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Amerykanka’s TAC 2012 (Teams Žá & Żubr)

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6595 days ago

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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 89 of 119
01 December 2012 at 11:35pm | IP Logged 
Don't look for them, add them when they are there:) You may want to get a particular book for your intensive reading (but don't read ALL of it intensively).
When actually adding, make sure to use the hotkeys.
Consider using sentences. a sentence card is more valuable than the sum of several single-word cards, imo.
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Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5169 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 90 of 119
04 December 2012 at 12:51am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Don't look for them, add them when they are there:) You may want to get a particular
book for your intensive reading (but don't read ALL of it intensively).
When actually adding, make sure to use the hotkeys.
Consider using sentences. a sentence card is more valuable than the sum of several single-word cards, imo.


Thanks for your response! :) I do get most of my words from my reading and listening materials - so the
problem for me isn't so much finding the words as finding good definitions and making the flashcards. But
you have a point about not looking for words - I think I stress too much about learning vocabulary. I will try to
start focusing more on using the language; hopefully then the vocabulary will come more naturally!

I also like your idea about sentence cards. They might be a very good way of cutting back on time and
acquiring a better knowledge of words' uses.

Edited by Amerykanka on 04 December 2012 at 12:52am

1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6595 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 91 of 119
04 December 2012 at 1:05am | IP Logged 
Yeah, if you keep the original sentence, there's no need to find a good definition or equivalent:) With sentences you just need a little nudge towards the meaning, and sometimes not even that.
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Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5169 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 92 of 119
04 December 2012 at 6:17pm | IP Logged 
I like to still have a general definition, but I just made 15 or so new cards and almost all of them feature a
couple of example sentences . . . I think this will prove a very useful method. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6595 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 93 of 119
04 December 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged 
:) yes but if the example is good the definition doesn't have to be PERFECT :)))
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Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5169 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 94 of 119
05 December 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
:) yes but if the example is good the definition doesn't have to be PERFECT :)))


Precisely! Using sentences cuts back on perfectionistic tendencies. I think I may add a new deck just for
sentences. (Well, if I can figure out how to add decks at all - Anki 2 is so confusing.)

Hopefully I will have an opportunity to update this log later today - if not it may have to wait til next weekend.
But I have been studying!!!
2 persons have voted this message useful



Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5169 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 95 of 119
07 December 2012 at 2:39am | IP Logged 

I am REALLY excited because yesterday I finished reading my second book ever in Spanish!!! At some point,
reading books in Spanish will probably become commonplace for me, but for the time being, I reserve the
right to make a huge deal over every finished novel! :) I'm on my sixth in Polish (seventh if you take into
account the fact that I read Quo vadis twice), and I still feel an enormous sense of accomplishment
whenever I read the last page of a book, so my attacks of euphoria probably won't go away any time soon
where either language is concerned. :)

Okay, now for a more conventional update.

SPANISH
4 hours 35 minutes
- 1 hour 10 minutes of reviewing flashcards in Anki
- 45 minutes of listening comprehension
- 35 minutes of grammar exercises
- 1 hour 40 minutes of reading
- 25 minutes of vocabulary acquisition
Flashcard Count: 4,685 words

My listening comprehension consisted of listening to articles on VeinteMundos, listening to the podcast Notes
in Spanish Gold, and watching news videos on BBC Noticias. I hope I'm getting better - when I go to
Nicaragua next summer I want to be able to understand everything!

For reading, I read an article on VeinteMundos and I FINISHED EL APRENDIZ - did I mention that? I
also read Isabel Allende's short story "Dos Palabras". It was interesting; I didn't like some aspects of it but I
think it was good practice.

LATIN
2 hours 35 minutes
- 1 hour 15 minutes of reviewing flashcards in Anki
- 40 minutes of translating a passage from St. Jerome
- 20 minutes of translating sentences from Unit 17 of Collins
- 20 minutes of studying Unit 19 and adding the vocabulary to my Anki deck

Not much to say except hopefully I will have a better week next week.

POLISH
Don't ask. I am really busy right now - over the Christmas holidays I hope to get going with Polish again. I
have this awesome plan for organizing my flashcards and completing a much-needed, comprehensive
vocabulary review. . . .

Polish is my favorite language - maybe it's because I grew up with it as a part of my life, but either way I don't
feel quite right if I'm not studying it. So expect to see a Polish comeback sometime soon! :)

2 persons have voted this message useful



Amerykanka
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5169 days ago

657 posts - 890 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian

 
 Message 96 of 119
14 December 2012 at 3:42am | IP Logged 
Time for an update! All of this preparation for TAC 2013 is very motivational! :)

POLISH
1 hour 10 minutes
- 1 hour of epic flashcard organization
- 10 minutes (or so) of flashcard review

The Epic and Awesome Vocabulary Enlargement, henceforth referred to as the EAVE, has begun!!! (Don't
ask how long it took me to come up with such a poor acronym, please!) Anyway, the EAVE entails vocabulary
review + lots of reading and vocabulary acquisition. My goal is to transfer all my paper flashcards to Anki
during Christmas break. It is a somewhat unrealistic goal, since last count I had over 5,000 Polish flashcards,
but I want to get a couple thousand cards moved.

LATIN
3 hours 40 minutes
- 1 hour 12 minutes of reviewing flashcards in Anki
- 25 minutes of reading Latin peotry and looking up vocab
- 40 minutes of reading, translating, and scanning Catullus 1
- 1 hour of translating a paragraph of St. Jerome's Ad Eustochium
- 10 minutes of reviewing relative clauses of characteristic
- 13 minutes of learning literary terms and other important terminology

Right, so it didn't actually take me a whole hour to translate the paragraph from St. Jerome. I decided to do a
supine review (since there was a supine in the passage), review all other interesting grammatical points, and
add all useful vocabulary to my Anki deck as I was translating.

I learned how to scan Latin poetry last Friday and it is so much fun! I fell in love with hendecasyllabic meter! It
is the only meter I know right now besides dactylic hexameter, which is not so awesome because I tried to
read The Aeneid and didn't get much past "Arma virumque cano". Ah well, I improve every day!

SPANISH
4 hours 22 minutes
- 1 hour 12 minutes of reviewing flashcards in Anki
- 10 minutes of miscellaneous Spanish study
- 20 minutes of vocabulary acquisition
- 10 minutes of grammar exercises
- 1 hour 10 minutes of listening comprehension
- 1 hour 20 minutes of reading
Flashcard Count: 4,722 cards

My listening comprehension consisted of lots of Notes in Spanish Advanced podcasts and BBC Noticias
news videos. As for reading, I have had a new idea. I am trying to get a feel for literature in Spanish, so I
have started reading short stories by famous authors. My plan is to pick an author each week and read short
stories by him or her.

I've already had an Isabel Allende week, since I read "Dos Palabras" and La Ciudad de las Bestias, and
this week is my Jorge Luis Borges week. So far I have read his (very) short piece "Borges y Yo" and "El Sur".
I actually read "El Sur" twice, since after the first time through I was pretty puzzled. I understood what
happened, but I missed a lot of the subtleties. So I read it again, with the help of an English translation in
several places where my Spanish dictionary failed me, and I understood it much better the second time! Why
do authors write such strange short stories? I've been reading them a lot in English this year, and they are
undeniably weird.

I will still be reading the novels I had planned in Spanish, but this is the new edition to my reading. By the
way, suggestions on which of Borges' short stories I should read tomorrow would be welcome! I don't know
anything about him except what I looked up on Wikipedia, and now I am still stumped as to what the
ultraísmo movement is.

Suggestions as to which other authors I should check out are also very welcome! :) Like I said, I hope to do
an author a week, although I'm sure I'll do "book" weeks too, since I have lots of books to read in Spanish.


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