Elle_Diablo Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 4030 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: French
| Message 1 of 4 15 December 2013 at 1:38pm | IP Logged |
Hello everyone!
My name is Estela. I am a 36 year old American. I've caroused this forum for quite
some time, but I just discovered these language challenges late this year so now I'm
participating. I signed up for the latest 6 weeks challenge with the @6WCBot at
Twitter under the name Emohibe (with French). I sometimes post as Elle Diablo. I'm
Internet shy, and I can't decide whether to go with a pseudonym or use my real name!
I have studied French in High School, but not much was absorbed, nor did I make stellar
grades. I want to continue with French because it seems a waste to have spent all
those years on it. I've always liked it and it feels familiar.
I live in Sweden with my husband and 1-year old daughter. There is strong incentive
for me to learn Swedish, but the motivation is severely lacking. The Komvux/SFI/SAS
circuit was not pleasant and has played a role in my ambivalence towards the culture.
I completed several months in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) at the adult learning center
(Komvux) and made an MVG (mycket väl godkänt) score. The scoring was then changed to
'A through F'. I moved to the north and completed Svenska som andraspråk 1 (Swedish as
a second language) with a C grade.
Earlier this year, I took an online test at Folkuniversitetet which is a for profit
school (I think! It is expensive is all I know). I scored a B1 in Swedish. I felt it
was disappointingly low, but more of what I expected my level to be. By now, my level
has probably sunk lower.
My experience speaking with natives is lacking. I understood southern Swedish very
well, but the north seems to have so many harder dialects. It is a little silly
because I've lived here much longer!
I would like to focus on the positive going forward and see what I can do by myself to
improve my language skills in Swedish and French. I want to participate in something
that will really push me to overcome what seems like an impassable obstacle.
French
I have taken a beginner's French class at Medborgarskolan last February. I would like
to improve it to a solid B1 at the end of 2014, but that might realistically be an A2.
There are French speaking people in town, but they are very busy with work and
children! So I have to get my French fix online.
Swedish
I would like to raise it to a B2 by the end of the year. I've considered using online
tutors to help with my speaking.
I use ANKI, LingQ and Barron's Easy French. I am planning on participating in italki's
6 week challenge with French if they have one in January. I have read the first part
of Benny Lewis' Language Hacking Guide, but goal setting and consistency is sometimes
difficult. That's why the challenges seem to help.
Per the Language Hacking Guide, I have a blog. http://diablofortunato.wordpress.com/
Thanks for reading! Looking forward to 2014!
Edited by Elle_Diablo on 16 December 2013 at 1:01am
2 persons have voted this message useful
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Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French
| Message 2 of 4 15 December 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
Välkommen!
I’m very happy you’ve joined the forum and our Scandinavian Team for 2014.
We’re still organizing the teams for TAC ’14 and at the moment it may appear that we are rather chaotic. Don’t let that discourage you! The confusion usually clears up by the end of January and as soon as every team hits its stride you’ll see that HTLAL is a great forum where you can find similarly-minded language enthusiasts who are always more than willing to help, spur and support one another.
I’m sure that you’ll be a great addition to our community and that the journey towards proficiency we’re all on together will be thrilling one.
I can’t wait to read about your progress in Swedish and your opinions on Sweden as a language learner living in the country itself.
Bonne chance avec le français aussi!
1 person has voted this message useful
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Othar Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6210 days ago 185 posts - 205 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Norwegian, Turkish
| Message 3 of 4 29 December 2013 at 6:39am | IP Logged |
Hi!
I'm looking forward to following your progress. What ressources and/or methods do you use?
1 person has voted this message useful
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Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French
| Message 4 of 4 25 April 2014 at 7:30pm | IP Logged |
Hej!
After the recent HTLAL outage I’ve been checking out the status of our team members to alert those who may not have already found out on their own that the forum is back online that it’s time for everybody to come back. So I’ve noticed that you’ve been logged-in as recently as yesterday and yet you haven’t posted for a very long time.
So I was wondering: would you like to update us on how your Swedish is coming along? Is there anything we fellow teammates can do to make you feel more welcome on the forum, have a more active interaction with the team and maybe even enjoy learning Swedish more than you seem to do now if one judges by your introductory post above?
We like to delude ourselves that everyone who happens on this forum will have a good time here but I’m sure this is not always the case. But as a community we sincerely aim to create an encouraging environment for all language-learners (not just for the die-hard language lovers) so let us know how we can help!
Lycka till!
2 persons have voted this message useful
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