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Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 27 26 December 2010 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
I have grandiose (crazy) plans for 2011. However, I am focusing on one main language at a time, with two or three others on the side for a little variety. My primary languages will be:
Spanish (January - March)
French (April - August)
Italian (September - December)
I also want to learn a little German, Greek, Polish, and Russian. I have goals for each of these languages for the year, but they are secondary to my Spanish, French, and Italian studies.
Mission Spanish
For the first three months of the year, I plan to focus on Spanish intensely. I am going to try to get as much done over the next three months as possible, and I'll re-evaluate at the end of March. This is my crazy plan:
- Get Anki Caught Up! (over 2000 reviews to do right now)
- Teach Yourself Improve Your Spanish: I expect most of this to be review.
- El Principito: I have the dual text for this, and the audio. I will use Lingq to speed up vocabulary acquisition, and listen to the audio at least 5 times. (The audio is about an hour long.)
- Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal: I will glean vocabulary chapter by chapter. I will listen to each chapter once, learn the vocab, and listen to the chapter twice more to solidify the new words. When I get through the last chapter, I will listen-read through the whole book, from beginning to end.
Living Language Ultimate Advanced Spanish: I expect most of this to be review.
Assimil Spanish with Ease: I will not be using Assimil the recommended way for this project, as most of it will be review. I'll be reading over it, and mostly shadowing and listening to the dialogs. I sometimes have time at work where I can listen to CDs, so I'll be utilizing that for Spanish for the next three months!
Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta: I will work through this the same way I worked through the first book, but expect it to go much faster, as I anticipate there will be much less vocabulary to learn.
Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban: By the time I get to #3, I plan to listen-read through this one twice.
I will also be focusing on grammar by using the Practice Makes Perfect exercise books. I want to work through Complete Spanish Grammar, Spanish Verb Tenses, and Pronouns & Prepositions. (I am going to try to get the Subjunctive Up Close and Past Tense Verbs Up Close, too. We'll see about that, though!)
So, now begins my journey. (Again.) I have this week mostly off of work, so I'm hoping to be able to get a good start. I'm planning to get Anki caught up and get through El Principito a few times by tomorrow.
Teango, as to your earlier question about speaking and writing (on my other thread), I work with a few Spanish speakers, and I can get some conversation practice in at work with them. I am going to focus on the Practice Makes Perfect workbooks for awhile first, but after I get done with the first one or two of those, I will be utilizing Lang-8 (and probably LiveMocha) for writing.
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 27 28 December 2010 at 6:34am | IP Logged |
I've gotten my Anki reviews down to 996 now, which is more than halfway to being caught up. I will try to get all the way caught up on that tomorrow or Wednesday.
I've worked through the first 12 chapters of El Principito. It's slower than I expected, but I am enjoying it. I'm going to try to send my children away (any volunteers?) for a few hours tomorrow so I can finish it up for the first time through. I think after I've worked through it the first time, listening to it a few times after that will be much more enjoyable. =)
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| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5584 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 27 30 December 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged |
I've used a lot of the resources you plan on using this year (even if I didn't finish them lol). We're going to do well this year.
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 4 of 27 30 December 2010 at 3:58am | IP Logged |
I have largely the same group of materials for all four of my major target languages next year. (Spanish, French, German, and Italian)
I will make a post soon on what specifically my goals are for each language, but at the moment, I'm focusing on Spanish, so I figure that's the most important thing for now. Tonight my kids are gone overnight, so I am hoping to get some extra study time in.
I finished working my way through El Principito last night, and I am going to LR tonight once or twice. I'd like to knock my Anki numbers down a little more, too.
My Colloquial Polish book came in the mail today, so I am excited for that. I'm going to try to LR El Principito first, though. =)
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 5 of 27 30 December 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
Okay, here is the grand plan. (I am not fooling myself. I know it would be nearly impossible to finish all this and still have some semblance of a life, but I am still going to try.)
My Spanish materials are listed above. This is my mission through the end of March. In April through August (five months), I will be focusing intensely on French. Then, from September through December (four months), I will be focusing my efforts on Italian. With my Spanish knowledge at about a B1-B2ish, I think a few months of intensive study will bring me to a happy place with it. I also have people at work I can talk to, and that will definitely help.
French
Assimil French with Ease
Living Language Ultimate French Beginner-Intermediate
Living Language Ultimate French Advanced
Teach Yourself Improve your French
Le Petit Prince
Michel Thomas (Advanced & Vocabulary courses)
Harry Potter 1 & 2
Practice Makes Perfect: Verb Tenses
Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar
Practice Makes Perfect: French Vocabulary
Italian
Assimil Italian with Ease
Living Language Ultimate Italian Beginner-Intermediate
Living Language Ultimate Italian Advanced
Teach Yourself Improve your Italian
Il Piccolo Principe
Michel Thomas (Foundation, Advanced & Vocabulary courses)
Harry Potter 1
Practice Makes Perfect: Verb Tenses
Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar
Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Vocabulary
Practice Makes Perfect: Pronouns & Prepositions
My other major language for the year is German, and I will be studying that all year, in part as a change of pace from the Romance languages.
German
Assimil German with Ease
Living Language Ultimate German Beginner-Intermediate
Living Language Ultimate German Advanced
Teach Yourself Improve your German
Der Kleine Prinz
Michel Thomas (Foundation, Advanced & Vocabulary courses)
Harry Potter 1
Practice Makes Perfect: Verb Tenses
Practice Makes Perfect: German Grammar Drills
Practice Makes Perfect: German Vocabulary
Practice Makes Perfect: Pronouns & Prepositions
Practice Makes Perfect: German Sentence Builder
Ambitious, but I like a good challenge. I'm looking forward to supporting my TAC2011 Team É teammates: amber5499, Tennisace, and Icaria909. I'll be following their progress, along with many other TACers next year. It's going to be a great year, Team É!
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 6 of 27 30 December 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged |
My unofficial goals for the year also include working a little with Polish, Russian, and Greek. I am going to start with a little Polish and Greek at the beginning of the year, and will probably switch my Slavic focus from Polish to Russian sometime in the middle of the year. These are the sources I plan to use, as time permits.
Polish
Teach Yourself Polish
Michel Thomas (Foundation & Advanced courses)
Greek
Teach Yourself Modern Greek
Michel Thomas (Foundation & Advanced courses)
Learn Greek Without a Teacher (or Spoken Word Greek, if I can find it or afford it)
Russian
Assimil Russian Without Toil
Living Language Ultimate Russian (Beginner-Intermediate)
Michel Thomas (Foundation, Advanced, and Vocabulary courses)
And I have this terrible bug called wanderlust, of which I have recurring attacks. I think it is a chronic disease. (At least I know of others who have it, but it's never killed anyone!)
I am trying to stay away from Japanese for the time being, but I have the LL Ultimate Japanese book (which I got for $6 with the CDs), and I just got six of the seven Harry Potter books for $65. (Damn that Christmas money, and my crazy collection of Harry Potter translations!)
My ultimate goals for the year are more focused on completing certain courses, since it is so much easier for me to measure my progress that way. However, I am hoping my goals bring me to the following levels.
Spanish: B1/B2 --> C1
French: A2/B1 --> B2/C1
Italian: A1 --> B2
German: A1 --> B2
Polish: Beginner --> A2
Greek: Beginner --> A2
Russian: Beginner --> A2
EDIT: I'm going to use Teach Yourself Polish instead of Colloquial Polish, since the audio I have for Colloquial doesn't match the book!
Edited by Kerrie on 31 December 2010 at 3:53am
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 7 of 27 01 January 2011 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
Okay, my Anki deck is killing me. I can't seem to get volver/devolver/revolver straight. So, note to myself from my handy-dandy Oxford dictionary.
volver - to turn
volverse - to turn around, become
volver (intransitive) - to return, to revert
volver de arriba a abajo - to turn over
volver a hacer algo - to do something again
volver en sí - to come round
devolver - to restore
devolver - to return (repay, refund)
revolver - to mix, to stir up
If anyone has any brilliant ways to keep these straight, feel free to let me in on it. LOL. Someday, I will get it all. =)
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5388 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 8 of 27 03 January 2011 at 5:08am | IP Logged |
Woo hoo! I got the Spanish list on Anki all caught up!!
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