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Goat’s TAC ’11: Team Ł | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5471 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes  | Message 1 of 6 21 December 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Starting my log early. My semester’s over, and I have a month off before the spring
term begins. In that time I hope to make a lot of progress, and I want to record my hours and accomplishments from the beginning of this intensive study period. :) Here in very simple terms—-the CEFR scale—-are my language goals for this coming year: Spanish: maintain/repair gaps in C1 German: high B1 to C1 Mandarin: A1 to B1 Polish: zippo to A2 Turkish: zilch to A1 In each language, I plan to do the following: -Study my Anki deck(s) every day or two. -Memorize a poem. Saying it will mark my transition from the study of one language to another (aka reciting, say, “Erlkönig” signals the beginning of my German studies for that day). -Log at least 200 hours of study (100 for Turkish, concentrated in the latter half of the year). Anki time, watching TV shows or movies, or listening to podcasts or music do not count toward those hours. In my next post, I’ll list more specific goals for each language and the resources I’ll use to achieve them. Bring it on, 2011! Edited by thephantomgoat on 24 December 2010 at 1:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5471 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes | Message 2 of 6 22 December 2010 at 9:29am | IP Logged | ||
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First, a quick post on multilingual and general language learning resources I've found
online (most of them through this forum). Here goes: -Free eBooks by Project Gutenberg. -Bilingual texts in Spanish, German, Polish, and a few other languages (some have audiobooks, too). -Logos Multilingual Library, found at <http://www.logoslibrary.eu/pls/wordtc/new_wordtheque.mai n?lang=en&source=search>. -Kinderbibliothek, which has children's stories in numerous languages, not just German. Found at <http://www.logoslibrary.eu/owa-wt/new_wordtheque.main_bi mbi? lang=de>. -A text-to- speech demo for a bit of help with pronunciation. -Audacity, a free, open-source program you can download and use to record and edit sounds. I've used it to slow down audio without changing the pitch, which helps a LOT when your (recorded) speaker is talking a mile a minute. Next post: more on resources specific to each of the languages I'm studying. Edit: The hyperlinks for the Logos Multilingual Library and Kinderbibliothek did not work. Copy and past the links above (minus the spaces) to visit the sites. Edited by thephantomgoat on 22 December 2010 at 9:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 3 of 6 22 December 2010 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I really like this idea! I think I'll try it out too. It could also be useful to get yourself in the mood for studying a particular language. Powodzenia! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5471 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes | Message 4 of 6 24 December 2010 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Dziękuję bardzo, ellasevia! Setting the mood was precisely the intention behind the
poem idea. One more post with contextual information (that is, my goals and available resources) and I'll start logging my progress! SPANISH Maintain C1 Goals: Improve listening comprehension. Increase confidence in speaking ability. Improve command of slang and idioms. Weed out grammatical errors. Read a LOT of literature. Resources: -The free audiobooks and texts found at AlbaLearning. -News podcasts like those found at BBC Mundo Radio. Assorted other podcasts like En la Historia and Radio Raza. -Novels and short stories. The first three books on my list are Isabel Allende's El reino del dragón de oro (2003); Gabriel García Márquez's Los funerales de la Mamá Grande (1962); and Miguel de Unamuno's Niebla (1914). GERMAN B1 to C1 Goals: Achieve proficiency and spoken fluency (and beyond!). Comprehend most spoken German (I can understand virtually everything said in a classroom setting, but outside of it, not so much). Be able to read a newspaper. Improve grammar. Resources: -Free audiobooks and texts at Vorleser. -Pukka German, a podcast for learning German slang, idioms, etc. -The site Deutsch Perfekt, which has a lot of resources for intermediate or advanced learners. -TV shows at MySpass or ARD Mediathek. I've watched the first two seasons of Türkisch für Anfänger on YouTube, and once I've finished the series I'm moving on to Stromberg (the German version of The Office). -Novels, beginning with Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Richter und sein Henker (1950) and Sven Regener's Herr Lehmann (2001). MANDARIN A1 to B1 Goals: Improve pronunciation, especially the articulation of the pinyin initials j, q, and x. Achieve natural fluency in utterance of tones (i.e. no "bouncing" from first tone to fourth, etc.). Increase vocabulary. Improve listening comprehension of both formal and informal speech. Be able to tell what a book is about by looking at it (something I have a hard time doing even when I flip through it). Be able to recall and write more characters. Resources: -Two online dictionaries. MDBG Chinese- English Dictionary has an auto-complete feature that I adore (it's a great help in identifying common compound words), while YellowBridge has enormously helpful sample sentences for each word. -TV shows at MySoju and Tudou (the latter also has news broadcasts). -The podcast Slow Chinese, which has texts and audio prepared and read (slowly!) by a native speaker. Created for learners of Chinese. -Fairy tales and fables at this site and poems at this one. The poetry site includes pinyin and a rough translation of each work. -Zhongwen Red, a series of over 100 vocabulary- based Mandarin lessons with audio. -Clavis Sinica, a site with TONS of resources for the Mandarin language learner. I anticipate using their Chinese Voices Project and their Chinese Text Sampler most. All of their texts are accompanied by audio. -On lazy days, I might watch an episode or two of one of the Mandarin language-learning series offered by CCTV. These include "Growing Up with Chinese" (for beginners); "Travel in Chinese" and "Communicate in Chinese" (both for intermediate learners); and "Happy Chinese S1 Daily Life" (for advanced students). -The cheesy teen novel 男孩别哭 and 哈利·波特与阿兹卡班囚徒 (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). POLISH 0 to A2 Goals: Do a lot of listening exercises from the very beginning. Strive for perfect pronunciation. Do extensive work with the case system. Explore Polish literature and music in order to establish further goals (such as "read ____ in the original"). Focus on precision in speech and writing, and strive to retain information long-term rather than just for the purpose of passing the next quiz (I'll be auditing a Polish course in the spring). Resources: -The University of Pittsburgh's Polish Language Website, which includes an excellent reference grammar, a dictionary, phrasebook, and links to other materials, including a collection of short stories and audio thereof. -Polish Grammar in a Nutshell, a shorter version of Dr. Oscar Swan's reference grammar (linked above). -Some parallel texts with (really fast) audio, which you can slow with a sound editing program like Audacity. -Short stories for the intermediate learner. -For fun, the blogs Bloggy Polish, Bits of Polish, and Transparent Language's Polish Blog. This last focuses on Polish culture. When I begin with Turkish sometime this summer, I'll detail my plan and resources. I've refrained from listing textbooks because, for the most part, I'm jumping into native materials, and I don't know to what extent I'll use the textbooks I've accumulated from taking language classes at university. This is the first year I'm turning to self-study in a big way, and gamboling through different resources like a lamb through the fields is a sure way to keep everything fresh. As well, many of my goals are quite vague ("improve speaking proficiency"). I'll evaluate how effective this (lack of) method and open-ended goals are at the end of the year. Let the fun begin! Edited by thephantomgoat on 24 December 2010 at 3:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5471 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes | Message 5 of 6 28 December 2010 at 11:07am | IP Logged | ||
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A thoroughly uninspiring past few days. Instead of getting a jump on next year's
language learning, I've been relaxing; I sorely needed it after my hellish fall semester. I'm keeping up on Anki reviews and waiting on some books to come in the mail (Teach Yourself Turkish and 哈利·波特与阿兹卡班囚徒 [Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban] prime among them). My greatest achievement during these otherwise lazy days: I read the first five pages of 男孩别哭 (Boys Don't Cry, no connection to the Hilary Swank movie), a Taiwanese teen novel by 蓝狐. It was a struggle. I understood what was happening plot- wise, but I input the text into a Mandarin-English online dictionary anyway. It helped me tease out the compound words I might've missed otherwise. I wrote down the pinyin of the first five pages in case I forgot a word and wanted to find it later (without having to go through the trouble of looking it up by radical) and highlighted the new words and compounds. It took a loooong time, especially because the book's in traditional characters (I know simplified). Looking up 識 by radical only to find out it's 识...ugh. Talk about adding insult to injury. But I'm liking the plot (summary culled from the description on the back of the book, with a few liberties taken in narrative tone): boy from a fishing village heads to the big city to become a writer, ticks off his father on the way, meets a piano player, falls in love, bada bing bada boom, we got ourselves a drama! Writing about what I accomplished with Mandarin recently has brightened my day. I felt pretty down earlier, having taken a couple of practice tests in German and Spanish and scoring worse than I expected. What always gets me in situations like this is the feeling that I "should" be better. That discrepancy between my actual and presumed level provokes a lot of guilt: "You've been studying German for three years and you still can barely string a sentence together?" But thinking like this gets me nowhere, and it's something I want to leave behind in the new year. No more "should's"! I've accomplished what I've accomplished, and it's enough to be thankful for that and move forward. In other news, still haven't started Polish in earnest (just doing Anki reps to build up a passive vocabulary base). That needs to change soon; I'm supposed to audit the second half of beginning Polish at my university this coming semester, and I need to learn the first semester's material to prepare for the beginning of the class. Which is three weeks from now. Gad. Lately I've been struck again by the idea of learning Swahili. It was the first foreign language I tried to learn through self-study, but I was eight and didn't get much farther than greetings and the names of animals. I've maintained a peripheral interest in the language, but it'll have to wait a few years: Turkish is my next. And after that--cut that thought off at the pass. Keeping the wanderlust to a minimum. Tomorrow: mianownik and narzędnik, meet your match! Edited by thephantomgoat on 28 December 2010 at 11:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 6 of 6 23 January 2011 at 8:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Thephantomgoat, jak są twoje nauki języków? Nic nie pisałaś od grudnia. Czy nauczyłaś się wiersze? Ja też uczę się polskiego teraz. :)
Thephantomgoat, how are your language studies? You haven't written anything since December. Did you finish learning the poems? I am also studying Polish now. Edited by ellasevia on 29 January 2011 at 1:17am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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