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TAC Team あ: Luai’s Climb to Trilingualism | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 33 of 68 07 June 2011 at 3:53pm | IP Logged |
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This is the final week of the 6WC and I'm winding down on French. I start Japanese classes next monday so I'm
going to try to focus on that language for the rest of this week. I'm switching over to doing a little French review each day and 1 new thing in French each day, and spending the rest of my language time doing Japanese faux immersion to try and "get my japanese head on" before class. So, more specific updates: French - Finished Michel Thomas - Reached Assimil lesson #41 - Reached FIA episode #17 - Finished Le Petit Prince - 143 words in Anki I'm very pleased with the progress I've made in this language. As I said before, I had an excellent accent when I was a kid but lost it without practice; I have it back completely now, and I feel confident when pronouncing words I haven't encountered before. I can hold a very very basic conversation now, and would consider myself in the mid-to-upper beginner range- it shouldn't be too long before I'm intermediate. More importantly perhaps, I learned a lot about my learning style and picked up some useful new study habits. I absolutely loved Michel Thomas and will definitely be using it again for other languages. I've picked up his Advanced CD for french and will be trying that out to see if I like it too; from what I've read it's not really advanced at all, so hopefully that will work out for me. I developed a habit of putting on MT while doing my daily stretches or while playing an online game that I'm addicted to, Poupee Girl, which doesn't involve words so it didn't affect my ability to listen. Both of those worked really well for me; I like multitasking because it gives me more language time in total than I would be getting otherwise, and I'm going to try to continue doing things like that. Looking to the future, I have acquired some new resources and made a plan for continuing my French. As long as I'm in school, my study time will be limited, so I'm doing a little review and 1 new thing each day. "Review" in this context means anki reps, listening back through the first MT CD, and listening to Assimil lessons I've already studied, and possibly listening to the audio tracks for Le Petit Prince. "New things" is going to be continuing Assimil, FIA, and the new MT CD. When I feel ready for it, I'm also going to start the Harry Potter book I downloaded, but it's much more advanced so I'm not sure when I'll be ready for it. When I finish Assimil I have plans to move on to Hugo's Advanced French. I'm going to miss the time-charting aspect of the challenge. Trying to move myself up the rankings really motivated me to do a lot more studying than I would have otherwise. I'll probably try to participate in more challenges in the future if they will involve a twitter bot again. Japanese During the last week or so I've pretty much stopped Japanese altogether, not counting the occasional episode of anime. Today I'm working on going through overdue kanji cards and anki cards and getting myself back on track. I just wasn't making progress before and with French as a handy excuse it was easy to stop doing anything. Happily though, I seem to have worn myself out on French and am craving a different language, so now is the perfect time to get back to my Japanese. With the morale boost from my successful French endeavor, the motivation from class, and a better understanding of what I need to be doing, I hope I can do much better from now on. I'm revamping my study plan to look like this: - Every day 8 new kanji (this seems to be a good number for me) and reviews - Every day new words into Anki from Kanji Odyssey 2001, skipping kanji I don't know yet, and reviews - Working through the Michel Thomas advanced Japanese CD as a review - Homework I'm also considering Assimil Japanese for more review. I feel like my haphazard approach has left me with holes in my knowledge that need to be filled. I also need to start reading, but I don't really know what we're going to be doing in class and for homework so I'm waiting to see what that's like before making plans for reading and writing. I've been considering using Kanji Odyssey 2001 for a long time but I finally am going to try it. All I'm using it for is sourcing vocabulary that contains kanji I've learned from Heisig. I like to learn readings from context best so I don't feel I need anything but vocab examples. This has the benefit of teaching me new vocabulary at the same time as making all those kanji I'm studying actually useable, so I'm pretty excited about it. I'll report back sometime next week with news of how my new plan is going and what my classes are like! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 34 of 68 07 June 2011 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
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I agree, the time charting aspect has been a huge motivation for me too. I kind of had to battle with the sore loser inside me when I realised that I could never catch up with the people right at the front, in order not to keep up completely. But I am always battling against the person just ahead of me in the rankings, and it is definitely getting me to do more in Japanese than I would have done otherwise. Are you considering taking part in the next tadoku challenge? I am very, very much tempted.
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| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 35 of 68 07 June 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
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I'm also very tempted but I don't how much reading time I'm going to be able to find when I'm in classes, especially
for three different languages. Has a new tadoku challenge been announced? Depending on when it starts I may give in to the temptation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 36 of 68 07 June 2011 at 8:24pm | IP Logged |
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I understand it will be running in July, which should give you enough time to decide how much of an impact your class hours will have. I figure that a system which allows you to score points just by curling up on the sofa with a manga has got to be a winner.
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| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 37 of 68 08 June 2011 at 3:27am | IP Logged |
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Yes, that would be good timing. Sadly I don't own any actual physical books in any of my languages with which to
curl up on a couch, though, and currently don't have any money to buy them... maybe I can convince my mom to buy me a present. ;) Otherwise I'll have to rely on pdfs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 38 of 68 15 June 2011 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
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Well, today was the second day of class. There's a lot that I could say about how things are going but I'll try to
keep it as concise as possible. Firstly I haven't had any time at all for French, yesterday and today. Actually I'm a little unwilling to do French because I'm so focused on Japanese right now! Hopefully though I will soon be keeping up with Anki and at least doing the occasional Assimil lesson. I plan to do FIA only on weekends, probably. I finished the Michel Thomas Advanced Japanese course, and it was a very good refresher course. I don't need it anymore though. Otherwise, I've not made any progress with my other materials. My class is from 8:30 AM to 12:50 PM. During class, we do not have any lecture or study the textbook; we are expected to do this at home. Instead we do discussion-based exercises to practice the new grammar... for pretty much all four hours. They change up the exact type of exercise from time to time, but mostly the teachers ask us questions and makes us repeat each other's answers, and/or we do pair work. We're also expected to answer immediately, and if you hesitate for a moment they ask someone else, which encourages people to jump into speaking and to speak more quickly and fluently. There's some "preset" discussions where we have to give a certain answer and creativity is not allowed, and some where we have free rein, though they try to "lead" us to use the new grammar. English is rarely allowed, even during our break. We also do some reading, learn new kanji, etc. but speaking is the focus. Of course this is great for me. I have a strong base in the language and good listening comprehension so I can handle this method, and I need to practice speaking. However, most of the other students can barely keep up. I really struggled as well, the first day, but today everything was much easier. I can answer much more quickly and fluently. But I've gone from "terrible" to "not good", really, so much more improvement is needed! The real problem with the class is the homework. Every day we have to do a few pages in our workbook, which takes me about 45 minutes; then we have to review the grammar, vocabulary, kanji, reading and writing homework, etc. for the following day, because we're expected to LEARN at home and PRACTICE at school. This takes about an hour. Lastly we have to make a video of ourselves speaking in Japanese, almost every single day. This isn't a freeform video, but a recording of each part of a pre-made dialogue. The video is very challenging because we're given videos of native speakers rapidly saying the lines and we're expected to speak at the same speed while focussing on good pronunciation, and we have to speak the lines from memory. Now, I can see the value in such an exercise, but I think the memorizing takes it a little too far- having done it both ways, I find I get the benefit of practicing speed and pronunciation BETTER when I don't have to memorize, actually. Furthermore it adds significantly to the time drain. As far as I know, I'm the fastest student in the class, and it still takes me an hour or more to do it. So the homework is a problem. It only adds up to about 2.75-3 hours, but after the exhausting class and the frustrating video work, I have no energy or motivation to do self-study or indeed, much of anything at all. Hopefully this will change as I adjust to the situation. Already today I was less tired after class than the first day, where I suffered "immersion fatigue", and I'm starting to develop a system to help me handle the homework. I really can't predict what the situation will be next week, but I'm hopeful. I'll return soon with another update! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 39 of 68 15 June 2011 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
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That sounds like a pretty intensive programme. Is it five days a week? Four hours of class and three hours of homework is almost a full time working day, no wonder you're feeling tired, although I'm sure you'll adapt! Unless I've had a bad day, I'm usually ok switching from 8 hours a day at work to doing an hour or two of Japanese in the evening, but I think after 7 hours of Japanese in a day I'd be more than ready to do something else in my free time. Are you taking the course at a language school or at a university/college?
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| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5828 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 40 of 68 15 June 2011 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
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It's at my local college, Penn State University. The teachers in the Japanese program there are all Japanese natives,
which is great, because most language classes now are taught by foreign undergraduates, like the Chinese student who taught my brother's German class, and they don't necessarily have good pronunciation. As long as I get enough sleep I think I will adjust just fine. I'm already less stressed out than I was before. Today was actually fun as well, so I don't feel quite as worried that I won't be able to stay motivated for the whole class. We're doing 6 chapters in 3 weeks this session, then there's a week break and another three-week session. It's going to be tough making it to the weekend but after having the chance to relax then I think Monday will be really nice! XD Of course I'm also going to try to use some of that time to work ahead, to ease some of the pressure next week. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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