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Vermillon’s TAC’13 鶴 & Lugus | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 33 of 73 17 March 2013 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Haksaeng: that's a nice return on TTMIK, I'm exactly in your initial situation: I understand nothing (well, for lessons 1 and 3.. lesson 2 was easy) but reading it poses no problem at all. May I ask how you studied the lessons? For now, I'm listening to it a few times over a couple of days, then I listen while reading, and finally I look up the vocabulary... but I feel there must be a more effective approach.
@Teango: by that time I'll be old enough to allow myself to study less! _ Korean: Today I've had the opposite of a motivation boost: as the TOPIK is in a month, I've had a go at a past exam, to see how far I am. Well, too far I am. In the first hour, I was able to complete the vocabulary+grammar (score: 64%, I think it's good already), and do almost nothing of the writing (12%, not so good...). Going to the listening part simply made me stop: it was clear I would have a very frustrating hour. Of course I've registered to give myself a short-term goal and force myself to study more, but here the goal is so far ahead that I have absolutely no pressure anymore. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 34 of 73 20 March 2013 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm impressed too. If he's using the 2005 version, he will die of boredom before the end. I am at the active wave lesson 61 mostly because I cba to go further... :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 35 of 73 20 March 2013 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
64% for vocabulary&grammar is pretty good! I'm convinced that writing is always the hardest part, but at least it's possible to sort of prepare the essay. I found a site that has a summary of all intermediate essay questions since TOPIK 10 and it's clear that some topics repeat or are rather similar. Might be worth having a look: essay questions I hope you still get something out of the remaining month until TOPIK! You never know, even if you're still having difficulty with the test you'll improve a bit until April 20 and we might have luck with the test paper. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6196 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 36 of 73 21 March 2013 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Vermillon, it sounds like you are working on the Iyagi lessons pretty much the same way I did. I listened repeatedly, then turned to the transcript while listening, then finally looked up all unknown words. I filled a notebook with the new words, but didn't put them into Anki or anything like that. Now and then I'd go back and review old lessons in between new ones. Over time it just built on itself and my listening improved gradually.
I still have a long way to go, but those lessons helped a lot and also familiarized me with some everyday vocab that I didn't know. You will notice the same words appearing again and again through the lessons. 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 37 of 73 05 April 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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@druckfehler: thanks for the encouragement! Unfortunately, since my last post, I can't say I've done anything... the result of fatigue and personal constraints. So I surely don't have any hope for this month's TOPIK, but it's fine, that was expected from the start and in the meantime I've improved a lot on vocabulary. As you said, writing is the hardest, and since I never speak nor write, that's something I need to tackle during the six months that separate me from the next opportunity to take it. Should be in reach :)
@Haksaeng: thanks for the feedback. I feel there must be a better method (like directly reading while listening on the first pass for a few dozens of episodes), but given that there are not that many episodes, I'm going to stick to this method for 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 73 05 April 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
March 2013 Report Since my mid-month report, I have done about nothing. Not so great, since the TOPIK is nearing, but at least I've had a half productive month! Mandarin / 普通話: After keeping on my schedule of 5p/day for the first half of the month, I finally admitted to myself that if I had mostly failed to keep on track since the beginning of the year, it was because I found this book frankly boring. It had taken me quite a lot of effort to get into Mo Yan's Country of Alcohol (酒国): it was difficult to read because of the story itself, alternating chapters about a writer writing to Mo Yan and describing the genesis of the book you're reading (!), and the fact that the narrator spends a good chunk of the book being close to coma due to high alcohol consumption and the weird visions he has that may or may not be real. But at least the narrative thread was interesting.. and this is not the case for the Clan of the Red Sorgho (红高粱家族), in which alternating narrations are all frankly boring to me, but that's probably because I'm not a fan of long descriptions. So I've just decided to stop reading this book, and as I have nothing else to read at the moment (apart from other novels I've stopped because of boredom), then I won't read any Mandarin for some time... Success/Failure & Goals: Paused for now. Going to China this summer, so I should be able to find interesting reads by then. Minnanhua / Hokkien / Taiwanese(?) / 閩南話: My progress in Minnanhua this month has been very good since it's basically vocabulary learning, i.e. the only thing I can do well in language learning. I'm getting better at it and now have a good amount of bricks to build sentence, I just need vocabulary to express myself, which is why learning HSK2's vocabulary was a great idea: in that respect, the HSK is a much better guide in terms of vocabulary acquisition than it was in the past when the "beginner level" (now split into HSK 1, 2 and 3) was quite a big amount of vocabulary to tackle at once. I'm not too convinced that my tones (nor pronunciation) are correct, but since I receive positive feedback, I consider it's ok for now. Success/Failure & Goals: Success. I'm very happy with the progress this month, and the natural next step is to tackle the HSK 3, which is about the same vocabulary mass as HSK 1+2, so it may take me over a month to complete that. I will also push for using more Minnanhua, and it looks like I shouldn't be too bad by the summer. Classical Chinese / 文言: Since I've spent a lot of time outside my flat and far from my study material, I took the opportunity to take along 说苑 and my dictionary, and despite being very slow, re-reading to improve comprehension and sometimes asking for help to understand the meaning, I've read 12 pages this month. That's still very little, but hopefully I can grow from here and develop a regular reading habit, which I don't have yet. Success/Failure & Goals: Success. My goal is to continue on this track and perhaps reach 30p a month. Korean / 한국어 / 韓國語: I don't have much to say there, paradoxically. As I've reported in my half-month post, I've finished the list B of KEV6000 and have consolidated my command of the vocabulary. I've also read a hundred pages of my manga, which I quite enjoy but don't find enough time to regularly read it (I had planned to finish it instead of merely reading 100p). I've also listened to a few Iyagi lessons, and I'm glad I've made that first step. My problem is still to handle grammar, listening and of course expressing myself. Basically, I've never spoken to anyone in Korean (apart from my teacher in the early days), and not chatted online more than two or three very short times. This is a real problem for me across all my languages: I find them interesting, I learn things about them, but I don't use them, which ultimately means I have no chance to master them, ever. I'm now more than ever aware of it, and one goal for April will be to look for language partners to chat with, in Korean as well as my other languages. Success/Failure & Goals: Half-Success. I know I'm going to fail the TOPIK, but my reason for taking it was to force me to study more, and I had no hope when I registered anyway. My goal for next month is to try and find language partners and hopefully "use" my Korean. Japanese / 日本語: As said earlier this month, Korean being my focus for now, I'm not doing much (or "anything", I should say) in Japanese. Breton / Brezhoneg: I've reached lesson 52, and I have a good command over all the content so far, thanks to the constant review with Anki. My experience here is much better than my previous one with Norwegian in that I've added the audio: I've heard most sentences enough that I can produce them automatically, and the whole Anki deck thing gives me opportunities to realise when there is some grammar item I have missed. I'm going to continue in that direction, and perhaps start using my other textbook (Ni a gomz brezhoneg) to change from Assimil. Success/Failure & Goals: Success. I'm satisfied with the slow but steady progress, and I hope to continue that way. Doing another 20 lessons this month should be good enough. Wanderlust: It's getting more difficult to resist the temptation. I like variety, and after three months of focus, I want to change. Perhaps I should just establish a rotating schedule, as I've seen some other people mention on this forum? Or perhaps just allow myself to do something else for a month, and come back to my normal schedule... A 6WC now would be more than welcome. In the meantime, I've started to create a new deck for Assimil Norwegian, with audio and, I hope, with a slightly more rational choice of Cloze deletion. My goal is to try and preserve the little level I had achieved and perhaps grow from there. I also intend to do this with other languages. Summary I think it was an OK month. I'm still tired and have recently been working more, so my motivation to study is not so high. Also, I'm starting to believe that I'm an all-or-nothing kind of person: I can study quite well when I pack my schedule with tons of things to do, but as soon as I try to work on a half-schedule, I basically don't do anything anymore. Perhaps I should just try and load myself! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 39 of 73 05 April 2013 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looking forward to seeing your new Norwegian deck =D
As for wanderlusting, maybe you should just have a free, rotating slot for wanderlusting? Instead of dropping everything for going wanderlusting from time to time, you just decide to do some free study everytime you're done with your main tasks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 40 of 73 06 April 2013 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
It's still some time off, but June is going to be Tadoku month (the "read more or die" challenge with page counts), so I thought we might combine that with a reading challenge for the Asian team. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, but focusing on reading might be a welcome change. And I suppose there should be another 6WC soon, right? Is it in May? Your goal to find people to talk to fits very well with the April challenge :) I hope you find some rewarding language tandems. I always thought it was tricky to divide the time well between the practice languages (usually we'd end up doing more German), but I've finally found the perfect tandem where we split the time evenly (also alternating between German and Korean as the language we speak first in the meeting). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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