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LanguageSponge’s TAC 2011, Team ÇÜ | ||
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| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 105 of 128 07 October 2011 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm glad one of the links have been helpful, Crush. I recommend that you carry on using
both sites - as one is comfortable for you and one is a bit of a challenge :] Carry on listening even if you don't understand it, look up the words you don't know that you've heard and listen again afterwards to see whether it makes any more sense. I got my pre-interview exercises/test to do for my CELTA course today. It was unbelievably simple. It was almost discouraging. My interview is next Thursday. I'm going to Wales tomorrow for the weekend so I may not update again until Monday. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 106 of 128 09 October 2011 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
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So this weekend I've not done a lot with French or German. I listened to Les Cowboys
Frigants and Henri Dès all the way to Wales (about 2.5 hours). I'm getting a bit bored with the lack of French music on my Iphone so I'll spend a few hours this evening looking for more. I spent 30 mins ish talking to my grandad in German about the CELTA course I've enrolled for. I explained what it entails, how difficult (or otherwise) I think I'll find it and talked about the interview that I will have for it on Thursday morning. That'll be the last hurdle to getting accepted onto it. The pre-interview assignments were easy; we were allowed to use grammar books and the Internet to look things up but I struggled to find a question the answer for which I'd have to look up.The rest of the weekend has all been Welsh, linguistically. I had to ask my grandmother for one or two words while talking about the rugby (Wales beat Ireland!) but that doesn't matter as I didn't know the words in English. Probably back to the studying tonight or tomorrow morning. I'm looking through difficult points of English grammar to practise explaining how they work - sad perhaps but I like this sort of thing. There were a few cases in the pre- interview exercises where my knowledge of other languages actually tripped me up or slowed me down. I was looking for things that just weren't there, or things that made the issue much more complicated than they intended. For example - "Which of the sentences below would be more difficult for a learner?" a] He can't be at home, there's no answer b] He can't speak French The answer they're looking for is probably that a] is more complicated. They want us to see that the verb "can't" has a sort of figurative meaning in the first sentence and keeps its literal meaning in the second. In a], "can't" means "it's not likely that..." or something along those lines. Whereas in b], "can't" keeps its literal meaning of "is not physically able to". Originally, I overthought the two options and thought of my foreign languages, seeing that "can't" in b] talks about foreign languages - and "can" is expressed by a special verb in many other languages. So I thought it might be getting at that... But it's not, I overthought it :P I'm looking forward to the course starting, should I be accepted onto it. I think I will. I've probably done more than enough reading for it for two people, let alone just me (thanks to songlines!) Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 09 October 2011 at 10:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ummagumma Senior Member IrelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 217 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 107 of 128 10 October 2011 at 8:31am | IP Logged | ||
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All the best in the interview. I'm sure you'll do well.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 108 of 128 14 October 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, ummagumma :] ------------ Okay, so yesterday I had my interview for CELTA. Firstly, it involved summarising a three or four page text they had given us on different kinds of teaching methods. We were told that this was just to further assess our written English as some candidates get other people to do their pre-interview assignment for them. That was fine - although I worried a bit too much because I don't write particularly fast. I finished it though, and am satisfied I summarised it properly. The second part involved going over the exercises that we had to do before the interview. I got one question wrong (due to overanalysing) and didn't provide enough explanation on another. I lost two marks out of the whole thing - so that's fine. The last part of the process involved a short conversation with the interviewer about the course and about our motivations for doing it. It was difficult to shut me up about any of it, really, and I was accepted onto it after that. Great :] I'll be sent an acceptance form in the post and the reading list that I, surprisingly enough, had to ask for specifically. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ummagumma Senior Member IrelandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5256 days ago 217 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 109 of 128 14 October 2011 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Das ist echt toll. Herzlichen Glückwunsch!
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| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 110 of 128 15 October 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
Danke für deine guten Wünsche, ummagumma. Ich freue mich auf den Kursanfang. Mir wurde aber gesagt, dass er verschoben worden ist - er fängt jetzt am 16ten Januar an, und das heißt, ich habe jetzt immer noch einige Monate übrig, bis der Kurs anfängt. Also habe ich mich entschieden, meinen Rückflug von Wien nach London zu stornieren und einige Wochen länger zu bleiben. Dann kann ich mich ein bisschen mehr ans Land gewöhnen. Ich habe das Gefühl, Österreich wird mir recht gefallen. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 111 of 128 20 October 2011 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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In den vergangenen Tagen bin ich sehr beschäftigt gewesen. Ich habe meinen Rückflug von
Wien nach London stoniert und ihn durch einen vier Wochen späteren Flug ersetzt. Das heißt, ich bin in Österreich vom achten November bis zum einundzwanzigsten Dezember. Und dieses Wochenende verbringe ich in Belgien mit meiner Freundin und ihrer Familie. In Belgien haben meine Freundin und ich vor, ausschließlich auf Französisch zu sprechen - das wird für uns immer leichter, weil wir Briefe aneinander geschrieben haben - sowohl auf Deutsch als auch auf Französisch. I have a couple of questions, this time around, to ask of anyone who may read this. I'm not sure whether everyone who reads this understands German so I'll summarise what I wrote about here. Basically, I am going to Austria on 8th November and was originally going for two weeks. I've scrapped that plan and am going to be staying for a bit longer than six weeks now. I thought it may be a good idea, and perhaps this is showing my own ignorance now, to go around different language schools in Austria and inquire as to the job situation for people who have done CELTA *and* who have a reasonable level of German - I'm not sure how to describe my level in German so I'm not sure if it may be best to play it safe and undersell it slightly instead of the claiming it's fantastic. If it helps, I'll also print off my CV in English (so they can see I don't write badly) and in German so that they can see my written German is okay. Maybe that's a crap plan, I'm not sure, but it's better than doing nothing, right? Any opinions at all, whether positive or negative, would be fantastic as I am not really sure what I'm doing. Secondly - the second part of my German post above says that I'm going to Belgium this weekend to see my girlfriend and her family. It's my girlfriend's grandmother's 80th birthday and birthdays are a huge thing for them. This weekend I'll mainly be speaking French with a smattering of English if I can't find the words. But the older generations - the grandmother, aunts and uncles - prefer to speak Dutch/Flemish (not actually sure of the difference etc) and claim to find it easier. This usually comes up a few times whenever I go over. I do speak German, and very well for non-technical purposes. So, as this comes up more and more often both when I'm in Belgium and sometimes even when I'm not, it would make my situation easier and most definitely a lot more fun to learn Dutch/Flemish. It will be one of my focuses in 2012's TAC without a doubt. Anyone got any insight? I can't find a proper dictionary online for Dutch for example - what's the best paper one, whether it be English<->Dutch, French<->Dutch or German<->Dutch? Any other tips would be great, but I expect the grammar to be easy :] Any insight to the contrary would be interesting? :] Thanks a lot for reading and for your suggestions! Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 112 of 128 20 October 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's an online Dutch dictionary:
http://www.interglot.com/ For paper dictionaries, I've read good reviews about the Routledge Dutch-English dictionary. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/041530041X/002-0874279-3382 458 Edited by Crush on 20 October 2011 at 5:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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