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Assimil Adventure: 6 languages at a time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4634 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 33 of 94 27 August 2012 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Please keep updating! This is awesome. I'm especially interested in Le Latin sans peine so I will be following your progress with it.
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| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 34 of 94 02 September 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks a lot! I'm just back from holidays, so haven't had the chance to try these decks yet, especially as I have yet to try Anki 2 (and see what are the implications and if it's safe, I'm a bit worried by the merging of all the decks.), I will try to set this up these days. (by the way, what is the hierotex.py file for?) Thanks also for your recommendations. Even though overlearning can't be done for all of the 6 languages I am studying in this experiment as I don't have 6h to spend on it every day, I am willing to try it for Egyptian, both in order to see how it compares with the other languages, and because I realise that if tomorrow I need to start the active wave, I'm not sure that I'll be able to translate anything at all. But that will mainly depend on the time I have to spend, and these 6 languages already take me 3h a day and I'd like to keep some time for German+Old English+Chinese and other personal interests... Hopefully I can give you some feedback on the deck in a very few days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 35 of 94 02 September 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems like I'm quite late in posting my log. I'm now in week 6 and am only posting week 3. Hopefully I'll catch up tomorrow and the day after so that my posts reflect my present achievement.
Assimil Adventure - Week 3 -Egyptian Hieroglyphs : lessons 15 to 21 : 4h35 Hieroglyphs is the first course I'm doing every morning and it's a real pleasure: I cannot explain why, but all these signs make me happy. Following on the second week, this week continues describing a garden, the trees and the master of a domain: no dialog here, it's not even narrative but only descriptive, which is necessary as the grammar covered until now allows only for introducing topics and exposing general truths about them. The progression is rather constant, and the main grammatical features of a week tend to be introduced early to provide enough repetition. The revision lesson is however absolutely not restricted to revision: it's a full explanatory lesson, which doesn't only sumarize the content of the six previous days, but also completes lists (you've seen 2 pronouns? we'll give you here all the others), it introduces concepts that haven't been dealt with before, and frankly it is frustrating for me: I tend never to remember the extra content of a revision lesson as it's not backed by examples and is drown in an already large enough mass of information. In my opinion, this is how this course differs from the other Assimils, or at least that is the course in which I notice it: in all the other courses, only what has been taught during the week is exposer in the revision, and the revision should be a rather light lesson, structuring your knowledge and giving you enough time to read back all the dialogs of the week. Anyway, this is how this book is layout and there's not much to do about it. I suppose it's legitimate to complete lists (of pronouns, conjugation endings) in the revision lesson for reference. I'm still glad it is the only course with this format. -Latin : lessons 15 to 21 : 2h35 My impression for this week is that Assimil's name is well deserved: I really feel that progressively I assimilate the grammatical structures, endings and conjugations. The beauty of it is that I don't try to remember them: often I will simply "pay attention", noticing that here or there I have this case and that is the reason for the meaning of the sentence, but I don't try to learn. This book is constantly adding notes like "you can't remember it all? don't worry, it will come!" or "don't try to remember this" and that is absolutely true, the magic of the method is really there and I am pretty sure that by the end of the book I'll have learnt a great deal of Latin, and that I'll be ready to tackle something much more difficult, hopefully reading some book with a dictionary. One thing I'd like to add here is that the content of the dialogs makes Latin a living language: this is extremely important to me, and considering Latin as a living language, it really makes me want to take part in discussions in Latin. We'll see how it fares from there, the way is still long, but in three weeks, Assimil has changed my mind on Latin, and the boredom of the various textbooks I had tried before has vanished. -Norwegian lessons 15 to 21 : 3h15 Looking back at my handwritten log, I am quite puzzled: one day I've written that I loved learning Norwegian, the other day that I was full of doubts, and I've alternated every day. So, here it is: I love learning Norwegian, I'm very happy to have started doing so with Assimil because it seems to me that Norwegian is one of the best Assimils I am trying at the moment. The dialogs are well set up, there's humour, the pace of introduction of new grammatical concepts is just right, the vocabulary is accessible from my other languages, well, everything is great. But one thing: I'm still very uncomfortable with the pronunciation of Norwegian, as I said last week. I listen to a dialog between the woman and the man, one is limpid, the other is as understandable for me as if it were in Icelandic. I don't know how to remedy this except going through more and more listening: Assimil teaches the pronunciation of the language at the beginning, taking into account only one "accent" it seems, because when that man speaks, there are clearly tons of retroflex consonants that have never been mentioned before. If someone could point me to something that could help me understand the parallels between the various accents of Norwegian, I would be really grateful as I hope it would help me make sense of it all. -Polish : lessons 15 to 21 : 1h40 Same as last week, I feel there is little content (as the clock shows), but however I've noted a little improvement. Looking further in the book, it seems that dialogs are going to get longer soon, so I enjoy these shorts lessons for now as they give room for other languages on my schedule. -Swahili : lessons 15 to 21 : 2h35 Here my comment should be about the same as last week: the introduction of new grammar is just at the right pace so that I'm neither bored nor overwhelmed. However, the vocabulary doesn't stick at all apart from the very very frequent words. I have taken no action to try to make it stick however, I hope that with time this will pass and want to continue trusting the method for now. I think it will always be time to focus specifically on vocabulary when I get close to the active wave date. -Indonesian : lessons 15 to 21 : 3h Like last week, it's similar to Swahili: the grammar is great, but the vocabulary keeps escaping me! Anyway, "the grammar is great" is what is important for me at the moment. The course introduces the various affixes which are omnipresent in Indonesian, and focusing on them to understand the relationship between the meaning of the base word and that of its derived words is enough of a challenge to leave the vocabulary for later. I completely believe that this is only a matter of time and that if I pay a bit more attention and spend more time repeating aloud, all this vocabulary will sink in in no time! A final note: I'm getting in the rhythm. This has been somewhat difficult for that 3rd week as I was on holidays far from home, but with a little bit of organization I was able to manage it. These were however very laid back holidays, in a house, so that I could spend the time to study every day. If you go camping however, forget about your Assimil endeavours! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 36 of 94 03 September 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||
My Anki deck has pretty complete coverage for the first 4 review lessons, which should really help with those lists. I would typically start learning the cards for the review lesson several days in advance, to help spread out the load. And like I said, don't feel bad about deleting cards. The most useful cards in the deck are the cards for the exercises and the review lessons, because they're short, sweet and focused on the most important vocabulary. The main lesson cards tend to be complete sentences (at least after a the first couple of weeks), and they're often longer than is ideal for Anki. Sometimes I groan a little when one comes up for review, which means that I'm Doing It Wrong. The HieroTeX.py file is an Anki 2 plugin that can be used with HieroTeX to create new cards, if people are so inclined. HieroTeX is a command-line tool for typesetting hieroglyphs. This is not especially for the faint of heart. You can find my 30-day retrospective for L'Égyptien hiéroglyphique in my log. Anyway, I continue to really enjoy this log. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6227 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 37 of 94 03 September 2012 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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strong work!
very impressive! I feel so lazy just sticking to one language right now! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 38 of 94 04 September 2012 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Motivation! Slowly getting back at my log, I should be able to be up-to-date tomorrow if all goes well. I'm a bit overloaded with languages, online courses I try to follow, books I try to go through... Perhaps I should be more reasonable and not attempt to do everything, if I want to actually do something. Anyway, here it is.
Assimil Adventure - Week 4 -Egyptian Hieroglyphs : lessons 22 to 28 : 5h This week has been fantastic. All of a sudden, everything is becoming clear: first, the vocabulary sticks to my memory, and I can very often pronounce a sentence just by looking at the hieroglyphs, and of course, I know their meaning. Better than that, the grammar presented until now doesn't seem to be much of a problem anymore, and even though I don't think I would be able to produce those sentences, at least I understand why they are built that way, which is, I believe, what is expected of me during the passive wave. Finally, I can reproduce the text on paper entirely almost without looking at it: after having studied the text, I conclude my lesson by copying the text. At first it was a bit difficult and I had to look at almost every word, but in a few lessons I progressed to looking only once per line, and even realising I could remember the entire text. This is a real motivation boost, and I expect to continue copying lessons in the future, at least as long as time will allow, as this still tends to be quite time-consuming, unfortunately. -Latin : lessons 22 to 28 : 2h50 Here as well, I feel that I'm at a turning point, even if perhaps not that extreme. I can now usually read and understand the text without reading the translation, and sometimes without even reading the notes. Of course, this is because there are so many cognates, or words that I can easily guess without being particularly similar, but still, the fact is that studying Latin with Assimil becomes more and more a pleasure for me. I should insist there, because reading back my handwritten log, this is really what sticks out, that every single day I've been happy during the lesson, and happiness means a high motivation and less chance to drop out. Trying to be objective however, I feel that even though I can understand the texts very well, it doesn't mean I will remember the vocabulary, particularly as I tend to recognize it passively and don't try to learn it. But that is fine, for now I am happy and perhaps it's all that counts. -Norwegian lessons 22 to 28 : 3h10 For the first half of the week, I've felt extremely burdened by Norwegian: I could understand nothing of the spoken dialog, the lessons felt longer and more tiring as there was a lot of new vocabulary that made the texts almost impossible to understand for me before learning it, while I usually can get the gist of the dialog before studying it (at least in its written form). But then, during the second half of the week, I've felt that my listening had become much better and that I could actually guess what is was about after listening once, and that listening a second time would bring more details. That's a real reward suddenly, I don't know if this is the design of Assimil that made these three first languages this way or if I'm in a particularly good mental / physical condition this week, or if simply the daily work is starting to pay off. I expect to continue on this track and understand more and more of the dialogs, as this is for now my weakest point in Norwegian, as the grammar is pretty easy and the vocabulary is not particularly difficult. Perhaps I could also remember more of the many idioms that each lesson introduces. => :) -Polish : lessons 22 to 28 : 2h15 Not much to say here. I've had the feeling that there was a bit more content this week, and the clock somehow confirms it, adding an extra 5 minutes daily on average. The general feeling is rather pleasant, even though I wouldn't mind if it was a bit more intensive. At the same time, the vocabulary is neither close to any language I know nor easy to remember, so it's probably safer to introuduce it slowly. The grammar however poses no problem for now, as there's plenty of repetition for each item. -Swahili : lessons 22 to 28 : 2h35 Not much here either. I simply have to say that, as in the three first languages, I feel that I recognize many words when listening to the dialog, and that's rewarding, but unfortunately very often I simply recognize that I've heard it before and don't actually know the meaning. That's not a big problem, because it happens that words that I recognize this way will then stick very easily for the next time. Progress is there, and it means I'm in the right direction. As for grammar, I'm amazed at how much has been covered in four weeks. If vocabulary doesn't quite stick yet, at least the progress in grammar is such that I cannot be dissatisfied. I'm expecting to see even more progress in the next weeks, as the basics have probably been covered now. -Indonesian : lessons 22 to 28 : 3h30 I can't say I've liked much this week for Indonesian. Perhaps because it was mostly the last language I've done everyday and it happens that I was quite tired, but I also found the dialogues absolutely boring (yeah, let's mention all the members of the family in one dialog, THE secret to a boring lesson). On the up side, the revision was still very interesting, structured well the knowledge and it helped me understanding the modifications that affect the radical when prefixed. I really hope it will be better next week. A final note: Every language took me more time than the previous week. There are two aspects of this: first, lessons tend to have a bit more meat, and that's very positive. Then, I realize that the time spent on a lesson is very much dependent on how much time I want to spend on it, and I can easily add five or ten minutes to a lesson if I feel like to. Also, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but fatigue really does affect learning. I have tried to keep watch of my physical condition during since the beginning, and fatigue has such a negative impact on learning that I'm doing everything I can to sleep earlier, to have a regular rhythm, and to place my Assimil schedule earlier in the day, if possible before going to work, and surely first thing when I get back, so as to limit the fatigue. It requires reshaping one's schedule, but it's doable (Pr.Arguelles is still far!). Generally speaking, this has been an amazing week and in almost every language I've felt that I was at a turning point and that progress was becoming faster. Don't miss the next episode! 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 39 of 94 04 September 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Awesom experiment, vermillon! I'll be following your log =)
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| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 40 of 94 05 September 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is it, I'm now in week 6 for all my languages, and I've finally managed to find enough time to post all the late weekly logs, finishing with today's week 5. Following this post, I'll consider either posting a weekly global report as I've done until now, or spreading it across the week to have the weekly report for one language every time I reach the revision lesson. Still need to decide which to do.
Assimil Adventure - Week 5 -Egyptian Hieroglyphs : lessons 29 to 35 : 3h35 Dialogs, at last! Even though I've enjoyed studying hieroglyphs until then, I was still expecting something a bit more lively and after four weeks, I think it was clearly time to move away from garden descriptions. The dialogs are quite simple and still tend to draw a lot from description, making them close the the narratives from the first weeks, but I've noticed several improvements: I retain better the content of the lessons (perhaps merely a sequel of last week's comment on being able to reproduce the text without looking at it?). The work load also seems to have reduced, at least I have spent 30% less time on Egyptian this week compare to last week. The course seems to have reached its cruising speed: every lesson progressively builds up on the previous one, and I don't find any day more (or less) challenging than the previous one. I think it is the perfect time to start looking at Anki and try to get everything in my memory. So emk's deck is going to come really handy now, and at least setting it up is my target before next week's report. It's perhaps also time to review the conjugation, because until now, I've merely considered the conjugation (and pronouns) as irrelevant as I'm reading and not trying to reproduce. As the active face is approaching, I feel it's time to prepare for it and not to hit the wall. -Latin : lessons 29 to 35 : 3h10 Not much to say this week. It's very much the same as usual, but on a personal level I've been quite busy and my attention has suffered from it. During the week, I've followed the lessons, and I went back a bit to the revision lesson to try to understand a few bits I had missed. Here as well it may well be that the "first stage" has passed and that now the lessons are going to plateau in learning speed, perhaps the opportunity for me to try to cram the vocabulary, or perhaps I should just wait and see what happens in two weeks time when I need to start the active wave... -Norwegian lessons 29 to 35 : 3h35 Good news, the impression from the last few lessons on improved listening ability is confirmed: more and more, I can get the topic of the dialog simply from listening, as well as identify new words, idioms and sometimes entire sentences. Yeah! I believe one major component of this success is that I start to see better the correspondence between Norwegian and German, and it helps me deduce new words. It's still not perfect, and I haven't had time to find a place to read about these correspondences, so if anyone passing by knows the name of the phonological transformation laws occuring in the German family, I'd be happy to learn about it, or to receive some book recommendation on the topic. So I'm confident everything is going to go well with Norwegian finally, and I will try to start reviewing quickly the old lessons, at least listening to them more or less passively, as the time I can spend on it is still rather limited (note the nice 30mn daily average). -Polish : lessons 29 to 35 : 2h15 The best week for Polish since the beginning of the book! Dialogs seem more interesting to me (perhaps only my mood?), and above all they're longer and meatier. The time spent on Polish is still relatively low compared to the other languages, but I plan to spend time doing scriptorium to push it up closer to the 3h30 weekly target. I find that I have internalized the grammar quite well until now, and even though I can't exactly say I remember vocabulary, at least it doesn't seem so daunting. Clearly getting ready for the active wave. -Swahili : lessons 29 to 35 : 2h Not much for this week. I believe it is because my mind was somewhere else, but the general impression is that I'm so late on vocabulary acquisition and every day I feel that I struggle so much with the lessons simply because there is all this vocabulary which I've seen in the previous dialogs but that I can't remember. I think I can't wait anymore, I do need to start learning vocabulary in a way or another, I'm just not sure how. Swahili has some funny morphology and I'm hesitating between having an anki deck containing the headwords, or using cloze deletions and inputing full sentences from the dialogs. I've never done the latter before, and I'm a bit afraid it might take too much time for it to fit neatly in my daily schedule. The problem with headwords is that to learn nouns, I need to learn the word plus its classes (~genders), and it's probably better done remembering the two forms (singular / plural) rather than just the radical, but this may be a much more time-efficient method. I'm giving myself a few more days to think about it, but before next week's report I want to have started, as the active wave is starting in two weeks and I don't feel ready at all. -Indonesian : lessons 29 to 35 : 3h10 Exactly the same comment as for Swahili: vocabulary frustrates me a lot as I keep forgetting it. Fortunately, Indonesian doesn't have the same degree of morphological complexity as Swahili, and it's almost possible to consider it as isolating. It is not entirely true as affixes can come on that, but considering the remoteness between the theorical "meaning of an affixed word = meaning of radical + meaning of the affix" and the reality, I think I will learn affixed words as well. It may not be necessary in the long run, but in a first time I expect it to at least help me internalize the semantic value of those affixes. As of now, in week 6 I have started adding the vocabulary to an anki deck, and I hope to add around 2 lessons per day, which should give me enough advance for the active wave. A final note: The plateau week. In all of the languages, I feel that I have passed a sort of first stage and now the new grammar doesn't seem like a big challenge but rather simply like a very smooth progression. As I'm two weeks away from the active wave, it is time to anticipate it a bit more: several people here told me that the biggest challenge in using Assimil, and particularly for multiple languages, was the wall of the active wave. For three of my languages (Latin, Norwegian, Polish) I feel entirely ready to tackle the active wave and don't plan to do any particular effort to prepare, but I will stay vigilent. For Egyptian, I will try to prepare by using emk's deck, and I think I should add to it some grammar review. It won't be easy, but I'll manage. As for Swahili and Indonesian, I don't feel very confident that I can actually do it, but hopefully some quick vocabulary revision should be enough to get me ready in two weeks time. Also I've almost recovered from my holidays and will now be able to have a more regular schedule, which means I shouldn't be affected too much by problems of concentration and fatigue. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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