want to start recording journal entries in Arabic because I KNOW I need to work on my pronunciation. I think ancient languages can wait a while longer (sob), mostly because I don't have enough money for the textbooks I want. So that leaves me with French, Spanish, or Russian. I'm much more interested in Russian - it sounds so pretty! - but know that I should learn at least one Romance language, simply because they're so useful and widespread. On the other hand, if I tackle Russian and reach a level of basic proficiency, preferably within 5 years or less (I'd hope to solidify my grasp on basic things before grad school), that would be pretty exciting as my Chinese is already not bad and I expect my Arabic will be decent in a couple of years as well, insha'allah. Also, my dad's new girlfriend is Russian and while I really don't like her, it would probably be nice to communicate with her in her original language, as for some reason her English still sucks despite attending one of the most prestigious PhD programs in the country (maybe it's just me, but most of the international grad students I know from that program DON'T have such crappy English, but what do I know). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 103 of 160 17 August 2009 at 4:45pm | IP Logged |
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I've started looking at various audio courses to supplement my level/listening
comprehension skills but am too impatient to listen to 20 minutes of something that I feel is too easy for me. I know review is important, but I'd rather review quickly things that I know for certain that I do know. Unfortunately, it's hard to gauge how difficult an audio course is without, well, listening to it. So thus far I've been sampling selections from the advanced or final tracks and seeing if I can keep up. So far everything seems far too easy, apart from some vocabulary (but I also can't be bothered to listen to 20 minutes just to pick up 2 that I don't know out of 30 words that I do), but I'll post later today with a more detailed update, assuming my internet fixes itself somehow. Did I mention my internet is broken? Yes, it's broken! At first I thought it was my Airport Extreme that was too old, but my brother somehow, magically attached another box-shaped item and claimed that this would "fix" it. Well, it didn't. I'm about as computer illiterate as your average modern-day Luddite, so I have no idea what to do, except steal my neighbor's wireless. Edited by bouda on 17 August 2009 at 7:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 104 of 160 18 August 2009 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
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Arabic Anki - 1.5 hours (and I'm STILL not done with all my new cards!)
Listening to various Arabic audio, mostly review - 45 min Chinese (modern), translation - about the same amount of time TOTAL: 3 hrs 45 min (2 hrs 15 min on Arabic) Here are my two favorite quotes (both spoken by Zhang Hongnian and transcribed by another source) from the Chinese text, obviously my translation. Unfortunately the text I have was faxed to me, so I don't know the author and have no way of pasting it up other than typing it all up - which is too much commitment to this log for me! “On the train of fate, at times people arrive, at times others disembark. I’m grateful that, on this carriage car, I was able to meet you.” (A little cheesy out of context, but I like the idea of the train!) “If artists and their work wish to move people, they must awaken the good and beauty within their souls, must pluck the thinnest heartstrings.” I will allow myself to GLANCE at the Russian alphabet, but I won't touch any grammar until I've started my Arabic course in September, as right now I need to focus on improving my Arabic for that class. I am so excited, by the way, that the damn Russian alphabet is written left to right (right?). When my computer messes up and prints Arabic left to right instead of right to left, I read it so much faster! Edited by bouda on 18 August 2009 at 1:24am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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