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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 153 of 160 04 October 2009 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention my current COMPLAINT.
Essentially, I'm reading slowly in Mandarin. Sloooooooooowly. Four months ago, I read about 20 pages of Chinese every night for my course (well-known Chinese novels and short stories). These 20 pages would take me less than an hour, which is the amount of time I'd allot myself. That's less than three minutes to read a page of Chinese with great comprehension and character recognition (my teacher was fond of randomly picking students to read excerpts out loud to test whether they knew their characters, and judging from my performance there, I'd say that at the time I knew most but not all of the characters from the paragraphs I had to read). I haven't timed myself yet for my current pace, but I'm going to guess that I'm spending around seven minutes per page right now - more than double the time! I'm still doing pretty well with comprehension, but don't ask me to read anything out loud! Frustrating. Don't know what to do about it except keep on going, I guess. Luckily, that was Plan A in the first place. Edited by bouda on 04 October 2009 at 4:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 154 of 160 04 October 2009 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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edit Edited by bouda on 04 October 2009 at 7:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 155 of 160 14 October 2009 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose this is some sort of an update -
1. As the hypothetical "you" may have noticed, I have been updating sporadically since maybe late September. This is because I do not have internet in my house. During the summer I had more money so enjoyed the privilege of going to coffee shops that had wireless - now I have slightly less money and cannot drive so remain internet-less. I am actually not upset at all, especially as I can sometimes steal my neighbor's weak signal if I'm really moved to (like now). 2. Speaking of "cannot drive," I'd also like to add that I currently have NO FORM of government-issued ID apart from my passport... you need two forms of ID (only one of which can be a passport, I believe) to obtain a non-driver ID card in my state... I do have a solution but haven't had time to apply for the Social Security card yet either ... helps that I have no printer and need one to print out the application form, although that's no excuse. But this is completely off topic. 3. Arabic is really, really, really, really goddamn frustrating. Not because the language is especially difficult (I have nothing to compare it to, so I don't know whether it is easy or hard in the greater scheme of languages), but because my class is - well - slow. It looks like this is solely the problem of my classmates - all the other sections appear to be doing quite well, judging from the occasional students who attend our sessions when they miss their own sections. No, it is just my classmates. I actually like them, but they're just... pre-occupied with things other than Arabic. I realize that this is a problem of most language classes but it's still annoying. 6. Chinese perversely is a little shaky too. I'm starting to become slightly less grammatical in conversations - interestingly enough, most of the mistakes seem to be from thinking in my (admittedly flawed) Arabic instead of English. I say "interesting" because I haven't any confusion between languages for a long time, and certainly never with languages that I have such disparate levels of proficiency in. On the other hand, whenever I feel vaguely disappointed about my Mandarin, all I have to do is talk to students at my university in supposedly advanced classes to feel much better. Far be it for me to bash my U's Chinese department (their most advanced level is by all accounts excellent and certainly holds a lot for me to learn), but it's nice sometimes to be reminded that just because you can put something on your resume doesn't mean that you're at all good at it... not just for the rush of schadenfreude in cases like this, but also - and more importantly - for the dose of humility it administers. Just because I can now claim to have taken "intermediate" level classes in MSA doesn't mean that I'm anything near proficient! Ok, I'm kind of impressed that my neighbor's shaky internet has actually held out this long, but I gotta jet and do more important things, like ACTUALLY STUDYING. Also, need to start volunteering again and/or doing something with my life. That would be nice too. Edited by bouda on 14 October 2009 at 6:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 156 of 160 14 October 2009 at 6:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Ok so I didn't mean to make a new post soooo soon or even get back online, but my
neighbor's internet miraculously started working for me again, so I couldn't resist the chance to skim through the last few pages of my log and try to track my progress. Trends 1. I am complaining all the time about how slow the class is 2. I am slacking on Chinese 3. I am obviously having memory problems again Thoughts 1. The class is actually not THAT slow, given the circumstances. 2. I am slacking on Chinese. (Output aside.) I can fix this one though! 3. I can discuss the memory problems with my doctor tomorrow. If I remember (ha). The memory thing is sort of annoying because one of the reasons that I put myself into language study with renewed fervor this past summer was that people tell me that language study may improve memory in the long run, and I do have some (minor) memory problems. Off medications I lose large but occasional chunks of time and on medications I lose small but frequent chips. Given the circumstances, I know that I should not be hoping for a miracle or anything like that, but it's a little disappointing still in an irrational way. /personal tangent 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5613 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 157 of 160 10 December 2009 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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أهلا
:) I just read through almost your whole thread, and I have to say it is very inspiring :) So even if you were writing about being frustrated, I wanted you to know that to me it sounds like you're doing great! Of course it's natural for us linguaphiles to have high standards I guess :P I am working on MSA and Japanese, so I can definitely relate. Well I flirted a bit with Mandarin and loved it too, but do not have the time right now to give to it. Anyway you haven't posted in a while so I'm wondering how it's going??? I haven't even started a log here but perhaps I should.. it's so hard to stay disciplined when teaching yourself. Thanks for the inspiration!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7101 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 158 of 160 05 June 2010 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kudos bouda for keeping such a long language log. I know I wouldn't have been able to log my progress for that long. How are you coming along with your Arabic?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5926 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 159 of 160 06 June 2010 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
Completely true! My personal "feel better" technique for Russian is to go to Wikipedia and read the language pages because I already know most of the material in the English section and they mainly use the same words over and over again. Unfortunately, I have to face reality when it comes to actually reading news. Arabic and Mandarin sounds like a pretty heavy load. Good luck on both of your languages, I'm certain you'll go far! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 160 of 160 16 August 2010 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello all!
It is the first time in ages that I've managed to log into this account and so I thought I'd thank you for all your kind words and post a quick update. Arabic is going well. I have been consistently studying and actually picked up my pace a little in recent days; as you may or may not remember, there was a period of time from last September to around February when I was having a very hard time getting my daily minimum done, but luckily I am back on track now! I have improved most significantly in my reading, which is to be expected, but surprisingly I've also started to make some headway on listening comprehension. Listening comprehension has always been incredibly difficult for me but I now feel that I am starting to pick up some phrases here and there when I do my daily listening - for someone who was picking up something like one substantive word every ten minutes just a month ago, this is a vast improvement! Of course I still have a long way to go towards proficiency but I'm feeling satisfied with what progress I've made. I'm on the road! Quabazaa, you've certainly started your own log since you posted that comment! I read your log sometimes (I think we've exchanged a word or two) and am always impressed at how lively you are. ANK47, I'm very grateful for the various video clips with explanation you've put up on your blog. Many of them are still "above my level" so to speak (especially as I have yet to truly begin tackling dialects) but I find your annotations very useful. I actually have one of the Simpsons episodes you put up on my ipod now... I'd have two but the program I was using to record stopped working. lynxrunner, I think I might have to try your motivation method! I have yet to poke around Arabic Wikipedia. And thank you for the luck. And thank you to those of you who took the time to wish me well in private messages as well. I stopped posting in this log because for some reason I wasn't able to log back into this account until now. So I made a new account and simply jumped boat. In a way it was satisfying to abandon this log because historically winter to early spring is a very bad time for me (I have a seasonal disorder that makes me kind of crazy and winter is prime neurotic breakdown time), and I'm sure I've posted all sorts of whiny embarrassing stuff in here. Of course I've almost definitely posted just as many whines in my new log, which you can follow here. As you can see from the tags, this year I have been focusing mostly on logging my Mandarin for TAC, but I log my Arabic as well (and ironically have almost definitely been doing more Arabic work than Mandarin - to be honest my Mandarin has taken quite a stumble this year!). I will probably log Arabic more often and perhaps even start fiddling with a new language when the school year begins again next month. Hope the summer has treated you all well. I know I've had a good one - I even had some Arabic conversations with native speakers for really the first time! No, teachers don't count! - bouda / annette 2010 log - Mandarin/Arabic Edited by bouda on 16 August 2010 at 8:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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