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TAC 11 Team Ohana: Joanthemaid | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 1 of 115 30 December 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello friends old and new, hypothetical teammates and anyone interested. This will be my language log for this year, and I hope you won't be too bored by it.I'm 23, I'm French and live in France, but I studied and taught English, travelled to various parts so I'm fluent at that, too. Now I'm studying it again (teaching didn't work so great) to become a medical translator. My Spanish isn't too bad either, a result of last year's TAC in which, however, I was unable or too lazy to work on my Russian beyond the first six months.
For this year, one thing is certain, I will keep using and at least maintain my current Spanish level. Now the question is: should I study Russian, like last year, and risk being discouraged, or should I study a language of intermediary difficulty such as German, which I used to know and forgot but shouldn't be to hard to get back into, with a chance of becoming fluent by the end of the year and thus adding one more linguistic feather to my cap? I would really rather know Russian than German, but German would be so much easier that the effort-to-reward ratio is definitely in its favour. One other reason why I stopped studying Russian last year, and it may sound dumb, is that I changed computers and so lost my old keyboard, which I had pimped up with little russian letter stickers, and by downloading a Cyrillic keyboard program. Now I have this shiny new one and putting stickers on it still seems a bit... sacrilege. All that to justify my decision really, which is the following: I will start studying German again, mostly by L/R (listening/reading), and see how work-intensive it is. If and when I reach fluency in German, then I'll maintain it along with Spanish and pick up my Russian where I left off (or a bit earlier as I'll have forgotten a lot). My goals for the first part of the year, until I reach at least passive fluency in German, will be: SPANISH Getting from B2+ to a solid C1 level, which is all I want really, at least for the moment. To do that I will: - Learn the conjugations. I have been postponing it for so long, now I can't get any better without making that effort. You gotta do what you gotta do. - Keep watching TV like last year, trying to vary the types of programs: series but also scientific and philosophical shows, news of course, debates. - Finish "La guerra del fin del mundo", by Mario Vargas Llosa, which I'm 200 pages (about 1/3) in. Keep reading various books in Spanish, while of course reading in French, English, and hopefully German soon. (Being a future translator, I need to maintain both my French and English at really high levels). - Going to Spain would be amazing, I'm really hoping it's going to happen this year (last year I'd planned a bike trip but my bike got stolen, so, dejected, I gave up altogether). GERMAN Getting from a dusty B2 level (in effect B1) to B2+, my current level at Spanish. To get there I will: - Read, read, read, and try to write here in German. Only informative stuff until I get to a more comfortable level. - After having gotten reacquainted with the language, re-learn declensions. I'll perhaps need to take a look at irregular verbs as well, but it shouldn't be too hard. - Post entries in German in this log. - Watch TV at as good a level as I can understand. By the way, if any of you know a good, free online TV it would help a lot. - Start reading bilingual texts. Then go on to easy monolingual novels (children's or youth literature, or non-literary stuff). - Store ONLY DIFFICULT vocabulary in Anki and try to learn it. If that's too much trouble, I'll just write it down and hope I eventually remember it. I should reach fluency in a year if not sooner (I'm tempted to think sooner, but last year I overestimated my starting Spanish level, so I'll be prudent). I'll post my goals for the second part of the year when I reach fluency in German. I might then slow down on Spanish and maintain German while learning Russian. It will also depend on my job situation (whether or not I can find work). Edited by joanthemaid on 30 July 2011 at 6:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 115 31 December 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I know we're not teammates in TAC anymore, but I hope you continue to do well this year. ¡Espero que tú tengas suerte este año nuevo con español y alemán!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5473 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes | Message 3 of 115 31 December 2010 at 10:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Noélie,
You can browse for free TV shows online at ZDF and ARD. MySpass has loads of free comedy shows. If you need a show recommendation to start you off, Türkisch für Anfänger is a lot of fun and is a great foray into colloquial German. I've found all three seasons available on YouTube, though there's no telling how long they'll stay posted. Viel Glück beim Sprachlernen! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 115 31 December 2010 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
Hi, good luck on your German! I am doing that too, as well as Russian. I just wanted to let you know, that an extra keyboard with both Russian and English letters is really inexpensive, and worth while. I have bought one that I just attach to my laptop whenever I want to write in Russian. Here it costs 129 NOK, which approximately is the equivalence of 15 euros. You could probably get it even cheaper if you got a used one. I was going to get the stickers too, when I realized that it was actually cheaper to get an extra keyboard. The only inconvenience is that you need a table when you use it, as it is uncomfortable to balance bot a laptop and an extra keyboard on you lap :). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 5 of 115 31 December 2010 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Solfrid Cristin, thank you so much for your help. Would you happen to know if such keyboards are sold online somewhere, and if not do you know the English name for them? I always work at my desk, so an extra keyboard shouldn't be a problem.
The phantomgoat, vielen dank, ich werde die Linken in mein Lesezeichen tun. Ach, noch habe ich nur ein bisschen Deutsch geschreibt und weisse ich, dass ich nicht so gut bin, wie ich dachte. Mein Niveau: B1. Es werde viel Werk sein... Icaria: ¡Muchas gracias! Espero que tú tambien tengas mucha suerte y mucho placer con tus estudios idiomaticos y todas formas de otros aspectos de tu vida. ¡Feliz año nuevo! добро пожаловать друзей! (More precisely, welcome to my log, new teammates -- I don't know how to say teammates.) Edited by joanthemaid on 31 December 2010 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 6 of 115 03 January 2011 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone. This is my first post for the new year. So, first:
Bonne année! Happy new year! ¡Feliz año nuevo! Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr! С новим годом! So far this year I've only worked on my Spanish. I read fifty pages of "La guerra del fin del mundo", looked up all the vocabulary I didn't know or I found interesting and writing down synonyms every time there were some, and otherwise just the translation in English of French. Now I need to re-read that part so it'll stick. I do that mostly because I find it much easier the second time around, so I actually get more enjoyment out of it. Though that might only be because the first time I concentrated exclusively on what I didn't understand... I also read a few articles on the El Pais website (http://www.elpais.com/global/). Among other interesting things there a summary of last year's events:http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internet/Diccionario/i nformativo/2010/elpeputec/20101229elpepunet_2/Tes). I've been thinking about studying German and Russian too though,and I know ho I'm going to start off on that: German: Considering my level, the smartest thing to do would be to start off with LingQ (listening/reading, http://www.lingq.com/). It would give me an idea of my real level and allow me to get back up to speed. Russian: I'll start by listening to all of the material I've already covered in the Princeton course (if you're interested, it's a fun and very complete course, downloadable for free off the internet: http://www.freelanguagecourses.com/language/russian/princeto n-russian-course-51/) Once I've listened to all that, I'll review everything starting with the first course that deals with declensions. Each course should take me less than an hour, so I'd say about 50 hours to review everything I did last year. That should take me three months at the very least, and that is if I start now. So here's the time spent on each language so far (I'll try to keep it updated in each post): Spanish 6 hours German 0 Russian 0 I like to finish one thing before starting another, so I'm not worried about the unbalance for the moment. If any of my team я teammates see this, could you write please, as I can't seem to find the links to your logs anymore? This way I can find you. In any case, good luck to all of you and may this new year bring you all the polyglottery you desire. EDIT: I've been thinking and I really don't think I can handle three languages this year. So what I'm going to do, as I haven't started, is this: I'll study Spanish and Russian. It's probably best, first because I'm on a Russian team, and secondly I stopped studying Russian six months ago and can still potentially forget a lot more, whereas with German it's been five years so I think everything I was going to forget is already forgotten. Whenever I reach advanced fluency in Spanish and basic in Russian, I'll think about getting into German again. Edited by joanthemaid on 03 January 2011 at 2:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5472 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 7 of 115 03 January 2011 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi guys, for some reason this logbook refuses to appear in my logbooks in my profile. Does anyone have an idea why? Edited by joanthemaid on 04 January 2011 at 12:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 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 8 of 115 03 January 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Joanthemaid, here is the page you are looking for. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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