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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 97 of 360 19 January 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rapport 5/7 done!
--- Actually it’s going pretty well! I can follow the news rather easily: I can’t claim that I understand every little detail, but I get more than just the gist of what they say. I find it a useful exercise, especially since the live streaming has no subtitles so you’re bound to focus on listening rather than reading. I must admit, though, that other programmes (whether entertainment ones or TV-dramas) are much more fun to watch than the news. Most of what gets covered in the news is, as usual, rather sad, tragic or at least worrisome! However, I can only encourage you to try it: it’s a great way to assess your listening comprehension level. Doing this challenge so early in the year means that, whether or not you find it too difficult right now, you have the chance to establish a benchmark. Later this year we can repeat this challenge and notice how much we have improved. Lycka till! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 98 of 360 19 January 2013 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rapport 6/7 done!
Jag tittade på Rapport idag också, men den är kortare på helgerna. I morgon slutar jag den här challengen. I’ve watched Rapport today as well, but it’s shorter at the weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to conclude this challenge. --- Corrections are always welcome in my log! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 99 of 360 21 January 2013 at 1:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rapport 7/7 done!
Jag är klar med challengen! I’m through with the challenge! --- As I wrote last Sunday, I didn’t watch much online TV (either Swedish or German) in the first fortnight of 2013, but this week I made up for that by not only watching the news every day but also the entire Julkalendern: Mysteriet på Greveholm - Grevens återkomst. The series, being a children programme, was quite easy to follow, but now I’m looking forward to watching some thriller or other grown-up drama, because Mysteriet på Greveholm was rather “barnslig” (if I’m not mistaken, that means “childish”). Edited by Emme on 21 January 2013 at 1:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kez Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4358 days ago 181 posts - 212 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Swedish | Message 100 of 360 21 January 2013 at 9:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Great job Emme!
Maybe you can watch Solsidan (Can't find any Eng/Swe subtitles for it though, just for the first 3 episodes) and I'm planning to watch Walander, which seems to be quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5167 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 101 of 360 21 January 2013 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey Emme! Nice to see you're keeping up with Assimil. I'm stuck a lesson 57. I've been
travelling the whole January visiting relatives, and even today, when I'm stuck at my hometown, I still haven't been able to carry on my TAC activities properly because my brother won't leave the laptop for the 4 hours I need. I've set the alarm for waking up early in the morning tomorrow so I can have a chance to study. Our Assimil Russian was easier at the first half of the lesson, because I had aleady studied a little Russian from other surces, but now, like I reported in my log, it's a bit too much information w/o the necessary sistematization a language like Russian demands. But we'll see! I plan to take another Assimil when I'm done with this one. Looking forward to hearing about your progress! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 102 of 360 22 January 2013 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hej Kez! Thanks! It seems from your log that you too are working steadily to improve your Swedish. I’m especially curious about your plan to systematically learn all those terms and expressions you need on a daily basis, so that you can lead your normal life in Swedish instead of in English or Dutch. I’ll make sure to follow your progress, because that method sounds interesting.
Hej Expugnator! As you probably know I’m quite a few lessons behind you with Assimil Russian because I chose to plan a revision wave between the passive wave and the active one. You had the benefit of already knowing a little Russian before starting the experiment, but I had to slow the crazy pace of Assimil down a little, because I’m an absolute beginner. Anyway, everything you experienced previously, I’m now facing as well. The second wave is turning into some kind of a farce: whereas I could do the first week’s lessons (i.e. lessons 1-7) with a certain ease, because I’ve ended up learning those short, easy texts by heart, those of the second week are becoming too hard: I’ve forgotten too many words to produce a translation without glancing at the Russian text, and my grammar is too shaky for my translations to be reasonably devoid of errors. As you say, the grammar is presented in a very unsystematic way, and I find it hard to make sense of all the piecemeal explanations you find in the notes. I still hope I’ll get a decent smattering of Russian from this course, and I still intend to work through Assimil before moving on to another course, but I’m really looking forward to restarting Russian again from the beginning with another textbook, hoping this time to find the process easier and less frustrating. Edited by Emme on 22 January 2013 at 8:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Silbermond Diglot Groupie United Kingdom xuexisprachen.wordprRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4357 days ago 64 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 103 of 360 23 January 2013 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Emme!
Thanks for your reply about Assimil; it's really helpful. I'm finding a similar problem - I have the 2011 100 lesson version, but coming from somewhere with very little background knowledge of the language (and no other experience with Slavic languages) does mean that yes, I'm having some trouble keeping up. Retaining vocabulary is difficult and I feel like once I get to the active wave, I'm going to have to go through it all over again because I won't have remembered as much as I should have. I'm still going to use it because it is pretty helpful, but I may need to add a revision wave like you've done. I have used another Assimil course before, for Swahili, but it had a French base and because I don't speak French I spent a lot more time on the comments than I did on learning Swahili! That's why I was wondering what you thought of the course for Russian as well - I've never managed to get to the active wave before, haha! Congratulations on finishing your challenge as well! :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 104 of 360 28 January 2013 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I’ve been thinking about quitting the Assimil experiment. I’ve put more than 70 hours of textbook studying into this experiment (not counting the innumerable hours of repeated listening to the CDs) with diminishing returns.
The past couple of weeks have been quite difficult, as you may have read in the posts above. The truth is that with the active wave becoming an impossible feat and the lessons in the passive wave becoming not only longer and longer but also more complex, what in the beginning was a nice experiment on the efficacy of Assimil is now turning into an experiment in futility. And above all I’m no longer having fun. When I used Assimil French a couple of years ago, I found the final stretch of the course far too hard and demoralizing: so it seems that the problem with a learning curve that is too steep for dedicated but not monomaniacal learners is not a problem of Assimil Russian alone, but of Assimil in general. But with Russian the limit was reached much earlier (well, the course also has about 40 fewer lessons, so it was probably to be expected). I don’t want to quit the experiment, but right now I see no purpose in the hours I spend (waste?) on it. I seem not to be able to progress any further with this method. I need to avoid burning out and the only solution I see is dropping the experiment or at least the rule that says that you can only use Assimil and no other resource for the duration. This is something that most participants have done anyway, everybody adapting the rules to their needs. That seems like the wisest choice at the moment. I’ll think about it for some more days, but right now I’m on the verge of giving up on Assimil Russian. Edited by Emme on 28 January 2013 at 9:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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