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TAC 2011-Team Ω - Sir Lunch-a-lot - GR/DE | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 1 of 9 29 December 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged |
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Okay. So this is the first time I am participating in the Total Annihilation Challenge.
I tried working on Greek last year with my own mini TAC, and had great results until progress came to a halt due to certain issues in life. I am hoping that participating in TAC this year will prove to be of help in learning my target languages. Anyway, the two languages I plan to work on are German and Ancient (Koine) Greek. Greek Plan: -Learn Vocab Occurring 30x or More. -Teknia Language Software will be used to check which words I need to learn. -Flashcards will be means of working on words. -Words will be learned going from Greek to English, and English to Greek. -Learn all Paradigms: -Bill Mounce's "Basics of Biblical Greek" will be used to look up paradigms. -I will copy down the paradigms and practice them at work. -Master Verb usage. -Studying from BOBG, I will fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Greek verb usage. -Active Greek Use -Since I have noted in my previous log that it helps to translate from English to Greek, I think I shall periodically do some exercises in Greek Composition. German Plan: In German, I would like to be able to make small talk, count, develop some reading comprehension and some listening comprehension. -I will start by going through the basic German lessons offered on the BBC website. This should get me started with some basic vocabulary and phrases. It also appears to have many links to various other online German resources. One such resource is Deustch Interaktiv, which appears to have some lessons for beginners, as well as some basic grammar. -I plan on spending time listening to German podcasts (I have already found both Audio and Video podcasts from dw-world.de via iTunes). In addition, I will be looking into acquiring German music (I may start singing some German Hymns), and borrowing German films from the local library. -As I progress with the basic lessons online, I will be looking into getting German language resources from the Library. -As I progress with the basic lessons online, I will begin conversing with my Father, Grandparents, my roommate, and my roommates father. -I am looking at taking an AJAT-like approach to my German learning at this point. For German, that is about as far as I have planned. If I get the money, I will look into acquiring some better resources (Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone). As I carry on, I shall adjust my plan accordingly. Tentatively, I am planning on spending between 45minutes and 1hour total each day between the two languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6240 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 9 29 December 2010 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the Omega team Sir Lunch-a-lot!
I've had a small taste of Koine myself, and I know it's not a walk in the park. But fun! And German is a great choice, as well. My own log will come up in a few days... Good luck! /aloysius 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 9 01 January 2011 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
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Guten Tag, aloysius. It is a pleasure to meet you.
Well, I have started work on German. I have been reading material over at AJATT to help me work out certain aspects of my approach to learning German. I have also found a live internet Television stream from http://www.dw-world.de. as well a handful of podcasts to help me start getting a lot of listening in. This website also has some interactive lessons (called Deustch Interaktiv, I believe) that seem to be pretty helpful. So, I have completed a lesson from that site, a lesson from BBC's site, and am working on a Lesson from "German Through Conversational Patterns". As I have been listening/watching TV, I noticed that a lot of numbers are constantly being thrown around, so I decided that would be a good idea to start learning numbers. Yesterday, I learned the numbers 1-11. I am hoping to learn up to 100 today if I can find that in my textbook. Otherwise, it will have to wait a day or two (basically, I figure I need to learn the odd teens - up to 13 or 14 as some of my friends have told me - then there should be 10 numbers to learn (20, 30, 40, etc) and it is all patterns from there. I will be practicing my numbers at work as I am always being required to count things. I have already begun writing a few words and phrases (and the numbers) on some flashcards, so I will be doing more work with that in the next few days. Between what I remember hearing about a former professor of mine who learned languages by learning a phrase a day and what the guy on AJATT does with his SRS, I have been convinced that it would be a good idea to learn phrases in addition to pure vocabulary. For Greek... I have done some reading, and spent about 30 minutes the other day going through my vocabulary on my Teknia software to create a list of words that need to be learned. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 9 04 January 2011 at 7:34am | IP Logged |
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So, I am definitely thinking that my focus will be primarily on German throughout this.
I have been having next to no desire to do much with Greek at this point (although I have been trying to at least read for the time being). I suppose part of the reason for that is that I have been working on Greek for about 2 and 1/3 years... and beyond the time that I spent taking classes the progress has been very limited. If nothing else, I will try to read a little bit of it each day (which is still more than I had been doing overall before). Anyway... I sucessfully learned my numbers from eins-tausend (wow... German must be messing with my brain... I just tried to spell the English word "high" as "heigh"). Since my line of work involves counting stock during the shift, I am having plenty of opportunity to practice counting. I have also set a number of my online apps to German. In a game called "Cityville", I was amused to discover that the "Townhall" is appropriately called "Der Rathous" in German. Also, in the vein of games, I remembered that "Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force" comes with English and German audio files and subtitles. So, I will be playing that on and off. The neat thing is that I can set the audio to German and leave the text as English, or vis-versa (or both as English or both as German). I'm not sure which would be the most beneficial at this point. English audio with German subtitles, or German audio with English subtitles. Any thoughts? I am also looking to increase my German music library. I have downloaded a couple of albums by Die Prinzen from iTunes (Sie sind sehr gut!), but I think I would like to find some free material... I have also been working through "German Through Conversational Patterns" Lesson 1 (Aufgabe eins... I'm amazed... I was able to think of that word off the top of my head without even looking in the book first!). I am really liking the approach this book takes. It has been building my vocabulary through a number of different means, teaching me phrases, and giving me opportunity to practice concepts as they are discussed. At some point, I want to start adding vocabulary and phrases into Anki so I can do a bit of SRS when I'm at home. Anyway, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm having fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 9 10 January 2011 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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Well, the intensity of German micro-immersion dropped off slightly due to a little trip
I took this week. But I did make a point of spending a little while reading through a conversational exercise in Lesson 2 of Conversational-Patterns. However, since returning home I have been working at listening/watching more German television programming. I have also been working a bit (ein bißchen) more with lesson 2 and am adding words and phrases to my Anki. It looks scary when I glance ahead seeing all the things I must yet learn. I was definitely panicking and feeling like a failure (or being afraid that I will fail). But then I just have to calm down and remember that it will all come with time and steady persistance. So, I am trying to not get ahead of myself... trying to not look at all the gramatical intricacies that I shall learn... trying not to worry about how it will be possible to come to speak and understand this language. At this point, I just need to focus on the small area of ignorance I am trying to eliminate and take the others only as they come. I have also decided that I will investigate the possibility of getting an extended loan of Pimsleur from the local library (since a week long loan would be pointless unless I could borrow a small section each week). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 9 09 February 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged |
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It's been a while since I have updated here. However, unlike with my Greek log, this
isn't because of a lack of activity. So, what have I been doing since I updated this log? Well, I picked up an 8 lesson copy of Pimsleur German from the local library. So far, I have done 3 lessons, and I think it is helping me naturally learn some of the conventions of German (such as how you order the words in sentences). I looked on iTunes to see if I could buy the rest of the Pimsleur series for less than I could on CD, and I noticed that there seem to be 2 kinds. One is more expensive (and has album art consistent with what I see on the official Pimsleur website) and the other is far less expensive (with fairly generic looking album art... consisting of "Pimsleur German" in the text (I think) and a coloured bar on either the top or bottom (or something like that. It has been a while since I have actually looked). Does anyone know if there is a difference between the two? I have begun reading my fathers "Neue Fibel" (a childrens book for learning German) which starts me of looking at pictures and getting the associated words (although a few of the word/picture associations are not the most intuitive, which usually results in me looking the word up). Then it starts doing short sentences gradually expanding the vocabulary, and looks like in the next handful of pages I shall soon be reading short stories. I have been finding this to be incredibly effective for vocabulary learning. However, this past week I became quite ill, so I did not put a lot of focus on German. But now that I am starting to feel better, I am going to try to get back into it again. Like the guy at the AJATT website says, it is all about starting lots and frequently. The more I am seeing German and learning it, the more I am convinced that I can learn this language without a great deal of difficulty. Anyway, perhaps I should try another Pimsleur Lesson or something. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Lunch-a-lot Groupie Canada Joined 5526 days ago 58 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 9 29 April 2011 at 5:08am | IP Logged |
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Although I have not posted here in quite some time, I have still been slowly working
away at German. I slowed significantly in March due to needing to focus on a class, but since then have tried to increase the amount I am doing. I have completed the 10 lessons of Pimsleur available at the local library and have purchased units 11 and 12 from iTunes. Since I cannot afford to purchase Part 1 all at once, I am buying it one lesson at a time, going over a lesson a couple of times in a week. Not ideal, but it's what I can afford. In addition, I am trying to listen to more German and watch some more German TV. One show I have decided to try watching on a regular basis is "Sesam Straße". I figure, if it is good enough to help children learn German, then it should be good enough for me (plus, it is a lot funnier/more entertaining as an adult than I ever found the English version as a child). I am finding myself understanding bits and pieces of what is being said, and I think I owe much of that to the Pimsleur lessons. It has done a fabulous job of teaching me many of the basic components of German. I am even understanding portions of the Die Prinzen albums that I purchased back in December or January. So, that has been very encouraging to see that kind of growth, and even the ability to articulate some of my thoughts and ideas. One thing I love about the Pimsleur approach to vocabulary is the idea of making you use words as you learn them rather than merely having you memorize lists of vocabulary. I think I may try to adapt this approach to my work with the fibel. I'll try to learn the unfamiliar words on a page or two of the book (a handful at a time, really), and then try to immediately use them by writing sentences or short stories and speaking those sentences. I think that may be a helpful exercise to start expanding my vocabulary beyond what I am learning in my weekly Pimsleur lessons (which could be useful when watching TV or listening to podcasts). Overall, I am really enjoying a more laid back approach to learning languages. Instead of trying to cram a lot of info in at once, I am just letting it gradually soak in. If I do not understand something right away, I recognize that it will come. I'll learn the different ways certain words can be used as I go along. I'll come to understand how everything fits together as the journey progresses. And someday, when my intuative understanding is pretty decent, I'll see about studying German grammar to understand it even better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5693 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 8 of 9 27 June 2011 at 3:39am | IP Logged |
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Hey Sir Lunch-a-lot, I was just wondering if you're still studying German. I only just found your log. I love this language myself, and I am a HUGE fan of Die Prinzen. If you want more music suggestions, check out my list of German music in my log (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp? TID=24343&PN=0&TPN=9) – maybe you'll find something that will interest you! We're lucky that there's a lot of great music in German, not only classical but popular as well.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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