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TAC 2013 Team Żubr German and Polish Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 49 of 74 20 June 2013 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
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For me, class learning is pretty helpful. In some ways I have an advantage and disadvantage in not being a true beginner. The advantages are pretty obvious--somewhat familiar vocabulary and understanding what the cases are and different verb forms, tenses, etc. The disadvantages--homework on subjects I already know. Some days we get long homework assignments on something that I'm pretty familiar with, so while it's certainly not holding me back, I sometimes think I could be further along--*think* is the operative word here; each time I do something seemingly repetitive, I learn that I really didn't know it as well as I thought I did. For example, I was really bored having to constantly write out the endings for accusative and instrumental. Of course, then it progressed to where we had to write sentences using both cases in the same sentence. THAT is something I hadn't practiced on my own, and I'm not sure I would have even thought of it. I have been looking ahead as well. Despite the disadvantage, I'm actually really glad I'm in this class. When it gets closer to finishing, I'll write a more detailed post on what I think the specific advantages/disadvantages are with a class versus complete self study, but the very short version is that I'm very glad I decided to take this class.
Oh yes, and I do take about an hour and a half to unwind after class. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 50 of 74 07 July 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged |
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It's amazing the things that seem to be the easiest parts of a language end up being strangely complicated. Take, for example, counting measurements, or quantities of an item. This is not a complicated task. Well, except for the fact that I never realized it requires you to automatically switch between singular and plural. So, it would be "five bottles of wine," not "five bottles of wines." This is really not a challenge...or, it shouldn't be. Sure enough though, that's the area that was giving me the hardest time this past week--needing to remember when to use genitive plural, and then remembering when to use singular and plural forms.
In other news, we watched Akademia Pana Kleksa, an incredibly strange yet amusing film! I had to go to YouTube to watch more. We've finally learned the past and future tenses, and even covered aspect. Tomorrow we will finally get the locative case, and then we will have handled all of the cases. I really can't believe that the class is ending this week. Friday is our last day, and I hope I will be able to write a more detailed post about what I liked/would have changed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 51 of 74 11 July 2013 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
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It's hard to believe 6 weeks went by so quickly. I just had my last test today and tomorrow we have our goodbye ceremony. I'll try to recap the best way I can:
As far as how much I learned: Wow, I really did learn a lot! I got all seven cases, past and future tenses, even learned a bit about aspect, and now, all Polish words don't sound the same. I'm still very much a beginner, but now I can see fluency as a real possibility. Taking a class: I would highly recommend this program. What was really helpful to me was that it forced me to get into a study routine. A large problem for me was that in doing independent study, I didn't know where to start; everything was different. Having a teacher break it down was very helpful to me. There are the usual "problems" with classes in that sometimes it goes too fast/too slow. As far as going too slowly, I won't complain much about that because I really think as a beginner it's not a bad thing to repeat and spend time on the basics. The book: We used "Hurra po polsku" as our book. Personally, that is the one thing I would change. I could actually see that book working better in a different environment, but its lack of grammar explanations made it almost impossible to know if you were doing something correctly. My teachers actually did make it work pretty well, but I can't imagine using it as a self-study tool. The one thing I didn't mind about it though were the exercises. There is a good amount of audio and exercises (with answers), which is what I had been lacking. Now that the class is over, I think I can more safely say that Polish is hard. I've put in around 200 hours in the past six weeks, and after around the same amount of time with German, I was much further along than I feel right now. That being said, I'm okay with my somewhat slow progress; Slavic languages require a completely different level of dedication for me, and I know that at some point this will click together and suddenly I'll realize that I understand so much more than I did six months ago. As far as what happened with the language interference, it eventually passed on its own. That was a real problem for the first four weeks, and it really felt at some points that my German truly "interfered" with my ability to speak and produce Polish. I think that this is something that could happen to anyone who speaks another language, and it's just something that needs to work itself out on its own. At a beginner point, you're really able to say very little, so it's not a terrible thing to happen. Overall, I'm extremely happy that I decided to take the course, and I really wish I were going to Poland (maybe next year). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6113 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 52 of 74 11 July 2013 at 9:51pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your report FK, it sounds like you had a fantastic time.
There are times when I would really like a teacher on hand to explain something. I may get the clarification through lots of self-study, but I have to find my way through a maze which is slow and tortuous. 200 hours is intense. I've noticed that my stamina and appetite for lengthy study has grown. In fact, I really miss Polish if I don't read and listen to it everyday. What are your study plans now? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 53 of 74 14 July 2013 at 11:24pm | IP Logged |
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Próbuję uczyć się dalej 3 godzina codziennie. Myślę, że długie godzinie bardzo pomagają mi. Chcę uczyć się więcej słownictwo i gramatykę (miejscownik i dopełniacz). Muszę pisać po polsku tak że mogę dostać poprawki.
_____ I'm going to try to continue studying 3 hours a day. I think that studying for longer periods of time is very helpful to me, and I will be able to focus on learning more vocabulary and grammar (especially the Genitive and Locative cases, which after awhile became difficult). I also really need to try and continue writing on here in Polish so that I can receive more corrections. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6113 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 54 of 74 15 July 2013 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
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Hi FK,
3 hours a day is about what I'm currently doing. It sounds a lot, but by the time I've reviewed Anki, watched an episode of my usual soap, listened to at least one radio podcast, read a few pages of a novel and done a bit in a course book...the time has flown by and I sometimes do more! I like that you have identified specific areas to work on. I have a tendency to procrastinate in the face of declensions! As a musician, I'm sure you've heard of Słowianki, but just in case - here's a taster called Czerwone jagody / "Red Berries" Keep up the great work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 55 of 74 08 August 2013 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
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*Had to dig back several pages to find this log!*
In the last month I've made some minor progress. I finally did learn Genitive and Locative cases--I think my first problem with the locative was all of the consonant shifts, but that's actually not as bad as it first appeared. It's actually a fairly easy case to know when to use. A large part of my studying has been focused on listening and reading. I tried doing this before, but wasn't very successful. I think part of the reason was because I just didn't have the grammar and vocabulary to make it a truly beneficial activity, and I wasn't doing it everyday. Now, I'm doing at least 30 minutes of listening and 30 minutes of reading each day, and it's becoming much easier. Not that I would be able to reproduce most of what I understand, but I'm still hopeful that that will come after some time. One fun experiment...I watched the Pan Kleks movies without subtitles. This is a slightly crazy idea! I found though, that even an A2-ish vocabulary is enough to pick up on the plot. What's really helpful is that these series are VERY much 80s movies and I found them really enjoyable to watch. Because of that, it was really easy to follow despite not understanding most of it. What I also did was look up the summaries beforehand so that I would know what was happening. Now for the problem areas which make me think Polish doesn't want foreigners to learn the language! -w or na: So to say that you're "at" a store or "at" a concert, you can use either "w" or "na." Easy enough, except there aren't many ways to tell which one you use. I know that "na" will be used with performances or events, but after that, it's memorization. A *slight* trick I've been using--back when we learned "do" and "na" for the accusative, we were told that "na" will often be used for "wide open spaces." So we use "do" to say that we're going to a store or to a house or hotel, because they're not open spaces. Turns out that "w" takes "do" and "na" takes "na" when you're talking about going "to" a place. So yes, I admit I've been cheating a bit to figure out which preposition to use! -Verbs of motion: I really had no idea how many verbs of motion there were. Even with the basic four, there are so many prefixes that make them different words, so it's A LOT of words based off of iść and jechać. I think the overwhelming feeling might have partially been due to the fact that First Year Polish introduces many of them with their conjugations all at once, and when you're looking at a full page of conjugations, all you can think of is how much you're going to have to memorize! -Aspect: Okay, I haven't officially gotten to this chapter yet, but it's only 2 chapters away. What I really hope is that I'll read it and think that the difficulty was very overestimated! The good thing is that because I've been reading, I've seen perfective forms, so I wonder how that will affect my comprehension of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4377 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 56 of 74 09 August 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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It's very difficult to find something not so terribly hard in Polish! Still, I'm going to try and list things that people will say are difficult but really aren't so bad--not to say they're easy, but certainly not impossible!
-Nominative masculine personal nouns: Here, this is usually taught beginning second year, if you're in an academic program. So of course in first year, you're told that it's really difficult. It's not! The most difficult thing about it is the consonant shifts, but it's really something that can be mastered within a few hours at the most. -Along those lines, consonant shifts: I'm finding this to be surprisingly predictable. That's something I'm not sure I'll necessarily make a point to really focus on, because it's one of those things that I think reading enough will allow to sink in. -2,3,4: Ok, so I only know 5 forms right now, but again, if I think about when they're used, it's not that terrible to remember. At least, for right now it isn't that bad! This I think is something that again, requires you to really know and understand how the cases function (and I actually wonder, if it's something that can be fixed through enough reading/exposure). ***Trying to be positive about some aspects of the language, because I hit the beginner's plateau where I'm trying really hard to get out of this stage but can't seem to make progress.*** 1 person has voted this message useful |
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