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NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4961 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 25 of 38 30 June 2012 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
Nice one Jae, that blog looks pretty interesting - having a read through it now :).
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| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French
| Message 26 of 38 04 July 2012 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
NickJS, glad you enjoyed it!
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Update on studies: I have now completed Pimsleur Portguese I (30 units). So onward and upward to Pimsleur Portuguese II. In other news, I don't think there's any audio for the FSI course I'm using, which isn't too great. Luckily, there are only 18 lessons in the version I am using and then I am switching to DLI (as mentioned in a previous course). I also think that since I am getting speaking/listening practice via Pimsleur, it's okay that I'm not using audio for the FSI dialogues.
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| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French
| Message 27 of 38 08 July 2012 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
Great progress in the past few days. I've completed units 1-6 on Pimsleur Portuguese II and I just finished Unit 3 of FSI. FSI units take much longer than I thought they would, although now that I've been through three, I heard that a unit generally takes 6-8 hours. There are A LOT of drills at the end of the each unit, but I find them to be very helpful in emphasizing grammar points and vocabulary uses via repetition (and I feel I'm learning a decent amount of vocab as well). I've actually managed to remember most of the vocab from each lesson (maybe a word or two per lesson I have to look up occasionally), which I think is pretty good considering I haven't formally studied any of the vocab yet (I've made vocab lists, but haven't typed them into Quizlet/Anki yet). I'm planning on making typed up lists every 6 chapters (that's when the program pauses for review) and studying them on Quizlet, since I really don't want to have to type up new vocab after every unit. Also, I've decided to put all of my previous vocab (the ca. 1200 words/phrases I studied earlier) into Anki for long-term review. I like Quizlet for initial learning because I have to type in the vocab correctly (accent marks, etc.), but I think the Anki system would be good for more long-term review so that I don't forget the more obscure words but don't have to review the really easy words all the time either.
Edit: Finished unit 7 in Pimsleur as well.
Edited by jae on 08 July 2012 at 2:34am
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| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French
| Message 28 of 38 14 July 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
Overview: New update and, in other news, I'm loving Anki!
Progress in Studies: So, I've worked up through lesson 12 on Pimsleur Portuguese II, and I'm also working through FSI Unit 4.
Anki: More interestingly, however, I've successfully loaded all of my previous vocab onto Anki for long-term review and I'm really liking it! I've always thought that Anki only allowed you to speak/think the answer instead of typing it, and since I prefer to type the answer to make sure I have all the spelling and accent marks correct (I mentioned this is a previous post) I've always preferred Quizlet. Now, I still think I'll stick with Quizlet for initial review since (for me) it's a quicker process of typing, pressing enter, typing, pressing enter, etc. (whereas in Anki you have to click after every word to select how well you know it)...but still, really happy with Anki for all the rest! Also, it was so much easier to load everything into Anki than I expected. I combined all my Quizlet sets into 1 "combined" set, downloaded it as an Excel file, saved it as a .txt file, applied UTF-8 encoding (since Anki doesn't work with files saved in Excel format), and then uploaded it straight to Anki with all my formatting preserved. (This was much easier than it sounds when I type out the steps ;D).
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| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4961 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 29 of 38 14 July 2012 at 2:14am | IP Logged |
Good man, do you happen to use Anki on Android at all too?
Your progressing through Pimsleur very fast too, how are you finding the 2nd course so
far?
Also it might be worth checking out Memrise.com...Its good for vocab and its VERY
addictive! Even got one of my friends addicted to the French on there haha!
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| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French
| Message 30 of 38 15 July 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
Hi again, Nick!
No, I haven't used Anki on an Android, but I am planning to use the mobile version for Apple products (not sure if it's similar to the Android version).
I do go through Pimsleur a bit fast -- so far, however, I've been able to retain all the information, and sometimes it's better to do a lot at once than drag it out over a long time period. I'm liking the 2nd course well so far. It's noticeably more complicated than the first course, so I'm starting to really learn a lot of new things (since I already had a pretty large passive vocab to start, and I know a lot of the basic grammar). All in all, I'd say studying Pimsleur is worth it, even if it can get a little slow at times.
I took a look at Memrise.com a few moments ago -- it seems really interesting! I just "studied" a few words (well, I clicked through the prompts to see how it works), and it seems to have an interesting method -- not sure if I'd have the patience to do that for all my vocab. I imagine it would be good for studying (Chinese) characters though -- might have to try it out more in-depth when I take up Chinese again. Have you used it for characters? (Or for another language? -- I see you study both Portuguese and Mandarin).
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Update on Studies: Worked through lesson 14 on Pimsleur. Studied more vocab on Anki (reviewing that huge set I studied earlier in the year). Total words reviewed so far: 365. I'm pleasantly surprised with how much vocab I remember from my vocab cram sessions -- even the more obscure words are still pretty familiar (though admittedly, I have forgotten several as well). Tomorrow, however, is going to be devoted solely to FSI since I've definitely been neglecting it (with all the excitement of a new vocab program, I've been reluctant to do all those exercises...). Até a próxima!
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| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4961 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 31 of 38 15 July 2012 at 5:22am | IP Logged |
Its very similar mate, although I have not used the iOS version for quite some time, however its more "polished" than the Android version.
Nice! I do have the Pimsleur course for Portuguese, but I'm so slow at going through it - I think I'm pretty visual though in the way I learn so I like to see the text as I'm going through it. So I've just been using Pimsleur when I've been out walking to and from places.
It is great the way Memrise works, I mainly tried it for Portuguese and the vocab really sticks. I have used it for characters too, however I do not like the way it displays the characters haha!
Oh also, I don't know if you can get it on the iOS but its a podcast app called "Ratpoison" and it lets you listen to BrazilianPodClass, CLO Chinese etc and its a really easy to use format, I use that pretty much every night before I sleep.
Edited by NickJS on 15 July 2012 at 5:25am
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| jae Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5666 days ago 206 posts - 239 votes Speaks: English*, German, Latin Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French
| Message 32 of 38 19 July 2012 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
I'll definitely take a look at Ratpoison when I get a chance -- that sounds quite useful.
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Update
Pimsleur: Finished lesson 25 as of today. I've been very pleased with my progress using Pimsleur. No, it's not the right method if you want to use it to learn the bulk of your vocab -- there aren't many new words/phrases introduced per lesson. But I've found it to be very helpful in increasing my ability to actually speak in the language -- I've become more fluid with sentence construction, more comfortable with some basic idioms, and my accent has definitely improved (a Portuguese speaker told me that my accent has been significantly better since I've begun to study Pimsleur on a more regular basis). Thus, it comes highly recommended from me for improving comfort in beginning conversations.
Anki/Vocab Review: My vocab review with Anki is also going well; as of now, I've reviewed 560 out of 1495 cards and I feel fairly comfortable with most of them.
FSI: I've finished unit 4 on FSI and I'm on to unit 5. Everything is still going well on that front as well; once I finish lesson 5, I'm going to study all the vocab/grammar again before going onto the review lesson 6 (every 6 lessons is a review lesson).
Tudo vai bem. Eu estudo muito e o meu português é melhor doque antes. Agora, eu vou tentar escrever algumas frases em português neste diário todos os dias. (And I'm always open to corrections, tips, etc.!) Até logo!
Edited by jae on 19 July 2012 at 1:57am
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