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Towards Goal-Oriented Multilingualism | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5168 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 25 of 27 14 November 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
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Rhadryn, I noticed you do both textbook and non-textbook activities. How do you set up your schedule?
I'm learning four languages through textbook. In the case of Georgian, I'm at a section of the textbook that actually consists of reading. So, I study Chinese from two textbooks, then Russian from Assimil (challenge), then Georgian first from a textbook that is actually a phrasebook and second from another textbook that is now a reader. Finally, I study Assimil Norwegian. When I'm done with all 4 soon enough, I move on to reading French literature alongside with the translation in Portuguese, which I check once in a while just so that I don't miss most jokes or lose much time looking words up. Even though I'm not officially learning French from textbooks anymore, I find that if I leave all the extended readings/non-textbook activities for the last, I end up there a bit tired and may not take the most out of these. Ideally, I should alternate languages I'm more advanced at (Georgian, believe it or not) with languages I'd just started. It was the case with Chinese-French-Georgian-Norwegian. But now Russian replaced Norwegian and I find it a bit tiresome also to do so much textbook learning in a row. Maybe if I switch Russian and Chinese it gets smoother. The fact is, I'm enjoying the bilingual reading time much more than the textbook learning, specially at furher stages when there's not much linguistic amazement left, and I' like to arrange my schedule in a non-tiring way. I still need to find time for reading books in English and Spanish that I'd have to read nonetheless (in quite a few subjects), as well as watching TV shows in English. Luckily the non-language reading diminished since I took an exam but it may increase at full-throttle soon as more will come. (Sorry for invading your log but I still don't have a multilingual thread and it wouldn't make sense to write it at either my Georgian or my Norwegian logs =) ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5385 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 26 of 27 16 November 2012 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
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Hi Expugnator,
I really don't have a schedule, just a list of things I want to finish each day and a list of other things that I could do if I have time. But looking at my logs, I do tend to intersperse the hardcore textbook learning (Assimil German and Russian and Penguin Russian) with reading, TV, or even flashcards which doesn't take as much concentration. I generally agree with you that reading is more interesting than textbook learning, but Assimil can be quite fun at times in German, though not so much in Russian because it's often frustrating. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5385 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 27 of 27 01 January 2013 at 7:18pm | IP Logged |
Well I have been failing to keep this log updated, but that doesn't mean my language study has stopped. Though it isn't going as well as it was. Here's the totals for this year (starting from mid-July up to December 31st):
So my total language study time for this year was 521.32 hours. Also note that the Japanese goal changed from the original 440 to 330, which probably didn't help my motivation but it certainly looks better on the graph. My November wasn't great, and then December was pretty bad due to multiple vacations and moving back to the US. If I had just worked a little bit harder I could have exceeded at least one of my goals. But I was close, and I feel pretty good about my accomplishments in general. In particular, I'm very motivated by my success in studying at least some every day. I've done Japanese flashcards everyday since October 20th! At the beginning my theory was that consistency was the biggest determiner of progress, and I believe I've proved that with my relative comfort in reading Japanese and speaking German. This was sort of a trial run anyway to see if I could stick long with something, and I think I've succeeded in proving that I can do that. Now I have high hopes for the year to come. How did I do with my non-quantified goals? Japanese: I read not one but two (and a half!) books. My conversation improved, but I don't know how much really because I didn't have many opportunities to really test it. I ended up not taking the JLPT 2. Also, at the end of the year I had made over 2000 flashcards for new words! That wasn't a goal, but I feel good about having done that. Russian: I ended up with about 400 flashcards while my original goal was 1000. I felt in general that Russian was my most disappointing language because I wasn't able to be consistent with any method and as a result I don't feel that I accomplished much. I did try to speak with my cousin, but he had forgotten all his Russian. Spanish: I did read one book, but that mostly showed me that I wasn't really at a level to read books yet. I never achieved consistency in my Spanish study, which was disappointing. When I did review Assimil though, I felt pretty good about what I remembered, so I don't feel too badly about this language. French: I read two books, and struggled a lot with the third one (La Chartreuse of Parme). But the first two went well enough that I feel pretty good about my French ability. German: When I was in college and high school I generally held German in disdain. What a mistake. This is a cool language that I really enjoyed studying. I very nearly finished the Assimil for it, which was more than I expected to be able to do. I forgot to have a conversation with my friend, but she says that she'll Skype me. Latin: I enjoyed studying Latin, and it was very motivating at times. I went through Lingua Latina twice, and I feel that if I really wanted to master this language, I could do it without too much difficulty. Arabic and Mandarin: I think these showed me that having a vague goal like "10 hours by the end of the year" really does not work. I won't make this mistake again. I liked studying the Arabic writing system, but there was almost always something more pressing so it got shafted. I studied Mandarin so little that I didn't even bother putting it on the chart. And that's all for 2012! I'm so excited to see what kinds of linguistic enlightenment 2013 will bring! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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