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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 129 of 133 16 October 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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20:46 14/10/2012 2012-10-14 Sunday Dansk søndag CCDays=12 Unit 14 completed. Some word-listing. Deutsch Sonntag Frau Jenny Treibel. 23:32 15/10/2012 2012-10-15 Monday Dansk mandag CCDays=13 Completed Unit 15. Deutsch Montag Evening Class. Die Verwandlung. Exercises converting text to from indirect back to direct speech. Interesting. Edited by montmorency on 16 October 2012 at 12:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 130 of 133 19 October 2012 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
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16/10/2012 2012-10-16 Tuesday
Dansk tirsdag CCDays=14 Completed Unit 16. 17/10/2012 2012-10-17 Wednesday Dansk onsdag CCDays=15 Completed Unit 17. Deutsch Anglo-German Club "expedition" to the Sheldonian, Oxford for an interesting lecture on Frederick the Great. Focusing on his cultural achievements and to some extent on his personal life. He was brutalised by his father and in turn seems to have brutalised his wife, or at least treated her badly, once he was King. Followed by a reception in the "Divinity Hall" of the Bodlean Library. A very beautiful building. I didn't stay for the concert of Frederick's music, as it was a bit expensive. 18/10/2012 2012-10-18 Thursday Dansk torsdag CCDays=16 Completed Unit 18. 22:26 19/10/2012 2012-10-19 Friday Dansk fredag CCDays=17 Completed writeups of Units 16-17-18 That completes my goal of consolidating the grammar in all 18 units of TYSCD. I exercised the "right" I gave myself a bit ago to just do the work mentally one day and write it up the other. In this case I did the last 3 days mentally and had a writing blitz today, and it's complete. As I am travelling this weekend, I'll take a break from the consistency routine, but I'll be back next week with what I hope will be my last pass through this book. Edited by montmorency on 19 October 2012 at 11:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 131 of 133 26 October 2012 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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20/10/2012 2012-10-20 Saturday
I travelled to Bradford to see the play "A German Play" by Eddie Lawler, who among other things, is a German tutor who organises the summer schools in Jena that I've been going to most years for the last few years. I'm not a city person, but Bradford seems very nice as cities go, and the Cathedral is lovely. There were a couple of fellow Jena students there, which was nice. And the play was excellent. I fully recommend it, and it is being staged again in Leeds (Chapel Allerton, Seven Arts, 27-28 Oct). I've put some more info here The following day I visited the National Media Museum in the city centre. Very well worthwhile, although I didn't have too much time before my train. 22/10/2012 2012-10-22 Monday German evening class. I have gone down with a cold, so have given myself all week off the consistency exercise! Languages and posting have been/ will be a bit erratic. 15:40 26/10/2012 2012-20-26 Friday Most of the week as far as languages are concerned I've been either close reading Frau Jenny Treibel,, or reading-listening to "Die Verwandlung". Not so much Danish I'm afraid. I hope to really get back to business next week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 132 of 133 21 September 2013 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
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Almost a year's gap in this log. Now that is not a year's gap in German - far from it,
but I must admit that Danish has taken a bit of a back seat, certainly in 2013. I have started to put that right. As reported elsewhere I've added Welsh to my list of active languages, and inevitably, in the excitement of doing that, I've neglected German a lot, and Danish had continued to take a back seat. I am now aiming to get the balance right between all three. This is not something I find easy. In the last year, re: German: I went to my evening class, ostensibly for the chance to speak with one native speaker + other learners. It's not ideal in that respect, but it is something, and the teacher is very good at explaining things without getting too hung up on grammar, etc. I continued to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, read the occasional printed book or e-book for which I didn't have the audiobook, and watch the odd film. I tried to keep Danish going, but it always seemed to remain on the back burner, and it feels rather rusty just now. I recently revived my Gold Listing for both German and Danish. And I've now revived my parallel L-R between German and Danish versions of the Jussi Adler Olsen Department Q books. I haven't quite established my ideal method here. I'd dropped the idea of reading German while listening to German, since I don't really gain much from that. It could mean that I could dynamically look up German words in a pop-up dictionary if I wanted, but fortunately, there aren't too many, and I prefer to scribble the odd one down and look it up later if I wish, or just quickly skim through the e-book with Readlang, and just look up the unknown words that way. I've been experimenting with having one pass through listening to Danish while reading Danish (after having listened to it in German) - this is to match the written to the spoken word - not trivial in Danish, and then another pass with reading Danish and listening in German. However, this does not work for these particular books, because the German versions are abridged. :-( I thought I could live with it, but I now realise I probably can't. So what I might try doing is to read in English while listening in Danish. Or: just quickly skim-read 1 chapter in English, immediately prior to reading and listening to it in Danish, optionally looking up words with a pop-up dictionary (probably using Readlang). Anyway, even if the German versions are abridged, and aren't perfect for pukka L-R, listening to those is still a very useful exercise in consolidating my listening comprehension (which has gone up by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, thanks I believe to audiobooks and podcasts. Now: that just leaves the active skills, and specifically speaking. Inspired by SSiW, I've been trying out You Speak German, which is very similar in concept to Say Something In ... &nb sp; I will report more fully later, but so far, I'm impressed. In some ways, it's a bit like going back to primary school as an adult, but actually, you have to work quite hard, and that is good. No German course that I have ever been on has given me sufficient chance to practice speaking (with the exception of occasional immersion courses, but there have been too few of those). So I have an embarrassing number of years of German learning behind me, without a corresponding level of speaking experience. I think that YSG could help to put that balance right. If I were able to get to Germany regularly, it perhaps wouldn't be necessary. And yes, there is skype and G+ hangouts. But YSG will give me, I believe, a well-worked-out and systematic approach to the spoken language such as I've never really experienced before. It will be interesting to see how it develops in the more advanced lessons. It's still early days yet. Edited by montmorency on 21 September 2013 at 9:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4833 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 133 of 133 01 November 2013 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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Dansk:
Just a quick update to say that my "Assimil Dänisch Ohne Mühe" book has now arrived. I'd acquired the audio before, along with the French version of the book in PDF format, but decided that a German version would be more useful, and also in real book format, so I could walk around with it, Arguelles-style, while shadowing. I'd never actually possessed a physical copy of an Assimil book before, but I can now see why The Prof. likes them for shadowing, and they are the right size and shape for holding, while walking along in his preferred style. Although this book seems to be new, and my audio is I think quite old, they do seem to match up, as far as I can tell, which is rather fortuitous. Anyway, I hope this course will get me speaking in a way that the TYS Complete Danish that I did before did not. That course had its good points, but the audio was not as useful as it might have been. For example, the audio and the text did not match exactly (i.e. there was some text that was not in the audio, and some audio that was not in the text), and there was no translation of the text. Assimil on the other hand includes text for all the audio (as well as copious notes), and has a parallel translation. In this case the translation is in German, so I'll have to work harder than if it were in English, but that's no bad thing, and is in fact a good thing since hopefully it will reinforce my German. It also means I won't be using the "crutch" of my native language at all (well, not in theory). Deutsch In the evening class I go to, we are reading Friedrich Dürrenmatt's "Der Verdacht" ("The Suspicion), which is very interesting. Dürrenmatt was a Swiss writer (and dramatist). I've got a PDF version of this plus its predecessor "Der Richter und sein Henker" ("The Judge and his Hangman"). I couldn't find an e-book version of translations of those, so I've been scanning a paperback translation, with the ultimate aim of making a parallel text in PBO format. To be honest, the language isn't that difficult, but it will be a good exercise. BTW, if anyone else is scanning books, I can recommend FreeOCR. Provided my scan is reasonably good, I seem to get 100% accuracy in OCR-ing, most of the time, at least for English text. Edited by montmorency on 01 November 2013 at 12:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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