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Russian Read&Speak - TAC 2013 Team Mir | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 113 of 142 26 September 2013 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for a major update in my studies and, as usual, I come to my Russian log, as Russian seems to be my
"official" language for the TAC, the one I started learning around new year's eve. I've had a total absence of 17 days of regular studies. That absence happened when life took all its way in to a greater sense, a major change. As a culmination of this process, a 7-night trip to Curaçao and Aruba. I bet you guys can imagine what was that process that took a few days of preparation/absence from work and ended with such a nice trip. =D So, given the nature of the trip, I'd say the 17-day absence didn't do major harms. Today I could get back on track again, Georgian being the only language which seems more difficult to focus on, which is understandable given the nature of the materials I use (either in German or entirely in the target language). I still have to adjust my routine as now I'm working from mid-morning till mid-late afternoon, which means I won't have free mornings anymore and will have to interrupt my morning studies both for going to work earlier and for having lunch later (which used to be a single pause altogether). My total time for study didn't change much; I just don't have to do extra time anymore, but it used to happen after I was done with all activities anyway. The following days will tell me if it will become quieter or rather busier to study. The trip allowed me to speak English, Spanish and Papiamento and thus evaluate my competencies on all of these. I realized I'm fluent in English and can resort to it for clearing things up and avoiding misunderstandings, despite some mistakes I still made. I also realized my basic fluency goal for Papiamento was reached. On a sidenote, I realized I am fluent, at least basically, in Spanish, too. I was in the Panama airport out shopping in Spanish, could make complex sentences free of portuñol-related mistakes and understand with little effort. That is to say, my Spanish is not just Portuguese with some endings. I was able to be aware of the false cognates and use them consistently as well as the words with minor but noticeable changes. I won't be adding Spanish now just because I'm not officially studying it, but it's nice to know that my knowledge of Spanish was a result of studying and not just taking it for granted due to Portuguese. As for the languages that matter, the TAC ones!! Papiamento - I'll be writing in detail at my Papiamento log. Goal accomplished, basic fluency reached. I want to practice more reading, listening and writing now that I got a dictionary. Taking it out of the rigid schedule, adding it up to post-schedule. Georgian - Still far from reaching B1, but I can see an improvement at the book I'm reading first in Georgian then in English. I start to get a good idea of what I read in Georgian. Will keep working, as I'm close to finishing some resources (this book and two textbooks/courses) I'll be able to find more appropriate resources for a necessary progress. Chinese Listening skills are increasing slowly but noticeable, thanks to native resources. Character understanding is still uncertain, that is, I'm not sure if I'm making good progress or not. I'm working on NPCR for my post-schedule, then other new resources will come, so, all in all, I think the variety of resources is creating a good sinergy. Russian I'm already in need of more conversational resources, but I'm glad that the textbook in Portuguese is working as a good graded reader. I'm even getting the gist of some conversations. I don't think B1 will be doable this year, but I believe I'll start dealing with native texts in a more motivated way. i'm not paying attention to grammar but I'm still getting the endings intuitively, which is good. Norwegian Reached a plateau when it comes to vocabulary acquisition. I'm a bit confident about daily life conversation but reading is still truncated. I'm still a bit afraid of reading a text on my own and failing to understanding it due to missing idioms. I'm reading a book with tales and they have some dialectal forms now and then. I'm enjoying it nevertheless. Need to work on listening skills, maybe the news. No plans of starting a new language before NYE, as Norwegian is still not close enough to basic reading fluency. Here's current schedule: Early in the morning - Anki. Finished all the short decks, now only the more-or-less eternal decks are left: Norwegian sentences, Georgian from the book Einführung in die Georgische Sprache, 20k Mandarin Sentences and German-Portuguese. These will follow me till I give up on Anki totally. I don't plan on adding new decks for the languages I'm already studying; will only add a new deck when I start a new language from scratch. 9:00 - 250 Chinese characters then Chinese pod, absolute beginner's podcast (which is annoying as it is easy, but...well...I want to finish one season before moving on to more difficult levels). 9:30 - Russian textbook in Portuguese - working more like a graded reader. The odds are high that I'll finish it by the end of October and get to something more conversational again. 10:00 - Georgian, currently with the grammar in German, which is about to finish, and the online monolingual course which is also about to finish (lesson 79 out of 100). 10:45 - Norwegian podcast, the only resource that allows me to say that I'm still in the textbook level for Norwegian. Once I finish it, I'll have to drop Norwegian for native-only resources and (re)start German. 11:00 - Norwegian series Dag, about 23 min. 12:00 - English series, 46 min long. - French book, 20 pages each day, even though I'm done with my nano-challenge of 10 novels this year. - Norwegian novel, currently Framtidslandet, reading only 1 story (1-2 pages) a day as I got no translation and am struggling a bit. Post-schedule activities These are activities that are not essential for keeping up with my languages but represent the optimal use of my free time. The idea is having as many activities so that I never run out of activities to do on my target languages, and yet I am not strictly committed to this; I may skip them now and them. a) Bilingual reading in Georgian (currently The Lord of the Flies) b) Chinese series for learners (currently Happy Chinese) c) Chinese extra textbook (just for reinforcement and making the transition to intermediate textbooks smooth - currently NPCR 1) d) Russian podcast (getting some taste of spoken Russian as the textbook I use in the morning has no audio) e) Chinese cartoon (currently Pleasant Golf and Big Big Wolf - subtitles in Chinese only) f) Georgian film (currently with subtitles in English, but later I'll have to stick to native audio only) g) French film (10 to 15 minutes each day, the list can be found at my French log. Currently 'Bienvenue chez les ch'tis'). h) Papiamento song (moved down from the daily schedule) i) Papiamento story (moved down from the daily schedule) j) Papiamento video (moved down from the daily schedule) k) Papiamento book (thanks to recent purchases) 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 114 of 142 30 September 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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First day with the new routine (starting work in the morning) and it wasn't that bad!.
Now it is 6 pm and I'm finishing a Papiamento video, which means I've been through nearly all of my activities. Only Anki is missing. From what I could see, the activity that demands the most time is still the Georgian study, which consists of the online lessons at ice.ge and the grammar reading/exercises at EGS. As for ice.ge , it is still indeed a time-consuming activity, but EGS will now consist mostly of chrestomathy, and I'1l try to take my time and not worry about finishing texts in a rush, since I'm only going to get a translation in German anyway. I do hope it will do great for my German too. Russian texts are finally getting a bit easier and I feel relieved about this. It still takes time to do my daily lesson, since I have to type what I need to translate, but I'm getting the hang of the Russian sentence and starting to predict some meanings and pay attention to how case endings do perform the job of word order and prepositions in other languages. I think it was a nice idea to move the Papiamento activities to the bottom as I can do them at home and since they are scattered through differents online/offline sources I used to lose important time before or after going to have lunch, which is now solved. 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 115 of 142 01 October 2013 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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One thing I realized from today's routine: I have a new time-consuming task that takes up
time mostly in the morning. I'm busy with a slow computer system but I can do listening with no harm, as the task is rather simple. So, a good idea would be to move the podcast activities for early in the morning, when I'm still doing this task. So far the only two I could do in background would be listening to the English series and to the Russian podcast, alongside with the Chinese podcast which already happens to be at that time. I'll give it a try tomorrow morning to see how it works out. 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 116 of 142 02 October 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know if this is related to the fact I woke up and got to work 15 minutes
earlier than the past two days, but today study activities went rather smoothly. I bet the fact that my Georgian is improving does count, and so is the Russian. These activities used to be the most time-consuming ones. OTOH, I started using a textbook for Chinese without pinyin or translation, so I foresee additional difficulty as I may have to resort to sites such as nciku.com where I'd attempt to draw the characters and select the matching ones. I got home with only the Chinese cartoon pending. I took the wise decision of doing the Russian podcast earlier, while I was busy working but could still listen in the background.Speaking of which, I think this podcast is helping a lot, and my Russian isn't improving only passively or literarily, even if this is my main focus. Then at home I could watch the Chinese cartoon (understanding more and more from it), read and listen in Papiamento and finish Anki which I couldn't do early in the morning. 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 117 of 142 11 October 2013 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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What can I say...burnout.
We're all so wholehearted about native materials here at the forum, but I think it is important to make a distinction between 'processable' and 'unprocessable' native materials. Processable ones are those which I can already understand to the point of following the story, or for which I have English subtitles and/or a translation. So, after I finished watching a Georgian film with English subtitles, I started a Georgian series with no subtitles at all. I also started doing NPCR lessons at book 2, with no pinyin. Besides, I kept on watching 'Pleasant Goat Big Big Wolf', for which there are only subtitles in Chinese, no English. There's also the Georgian novel which I can't follow in a smooth because I read the paragraph first in Georgian only. We then have 35 min for the Georgian series, 25 min for NPCR2 and 12 for PGBBW. That accounts for 72 min of native audio, plus the Georgian novel and the texts at the Russian textbook. As a result, I feel much more tired in the past two days. I believe there should be a balance between native materials you can and those you can't understand. I start to see some improvement in the case of PGBBW but at least it has Mandarin subtitles, while the Georgian series has nothing - and I wouldn't be able to understand it with Georgian subtitles-only either, for that matter. So, my next step is figuring out how to overcome this. It is really hard to find subtitled material for Georgian and I start to like the series, but I'm still a bit skeptical as to how far this forced Georgian/Chinese immersion will take me. 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 118 of 142 18 October 2013 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm eager about finishing my current Russian textbook and starting a new one! Currently
at lesson 70. I'm tempted to start Living Language, despite its lengthy lesson. It adds to the fact I also own the intermediate one, even though I'm not sure I could move into intermediate resources. Any suggestions for someone who took 3 Assimils and an old-school textbooks and is doing a podcast? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 119 of 142 29 October 2013 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
I obviously don't know about the Russian textbooks, but have you tried GLOSS? I listened to one Russian lesson and it seemed pretty good to me. I love using it for Portuguese, Spanish and BCSM. 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 120 of 142 29 October 2013 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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GLOSS is good for Russian too, yes. (Thanks for that one, Serpent.)
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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