Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 33 of 56 23 July 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
Long time no hear...how's everything going, mate? I hope all your projects (language or otherwise) are flourishing in the generous summer sun, you're remembering to water your kanji cacti, and that you'll soon find many more wells of cool inspiration to draw from in your travels. :)
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 34 of 56 25 August 2012 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
Hi forum! And thank you for your messages. Sorry for not replying - I've been completely offline language learning-wise.
I thought I could write a little life update for y'all:
Life Update
YES! I'm done with my studies ! It was a pretty intense moment when I realized that I'm not a student anymore, so I've had my own little existential crisis this summer I guess. And, this week I started my first real job! I got a dream job at the company where I did my thesis, so I'm really happy about it! :D
And in July, I actually went to Myanmar (Burma) on a short volunteering trip. It was such a great trip, and one of our main tasks was to teach English to university students. It was really fun to have my own lessons (a new experience for me). The learning materials were good and the students were skilled and lovely so we all had fun. But at one particular place the learning materials were complete garbage (unfortunately). At this place, the students were complete beginners, and for some reason the materials expected them to know and use vocabulary they had never been exposed to. We were struggling really hard to present it in a way that could make sense to a beginner. Ohhhh, these students were bored to death. :/
...And at that moment I just wanted my soul to explode and just drown everybody in sweet sweet AJATT and LR philosophy: -"You don't have to suffer like this! You don't have to be all stressed out when you try to decipher the text in the assignments while everybody is waiting for you. You don't have to recognize and use words like "credit card" and "passport" before you have even learnt them. The suffering is a lie - LR will set you free. Freeeeeee!! -You will dance through life! - filling your days with colorful adventures - learning advanced English without even noticing!"
Lol. Luckily all the other English lessons were a lot better. ;) And it was a great experience to be a teacher!
The return of The Feeling
And today I suddenly felt something I haven't felt for months. I felt a little Japanese spark! (must have been that mythical 'Inspireeshyon'). So I casually did a web search to see if I could find new Japanese audiobooks. To my great surprise I actually found a brand new full recording of "I am a Cat". This narrator actually seems to be pleasant to listen to so I'm super super excited to LR it.
I hope I'm soon back to my old and noble TAC ways. :)
See you on board comrades! :)
Edited by M. Medialis on 25 August 2012 at 1:58am
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 35 of 56 25 August 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged |
Big congratulations on finishing your Master's thesis and landing that dream job into the bargain! You must be thrilled... :D
It sounds like the last few months have been both an exotic adventure and a time to reflect on all these big changes. I've only ever read about Burma in old novels; what was it like living there?
Incidentally, my last real TAC update was also in the beginning of May, so don't worry about going offline for a while. The main thing is that you're igniting new sparks in the Japanese kindling once again, and it's great to see you back on the forum!
Edited by Teango on 25 August 2012 at 2:47am
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 36 of 56 06 September 2012 at 6:49pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #6
@Teango Thank you! It feels great to be back. :)
Burma was really nice! I thought it was a charming place, and the people are amazingly friendly. Really, extraordinarily friendly. Many people are quite poor there, but the people in the cities gave a very modern impression with stylish clothes and everything - except the monks who wear their robes of course. So I would recommend it, but I have to say that it couldn't beat the kawaiiness of Taiwan ;) ).
Now, my modem has died so I've lost my Internet connection at home (hence the late reply). I'm writing this on my work computer.
Restarting the engines
I have finally gotten some momentum in my Japanese studies again after a 4 month hiatus (horray!). It didn't take long before I was back in my old habits, listening to podcasts and doing LR on the bus. It's funny how it's possible to get so disconnected from a hobby and then suddenly be back again as if nothing happened.
Right now I'm LRing "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in Japanese. Now, who is that mysterious Hyde..?
Listening Level-up
I feel I have gotten notable improvements in my Japanese listening skills! Yesterday I was re-listening to a podcast that I'm familiar with. Before, I have been able to catch words and phrases here and there such as 'Disney character', 'eating an apple' etc. But those words and phrases were really far apart in the podcast so I have never had a chance of connecting them (that is, I could catch the phrases but I couldn't put them into a context). Now, I have a better ability to follow along in long thoughts, so yesterday I managed to connect the phrase "favourite heroines" with "princess" and follow along in the theme of the discussion. So when they finally reached the phrase "eating an apple" it was evident that they were speaking about the Disney movie "Snow White"!
Japanese is beginning to make sense, finally! :D Now I just need...maybe 10000 more words before I'm fluent. Lol. ^^
Sentence Exploration
I also have started to do a new little variation of sentence mining. I listen to a podcast, and when I hear an interesting word I look it up so I get example sentences. Then I write down all example sentences that I find interesting.
The example sentences are likely to contain many other interesting and unknown words, so I just continue the process: "Podcast -> New Word -> Find and write down Example Sentences -> New words - Find and write down example sentences -> New words ->". If I get bored, I just turn on the podcast again to get a new word to follow. I'm also a bit inspired by Khatzumoto's advice: "If you're feeling righteous you're doing it wrong", so there are absolutely no rules when I do this - I'm happily jumping between words and sentences and get to do something I really enjoy - writing Japanese.
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Team Sputnik - M. Medialis
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6357 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 37 of 56 15 September 2012 at 11:31am | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2012 - Team Sputnik - Log #7
It's a bit ironic to be a member of the official Russian TAC team and not be studying Russian.. I've actually done some Russian LR but my grand plan for this year was to take private lessons to get into the speaking zone - but the skilled Russian teacher I wanted apparently stopped giving lessons this year. Bah. :/
Japanese Update
Finally I'm back in the Japanese zone! Depending on my mood, I listen to podcasts, watch drama, do Blog Scriptorium, Standard Scriptorium and LR. And everything I do makes me come across new unknown words, which gives me example sentences, which gives me more words, and I love it!
The thrill was complete when I did Blog Scriptorium and correctly guessed the meaning and pronunciation of the word 社会人. (the two first kanjis have been bugging me since I started learning Japanese because they never wanted to stick).
As a reward I instantly jumped up, did the 'Victory' sign and shouted グレート サクセス!! (Great Success*) with my Japanese voice! ^^
*But we pronounce it: Gureet Sakusesu!!
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Team Sputnik - M. Medialis
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 38 of 56 07 October 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged |
Hey! Good to see you back on track! I hope that you will be able to get some Russian studies done, or at lest
the occasional film or podcast, we need your input!
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Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian
| Message 39 of 56 21 October 2012 at 6:19am | IP Logged |
Interesting experiences teaching English in Burma! I do find myself in the same pinch
when I tutor English or Arabic :) Oh, for some of that AJATT and LR wisdom:)
Not to worry about Russian, hopefully you'll find your rhythm somewhere along. Life does
tend to get in the way and disrupt out plans. It's only natural, so hopefully you'll get
back in the flow of Russian. Great updates, and keep up the great work :)
がんばってね!
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Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian
| Message 40 of 56 21 October 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
Hi! I forgot to ask, would you mind sharing where you found this super-amazing audiobook
for "I Am Cat?" That is, if it's publicly available :) Thank you in any case :)
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