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Super Challenge Registration/ Update 2012 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 481 of 656 19 July 2012 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
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rewire, you are not the only late entry.
OK, I'm diving in! SPLASH! LANGUAGE: Japanese CHALLENGE: Half (50 films and 50 books) CURRENT LEVEL: A2/B1 COMMENTS: I won't watch films per se, but I will sit down with my wife when she's watching her Japanese dramas. She watches about five a week, so even though without the commercials an episode comes in at less than 45 minutes, I'm sure I could sit through 100 of them by December next year, even with the late start. The 50 books will definitely be more challenging. I've read news articles and the like on the Internet, and I've read passages in my textbooks, but I've never read a book purely in Japanese, and I have no idea where to start. Luckily, there's a library in my workplace: a high school! And summer vacation is about to start for my students, so I should have some time to peruse the aisles and see if there is anything suitable for me to tackle. Of course, I can reread the same books, so that helps. EDIT: I forgot to include my language log link. Could someone add tags to it please? I can't figure out how to add tags other than the microtags for each post. Thank you! Also, I'm on Twitter at kujichagulia18. Edited by kujichagulia on 19 July 2012 at 8:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 482 of 656 19 July 2012 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Kujichagulia, I have found children's books are a great way to start with Japanese because they grade the amount of kanji and furigana by level. It means you can start by just worrying only about vocabulary, but the kanji will still get introduced to you over time. The 10分で読める series, plus similar series also published by Gakken, is particularly good, and graded at six levels corresponding to year groups in elementary schools.
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 483 of 656 19 July 2012 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you very much, g-bod! I'll look at getting those right away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 484 of 656 20 July 2012 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I've updated to full challenge - I'm still not sure I can read 100 books, but it seems more realistic now than it did a month ago.
Twitter says I'm at 11% - 8.4 books, and 14 movies. I've actually been having trouble finding good movies; I've already seen most, though not all, of the classics. My wish-list for books, on the other hand, continues to grow. Flics 14. Le dernier métro (François Truffaut, 1980). From IMDB: In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs. It's considered a classic, and is on a lot of "best of" lists. And while the acting was fine (Catherine Deneuve and Gèrard Depardieu are always fine), and the cinemetography was beautiful, the movie never seemed to come alive. It felt more like a nice little costume drama than anything real or significant. It won a lot of awards, though. X. Intouchables (Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano, 2011). From IMDB: After he becomes a quadriplegic from a paragliding accident, an aristocrat hires a young man from the projects to be his caretaker. Our French Meet Up group was invited to a screening, and were given two passes each. I didn't know this, but in Lingua Hollywood a "pass" is not the same thing as a "ticket." I knew something was strange when I arrived at the mall and there was already a long line - and it was not the type of crowd I've ever seen at a foreign-language showing. They looked more like the kind who took their kids to see last year's Adam Sandler movie at the dollar theater, or the kind of people who elbow you out of the way to get to the free samples first at Cost-Co. Turns out the the pass only gave you the right to turn it in for a free ticket(exactly - wtf?). The masses had been lined up for two hours for their free ticket, and we didn't get in. I usually hate movies that are blatantly manipulative, but the trailer makes it all look fun & I'll probably see it when it's released. I'll just get drunk first. On deck: 15. La grande séduction ("Seducing Doctor Lewis," Jean-François Pouliot, 2003). As recommended by microsnout; it'll be my first Québécois movie! IMDB: A much-needed boost, in the form of a new factory, is promised to the residents of the tiny fishing village St. Marie-La-Mauderne, provided they can lure a doctor to take up full-time residency on the island. Inspired, the villagers devise a scheme to make Dr. Christopher Lewis a local. 16. Camille Claudel (Bruno Nuytten, 1988). This looks like some serious melodrama! IMDB: Biography of Camille Claudel (Isabel Adjani). Sister of writer Paul Claudel, her enthusiasm impresses already-famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. He hires her as an assistant, but soon Camille begins to sculpt for herself and for Rodin. She also becomes his mistress. But after a while, she would like to get out of his shadow I loved the Rodin museum in Paris, which is reason enough for me to see this. Books I'm already 100 pages into Le hussard sur le toit, which astounds me. It's not an easy read, and there is a lot of adult language that I haven't encountered before - at least not in writing. I have a dog-eared paperback in French, and an English-language library book that's due in 3 weeks, so I'm under pressure to finish. Sometimes I read with a dictionary, sometimes I flip back and forth between the two books, and sometimes I go for broke and try to read without a net. I miss a lot if I go too long without checking against the English book - at one point I thought the characters were hiding out in a valley rather than locked inside a barn. I still need my English-language back up. The story itself is intense - you can almost feel the oppressiveness of the heat, and Angelo's ride into a village decimated by cholera is more horrifying than anything in Walking Dead. It's an adventure, for sure - the hero is on some type of secret mission in support of the Italian revolution - but large portions of the book so far are spent with Angelo struggling to maintain his humanity while the world falls apart around him. Humanis is also releasing a lot of Kindle ouevres complètes on Amazon of major French authors - Proust, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Hugo, Verne, Maupassant, Dumas, & Flaubert! - for $2.99 each. While I certainly don't need the complete works of any of them, I do plan on reading at least one book from each of them during the challenge. I downloaded A la recherche du temps perdu (édition complète - 10 tomes, augmentée, illustrée et commentée!), and the formatting seems pretty nice. I've found that the free Kindle versions of the classics can be extremely poorly formatted, so it's worth a few dollars to have a product that's actually usable. A la recherche is 3862 pages - which is less than 40% of the Super Challenge. It ... might be maybe could be doable. It's at least tempting. Edited by kanewai on 20 July 2012 at 4:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5791 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 485 of 656 20 July 2012 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Update:Spanish 4%
Read 1.1/50 books "Ines del alma mia" Watched 3.3/50 films Tv "Colloqualspanish:8-11" I am not counting albums any more 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4699 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 486 of 656 20 July 2012 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for a long over due update
20 movies 1 book. Slow progress but since it takes me 4 hours just to read 3 pages, I am pleased I have one in the belt especailly since I have to fit in around 3 hours a day of regular study. I could "cheat" and count my regular study texts as reading, but I refuse to do so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4701 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 487 of 656 20 July 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Films (45-min+ TV episode or film): 18/100
Books (100-page units): 4/100 Books (real books): 0 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5237 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 488 of 656 22 July 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Trying to balance my reading with listening practice. Finished some interesting podcasts and use Veinte Mundos
for more practice. I'm still pretty comfortable with intermediate level material, but the advanced can blow me out of the water. Also watched "Viva Cuba" on Netflix. Someone here had recommended it and I already had it on my list of movies to see. Some conversations I could understand easily, while others stumped me. Peliculas:(4/50) 1. Solas 2. Podcasts from Notes in Spanish (92 minutes) 3. Podcasts from Notes in Spanish and Veinte Mundos (90 minutes) 4. Viva Cuba Am reading Casi Una Mujer, by Esmeralda Santiago. This material suits me much better than 2 previous children's books I was reading. I'm improving on more day-to-day vocabulary, like sweeping, rinsing, refrigerator, etc, which is good. There are about 10 words/page that I look up. Even though I could pass them up & still understand basically what's going on, one of my goals is to improve vocabulary. Some days, I look up words, others I continue reading, whatever suits my mood. I'm pleased with the progress that I'm making. Sometimes I still read out loud. All this reading & listening makes me want to improve my speaking & writing skills, to put into practice what I'm learning, but I feel that even a 1/2 Super Duper Challenge would be out of my range at the moment. One of the things I noticed in my last book, La Piramide Roja, was that they used the vosotros form and commands in European Spanish. I'd never come across any readings that did this, which was interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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