|
 |
Multi Language Ultimate Fixup | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Gitaa Brother Newbie United States Joined 5093 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 3 20 May 2012 at 5:32am | IP Logged |
|
The story so far: I have learned Japanese and German up to completing
the Assimil active wave, and struggling through a few readers. I had tried various other methods, but I seem to have reached a dead end. In March, I decided that I would give up any idea of learning by any kind of optimal or balanced method and instead concentrate on things that I knew would work for me. This meant taking things in separate stages. The first step is to get fluent in reading. Then when I had enough facility with processing the language, that I could listen to spoken German for a good length of time without needing a Zen like level of effort to not think in English, I would start actively listening for hours at a time. After doing this for a while, I would have this large cloud of the language buzzing in my head, and I could start plucking stuff out of the cloud and start actively thinking in the language without forcing myself. Finally I could go over the loose points in the Grammar, fix problems with my speaking, and begin actively using the language. I decided to take the Harry Potter approach, reading through a translation and figuring out all the things I don't know. I'm not into Harry Potter, so I used the German translation of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson which I am pretty intimately familiar with. This worked out well. The 300 pages of highly compact, idiomatic English were transformed into 450 pages of not so idiomatic German. Also, the book is written in the present tense which a blessing. I read it in three passes: once to get the gist of it, once to try to figure everything out, underline everything I didn't know, and then look up the underlined words in the English text and write their meaning in the margins, and a third pass just reading it. I am 2/3's of the way through the third pass and things are going well. I can read a page in about five minutes or half my normal slow reading speed. I also remember most of the unknown words, so my vocabulary has been improving without me consciously trying to work on it. I am planning on following through with this for German (and as soon as possible since my time is completely free and I have a real use for it), and then doing the same for Japanese. I have also given in to the urge to start with Assimil New French with Ease. I resisted for months, because the last thing I wanted was to have a third foreign language at an unusable stage. Still, whenever I listened to French music or watched a French movie, the urge came up again. So I have decided to just do this for fun with no expectation of ever taking it past the introductory level. It isn't conflicting with anything, because I am just going to try blind shadowing the lessons for the next few weeks. Actually, it is helpful because this time around, I am reading up on the phonetics first and making sure my mouth is producing the correct sounds. That experience will be helpful in fixing lingering problems I have in the other languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Gitaa Brother Newbie United States Joined 5093 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 3 22 May 2012 at 2:27am | IP Logged |
|
Last month, I decided once and for all to start listening to German
until it started to click. I downloaded the episodes of Elektrischer Reporter, a ZDF cyberculture show. This has its pluses and minuses as far as listening goes. It begins with a regular news type feature which throws in all kinds of the wall video clips (e.g. naked ladies in tubs, a Flash Gordon style dance troupe, Gamera) that can really distract the struggling viewer. Then they interview a Twitterer, with a non professional speaking voice that is challenging to listen to. Finally, it has a future scenario sequence with has a cartoon illustrating what they are saying which is helpful. It was a serious struggle to listen. I tried different techniques like just listening to the words being said without trying to figure anything out. Eventually I started just focusing on one sentence at a time and if I couldn't figure it out I would jettison it from my head and work on the next one. I did this for a few days and I was able to keep up listening at times for a few minutes before it all fell apart again. I was kind of impressed with this, but I did not take it any further and went back to just reading. I started watching the programs again today, and everything just comes through crystal clear without any deliberate effort. It's not perfect. I can still tune it out if I think something in English, but it is more like pressing a mute button on and off. There is no mental maelstrom that gets triggered every time I get distracted. The reading I did in between must be responsible for most of this. I suppose I will never know whether doing all that listening made any contribution. ------ I bought the Japanese edition of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle today, which I hope to start working on in September. If I was doing a half hour of French every day, then I would only be halfway through at this time. When I am intensely working through a book, I really can't be doing anything else with languages. It may be only a half hour waking time, but it can still invade my dreams, which I will need to be 100% dedicated to Japanese. Also, in the few weeks before that, I will need a Kanji refresher and that will turn out to be the thing I am doing with the half hour I manage to set aside every day. So I can definitely rule out French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gitaa Brother Newbie United States Joined 5093 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 3 29 July 2012 at 10:46pm | IP Logged |
|
I finally decided to just work through Assimil's New French With Ease,
purely for fun. I became interested in phonetics after watching the videos on the towerofbabelfish website, and the Assimil was sitting on my bookshelf tempting me, so I gave in. I did a lot of blind shadowing of the recordings in June, trying to get the phonetics right. Then in July I started one lesson a day. I tried following the system specified in Professor Arguelles's video Shadowing Step by Step, but after a while I decided that shadowing was not really working for me. It seemed to be hindering my pronunciation more than helping it, if for no other reason than I end up putting an effort into imitating the female voices. I also think I can predigest the recordings well enough by just listening to them intently a few times. I did stick with the idea of a ten lesson window, where I would listen to ten lessons in a row, reading along with the English for a new lesson and then over the next ten days moving gradually over to the French text. For the lesson of the day I would read it over. I would then try to get the pronunciation down correctly by going over it line by line, listening to the recording and then repeating, then reading it out loud with an exaggerated fake French accent, and finally reading it as fast as I could, which I found really helpful for pronunciation. Finally, I would go through the exercises trying to catch everything on the first couple of listenings. I was pleased with how things were going, and I feel I have established the right routine that I would use with any Assimil book. It is certainly a good way to spend an half hour or so a day doing something different, EXCEPT when my primary activity of the day is learning another language. Learning French was definitely absorbing all my interest away from learning German. I did work on German during this time: reading a few books and making an Anki deck for the genders, but it really feels as if I haven't. Also, after getting my German into something usable, I am planning on using all the spare moments I can squeeze out of the day for reading Japanese. So after lesson 26, I decided to stop. Even if I never try French again, it was a worthwhile experience. I have a much better idea of how to go about getting a workable accent in a foreign language. Also, now French has gotten to feel ever so slightly like a chore. This should be enough to stop me from getting the feeling, every time I am a bit discouraged with German, that I should instead be putting this effort into a language I am actually interested in, like French (Why am I working on German? I picked up a bit of it when I was in Berlin, and I was thinking of moving there so I decided it would be helpful to learn it to a survival level, and also that by learning a non-exotic language I might be able to figure out how to move ahead with my Japanese study. These two goals are a bit contradictory, and I had no idea how to learn to a survival level, so I just tried to learn German. It did however give me a much better idea of how to learn Japanese, which I am planning on putting into practice soon). So this leaves me with the rest of the Summer to work on my German (Also, Deutsch schlicht und einfach in fünf Wochen ). The first priority is pronunciation, breaking it down and building it up. My experience with French tells me that I should be able to do this in five weeks, at least to a level where I need outside help to figure out what's still wrong with it. Also of the highest priority is to be able to produce the language. I just read "How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately" by Bois V. Shekhtman (h.t. emk), and I would like to follow through on his suggestions by writing a lot on Lang-8. There are other things I can do of much lesser priority: more reading and listening and possibly going through select chapters of Hammer's Grammar along with the workbook. If I make further log posts, they should be in German. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
