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TAC 2012: ’ne nur’ & ’jäŋe/ledús’ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 26 03 January 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's my TAC 2012 log.
Current goals I've spent some time planning out my language goals for 2012. I've decided to present them in terms of what I'd like to do with each language, rather than CEFR levels. Primary language: Japanese Goals: comfortably watch anime without subs, comfortably read web pages and books, hold 10-minute conversations with patient native speakers, and hear and produce pitch accent correctly. Secondary language: Russian Goals: comfortably read academic literature (for instance, on stochastic calculus, Markov processes, and exercise physiology), easily understand pop songs, and correctly hear and produce stress. Clean-up language: French Goals: sort out my accent to a level where I can shadow decently, be able to hold arbitrarily long conversations with patient speakers, and be comfortable using French as a base language for Assimil. Just Because languages: Hungarian and Swahili. Hungarian goal: to be able to semi-comfortably use my lovely Hungarian vegan cookbooks. They're from the incomparable Napfenyes Etterem in Budapest; check it out if you visit Hungary! Swahili goal: I promised Sprachprofi that I'd do 100 hours of Swahili this year. Maintenance languages: Italian, Esperanto, and German. Italian goal: read 10 books (including 5 Great Books) Esperanto goal: read 30 books; this will lightly improve my vocabulary. German goal: read at least 5 books, listen to at least 20 hours of online lectures. Fuzzy goal: make my speech more clear and flowing, so I'm not asked to repeat myself, and with a light enough accent that I can reasonably hope that the native speakers I know will all claim not to find my accent itself jarring. English goal: Make a 5-minute recording with no undue hesitations or filler words. Changes in goals so far 1) My German goal has expanded to include improving my accent. The original goal was "continue reading and listening to it; I want to at least maintain my current level in it." Similarly, in the interests of speaking more clearly in German, I'm also working on polishing my English speech again; I've slipped a bit in enunciation since the days when I was speaking it all day and doing theater classes. I'd also like to weed out some of my incorrect "reading pronunciations" of low-frequency English words - suggestions for how to approach that are welcome! Progress German - completed one book. Edited by Volte on 01 February 2012 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 26 03 January 2012 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I started the year a bit over a week early, with help and feedback on my German accent provided by Arekkusu and Sprachprofi. It's gone from "pretty dismal" to significantly improved, but I still have a fairly strong accent in spontaneous/unscripted speech. I haven't been asked to repeat myself recently, which is progress, and I'm more willing to switch into German with multilingual friends again.
The year itself is off to a slow start, as I battle an exhausting cold. Until I'm well enough to properly study again, I'll continue focusing on maintenance and resting. Edited by Volte on 03 January 2012 at 5:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 26 03 January 2012 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
That in itself is a pretty ambitious task! The 10-minute conversation is probably the simplest task out of all those... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 26 03 January 2012 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. But I started playing with Japanese in 2004, and I'm thoroughly tired of not being able to do those things. The "10 minute conversation" is in there as a relatively simple goal, comparatively - and reflects the emphasis I tend to put on speaking vs understanding. I can pick bits out of anime already, though comprehending whole scenes without subs is a definite rarity, and only happens when they're incredibly simple. My reading comprehension is pretty dismal, though I recognize about half the kanji - in isolation, rather than fully comprehending words and phrases consisting of multiple ones. I'm not aiming for academic literature in Japanese this year, but I'd like to be able to read fairly typical manga, novels, and webpages about technical topics that interest me for pleasure, even if I miss some details and can't understand the hardest ones. Japanese is the language it irks me most not to be able to do these things in, and this has been irking me for years - and I want to break out of the Indo-European bubble. If I fall short, at least I hope to be a lot closer than I am now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 26 03 January 2012 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good luck in your goals, Volte, since you've always encouraged me with mine.
You certianly are ambitious. I made the goal of reading 24 books this year, most likely in English since I don't know any other languages well enough to read in them. I certainly feel like a slouch. Edited by Michael K. on 03 January 2012 at 11:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 26 05 January 2012 at 12:20am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you. Don't compare yourself to others. I could feel like a slouch compared to plenty of forum members here, but what good would it do? A lot of us are starting from very different points; if I tried to read as much in Greek as Sprachprofi does over the next few months (I've never studied it), it would not be a recipe for happiness - much less in all her other languages. And if my goal was to have as many fluent languages as Iversen by the end of the year, I'd be setting myself up for painful failure if I were able to actually buy into the goal at all. You've made your goal; enjoy it, work towards it, celebrate if/when you hit it, and be merry. And consider an Esperanto or Spanish easy reader as one or two of your 24! Good luck. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 7 of 26 05 January 2012 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks again, Volte.
I meant it to be more lighthearted than it actually seemed, but sometimes I do feel like an undisciplined slacker. I'm thinking of reading the Chronicles of Narnia in Spanish and the Bible (well, parts of it at least) in Spanish and Esperanto. If I could find "The Little Prince" in Esperanto I'd read it. I've never read the C of N before, but I like CS Lewis, and reading the Bible would be personally satisfying for me, since I'm trying to read it in English in its entirety this year. I liked "The Little Prince" when I read it awhile ago. Those might be ambitious goals, but i think it'd be fun. Everyone should feel like a slouch compared to Iversen & Sprachprofi. They're amazing. Edited by Michael K. on 05 January 2012 at 3:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 26 05 January 2012 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're making me blush. I don't consider myself such a great language learner -
considering my usually lax work schedule, there are so many more hours I could be studying languages, and instead I'm surfing the web or doing nothing in particular. In 2011 I logged 711 language-learning hours total, and more than one forum member beat that. JNetto even did 326 hours in 6 weeks for the May 6 Week Challenge. And I don't have Volte's ability to sit down with something and study it for several hours; my longest sessions are 60 minutes, and 30 minutes is much more typical. Surely I'm a slouch? It is futile to measure yourself against other people, whose circumstances and goals may be very different (says the inventor of the Twitter bot & highscore). In the end, it is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday. I shall make 712 hours my minimum goal for this year, and if I hit the 800 range I'll give myself a medal. My recipe: keep records, set records, beat your own records. Keeping records is surprisingly helpful because it holds a mirror to you and guilts you into doing more ;-) Setting a record feels good, and breaking your own record is awesome. The Esperanto translation of the Little Prince (and others) can be found at http://www.odaha.com/antoine-de-saint-exupery/maly-princ/la- eta-princo 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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