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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 121 of 160 27 August 2009 at 8:36am | IP Logged |
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Not sure what was going through my mind this morning when I wrote my last post.
It looks like I MIGHT be going for Japanese as my third language to tack onto MSA and Mandarin, because I impulsively bought a textbook today, which wasn't the brightest idea but it's almost my birthday, so that's my excuse. Anyway, I flipped through the first few chapters and was surprised at how quickly my Japanese is coming back to me. Turns out that I still remember all the kana and some simple grammatical structures. It's also amusing to me what things I now find hard. The way that the pronunciation seems to sometimes differ from the written form was never something that occurred to me as strange before when I was a little kid - I just took it as a fact of life. But now it throws me off. Not sure if I'm right though - I haven't really started studying anything yet, so I can't say anything for sure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 122 of 160 29 August 2009 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
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So still waffling on the potential third language but that's okay - I'm not in a hurry.
At this point it looks like I might use my extra time to systematically go through a couple Mandarin textbooks and comb for vocab/see what grammar holes I have. About an hour of listening today but I have yet to tackle the most important task of the day... finishing putting my textbook cards into Anki AND THEN REVIEWING THEM. I have a backflow of like 400 cards right now because I haven't Anki'ed it up for so long... Edited by bouda on 29 August 2009 at 5:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 123 of 160 29 August 2009 at 6:57pm | IP Logged |
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Okay, so I think I really need to do a comprehensive review of Chinese, just because
I've forgotten some things lately but I don't know what. I think one thing I want to do is create flashcards with sentence patterns on one side and maybe an example sentence on the other side. The point is to create my own sentence. This should be super easy and, with any luck, good practice. The only problem is that I won't know for sure if my sentence is sufficiently beautiful! But I really want to improve my formal/academic writing, so it's necessary to make sure that I have a good grounding in all this. Another thing I'm going to do for Chinese is start reading newspapers again, which should be easy. I have a good textbook for newspapers etc, I believe, so I'll go through that and see how it goes. I usually just read novels, which is good and all, but doesn't always teach me the vocabulary I'd learn from newspapers. I also will continue translating things for fun, possibly something longer like a novel if I have time. Finally, I'm going to continue working on my wenyanwen, which will pick up in speed once the academic year starts as I want to follow along with a nearby class (though I won't be part of the class). I'm not too worried about my Chinese - it's my Arabic that I'm nervous about. I think right now I'm probably in that valley between beginner and intermediate, perhaps low- intermediate. I can talk about many things but not everything I want, and my speech is a little halting at times. As a result, I can plan many things to do but have a hard time doing any of them effectively. I'm going to start studying my new textbook in the week before my class begins, though, because I prefer to study before class rather than in class - lets you ask better questions... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 124 of 160 30 August 2009 at 9:16am | IP Logged |
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So today I did three minutes of Arabic. That was it - three. I did watch a movie in
Mandarin, but that's not Arabic, for which I only did - have I mentioned it? - only three minutes. After some mental castigation/procrastination, I've realized that it's not that I have a hard time studying Arabic grammar or reading texts or listening to the radio or watching movies or talking to myself like a crazy person, because I'm fine with all that. What I have a hard time doing is working on memorizing vocabulary. Right now I'm using Anki, because I have a hard time remembering vocab just from seeing it once or twice in context. Anki isn't really working out for me. If I get started, I can generally get into the swing of things and go for a while, but I just have no motivation to get started, and I'm questioning how much it helps anyway. So I think I'm going to downsize my Anki attempts for a while and go back to my traditional method of vocab memorization, endless wordlists. Slightly less boring only because I can see how much progress I'm making at a glance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 125 of 160 30 August 2009 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
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I've counted 16 hours of Arabic since I began counting ten days ago (including a few
hours from earlier that week), which is about half of where I wanted to be at. But that's okay, because I find that counting hours doesn't adequately reflect the work I do anyway, because I tend to work in frenetic spurts and then waste a lot of time. Today's plan may include some of the following: - L-R - reviewing my Anki - putting new flashcards in... maybe - starting my new textbook - recording myself to see how halting my speech is - yay! - looking at the textbook/reader i borrowed from the library (love it) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JasonBourne Groupie United States Joined 5756 days ago 65 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Arabic (Written), Turkish | Message 126 of 160 30 August 2009 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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I hear ya about the arabic vocab problem. I've studied a few languages in my time, but I seem to have the hardest time remembering Arabic vocab, not sure why...
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 127 of 160 31 August 2009 at 3:26am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, I don't know why either! And the strange thing is that people keep on telling me it
should be easy to remember vocab, for example because of the root system. I guess that I'm still learning new roots more than refreshing my knowledge of old ones or something. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 128 of 160 31 August 2009 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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30 min Anki yesterday - at last! Turns out that, although I still have a hard time
remembering new words, I at least haven't forgotten most of my old words. The first ten cards or so were impossible but it was smooth sailing from there. However, I still have 300 to go. Class starts for me in two days. I'm actually very nervous because I don't know how I'll match up. I don't want to be the worst student there, although I don't mind if I'm not one of the best. I just don't want people dissing me because I didn't go through the same program as they did, which probably won't happen, but I'm super paranoid. I also don't want to be too far behind because that's not fun! I think I'm going to prepare some short introductory-type speeches that I can reel out if pressed on the first day and then go from there. A short list of things to do in the next two days aaaa: - get around to FINALLY memorizing my verb form chart, once and for all - photocopy some charts of a few irregular verbs, just in case I forget 'em (or don't know them) - photocopy all tense, pronoun, case charts for easy reference in times of need - finish chapter 1 of new textbook, be well acquainted with vocab -------> finish initial vocab study today Edited by bouda on 31 August 2009 at 6:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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