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STELINGO’S TAC 2013: SPARTA /KOFOLA | ||
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| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 1 of 84 31 December 2012 at 4:49am | IP Logged |
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STELINGO’S TAC 2013: TEAMS SPARTA AND KOFOLA
I have been a member of the forum for over 4 years, but this is the first time I have entered the TAC. I started learning my first foreign language at the age of 11 and 3 decades later I am still going strong. For my sins I am a language teacher, I teach French and Spanish in a comprehensive school in the UK. This is something that I have not mentioned here before, as many on this forum have a very poor opinion of language teaching in schools. Although I sympathise with some of the complaints made about language teaching, I think many do not always appreciate the issues and problems that face language teachers and I do not visit the forum to justify language education. For the challenge I am concentrating on Czech and Modern Greek, although I study several other languages and would be the first to admit that I spread myself too thinly. I have tried to drop some of them, but I am a language addict and quickly suffer withdrawal symptoms (snappiness, depression, a tendency to mutter myself in several languages). I am learning to live with my addiction. Apologies that this is a very long post. MY LANGUAGES FRENCH CURRENT LEVEL C1 The first language I learnt was French which I started at school when I was eleven. The classes weren't very challenging and I quickly became frustrated at the slow pace of the class. So I took out books from the library and also bought some books and began teaching myself. By the time I was fourteen I was able to read magazines and novels. The first novel I read in French was Dr No, and then The Three Musketeers. I went on to complete a BA degree in French and Hispanic Studies. I deliberately chose a university which didn’t offer the traditional language and literature degree but which, instead, focused on linguistics, translation, interpreting and area studies. The course lasted 4 years, one of which was a compulsory year abroad. I spent 3 months studying in Paris. I had to make an effort to find opportunities to speak French, as I was often with other English speaking students. I lived in a Foyer pour jeunes travailleurs, which gave me an opportunity to meet young French people and speak French. I also did voluntary work for an organisation which helped blind people, purely for the selfish reason of practising my French. I enjoyed my time in Paris, but it’s not the best place to learn French. Since then I have been back to France a few times, once I did a homestay, a couple of holidays, and some school trips. GOALS Maintain my level, mainly through watching internet TV, films and reading. Speaking practice with French friends / TAC team members. SPANISH CURRENT LEVEL C1 I took my French ‘O’ level exam a year early, which gave me the opportunity of starting Spanish in my last year of school. I was the only student taking it. I then studied it at university as part of my degree, and spent 6 months in Madrid teaching English. I shared a flat with some Spaniards, and spoke Spanish a lot, even whilst teaching English, as many of my students preferred explanations in Spanish. By the end of the 6 months I felt very comfortable in the language, and more confident in it than in French. I still remember my disappointment, though, when I realised that 6 months in a country is not sufficient to gain a native like knowledge of the language. I haven’t been back to Spain much since then, but I have been to Latin America several times, most recently last Summer, when I spent a week in Buenos Aires. I discovered an excellent site airbnb.com, where individuals rent out their spare room or apartment. Thus I was able to spend a week with a local family for just $150 right in the centre, practise my Spanish and get a more intimate view of life in Argentina. Much better than staying in a hotel. GOALS Maintain my level, mainly through watching internet TV, films and reading. Speaking practice with TAC team members. PORTUGUESE CURRENT LEVEL C1 Portuguese, and more specifically Brazilian Portuguese is the language I am in love with. To me, hearing it spoken is like listening to music. I love the way Brazilians express themselves, the dynamism and flexibility of the language, the intonation, the colourful slang. I find it a much more interesting language than either Spanish or French. My introduction to the language was through the BBC series ‘Discovering Portuguese’. During the 70s and 80s the BBC used to produce excellent language programmes. They were a good balance of presenting beginner’s tourist language and basic grammar along with segments in the target language about the people and culture, thus catering to both beginners and intermediate level. They also produced some very good course books to accompany these series. These programmes were often my first introduction to many of the languages I now speak or study, and I find it sad that very few of them are now produced. I went on to study (European) Portuguese at university. The Portuguese department had links with several companies in Lisbon, so I spent 8 months in total doing work placements and improving my Portuguese. I shared a house with Portuguese students, which also helped tremendously. I have been fascinated with Brazil since my teens and it was a dream come true when I finally made it there in the early 90s. I spent a month travelling around and also stayed with a family in Campinas (1 hour from Sao Paulo) who welcomed me into their family like a lost son. In total I have been to Brazil 6 times, the most recent being last Summer. GOALS Maintain my level, mainly through watching internet TV, films and reading. I bought Gabriela, cravo e canela by Jorge Amado, which I intend reading early 2013. ITALIAN CURRENT LEVEL UPPER B2 I started learning Italian by myself in my teens, and picked up the basics pretty quickly. After graduating I had more time to focus on my Italian, and did a 2 week language course in the early 90s. My comprehension skills are fairly good and I feel quite confident when speaking. GOALS To work through Ultimate Italian Intermediate/Advanced and Grammatica Azzione. Improve my listening skills by watching il Telegiornale canale 5, Euronews, Cronache della Svizzera podcasts and Italian films. Read a couple of Italian novels. Practise speaking with friend via Skype. Visit Italy! GERMAN CURRENT LEVEL LOWER B2 I also started studying German by myself during my teens. At first I found German difficult as I could not grasp the concept of cases. I remember one night I was reading a grammar book until late and I was getting quite frustrated because I didn't understand the explanations. But then I had a Eureka moment and suddenly it clicked. As it seemed so different from the Romance languages, for a while I found the language quite a novelty and wanted to take it at university. But my fascination with Brazil won the day, so it took a back seat for a while. After graduation I was able to focus more on German. I studied for 2 years at the Goethe Institut in the evening and did two languages courses in Austria and Germany. However my German is quite rusty these days, and I lack confidence when speaking it. GOALS To work through Ultimate German Intermediate/Advanced and Aktion Grammatik. Improve my listening skills by watching German news and other German programmes on ARD Archiv and podcasts, plus Euronews. Practise speaking with TAC team members via Skype. RUSSIAN CURRENT LEVEL B1 My first real introduction with Russian was through the excellent BBC series ‘Russian Language and People’ (broadcast in the mid-80s, some clips available on YouTube. They had a great mini soap opera in the series, до свидания лето Goodbye Summer) I loved the sound of the language, the exoticness of the alphabet and the idea of being to speak to our (at the time) Communist ‘enemy’. I would say it is my second favourite language after Brazilian Portuguese. I have done several language courses in Russia and Ukraine and I can speak Russian reasonably well. I can communicate in most daily situations. I have read several crime novels in Russian, some short stories and plays by Chekhov and Pushkin and even Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, with the help of an English translation. I would love to read Dr Zhivago in Russian but it is too difficult for me at the moment. I also still find it difficult to talk about more complicated topics or understand the news on TV. GOALS To work through Ruslan 3. Improve my listening skills by watching Russian news on Первый Канал and Euronews, plus listen to podcasts from Эхо Москвы. Practise speaking with TAC team members via Skype. CZECH CURRENT LEVEL LOWER B1 My interest in Russian naturally led me to become curious about the other Slavic languages. I started dabbling in Czech about 10 years ago, and became more serious about it after visiting Prague in 2002 and falling in love with the city. I go there several times a year and have made friends there, both Czechs and expats. None of the expats I know speak more than a few words of the language and they live in an English language bubble. I must confess that when I first heard Czech spoken, I didn’t like the sound. It sounds very different from the other Slavic languages. I have come to like it, although, if I become President of the Czech Republic, I will pass legislation to make it compulsory to adopt a more Slovak like accent. :-) I can now manage most daily transactions in the language, converse reasonably, although still quite haltingly at times, on everyday topics. I can understand newspapers quite well, but my listening skills are weak, which often means my interlocutors will switch to English. GOALS To work through Čestina pro Cizince and Česky Krok za Krokem 2. Improve my listening skills by watching ČT1 Události, and a great retroseriál called Vyprávěj. (http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/10195164142-vypravej/. I’ve watched all the first series and I thoroughly recommend it. It traces the lives of a family from the mid-60s up to the current day, and shows how the political and social events of the day impacted on their lives. It’s often light hearted and they intersperse TV news reports from the period to give you a flavour of the times. There are 4 series up to now, all available online. Some of the characters are Slovak, so you also get to hear some Slovak) plus listen to podcasts from Radio Praha. Practise speaking with TAC team members via Skype and when in Prague. Read a couple of children’s books/and/or bilingual novels. POLISH CURRENT LEVEL HIGH A2/VERY LOW B1 It was only natural, given the high number of Polish immigrants to the UK, that I would start dabbling in Polish. In some ways, I wish I had never started the language, as I don’t believe I will ever achieve a very high conversational level due to the interference from Russian, and especially, Czech. But I really like the sound of the language, I love all those sh and ch sounds, (one of my favourite phrases from the first text book I used is Cieszę się ze jesteście) and the fact that some of the words sound like Czech spoken with a speech defect! (sedm/siedm, osm/osiem, napřiklad/naprzikład) I started studying Polish in about 2003, and have done 2 language courses there. My knowledge has also come in handy at work, when I had a non-English speaking Polish student in my class, and sometimes when dealing with Polish parents. GOALS Complete Polish in 4 Months 1 and work through Polish in 4 Months 2 MODERN GREEK CURRENT LEVEL MID A2 My introduction to Greek was again thanks to the BBC and their excellent series ‘Greek Language and People’. I’ve been dabbling in it on and off for many years, but have been getting more serious about it recently. This year I completed the textbook ‘Communicating in Greek 1’ and read my first Greek reader. GOALS Work through ‘Communicating in Greek 2’ and for listening Akou na Deis 1 and 2. Read a couple of Greek readers. Practise speaking with my TAC team mates via Skype. Visit Greece. MANDARIN CHINESE CURRENT LEVEL HIGH A1/LOW A2 More recently I have begun learning Mandarin Chinese. I was always reluctant to study this language as I thought it would be too difficult being a tonal language. In fact for many years I studied Japanese. However my school established a link with a school in China so I decided to give up Japanese in favour of Chinese. I find the language fascinating, love learning the Hanzi. (I use skritter.com to practise them and officially know 618 characters, although in reality I can probably only write half that number from memory.) But I find it disconcerting that, if your tones aren’t reasonably accurate, it’s very difficult to make yourself understood. I adopted some tips, such as lowering and raising my head when producing the 3rd tone, or raising my eyebrows when producing the first tone. Unfortunately I can’t get rid of these habits when speaking to real life Chinese people, which must make me look quite demented, as well as being incomprehensible. My school actually paid for me to do a 2 week language course in Beijing in 2010. Of course I didn’t make much progress in such a short time, but it was a brilliant experience. However I did find it a big culture shock and am not sure if it is worth me investing a lot of time in the language, as I doubt I will spend much time there in future. I would like to go back, though, when I have a higher level, to see whether I still feel the same way. Plus, I want to visit the Panda reserve in Chengdu. :-) GOALS Complete Colloquial Chinese. Read a Chinese Reader. Sponsor a panda ARABIC CURRENT LEVEL VERY LOW A1 I have a love/hate relationship with this language. I love the alphabet; I find the language, especially the diglossic situation, utterly fascinating and enjoy listening to the news presenters on Aljazeera. However, I find some of the letters impossible to pronounce, the vocabulary and grammar are very challenging, all the resources available have their faults, and I realistically do not have time to reach a reasonable level, given all the other languages I have on the go. But I have completed (after 2 false starts) Mastering Arabic 1 and it seems impossible to ignore the language as the Middle East is always in the news. GOALS To resist the temptation and not study any Arabic. Likelihood of success: very low In which case work through Linguaphone Arabic OTHER LANGUAGES WHICH I WILL NOT BE STUDYING CATALAN PASSIVE SKILLS B1/2 DUTCH PASSIVE SKILLS LOW B1 NORWEGIAN A1 SWEDISH A1 JAPANESE A1 Edited by stelingo on 31 December 2012 at 3:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5342 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 84 31 December 2012 at 9:37am | IP Logged |
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Oh, I am absolutely going to love being on your team! I like the way you think, and I see that you have all my
languages, some of them at a higher level, so I foresee some really interesting Skype sessions in the future. I used to be a language teacher as well ( more than 20 years ago, but still) and I agree that a lot of people have negative experiences which lead them to being negative towards language teachers, but I am sure you are a wonderful teacher. I am quite proud of my days as a teacher, as I know that I inspired people to go abroad and study the language afterwards, and in any event all that can be reasonably expected is that people get a base to build on. No one can learn a language from 4 hours a week at school for a couple of years. I am sure we are going to have a lot of fun on team Sparta, and I look forward to a great year! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 3 of 84 31 December 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
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I'm also looking forword to skyping with you and the other team mates, Cristina. My pupils only get between 2-2 1/2 hours of the language a week, so they're definitely not going to reach basic fluency by the time they graduate. Edited by stelingo on 31 December 2012 at 9:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4366 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 84 01 January 2013 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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It is a very nice introduction. I am tempted to be as analytical as you. Good luck with all your plans!
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5873 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 5 of 84 01 January 2013 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
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Just stopping by to say that i did indeed read your log ;) and i'm excited to see where you go this year. The languages you're studying are really interesting and, as Cristina's said before, match (or rather overshadow!) mine and a lot of other folks on team Sparta. I'd love to expand my studies to include all the languages you know/study, but i'm afraid i'd die before i mastered even half of them!
Estoy ansiosx por ver cómo avanzas con tus idiomas este año, espero yo mismx poder alcanzarte en algunos de ellos :D ¡Te deseo mucho éxito y un feliz año nuevo! 新年快乐！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 6 of 84 01 January 2013 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your comments, renaissancemedi and Crush. And I can assure you, Crush, that I will never master all the languages I'm studying. In fact, I don't think I could really say I master any one of them, but the journey is an interesting one.
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| ancpem1 Groupie United States Joined 4396 days ago 56 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian, Greek, Latin, French | Message 7 of 84 02 January 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged |
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Hi, stelingo! I'm also on Team Sparta, and I see that we have languages in common. I look forward to seeing your progress!
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| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 8 of 84 02 January 2013 at 7:32am | IP Logged |
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Thanks ancpem1
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