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Luna’s Log: TAC 2012: Team 德

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Luna Moonsilver
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Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 9 of 29
31 December 2011 at 9:01pm | IP Logged 
silverpolyglot wrote:
Luna I wish you luck in your studies and on the challenge! For
another potential resource
for mandarin, there is this new app for the iPod touch/iPhone called Mindsnacks
Mandarin
that I really recommend. There are a lot of fun games that help you develop your
ability
to rapidly recall and identify certain characters, as well as be able to identify how
the
correct characters should look, develop your ability to hear the tones and know exactly
which tone it is under a certain time limit. There is also a German version, called
Mindsnacks German but without the tones and characters. All the best!

-Silver


Oh wow, I downloaded the app this morning on my way to work and finished the free level
on my lunch break... I love it! :] I've not tried out the sound yet but I'm
certainly considering buying all 50 levels in the next couple of days. What a good
find! Thank you! :D
1 person has voted this message useful



Luna Moonsilver
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 10 of 29
01 January 2012 at 12:49am | IP Logged 
[Goals] January 2012

Here I'm going to summarise my goals for the rest of the month. I've estimated what I
think will be manageable, but really this month will be a test for what I can achieve,
so hopefully February's will be more realistic :].

Just a note: media = films, books, TV. Class work = time spent in class plus time
spent on homework/assignments for each class.


Deutsch
Media - 1,200 minutes in January (20 hours) - 300 minutes/5 hours per week.
Since January is when Tadoku runs, I think I'll far surpass this goal this month,
but we'll see. I've also started watching a soap called Verbotene Liebe which I
kind of totally love ;]. It's a guilty pleasure!
Words Read - 83,333 words in January - 20,833 words per week.
I want to read one million words in German this year, so that's how it breaks down. I'm
averaging books out at about 250 words per page, though I would guess that reading all
the Harry Potter books should take me some way towards meeting the goal. I'm about 150
pages into Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen. With this being a Tadoku
month, again, I should reach this goal.
Words Written - 2,000 words in January - 500 words per week.
Most of this will be on Lang-8 and I'm debating whether or not to include assignments
because they're usually around 750-1,000 words, which will hit half my goal in a few
days. It may end up that I change this to a slightly higher number next month.
Class Work
I don't have any specific goals to meet for my class work - aside from getting it all
done and passing, of course! ;] For January, so far (my Christmas assignments), I have
to read a book - Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stück Zucker - do a translation of a
newspaper article and do a presentation for our thematic module on one of the books
we've read/films we've seen since October.

中文
Media - 1,200 minutes in January (20 hours) - 300 minutes/5 hours per week.
Same as the above; I'll watch dramas on viki.com and some films as well, though I
think I need to watch more things set in modern times than I currently manage ^//^.
I've put Mandarin down as one of my Tadoku languages, though so far I've never managed
to read anything in Mandarin for it. Maybe this month will be the one! :]
Words Written - 1,400 characters in January - 350 per week.
Again, this will be on Lang-8 because I don't do so many writing assignments in class
(we've done the one for this semester already). I'm going to try and do two or three a
week, though this will depend on time constraints. Either way, this goal hopefully
won't be too hard to hit.
Class Work
Same as above, in that I don't have a set goal of hours for this, though I do have a
presentation to do - about my Christmas and what I did - and a couple of exams at some
point in January. I'll probably post the dates when I know them for certain.
Textbook - 960 minutes in January (16 hours) - 240 minutes/4 hours per week.
I want to work through the New Practical Chinese Reader series and finish at least
books two and three this year. We're using book two in class, but we're moving at a
snail's pace (one lesson every two weeks!) and I want to step it up a bit. Hopefully
I'll have finished at least up to lesson twenty-one by the end of January.
Assimil - 20 lessons in January - 5 lessons per week.
I got hold of Assimil - Le Chinois Sans Peine the other day and though the
things at the beginning are very easy, I don't see the point in not using it. Five
lessons a week (minimum) shouldn't be too bad, but I suspect they will be getting
harder towards the end of January, so I can re-assess this for February.

Kiswahili
Assimil - 12 lessons in January - 3 lessons per week.
I'm on lesson six of Assimil Le Swahili Sans Peine and it's already proving to be quite
difficult; partly due to the fact that the whole thing is in French, which I can't
speak. Still, I'm getting through it - it's just taking a while. Three lessons a week
plus entering the words into anki should be enough to increase my level, however
slowly.
Media - 480 minutes in January (8 hours) - 120 minutes/2 hours per week.
I'm not sure what I'll use here except for videos from BBC Swahili. If anyone knows of
any music I can get hold of/any videos I can watch, that'd be greatly appreciated! :]
Textbook - 960 minutes in January (16 hours) - 240 minutes/4 hours per week.
I may or may not end up using the textbook I have - Living Language Swahili - at
this stage. It's mainly because of the whole Assimil-being-in-French thing, but if I do
start using it, I'll be taking it slowly. I don't want to mix myself up too much!

:] Well, that looks all nice and neat and organised, which was what I wanted. There's
no telling if it'll last (probably not), but at least this way I have a plan for the
first month of the year.

I've also got a weekly schedule which I hope I'll stick to:

Sunday: Deutsch, Kiswahili
Monday: 中文, Deutsch
Tuesday: Kiswahili, 中文
Wednesday: Deutsch, 中文
Thursday: 中文, Kiswahili
Friday: Kiswahili, Deutsch
Saturday: -- FREE DAY --

The first language up there is my focus language, of which I'll study at least 30
minutes (but hopefully an hour!) that day. The second is the … well, secondary
language, of which I'll study a minimum of 15 minutes (moving up towards 30 minutes)
that day.

I think that's everything. Yet another massively long post ;]

Hope everyone had/is having/will have a great new year!

新年快乐! Ein gutes neues Jahr!

- Luna :]

edited to fix formatting issues

Edited by Luna Moonsilver on 01 January 2012 at 12:57am

3 persons have voted this message useful



NickJS
Senior Member
United Kingdom
flickr.com/photos/sg
Joined 4967 days ago

264 posts - 334 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 11 of 29
01 January 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged 
Nice schedule! By the way, how do you go about keeping track of the amount of hours that
you have studied?

Do you just take note in a journal etc?
1 person has voted this message useful



Luna Moonsilver
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 12 of 29
01 January 2012 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
NickJS wrote:
Nice schedule! By the way, how do you go about keeping track of the
amount of hours that
you have studied?

Do you just take note in a journal etc?


I've got a spreadsheet I set up, though I think it needs tweaking. Ellasevia's got a good
spreadsheet on his log too (right on one of the final pages somewhere). I do like
spreadsheets :3 they're so neat and organised!
3 persons have voted this message useful



NickJS
Senior Member
United Kingdom
flickr.com/photos/sg
Joined 4967 days ago

264 posts - 334 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 13 of 29
01 January 2012 at 7:17pm | IP Logged 
Just dropping by to post you the list of team logs so that you can find it easily:


Team Logs Here

2 persons have voted this message useful



Luna Moonsilver
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 14 of 29
02 January 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged 
NickJS wrote:
Just dropping by to post you the list of team logs so that you can find
it easily:


Team Logs Here


Yay, thank you :]
1 person has voted this message useful



Luna Moonsilver
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 15 of 29
09 January 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged 
Week 1: 01.01-07.01

Time spent studying (this week): 3hrs 27mins
Time spent studying (altogether): 3hrs 27mins

It's been a bit hectic this week. Well, I say a bit... It's been one of those
horrible weeks where it's the end of the holidays and time to get ready for the normal
routine (in my case, going back to University) and I've just been busy essay-writing
and translating and whatnot.

Still, I got through a couple of Assimil lessons and did some reading - though I'm
hoping to crank up my Tadoku score in the next week or so ;].

By this point, for Mandarin, I wanted to be at about lesson 20 in
the NPCR series. I'm at 17 and it's slow going - but I think it will get better from
now on. We're managing about a lesson every two weeks in class, so I'm hoping I can get
through a lesson a week on my own and then use the classes to reinforce the information
I've already learned.

I've had some good news about my Mandarin class this week, too - we do an hour-long
conversation class with a native speaker every week and since the beginning of this
academic year (October), I've not been able to go to mine because it clashes with
another class I take. I looked at my timetable for this week and it seems to have been
fixed. We'll see, though. It's already taken them this long.

German is still pretty steady. I'm going to try
and read some more Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen, but I need to read
Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stück Zucker by Thursday. On the plus side, I've finished
all the English books I brought with me for this week, so I'll hopefully get through
quite a bit. :]

For Swahili, I really, really need to
keep doing Assimil. It's getting harder already (I'm only on lesson 8!), so I've
started going through the vocab before and entering it into anki - because I'm not
retaining the meanings so well when I'm just translating from French without writing it
down anywhere. I've entered an accompl.sh challenge to complete eight lessons of a
language course this month and I've done one. I've got some way to go!

...That's about it for this week. Things are settling down here (or will be when I get
this 2,000 word essay out of the way -.-) so I'll hopefully be around more often. Well,
no. Hopefully I'll be studying more often ;]. Hahaha.

ETA: fix a typo -.-

Edited by Luna Moonsilver on 09 January 2012 at 7:42pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Luna Moonsilver
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
lunaslanglog.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5086 days ago

77 posts - 99 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 16 of 29
30 January 2012 at 12:22am | IP Logged 
Ugh, so I've had a horrible three weeks that began with a multitude of exams and
assignments and ended with my dog being put down. :/. Not so great, but that's mainly
why I've not been around so much (read: at all) recently. Sigh. I'll do better,
hopefully.

Still, here goes some weekly updates:

Week 2: 08.01-14.01

Time spent studying (this week): 7hrs 38mins
Time spent studying (altogether): 11hrs 5mins


Classes started on the 9th and I suddenly found a load of work that really needed to be
done. Still, one good thing has come out of this term so far: my Mandarin conversation
classes, which I couldn't attend before Christmas due to a clash with another class,
have been fixed! We got a new teacher and though we're just doing drills from the
textbook, it's pretty useful.

Week 3: 15.01-21.01

Time spent studying (this week): 4hrs 55mins
Time spent studying (altogether): 16hrs


Another hectic week; I had a Mandarin presentation on the Tuesday and then an oral exam
on the Wednesday - but hopefully it wasn't so bad. My pronunciation is still
shocking though, so it's something I'm going to work on. There's a lot of
competition in our class at the moment - from September, if we pass, we have a year
out, where we go to the country(ies) of the language(s) we're studying. But for China,
because we can't work and because our university has some kind of partnership with
Beijing Language and Culture University, we can get a scholarship that helps with some
of the cost. There's only five scholarships for a class of about fifteen students (some
of them aren't going to Beijing), so yeah, it's getting interesting.

I did a German presentation on the Thursday of this week too; which I don't really
remember. It was for our film and lit class - so I'm hoping that went okay. I think I
ended up debating with the lecturer when she asked me a question though, so that might
count in my favour? ;]

Week 4: 22.01-28.01

Time spent studying (this week): 11hrs 43mins
Time spent studying (altogether): 27hrs 43mins


This week was better. With a presentation on Tuesday, I finished all but one assignment
for my course (for this semester), meaning that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had
some free time to devote to studying. I've been using memrise a lot more - it's fun,
which helps; plus the points-based system is fun for me and I'm picking up (in German
specifically) a lot of 'basic' words that I should know but don't.

I've also started moving ahead with the New Practical Chinese Reader series. It's the
textbook series we use at uni, but currently we're getting through one lesson every two
weeks, which is highly impractical. I've gone through the texts in lesson 17 in great
detail already, but I'll have to see if I keep it up over the next week or if I'll lose
all motivation again.

Also, this week I signed up for the six week challenge that's going to take place in
February. I'm going to focus on Swahili because I haven't actually touched it for three
weeks and I don't see the point in starting a new language from scratch when I'm never
getting anywhere with this one.

--

Hmm, I think that's about it. I'm planning on posting a bit more when the six week
challenge rolls around - and I'm going to start pestering my teammates as well, so they
don't think I've dropped off the face of the earth! ;]

Hopefully, my posts will be shorter than this in future, too!


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