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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 345 of 436 26 August 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged |
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Come on kraemder you know I already use native material!
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 346 of 436 28 August 2013 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
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So I mentioned a few days ago that I thought my French was good enough for my purposes and I
was happy to leave it be. Well I've been in France for a couple of days now and I can tell you that I am no longer satisfied! Most of my interactions have been in French and it's been great. I feel the same sense of confidence as I did in Germany with the added bonus of knowing more of the language already. This summer has given me new and positive experiences in French, and I'm finally forgetting the hangups from my school days. The only problem is I don't have time for three languages! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 347 of 436 29 August 2013 at 8:05pm | IP Logged |
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There's always time if you want to! ;)
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| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 348 of 436 30 August 2013 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
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I think you can do these three. You've already gotten a head start in French anyway and umm you've sort of
been doing three for a while. Just do it when you can. Btw I'm not having any regrets adding German to my Japanese. At least not yet heh. And of course I'm doing two and not three and when I think about adding Spanish into the loop my reaction is the same as yours. Hehe up to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 349 of 436 06 September 2013 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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I'm back home and therefore back in the realm of reliable wifi. It doesn't quite make up for the lack of a Mediterranean climate but it does at least allow me to make an update here.
I didn't read anything of the Japanese books I took with me on holiday. Instead I read L'homme a l'envers by Fred Vargas from cover to cover. It was tough to start with. I read the first couple of pages intensively, then the next few semi-intensively, then I was able to read sections extensively but had to tackle other passages semi intensively. The sections I could read extensively got longer and longer until suddenly I'd finished the book! I enjoyed it so much I bought L'homme aux cercles bleus on my last day in Montpellier. I spoke plenty of French too. It was all tourist situations, no lengthy discussions or anything, but I could solve all my tourist problems in the language, which was great. The lessons I took over the summer were a great help here. I didn't exactly work hard for them, but it meant I arrived in France ready to use French. No warm up required. So I now have French as a tourist language and a reading language. As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm no longer satisfied. I was happy to make excuses for French when I wasn't using it, but now it's suddenly become a useful language for me I want more! My listening is weak, although it seemed to improve a bit over the last couple of weeks, and my writing is awful. Unfortunately my tutor is going back to France for good so I'm on my own for the time being. Of course longer term I could look to make alternative arrangements. I picked up a couple of textbooks while I was away and have decided to try to commit 5 hours a week to textbook study of French. As for my other languages, I think I need to go and say hello to them now I'm back home. I hope they won't be jealous. Edited by g-bod on 06 September 2013 at 1:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4633 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 350 of 436 06 September 2013 at 8:51pm | IP Logged |
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Seems like a pretty good holiday! And congrats on reading fully L'homme à l'envers! I've
never read it myself but heard good things about it. Maybe I should start reading in French again :p If you ever wish to practice a bit your french, don't hesitate to contact me, It'd be a pleasure to help you out! We can even talk a bit in Japanese too if you want ;) Anyway, congrats again and I hope this time you won't let French down! It is SUCH a beautiful language after all! :p (says the one who does everything in English or other languages even though he's in France...) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 351 of 436 08 September 2013 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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I somehow managed to fit in all three languages today! I listened to some French radio in bed this morning, I spent just over half an hour studying German, I studied some French with my brand new phonetics textbook, I spoke Japanese with a friend on Skype and then I studied some more French with my general textbook and finished off an exercise in my oral comprehension textbook which I didn't manage to complete yesterday. I then spent a little time studying my kanji cards in Anki.
Clearly it is possible to do all three, at least when I don't have to work. But since studying languages won't pay my rent, I'll be back in the office again tomorrow. Oh well... It's not bad at all though. I think I've finally broken the painful interference barrier. My Japanese did not suffer today despite the fact I haven't really done anything in the language for the last two weeks and have instead spent a lot of time with French. This nearly killed my Japanese 12 months ago, but today there were no problems. I was also able to pick my German up right where I left off without too much effort, and after just half an hour I felt like I had already had a worthwhile study session and was happy to put it down again until tomorrow. I also have a better idea of what I want to study in September and how I want to prioritise things. French is going to be my main language. If I only have the energy to study one language, it will be French. I want to focus in particular on listening and pronunciation, but I will also continue to review the A1/A2 level vocabulary and grammar which I should already know (but some of it I have forgotten or never learned properly in the first place). The only formal self study I plan to do with Japanese is to continue my kanji project. On my first day back from my holiday I saw I had some 200 due cards for kanji compounds and 46 due cards for character recognition. I didn't dare face the backlog until yesterday, when I was backing up a lot of data to an external hd from my computer and realised I had to wait for a few minutes and the idea occured to me to timebox some Anki cards! I've set the compound deck to serve me up 50 cards a day and the character deck to serve me 10 cards, and I will just keep coming back for a few minutes each day until it's back to normal and I'll then continue with the kanji textbook from before. I'll still carry on practicing speaking on Skype and I will make arrangements for some more lessons with my tutor once I'm settled back in to work. German is an interesting one. Before I went to France I was almost certain I would make this language the number one priority on my return. However, I have decided for now that rather than trying to cram all the basics as quickly as possible, I will try to take a slow and steady approach. I'm curious as to how much I can progress in around half an hour a day, five days a week, which I think I can afford to spend on German while still doing what I want to do with French and Japanese. The format of my German textbook also works quite nicely with this approach, as it mixes up different types of activities in a really nice way so I'll get to practice different sets of skills each day without having to take any decision for myself apart from opening the book and continuing from the previous day! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 352 of 436 14 September 2013 at 12:09am | IP Logged |
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So I've been back to normality for a week now. It feels almost as if I never went away. I miss the sunshine and I'm fed up of the cold autumn rain already.
So I said that if I only had time for one language, I would prioritise French. I've stuck to that. I only had time for one language this week and some nights I was too tired/too distracted by minor household issues to even do that. Welcome back to real life... I've started watching the TV show Les Revenants. I'm not using subtitles, so I'm sure I'm missing a few details, although my comprehension is enough to keep me watching and keep me focusing on what I hear, so it's still doing me good. As well as missing the sunshine, I'm also really missing having instant language practice available every time I stepped out of the apartment. It's quite hard to maintain the momentum when I am back to just me, my computer and a few textbooks. I don't know whether to try and find a new tutor to work with, sign up for a course this autumn, or simply plan another holiday, but I feel that I have to do something! Edited by g-bod on 14 September 2013 at 12:10am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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