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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 33 of 360 20 October 2010 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
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Tack så mycket, Impiegato, för hjälpen.
I’ve been remiss in updating this log, mainly because I honestly haven’t worked that much lately. Back in August I was already running out of steam, then in September I went on holiday – and boy, did I need that! – but my language studying has suffered a great deal for that. At the moment I’m still struggling in the final phase of Assimil (for those who know New French with Ease I’m stuck on CD4). My due cards in Anki piled up to a ridiculous number while I was away, and I’m still trying to get back to normal (I don’t believe in cramming a lot of repetitions in a few days just to see that number crawling down, I prefer to do it in a more gradual way). I’ve also studied very little Swedish: I’ve hardly ever opened a textbook, relying instead on the internet for some reading and listening and the occasional online exercise (which is great, as I can sneak in a couple-of-minute exercise during work). So that’s it for now. Let’s hope that owning up to my negligence will prod me into better discipline! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5698 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 34 of 360 20 October 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged |
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No need punishing yourself or feeling guilty :)
Let the joy on studying come back to you. My study is down a bit and shall begin again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 35 of 360 20 October 2010 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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@staf250
Thanks so much for the encouragement! I know your attitude is the right one, but sometimes it’s difficult to keep everything in perspective and deal with a momentary pause for what it is: a momentary pause in a long journey. Good luck with your studies, especially your Italian—and if you’ve got any doubt about the language, I’ll be more than happy to help (maybe in the Italian sub-forum which badly needs some activity!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 36 of 360 08 November 2010 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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Ok, time for another update.
Well, apart from my daily Anki session in Swedish, I haven’t had much time for anything else, which means I’m still stuck on the final CD of Assimil French With Ease. That’s a pity, given that I’ve just received Perfectionnement Français / Using French. It seems that it will have to sit on my bookshelf somewhat longer than I hoped for. Anyway, isn’t it great when your loved ones know you so well (and put up with you and your hobbies even when they don’t share or even understand them) that they think of language courses as a suitable present for you? Personally, I love it! However, just to make sure I don’t forget everything, here is a very short text in French: those familiar with Assimil will notice that it doesn’t stray very far from what one learns there, but I don’t feel I’m up to anything more sophisticated yet. Il y a rien d’intéressant à la télévision ce soir. Alors, je vais lire un roman. Il s’agit du The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, un roman de David Mitchell. J’aime beaucoup cet auteur. Il est anglais, mais il a habité longtemps en Japon. Je crois qu’il habite en Irlande maintenant. D’habitude je lis les livres en anglais en version originale. Probablement j’ai lu plus de romans en anglais que de romans en italien. J’adore la littérature, mais je ne suis pas passionnée par la littérature italienne. Je n’ai toujours trouvé beaucoup du romans italiens, que j’ai vraiment aimé. Of course, corrections are always very welcome! Edited by Emme on 08 November 2010 at 10:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 37 of 360 22 November 2010 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
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So this week I decided to jump the gun and read my first French book. I know most French learners choose Le Petit Prince as their first attempt at reading literature in the original. I’ve actually owned a copy of that book for years now, and I was looking forward to beginning it after I finish Assimil. But some days ago I was in a book shop and saw Daniel Pennac’s Monsieur Malaussène au théâtre: it’s a slim book and not intimidating at all, and remembering how much I had enjoyed it (watching the pièce in Italian) I couldn’t help buying it. It was the typical impulse purchase. When I got home, I started reading immediately and a few hours later I had finished it. Of course, mine was extensive reading, coupling my still approximate command of the language with the memories of the play, but overall the experience was a positive and heartening one.
As far as Swedish goes, I’ve again been searching the internet for new materials. I know, I know, I really shouldn’t do it, as I already have more than plenty, and if I only could get myself to work seriously with what I’ve got I would improve so much! Anyway, I’ve found a course prepared by Sveriges Radio’s Russian service. It’s called Svenska? Varfor inte? Of course, I don’t know a word in Russian (well, not more than twenty), so the use of this course for me is quite limited, but I can listen to the Swedish dialogues and read the transcripts and that’s the spur for me to review some basic vocabulary and grammar points. I’ve only managed to go through the first lessons and so far they cover familiar ground. Useful? Maybe not too much, but right now I don’t seem very good at sticking to a consistent study programme, so anything that keeps me doing something is probably better than sitting around doing nothing or just thinking about studying rather than actually doing it! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 38 of 360 15 December 2010 at 3:35pm | IP Logged |
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A long train commute is quite annoying and tiring, but it can do wonders for your reading (especially if you happen to sit in a quiet compartment). After the surprisingly pleasant result with my first book in French (about which I wrote in the previous post), I decided to have a go with a novel in German. As I wrote at the beginning of this log, I studied German at university and I managed to reach a good level (CEFR C1 / Goethe-Institut ZMP at the time), but I also learnt to passionately dislike the language so that I ended up neglecting it for years (apart from travelling to Germany from time to time). Until recently, my aversion was so strong that I avoided any activities which required using German, whether studying it, listening to it, or even surfing the net in it. In fact, the overall impression that I’ve taken away from my university studies is that I may be good enough to discuss and write about literature and philosophy in German, but beyond that I’m hopeless at the language: overall I feel quite alien from it. I know this is not rationally justifiable, but that’s the way I feel.
Maybe because I enjoyed reading the French book and I wanted to find out if I could replicate the experience in other languages as well or maybe because enough years have gone by since I last read in German so that the worst of my hatred has had the time to abate, a couple of weeks ago I decided on an impulse that I had to start a book in German. To avoid stoking the bad memories of long evenings spent on Kant, Goethe, Schiller and other such worthy but difficult authors, I opted for pure escapism in the form of a thriller. The choice fell on Venezianisches Finale, the German translation of Donna Leon’s Death at La Fenice. I know it’s starting to look as if I just can’t get enough of Comissario Brunetti (in a previous post I wrote about watching the tv-movie in French), but it was pure coincidence, as my local library doesn’t carry much non-classic literature in German. I rushed through the novel in just five days (well, that’s how I suppose thrillers should be read) and I was surprised to find out how little German I’ve forgotten over the ‘lost’ years. Not only that, I was even more surprised to realize how much German I had learnt back then, as I had never felt I had mastered the basics and above all I always believed that I lacked great swaths of everyday vocabulary. It seems that, after all, I used to know German much better than I thought! Now it’s time to look forward to 2011. I don’t like making plans for the future, as I know I’m genetically incapable of keeping them but—as this year for the first time I succeeded in reading at least a book in four languages—I think it would be nice if next year I could manage to read at least one book in five languages (the next candidate, of course, is Swedish). That would be a great way to combine my two biggest passions: languages and literature. I love reading, and when possible I love reading novels in the original—English above all. Actually I’ve been reading English novels for so long that English seems to me the natural language for novels. A couple of years ago I got to the point when I was starting to feel ashamed about being rather well-read in English but not so much in Italian, so I started to force myself to include some Italian novels in my literary diet. Nowadays I read probably three English novels to each Italian one, but if now I add French, German and Swedish to the mix, I’m certain that would make 2011 quite an interesting reading year. To finish I’ll write a couple of sentences in Swedish about reading: corrections are welcome as always! Jag tycker mycket om litteratur. Jag föredrar skönlitteratur framför facklitteratur och vanligtvis läser jag romaner på engelska. För ett par år sedan började jag läsa mera italienska romaner som jag hade tidigare bara brukat läsa som läxa när jag gick i skolan. I höstas, för första gången, har jag läst en bok på tyska som ingen lärare befallade mig att läsa. Boken som jag har läst är en deckare. Det var tur för mig att jag inte hade svart att läsa den på tyska: jag slutade boken på fem dagar. Edited by Emme on 15 December 2010 at 3:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 39 of 360 26 December 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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The week just finished was very productive as far as language learning is concerned: I clocked in more than 7 hours studying Swedish (and for studying I mean actually sitting at a desk working intensely with my textbooks and CDs and not just some extensive reading or tv watching for pleasure). I know that for many forum members this may sound very little, but for my standards it’s an excellent result. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to be as efficient in French, but I still succeeded to do some Assimil French lessons (mainly reviews).
I’ve also spent some time thinking about plans for language learning in 2011. Actually I had to stop myself doing that, because I know that trying to make plans is just a waste of time for me, as I never keep them. Anyway, I intend to give myself permission to explore another language for a limited time--mainly to keep the worse of wanderlust at bay. So I’ll probably dabble a little in a new language (Japanese?) at the beginning of the year and, if I discover that I enjoy it, I might decide to keep studying it in the coming months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 40 of 360 31 December 2010 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
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Here we are at the last post of the year.
It’s probably time I looked back at the past year to see what I’ve achieved and make some plans (possibly few) for the future. The first thing to notice is that I probably did more since April (when I joined the forum) than in any previous year – at least as far as language learning as a hobby is concerned. Of course, when I was a student at University I could spend much more time learning languages, but that was also the main focus of my studies. Now, instead, I’m trying to conciliate my love for languages with having a life! Secondly, despite all its faults (and I believe it has many) I discovered Assimil and it was a great find. I particularly love its emphasis on a little lesson every day (and my problems really began when, in the second wave, the lessons were no longer so ‘little’; the learning curve got too steep and I couldn’t keep up with the rhythm of one lesson a day because the texts and the material introduced were too rich and complex). Thirdly, I’ve almost made my peace with German, after long years of mutual hatred stemming from some unhappy experiences at University. Maybe 2011 will be the year when I can finally get back to it. Fourthly, I’ve really enjoyed studying Swedish (no surprise there!). I’ve put in another 8 hours since my previous post (but I know I have the holiday season to thank for that; when the holidays are over, I’m sure I won’t have this kind of spare time for several months). I actually like taking note of the time spent studying as I’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks, and I may decide that this is the right format for keeping this log updated (i.e. recording the hours spent studying instead of the lessons/units/chapters done). Finally, I’ve managed to stick to my main languages for some months now (a small achievement in itself for someone as unfocused as myself), so I feel I can afford a little flirting with other languages at this point. This is my reward for staying focused. So from tomorrow I will start dabbling with Japanese: nothing serious, just for fun. Let’s see how it turns out. Buon anno a tutti! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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