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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 65 of 140 31 December 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends; often in the US you will see present perfect substituted for by a past
simple. CF. I have just finished my homework. (UK) I just finished my homework. (US) Also, "Did you ever do drugs?" "No, I never did." etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5169 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 66 of 140 31 December 2012 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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It could be a UK/US distinction - I don't know much about British conventions. :) Although the present perfect
would sound perfectly normal to me in both of tarvos' example contexts. However, when I read the sentence with "recently", as an American I immediately thought that the verb ought to be past simple and not present perfect. The present perfect can be used with "recently" - which I might not have made clear in my original post - but in this instance it just seemed wrong to me. However, it may offend my ears for stylistic reasons rather than grammatical ones. So, Julie, I wouldn't worry about it too much! Edited by Amerykanka on 31 December 2012 at 3:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 67 of 140 03 January 2013 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Amerykanka, thank you so much for your corrections, there were very useful!
Everyone, thank you for the interesting discussion about the English tenses! As Serpent pointed out, I had been taught that "recently" requires Present Perfect in most situations. I have to admit I truly hate English tenses! ;) And the UK/US distinction, including the US use of Past Simple where the British would use Present Perfect by default, does not make things easier. I guess I should read more English prose to get the feeling for the right use of tenses... That's one of the trickiest features of English, for me at least. And now the usual update... Lazy time before Total Annihilation: 15.12.2012-03.01.2013 First of all, I have to admit the last 2,5 weeks were pretty much lost for any serious learning. I came down with a cold and I generally didn't feel good; even now I'm still coughing and sneezing a little bit. Then Christmas came: lots of family time, very little learning time. I did watch tons of American movies/TV shows with my dad. Tomorrow will be the last lazy day :). Swedish Next to nothing, unfortunately, which is sad considering how much I did during 6WC. Seems like a Twitter bot is the greatest motivator. Just kidding :). Well, I did have to skip a few classes in the last week before Christmas as I was sick, and then the Christmas break came, with no classes whatsoever. So what did I do? - Papunet - I read a couple of news on this website. The website, prepared for people with intelectual disabilities (I've got no idea what is the right term in English nowadays), includes texts in very simple Swedish (and Finnish, which I haven't tried. I don't know how artificial the texts sound, but it's nice to read something I'm able to understand without a dictionary, for a change. Even if I didn't know some words, I was usually able to figure them out from the context. It seems that there are actually more websites in simple Swedish: try googling "på lättläst svenska", it renders quite many results, e.g. 8sidor.se and Klartext. I've also found links to such websites in other languages: Danish, Norwegian, Italian. - watching Swedish TV on svtplay.se. Unfortunately, most videos are unavailable with my Polish IP (have I ever written on this log how much I hate this kind of a geographic discrimination on the Internet?). I did manage to find a couple of videos that worked among those for children (Emils sommarlov, and some TV show about magic-like redocorating children's bedrooms ;)). If you know which videos don't have geographical constraints, please let me know: there is nothing more annoying and disappointing at the same time than clicking, full of hope, on some interesting videos and getting the same error message every single time. - revising material from "Szwedzki - kurs podstawowy" by Edgard. - listening to two recordings from ielanguages.com. - Hugo's "Swedish in three months" (1998 edition) - I did the first chapter. Quite a strange book, very much grammar-oriented, and different from Hugo's Dutch course, if I recall correctly. I doubt I'm going to continue with this. - "Swedish Word Power 1001 & 2001" from innovativelanguage.com - I did a few dozens words. I have mixed feelings about this. The idea is quite nice: you basically get a huge collection of words: a Swedish word, its English translation, a picture and examples of use (sentences/phrases/collocations) + audio. However, there are lots of obvious shortcomings. The whole collection was clearly translated from English. I did a little research and it seems that similar products are offered for other languages, probably with no second thoughts whatsoever. There is e.g. a card with the verb "make - göra" but most examples don't include "göra": laga kaffe, bädda sängen... (make coffee, make the bed). There is no grammatical information such as verb forms, plural forms of nouns, or even en/ett distinction! I hope at least sample sentences are correct (they seem to but I might be wrong). The audio is hardly usable: just a list of words in Swedish broken by categories: no examples, no English translations. It looks like an unfinished product, nothing more. I might use it for vocabulary enrichement but I'm glad I just borrowed it, and didn't buy. - I took part in the first challenge of Team Viking and wrote the following text in 10 minutes, with no dictionary/Internet support. Any corrections would be appreciated (apart from the obvious å/ä mix-up).
French - I watched four episodes of "Roswell" with French dubbing recently; I understand about 85% of it. I usually either understand everything or miss out almost on a whole dialogue/scene. I started watching TV series in French during 6WC. I watched "Pretty Little Liars" (20 episodes so far, pretty easy, probably the highest frequency of "laisser tomber" ever, at the moment I'm too bored to go on with it), "Desperate Housewives" (1 episode), "Castle" (1,5 episodes, pretty hard as there are quite many funny dialogues, puns etc. I like "Castle" a lot and want to go back to it when my French gets better, as I wouldn't be able to enjoy the series now). For now, I will continue with "Roswell" unless it gets too boring. emk wrote about "Buffy" all the time, so I might give it a try as well (never watched it before). - I also read 30 pages or so from "La classe de neige" by Emmanuel Carrère. I would miss words here and there obviously but I didn't have problems to understand the general meaning, and I would mostly get the details, too. I'm not sure if I'm going to read the whole book, though - it was a completely random reading choice, and from what I've found on the Internet, it seems much gloomier than what I usually read (the first 30 pages were fine, though). Well, I'm gonna see. - lyricstraining.com - yeah, Serpent, it finally worked on another computer. Two songs so far :). - I came up with the idea to listen to some lectures in French, and I found a series of lectures on social psychology and gender. I listened just to the beginning of the first lecture: it seems interesting, and really easy, if anyone wonders: slowly and clearly spoken French. The problem about using authentic input is that I don't feel like I'm "learning". I know, it takes time and I'm being much too impatient with French. I can't help it :). So I decided to look for some more "material/learning-oriented" activities, and to go back to some sources I used in the past and never finished (ielanguages.com is the only new one here). - ielanguages.com - I listened to a couple of recordings and read a lot about informal spoken French and slang. The presentations on YouTube are really great! - "French in Action" - I watched lesson 25, so I picked it up where I stopped watching the last time. - "FrenchPod" - I listened to a couple of dozens old podcasts, starting with "Newbie" and getting to "Elementary". I plan to work my way up to "Advanced". On the easiest levels, I don't listen to the whole podcasts, just to the dialogues. I listened to them three times: the first time without any text support, the second time I followed the transcription and the third time I would pause the video to repeat sentences and practice my rusty French pronunciation. The newbie podcasts were very easy (well, I'm far from being a newbie :)) but most of the dialogues are quite funny, and many of them include pretty idiomatic expressions. I was thinking about going back to the French Assimil (Polish-based) as well, which I stopped using a few years ago somewhere after 30 lessons or so but I didn't have the book with me during the Christmas break, and now I'm not sure if it's a good idea anymore. Maybe I'll just do the same thing as with FrenchPod... Somehow, I still haven't found the "right" way to continue my French learning. I jump back and forth between authentic materials and typical foreign language stuff, ranging from very basic to advanced, and I'm not sure if any of this is working. I know, I know, I should stick to a few sources and wait for the results :). Have I ever mentioned that French was always the language I most struggled with? And that I made a very bad classroom experience with in just in the very beginning... pretty traumatic ;) English and German My English & German studies weren't that interesting (or intensive, for that metter) recently, so I don't have anything interesting to share. I did get to speak German for a couple of hours, and to interpret from and into German and prepare myself for the job before, mostly by reading in German, but that's it. English was mostly about watching movies, reading articles on the Internet and spending time on HTLAL :). All in all, the lazy time is hopefully over, and so is my update, which was supposed to be so much shorter. Now I feel ready for TAC 2013 on Team Viking and Nebun :). Wish me good luck! Edited by Julie on 03 January 2013 at 3:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 68 of 140 03 January 2013 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Seems like colds and the flu are making their way to everyone. I hope you are feeling better soon! Good luck with all your goals for 2013. I'm looking forward to reading your log! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 69 of 140 07 January 2013 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Simply: I love your log.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4356 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 70 of 140 07 January 2013 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nice log. We are teammates so I'll be here often! Good luck with your goals, although you don't seem to need it. :)
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 71 of 140 08 January 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for dropping by and following my log! I'll try to keep it interesting.
@Cavesa: it's so nice to hear, especially as I found your posts about watching TV series so inspiring! @renaissancemedi: thank you so much! And I need all the luck I can get :) I've got to say I only make a good impression ;). Beyond this nice image of an almost-well-organized learner there is a great deal of chaos, fear, and simple laziness and procrastination ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 72 of 140 10 January 2013 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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The Swedish week: 04.01.2013-09.01.2013
During the last few days, I focused on Swedish mostly. It wasn't the most reasonable thing to do (I really really should concentrate on French and German at the moment) but boy, that was fun! Vikings, I officially hate you for making me focus on Swedish ;P Swedish - Inspired by Emme and Kez, I watched movies on svtplay.se. I started by watching "Kan du vissla Johanna?". I watched only the first twenty minutes or so: I felt like I missed to much, and it was difficult to follow the story. The movie is available till 23.01 - I liked it quite a lot so maybe I'll give it another try. - Then I watched a popular Swedish Christmas movie, "Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton". I even read fragments of the Wikipedia article about it. The movie was easier and very enjoyable, I can well understand why it is so popular! I would rewind quite a lot to understand the movie better, and I checked some words in the dictionary. Sometimes I would use Swedish subtitles, sometimes I would switch them off. Unfortunately, the subtitles don't match the audio (it's an abbreviated version, which is generally good but not optimal for those using subtitles movies to learn foreign languages). I watched the movie 1,5 times, and I may re-watch it again, especially as I wasn't very focused during th end part of the movie. The movie is available till 23.01, if anyone wonders. - Finally, I started watching "Mysteriet på Greveholm" - a children series which consists of 24 episodes, ca. 13 minutes each. I've watched 8 episodes so far (ca. 100 minutes) and I love it! Although it's for children, it is really enjoyable and funny (and I used to love series of this kind as a child). Most importantly, I am able to get most of the story! Which I still can't believe :). I have subtitles switched on, and the fun part is I often understand sentences that were left out in subtitles. I decided not to rewind or use the dictionary too often, and I only refer to the dictionary when I'm really interested in a particular word, or when I really want to fully understand a given sentence. The series is available till 23.01 as well (which is actually a motivating factor ;)) - you don't wanna miss it! (Emme gave some more links to videos that are available abroad, if you haven't seen the post.) - svenskamedsang.weebly.com - I found this website and enjoyed it a lot, too. The author, Eva Bornemark, recorded short songs in Swedish, written specially for Swedish learners. I wish I found this a bit earlier (I know quite a lot of vocabulary already) but it is still a useful and interesting resource. The songs are very melodic and easy to sing along, so that's what I did. According to the author, this helps with learning Swedish pronunciation. - I also learned/revised some vocabulary at quizlet.com. I didn't know the website before, and it's no Anki, but I found it useful as one of the users, mmancall, published sets of words from the course book used in my class ("Svenska Utifrån"). With these sets, the option "Play game: Scatter" worked best for me. There is also another set with expressions from the same book, which I haven't tested. I haven't tested flashcards at spellic.com for the same book either. If you by any chance find an Anki/SuperMemo/other database with vocab from "Svenska Utifrån", please let me know! - I read a short story from "Små stycken av Stockholm" by Rainer Alander. The stories are very short (no more than 4 pages, and there aren't many words per page), and written in simple Swedish. Very learner-friendly, I would say, I didn't even have to use a dictionary a lot. As a bonus, the title of the first story is "En polska", and the last story is "De polska hästarna", so it seems like a must at least for Swedish learners from Poland ;)). - I also went to my Swedish classes (5 x 1,5 h) and revised some material from "Svenska Utifrån", mostly by listening to CDs, and repeating sentences after the Swedish original. - Last but not least, I installed the Swedish keyboard setting on my computer. It's not even all that complicated - I was afraid I would have to re-learn all the punctuation marks all over again, and it doesn't seem to be the case: the Swedish setting is very similar to the German one, with the exception of å in the place of ü (and a couple of less relevant differences). Please, don't prove me wrong ;), don't deprive me of the illusion that typing in Swedish may actually be easy (I know, I know, I shouldn't complain about it when other people learn how to type in Russian, not to mention other languages, but there is nothing more annoying than looking for this stupid semi-colon* in a hurry!). * to be replaced by the name of any punctuation mark you are very much in need at the moment. French My French suffered a bit recently from the increased motivation to learn Swedish ;). Still, I managed to study it every day, which is already a habit. - I watched TV5 Monde a bit and listened to RFI podcasts. - I also went back to "Profesor Pierre: Słownictwo" by the Polish publisher Edgard. It is basically an SRS program with a ready-made Polish-based vocabulary database, including audio recordings of the words and sample sentences. There are also analogical programs for English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian vocabulary. I love this series, used all of the programs except for Italian (well, Russian probably doesn't count either - I beta-tested it a few years ago but other than that, I didn't use it). Although I've never completed any course, I've learned a lot of words this way. Maybe I'll complete the French course this time (I started this in 2008, which I'm kindly reminded of every time I launch the program ;)). There are still over 600 words to learn, and a GREAT deal of overdue revisions. - Inspired by emk, I read a few pages of "Le Lotus bleu" from the Tintin series (not enough to share any reflections here, other than that I wonder if I'm going to like it - I haven't really read a lot of comics / graphic novels since my childhood). - I also unpacked Französisch - Sprachkalender 2013 by Langenscheidt, which I brought from Germany a long time before January, 1st. For those of you that might not be familiar with the concept, the book is basically a calendar with some little activities in French for every day of the year (well, technically not every, as there is just one card for Saturday & Sunday each week). I bought this as a motivation device to make myself study at least a little French everyday, and as such, I don't feel like I need it that much any more. Still, I'm using it and I will share my reflections in a few weeks. English and German I have to admit I neglected my German quite a bit recently (may I blame this to Swedish as well? Hmm, it doesn't seem very plausible... so it's all my fault, I guess). I did something every day, but "something" is not good enough. On the bright side, I'm in the middle of a novel in English :). I know it sounds hardly impressive (and it's not even "serious" literature) but the avid reader that I was in my child and teen years, I don't read many novels these days. Getting an e-book reader did help a bit, though. Last year I read 8 novels in English, if I recall correctly (some of them actually in their paper editions), which means some progress was already made. This year hopefully will be better. Edited by Julie on 10 January 2013 at 2:09am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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