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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 36 25 April 2013 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the advice, sfuqua. I agree that language learning goes up and down a lot, some good days and some less good ones. This morning I had a great Anki session and was able to recall most of my cards very easily. A lot of it has to do with how tired I feel, and that pretty much depends on what kind of day I've had at work.
Like you say, if you're using a course that you enjoy then that's the main thing. I plan to just keep studying, learning and enjoying with my Linguaphone course. In the past I suffered from having too many available materials and was never able to stick consistently to one course, thus I never made much concrete progress over the long term. Now that I'm sticking to a single course it's going much better. I just pretend that I don't own any other resources. In other news, I was very excited to see that my 1980s Linguaphone Spanish and French courses had been delivered. As I wasn't home at the time, one of the delivery companies had the foresight to leave my package in my recycling bin. Lucky it wasn't a recyling day! Having now had a quick look at the books I have the feeling that the courses being produced by Linguaphone during the 80s were much better than the stuff they're putting out today. Which is weird, why would they make their courses worse? Their 80s stuff looks a lot like the modern Assmil and Living Language courses that I have. Have people become stupider in the last 25 years? Oh yeah...I have also somehow managed to buy an 80s Japanese Linguaphone course from Ebay (they are just so cheap...can't resist!). Not sure how that happened. I have no immediate plans to learn Japanese but I hope to visit one of my friends who has recently moved to Japan. So I may now have 3 languages in my future: 1. Spanish. Seriously studying. The most important by far. 2. French. Just for fun. I would like to have some tourist level French for travelling. 3. Japanese. The same, some tourist level Japanese would no doubt be very useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 36 27 April 2013 at 12:29pm | IP Logged |
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Let's talk about Japanese. So, this morning I received the Linguaphone Japanese course that I bought very cheaply on ebay. I had a quick look through it and when I compared it to the one they're currently selling, it appears to be almost exactly the same. My version is Copyright 1967 but printed in 1992. So, looks like I saved myself £180 by buying on ebay.
The only updated/revised courses(from the 70s/80s, I'm guessing) that they sell, judging from the pictures on their website, are the French and Spanish courses. The modern Spanish course has certainly been simplified from the 1980s course that I got the other day. Not that any of that really matters, is just an interesting observation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 36 29 April 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged |
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Still doing my usual thing of Anki during my morning commute and Linguaphone at night time. My Anki deck is up to 950 words, although I don't know all of them yet. Tonight I completed Unit 1 of Level 2, Book 1. It was quite a quick unit, it only took about 3.5 hours. I will start Unit 2 tomorrow night.
I've now been studying Spanish 'seriously' for 70 days and have accrued 36 hours of total study time, 26 of which have been spent chipping away at Linguaphone. Sometimes I wish I could go faster but in truth I don't have the mental energy to study for more than an hour a night. After an hours it's a case of diminishing returns. Most of the time I study for 30 to 40 minutes. I suppose I'm going more for quality than quantity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 36 30 April 2013 at 10:15pm | IP Logged |
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More Anki and Linguaphone today. Nothing special to say about that except that I'm still enjoying it. I've started to work more on my pronunciation of Spanish, trying to mirror more closely the speakers that I hear on the various bits of Linguaphone audio. I'll never sound like a native but I am trying to absorb the rhythm and temp of the language. I can't roll my rr's to save my life. While Spanish is not particularly difficult to pronounce, now I can hear that Spanish spoken with a strong American or British accent sounds horrible, it's so robotic.
This morning I decided to challenge myself to start reading more native Spanish materials. I downloaded a few articles from El Pais (via the Pocket app) to my mini tablet for reading on the train. They were about the european economic situation, an interview with Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina, and about electricity and gas prices. I only understood about 20% of the text but it was still a worthwhile exercise. I simply don't have the grammar foundation to understand most news stories yet. I focused on the paragraphs that I could understand well and tried to decode other things that I almost understood. I also picked up a few new vocabulary words and input them into Anki. I might start doing this every day. However, I did notice that it is very easy to totally misunderstand something if you get even one or two words wrong in a sentence. I also discovered that some verbs have loads of different meanings depending on the phrase being used. I found some interesting Spanish grammar explanation videos on Youtube by Professor Jason Jolley of Missouri State University. He's quite good at explaining various grammar related topics. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/languagenow?feature=watch 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 36 08 May 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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It was a long weekend here and also my wife's birthday, so the only thing I did for 4 days was 10 minutes of Anki reviews. It was good to have a mini break and focus on relaxing for a few days but I got straight back into my regular schedule tonight. I'm now approaching the half way point in Linguaphone and hope to finish up Level 2, Book 1 within the next few days. I think it would have been very dangerous to leave off studying for any longer - that's when habits start to slip away.
I can see that I'm still very much at the beginning of a long journey. The road ahead is uncertain but I just keep putting one foot in front of another, so to speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 36 09 May 2013 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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I had a total and utter lack of enthusiasm for my studies tonight. I did my usual 30 minute session and chipped away a few more pages. I'll be glad to see the back of this unit, it has not been one of the more enjoyable ones so far! It's all about what you do in your free time, which is fine and easy enough to understand but I just can't seem to muster any enthusiasm for it.
At the end of every unit there is usually a few pages of revision and practice exercises. This unit has about 10 pages worth and it seems like it'll never end. Quite a lot of writing as well, which I normally like but these particular exercises are doing much for me. However, I'm keeping the larger goal in sight and as soon as I'm over this mini slump I'm sure I'll be back to normal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 36 11 May 2013 at 9:01pm | IP Logged |
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I had a sudden flash of inspiration and have decided to start studying Living Language Ultimate Spanish alongside my 2006 Linguaphone course. The more I use my 2006 edition Linguaphone, the more I feel I'm missing out on learning grammar in depth. It just doesn't have enough explanation for my liking. My 1980s Linguaphone course, conversely, goes hardcore on grammar right from the very first lesson.
Tomorrow I'm going to try 30 minutes of Linguaphone 2006 then 30 minutes of Living Language Ultimate. I need to devise a way of working with the 2 courses simultaneously. After I wrap up Linguaphone 2006 I may very well flip flop the 1980s course alongside Living Language. There's a ton of content in both courses and it will likely take me the rest of the year to complete them. My Anki deck is over 1000 words now. I'm not planning to add any more words to it for at least a couple of weeks. In fact, now I'm mostly adding words that I come across when reading articles from El Pais. Reading is pretty difficult but I think using native materials is essential to aid learning as course materials are usually very contrived and simplified. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mjrobertson Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6477 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 36 12 May 2013 at 3:35pm | IP Logged |
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I've been thinking about my longer term language learning goals. Next year I'll be 40 years old and I need to consider realistically what I'll be able to achieve in terms of language learning, given that I do not have multiple hours free every day for studying. Even if I did, I still have many other hobbies, interests and other obligations that take up my free time.
For me, language learning is a bit like an all you can eat buffet. There are just so many choices and many of them are very appealing, but if you try a bit of everything you'll just end up making yourself sick. Every time I read other people's logs I think "Wow, it would be great to learn x language," but most of the time it's just a fantasy. I now see (and accept cheerfully) that I will never learn languages such as German, Hindi, Swedish, or Korean. Some people on this site do appear to be multi talented polyglot, language learning machines but it's clear to me that I'm not. I have no special talents as far as that's concerned, possibly apart from the ability to continuously keep putting one foot in front of the other. I admire those who can do it but it's not for me. I also greatly admire (more, in fact) those who have kept on studying just one or two language year and year after year. So, I'm now rather boldly setting out my lifetime language learning goals. From now until I die, I will focus on learning: 1. Spanish (currently studying) 2. French (will not start learning for at least 2 years) 3. Japanese (will start learning some time this year) Actually, this list is the same as the one I posted a couple of weeks ago. They are all countries and cultures that I'm fairly interested in and would like to get to know much better. If I can learn 3 foreign languages in the time that's remaining to me (who knows how long one will live?) I'll be more than satisfied. I will even be satisfied with 'just' reaching a high level in Spanish, to be honest. The older I get, the more I see that in life you can't have everything nor should you try to have it all. You need to pick and choose and decide how to spend time your time. You need to be joyful and enthusiastic about the things that you're doing and at peace with the things that you've decided to let go. It takes a lot of time and self analysis to eventually arrive at one's true, inner values and seeing what is important in life. For example, I long ago gave up any kind of yearning or desire for money / financial success and I'm so much the better for it. It may be more about lifelong learning for me than learning languages as such. I want to keep my brain and active and keep learning new things for the rest of my life. I want to know how people in other countries live, think and feel. A great way to do that seems to be by learning a few languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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