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TAC 2011, Team KEN: M. Medialis - RU JP | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6350 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 1 of 113 27 December 2010 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Team TAC 2011 - Team KEN
Personal log of M. Medialis The new year is approaching and I am now an excited member of Team KEN. Before I start the real log, I wanted to make a grandiose (and quite pretentious..) opening, so I composed a little story. Don't say I didn't warn you. Enjoy! ;D The secret of Sai-Lon Tsu ----------------------------------------- On the New Year’s Day, Sai-Lon Tsu gathered his disciples, as he always did. ‘Friends, at this special day I would like to talk about language learning. Could anyone of you suggest what a language consists of?‘ The first disciple answered: ‘Master, at its core, every language consists of words. Words and grammar.’ Sai-Lon Tsu smiled, and replied with his soft voice: ‘Good. Now I would like you to teach me some Japanese. But before you start, I’d like to give a little constraint: You are not allowed to use any Japanese words, and you may not use any grammatical explanations. Please begin!’ The disciples were stunned. After a couple of seconds, the first disciple stepped forward: ‘Master, Japanese uses three scripts: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. A Kanji can have different readings depending on what word it appears in.’ Sai-Lon Tsu replied with his soft smile: ‘Good. You have just taught me about the Japanese language. But I would like to learn the actual language. Please teach me what Japanese is in practice. Teach me real Japanese!’ The second disciple’s mind was spinning. He stepped forward and begun: ‘Master, when you want to construct a Japanese sentence, you make use of some special features: Japanese uses particles, and it is topic-prominent and agglutinative which means that.. ’ - The second disciple stopped when he realized that he was just providing a grammatical explanation...his master must have given them an impossible task.. Suddenly, the third disciple started to breath heavily. He stepped forward, altered his voice, and to the other disciples' amazement he gave a wonderful little speech which elegantly captured every essential aspect of the Japanese language. Just a couple of sentences, without using a single Japanese word, and without explaining any grammar. He gave a distinct nod and stepped back, awaiting his master’s response. And Sai-Lon Tsu did indeed reply with a pleased voice: ‘Excellent! You have just demonstrated the hidden secret that is concealed within every language. A secret key that unlocks the depths of language learning. Now, when you all have seen and experienced this philosophy, I want you to go out and design methods that in the same way can capture the essence of any language. If you execute these methods, and if you never lose contact with native materials, you will one day realize that the words and the grammar swiftly and quietly are coming by themselves. - Just as a little valley connected to a river one day may become a lake..’ ----------------------------------------- Team KEN - M. Medialis Edited by M. Medialis on 27 December 2010 at 1:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6350 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 2 of 113 27 December 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Team Tac 2011 - Team KEN
Personal log of M. Medialis Introduction Alright. After that little OTT opening, it's time to start the log. ;) I guess I could quickly introduce myself: I call myself M. Medialis, I am a computer engineering student, and I love to play the piano and study languages on my free time. In the Team TAC of 2010, I was a member of Team K. My log of that year can be found below: M. Medialis' 2010 Team TAC Log This year, I am a proud member of Team KEN. Featuring my eminent and lovely co-adventurers: Buttons, Teango and Adrean. And now it's time to get into it: Language learning plans for 2011 Current level I've spent the last 2.5 years on bringing Russian and Japanese from almost zero knowledge to an intermediate level. One of the main result of the 2010 TAC was that I gained the ability to study two languages at the same time. I now also have the 2000 most common Japanese kanji under my belt. Initial thoughts And of course, wanderlust kicks in every now and then. I sometimes dream of just diving into a new language again. Doing passionate LR adventures in French, Korean, Cantonese, German, Mandarin or maybe Portugese---ahhhhh. So I tell myself the following: M. Medialis, you already know how to bring a language from beginner to intermediate proficiency. And you know how rewarding it is. But now it is time to explore new territory - it is time to prove that you can go from intermediate knowledge to full fluency. Don't just let yourself wander around aimlessly - gain momentum so that you can break free from the endless curse of intermediate inertia! So that's what I will do. I will aim for fluency in Japanese or Russian (or both). :D The Strategy When looking back at the past year, I would say that the general lack of materials was the main force holding me back. But with the advent of the surfpads, I see a fantastic remedy to the problem! A surfpad would let me do SRS, LR of e-texts and a lot of other exciting things when I'm at the university or on the train. I'm eagerly waiting for Windows 7-based surfpads, so that I know I can work without limits. Other than that, I just plan to have as much fun as possible. Playing around with LR, Song Scriptorium, normal Scriptorium, watching anime and doing other things that I like. Occasionally, I will do three-day sprints (the number of days is not important), where I try to squeeze in as much language learning as possible. These are the only times I will actively log my hours. Otherwise, you can just assume that I spend about 1-3 hours daily at language studies. (the reason I avoid logging hours is that I then risk neglecting my university studies altogether). Closing words So, now there are just a few days left. Let's make this new year the best ever. Go, go, go Team KEN! :D ----------------------------------------- Team KEN - M. Medialis Edited by M. Medialis on 27 December 2010 at 1:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6350 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 4 of 113 28 December 2010 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Legoland: nice! :)
KEN stands for the merging of two 2010 Team TAC teams, namely Team K and Team EN. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5549 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 113 28 December 2010 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Loved the initial koan-esque tale, and I'm looking forward to your climb from intermediate plateaux to advanced Elbrus and Fuji-san peaks.
That's the spirit...*big smiles and ninja backflips*...gambatte!! ^o^ Edited by Teango on 28 December 2010 at 3:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6350 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 7 of 113 11 January 2011 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Team Tac 2011 - Team KEN - Log #1
Wow. The year has started. I have been really busy with an assignment which has swallowed all my free time. But don't fear, next week I'll go back to a normal schedule, and I will dive into full throttle language learning! Back in the Fluency Factory Yes, I have just spent 5 out of 8 days in the assembly line at the Fluency Factory. Assembling valves and doing Japanese Silent Shadowing. Since you didn't ask, I will now document my (very subjective) experiences. ;) Heating up a language On my first day in the factory, my languages were cold and dry. It's a feeling I get when I've been away from immersion/LR/scriptorium for a while. If I read Japanese text, there is no life, just stale characters. While doing my silent shadowing in the factory (listening to fun podcasts), my Japanese slowly started to defrost, and on the third day (after about 20 hours of active immersion), it was up at full heat, pulsating in my mind. Result: Every word I hear lands softly in my mouth. And suddenly all Japanese texts become vidid and exciting. Reading Japanese becomes a breeze. Alright, this was my attempt to describe the inner voice that I get when I study Japanese. (I believe that this is the inner voice that Prof. Arguelles is referring to.) I always try to get this "heated" feeling before I do anything else in the language. A note: LR and Scriptorium achieves the same effect even faster. Old-School Shadowing Experiment Since I don't have my bike here, I have to walk home from work (takes about 20 minutes). This gives me an excellent opportunity to try the orhodox way of Shadowing out loud. It's quite fun, I shadow from the podcast Tokyo Local, where they chat around at a wild speed. I quickly realized that I need to focus a great deal on my breathing to get the words down correctly; Some Japanese sounds, sentences and exlamations just seem impossible to pull off if I don't start at the right "phase" in my breathing. I don't know how effective Shadowing is, but it's definitely a lot of fun, and it's undoubtedly a nice way to practice concentration and the ability to listen and speak simultaneously. New Japanese materials! Thanks to Legoland and Atamagaii, I've gotten access to some new and sweet Japanese materials. It's fantastic. :D Because of my pressed schedule, I've only had a couple of hours to actually use it, but I've LRed a couple of new stories, and I've collected more than 17000 (!) sound files with pronunciations of common Japanese words. If I get enough time in the upcoming months, I hope I can create a good computer application that makes those sound files easy to access (i.e. maybe some sort of dictionary look-up function like the one in ABBYY Lingvo's Russian dictionary). Tech update Oh, and I have found a surfpad that seems so extremely useful for language learning. Check out this video: Demo of Asus Eee Slate EP 121. I just see the possibilities to get instant Japanese character recoginition (just think about it, writing Japanese with stylus instead of typing with a keyboard). And on top of that, it would become my ever-present LR companion. (and I have tons of ideas on other cool things I could do with it to learn languages). I'm. In. Love. (no, I'm not in any way affiliated with Asus - I just can't help my enthusiasm :) Current plan Complete the course work as soon as possible. Accumulate inspiration so that I can go full speed next week. ----------------------------------------- Team KEN - M. Medialis Edited by M. Medialis on 11 January 2011 at 6:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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