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Duan’s TAC 2014 (Sokoły / Triomphe) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Duan Newbie Canada Joined 4797 days ago 36 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish, French | Message 10 of 25 06 January 2014 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Salut, DamedesLangues!
Yes, so far I'm still in the honeymoon phase of learning the language where everything is enjoyable and new and so you fully engage with it. I've gotten to lesson nine in Pimsleur, with some repeats to make sure I was getting all the new stuff. I am still not very fast with my responses most of the time but I am working on correcting my accent. I have heard of Duolingo and in fact signed up to the service when it first started up. I did a little Spanish before stopping, since I really wanted to focus on Polish at the time. My sister reminded me of it last week, so I dusted off my account, deleted my spanish progress (which I've of course forgotten anyway) and signed up for French. However, I haven't started using it yet since as I have said, I've been focusing on my spoken/listening at the expense of reading/writing. I really want to ensure that I have an intelligible accent since that was something that eluded me the last several times I attempted learning the language. But as of lesson 9, even Pimsleur wants me to do a little reading, so maybe I will reverse my stance on this somewhat. Hm, not sure... Sorry, my Polish teammates, I still haven't studied much polish besides my Anki decks, not even a podcast to show for it - I've been spending all my free time on French. I guess this is what wanderlust is? Except that it is one of the languages I am studying, of course :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 11 of 25 06 January 2014 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
It's odd, but it's allowed! I learned Dutch for "no apparent reason" as well (though for me the thinking was that it would be particularly easy, not particularly hard). I've never been to a Dutch-speaking country nor do I have immediate plans to visit one (though I sure wouldn't turn down a free trip!!!). The biggest issue is that you don't have the same level of structural, built-in support to keep your motivation up when you reach an inevitable lull. But if you've reached the two-year mark and are now getting involved in TAC, you're doing pretty well, I'd say! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Duan Newbie Canada Joined 4797 days ago 36 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish, French | Message 13 of 25 07 January 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey DamedesLangues,
As you already know, I decided to start Duolingo up last night (under the same username as this one). Anyone else listening along, feel free to add me as well. I admit to being a little apprehensive with plunging into writing right away, especially given that spoken and written french appear to have a tenuous relationship at best, as far as I can tell. Oh well, I guess because of all the dropped endings and similar pronunciations for everything, it might be better to associate and reinforce the spelling right away. I guess we shall see. I certainly know what you mean about procrastination. For example, I *still* haven't gotten around to something more active in Polish than adding to and reviewing my Anki deck! Added a few more words that seemed apropos for the wonderful winter weather we're having right now. But I think to maximize the chance that I continue to actively study and don't just continually put it off in favour of french, I'll need to work out a schedule. In the meantime, I continue to go through French, but at a slower pace due to other commitments and repeating lessons to make sure they sink in. Still, I am on lesson eleven or twelve at this point, and given I started a week ago I can at least be proud that I am doing an average of two a day! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Duan Newbie Canada Joined 4797 days ago 36 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish, French | Message 14 of 25 10 January 2014 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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French
9 Janvier, 2014 So I continue to work my way through French. I think that having already some familiarity in the language is making the beginning steps go *much* faster than my equivalent experience in Polish, or maybe I'm just a more experienced language learner. Either way, it makes me think that learning other languages after I've gotten comfortable with these ones is less wishful thinking and an actual goal I could accomplish! However, it's not all sunshine and roses. Some of that previous exposure is also hampering me a bit now, because I didn't internalize the correct pronunciation the first time around, so I'm seeing a lot of words I know, but then I'm hearing them pronounced and do a double-take: "Is that how it's supposed to sound? Really?" So I am slowing down a bit to focus on getting a good foundation here. I know that a flawless accent is extremely difficult to obtain and it's unnecessary anyway, but what can I say, I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times. So I've gotten up to chapter 14, skipping the reading lessons for now. I am still finding it easy to keep up with due to Pimsleur's slow introduction of every phrase. However, it is starting to get more challenging as I remember it from my school days, especially when listening. I am looking to add a French keyboard layout to my computer for use when I'm typing in French. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations? I'm unsure about using the French (France) layout because I'm pretty sure AZERTY will just trip me up -- does anyone regularly switch between that and QWERTY with no problems? I appreciate all feedback. I have also been using Duolingo a lot, since I can conveniently use it on my tablet. I've had several times this week where that's come in handy. Went to an appointment yesterday and the doctor was running 40 minutes late. No problem, I said, and proceeded to get my Food skill levelled up! I like Duolingo a lot. The game format keeps it interesting and I also like the way they teach grammar points without a lesson. I've already covered genders, agreement (in gender and number), adjectives, plurals and possessives and it was relatively painless. The only weird thing I've noticed so far is that Duolingo thinks I've already unlocked the first lesson of Etre/Avoir. Perhaps it did this because I have already been using the conjugated forms in prior lessons? Or did it do that because it thought I had already completed these lessons? I'm not sure. Still enjoying French a lot at the moment and feeling guilty for not spending any time with my Polish. I feel a bit like I'm cheating on her! ;) Oh, and today I was able to register my daughter for French Immersion. Since there are generally more potential students than qualified teachers, that only means we're entered into a lottery system and so we now get to wait to see if she gets accepted. Trzymaj kciuki! Polish Still no Polish other than Anki, and sometimes thinking of polish sentences in my head :(. My plans here are now basically to write up a schedule so that I am more directed and focused. I will also try to come up with weekly Goals/Objectives/Challenges so that I have something to work towards in the short term. Clearly I can not be trusted to aimlessly do the work myself! Luckily, I should have a Skype conversation tomorrow so I can dust off my Polish and get back into it just in time for the weekend. I also need to contact my pen pals - last month I was dealing with some personal issues and then the onset of Christmas and so promptly stopped regular correspondence because it was just too much, but now I feel bad for not responding for so long. Oh well, nothing to do about that but to try and reach out and apologize. So hopefully my next update will have me in a more organized state! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Duan Newbie Canada Joined 4797 days ago 36 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish, French | Message 15 of 25 13 January 2014 at 5:23am | IP Logged | ||
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So now that I'm at the end of another week, I decided to do mostly review and take
stock of where I am. I'm pretty happy with my progress in French; while I am pretty much starting from zero again I was happy that so much is returning. Polish is another story... French I continued to work through Duolingo and also checked out a French course on Memrise. On Duolingo I am getting to the point where I'm starting to get enough wrong answers that I'm going to have to go back and review question words, but otherwise I'm still going strong there. The Memrise course I checked out on the other hand, is actually so far basic, perhaps too basic. I'll need to go over to the website (as I accessed the course through the app) and see if there's anything worth it there for me. Otherwise I'll probably drop it, which is a shame because I credit Memrise with a good deal of my Polish vocab. I looked up some Liaison rules since I was having trouble figuring out why I was hearing different pronunciation in Duolingo than in Pimsleur for the same phrase. As far as I can tell, Duolingo pronounces "Plus tard" incorrectly (the s should not be realized in this case). Since I started goals for my Polish, I figured I'd also make some for French, all currently outstanding: Short Term Goals (This week): - Add vocab to Anki - Since I'm already using Anki for Polish, this seems like a natural thing to expand to my other L2. Having finally read the documentation, I am wondering if I should experiment with note types or whether it would even be beneficial. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or do you just stick with the simple, front and back cards? Duolingo conveniently has a list of every word it's taught you, so I will probably start my deck with these words. Medium Term Goals (1-2 months): - Complete Pimsleur I and Living Language French, then evaluate where I'm at. I don't honestly anticipate this taking 2 months, but technically if I was going at the suggested Pimsleur pace it might take me that long to get through those courses. - Set up French Skype call: I have one potential contact for this already, and I'm not sure I'm at a stage for speaking yet. But I would like to have that set up. I found it immensely helpful for Polish even when I thought I wasn't doing that well, and it's always good to have an authentic source for your input. I also would like to get used to the Quebecois accent, vocabulary, etc so that is another goal. Long Term Goals (???): - Read some French literature in the original. Dumas, Verne, Hugo are all on the hit list. This goal I'm not sure how long will take. I suspect it will easily be doable in a year but possible in 5 or 6 months, depending on my dedication. I could be underestimating the level of reading skill I'll be able to obtain (given I don't have that in Polish yet). But I prefer to aim aggressive when I have a plan. Polish On Friday I had my first weekly Skype call of the year. I was a bit rusty but most of my Polish came back after a half hour or so. However there's one thing that I kept messing up, which I always mess up... and which inspired me to set my first short term goal in Polish. Short Term Goals (1 week): - Master the verbs of motion: For the uninitiated, Polish has several verbs for what is covered by the English 'to go': Depending on whether you are going once or habitually, or by foot or by vehicle. I constantly get these mixed up to the point that at my last Skype call I just stopped dead in the middle of the conversation trying to think of the right words and failing miserably. So this week I will drill myself every day, make a separate Anki specifically for those, and practice writing sentences until I've fired those synapses enough to etch that permanently into my brain! I don't want to have to worry about this ever again. There's so much more to be wrong about in Polish :) - Experiment with Anki: As I said, I read the manual and learned about different ways of presenting the flashcards. It seems that the note type feature could be useful to create conjugation tables, store perfective and imperfective aspects, etc. Has anyone else tried this? I was worried at first about messing up my deck but I've decided I could always just delete it if it doesn't work right. Of course, if anyone has ever tried this, I'd love to hear about it. - Listen to the podcasts at realpolish.pl. I have the site bookmarked and have listened to individual podcasts in the past, but I need to work on my listening comprehension, so I feel that since there are hundreds of these podcasts, I can get a massive amount of input to hopefully train my ear. Medium Term Goals (1 month): - Not specifically for Polish, but I'd like to investigate some of the learning techniques mentioned around this board (L-R, Shadowing, etc) and see if any of these would be useful for me. Just haven't made the time for it yet, and I'm thinking these benefit an intermediate learner more than a rank beginner anyway. So not urgent for French, but getting there for Polish. - On my first trip to Poland, I picked up a few books: One children's book and two adult fantasy novels. For a medium goal I intend to finish reading the children's book (I've read the first couple of stories a few times but haven't gotten past there yet. Setting it as a goal will hopefully change that!) Long Term Goals: - Read the novels, the first two books from Andrzej Sapkowski's Wiedźmin series. This is getting long, so I'll end here for now! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Eagle32 Groupie New Zealand Joined 6502 days ago 56 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 25 27 January 2014 at 1:18am | IP Logged | ||
I use the US International keyboard layout. Accents are typed by various key combinations. For example: é is typed as an apostrophe followed by an e. The full instructions for the combinations on Windows computers are available at the following link under the section "Creating international characters" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560 The rest of the page has instructions on how to change the keyboard layout in windows. Once you are used to it it's a quick and easy way to type accents with the keyboard layout staying the same. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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