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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 41 of 360 08 January 2011 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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As I anticipated in the previous post, with the new year I intend to explore Japanese for some time (days, weeks, months? Who knows?) and see if I enjoy studying it and if it’s at all feasible with my busy schedule to pick up another language. Since joining the forum last spring, I’ve succeeded in staying focused on just two languages (Swedish and French). That’s why I think I now deserve a little reward consisting in some weeks of guilt-free dabbling in Japanese.
Where do I start from? Well, I’m an absolute beginner, even though I’ve learnt a handful of hiragana and some greetings over the years. In fact, Japanese together with Chinese, Spanish, and French (the latter before I started studying it in earnest last spring) have always been my go-to languages when I succumb to wanderlust. What do I hope to achieve in the language? I don’t want to set myself any target, but just enjoy the journey while it lasts. Even if I decided to continue studying the language, I can’t see myself pursuing any kind of proficiency in Japanese (of course, I may change my mind if I fall madly in love with the language). Right now I just want to have a little fun and find out more about a language which is the most exotic of all the languages I’ve studied so far. Which materials am I using? Well, I’m a hoarder when it comes to language materials, so I’m spoilt for choice. Between textbooks, university handouts, podcasts, online resources, etc. amassed in the past decade or so, I think I have enough materials to last me a lifetime. Seriously, though, I want to use something that gently eases you into the language as I don’t feel like doing intensive studying right now. That’s why I’m planning to use Irasshai as my main resource, which seems quite gradual and, according to reviews on this forum, very slow. And what about the other languages? Of course I want to continue working on my Swedish (right now I’m very happy with how it’s going) and French (which I’m grown a little tired and listless with). If I can, I also hope to have enough time and energy to brush up my German. And of course I love the idea of aiming to read at least a book in each of my main languages in 2011, as I wrote in one of my last posts. So, that’s all for this first post of the year. Wish me luck with language learning in 2011! I wish everybody a serene and productive new year! 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 42 of 360 20 February 2011 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
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High time for an update!
Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been far too busy with work and other things to have any free time for my hobbies. That’s why I’ve had to put language learning as well as participating in this forum on the back burner. That’s a pity, because over the Christmas holidays I had acquired a nice momentum, all the benefits of which I have now lost. I’ve managed to steal some half an hour here and there for languages, but as everyone on this forum knows, the only way to see results (and consequently maintain enthusiasm) is by working a little every day: what I’ve done over the past month and a half amounts to so little it really hasn’t done any difference. The situation is not likely to change in the coming weeks, so I’m somewhat sad. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5698 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 43 of 360 20 February 2011 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||
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You entitled your thread "Emme's Small Steps" so I think you did foresee the actual situation. Primavera
comes, away sadness :). 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 44 of 360 20 February 2011 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
You’re right, but sometimes it seems that small becomes really infinitesimal and it gets a little depressing! But thank you for cheering me up! 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 45 of 360 03 April 2011 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven’t posted an update for some time now. That’s because I haven’t had much to report about my language progress in the past few months. The problem is, I’ve been quite busy lately and so I haven’t actually studied. Of course I’ve kept doing some passive work like listening to the radio or to podcasts and watching TV-programmes in my target languages, but I’ve almost never found the time to actually sit down at a desk with a book and do some serious studying.
The only positive note is that a couple of weeks ago -- at long last -- I’ve started playing around with Japanese, which was something I had promised I would do at the end of last year. I’m not sure whether I will keep on studying Japanese seriously and long term, but I’ve decided to start a log devoted to it. Should I go the distance, the log will chronicle my journey towards some kind of proficiency; should I drop the language, the log will quietly sink to the bottom of the humongous language learning log page of the forum and I will quickly forget it. 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 46 of 360 31 December 2011 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quick end-of-year update:
I haven’t had much time for language studies this year, especially in the last couple of months, but at least I’ve managed to achieve what I set out to do at the beginning of 2011, namely reading a book (or more) in each of my main languages. So apart from the several novels in Italian and in English I regularly read, I’ve read a couple of Donna Leon’s Brunetti crime novels translated into German, Daniel Pennac’s Comme un roman in French, and a children/YA Swedish novel Vitterväder by Börje Lindström. I don’t intend to make any New Year Resolution for 2012, which I’m sure I won’t be able to keep. I just hope I’ll have more time to devolve to languages and to participating in this forum. 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 47 of 360 29 April 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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High time for an update.
If anyone is reading this log, I’m sure you’ve noticed that my greatest problem is the lack of consistency. My passion for languages must always contend with my other passion: literature. The first months of 2012 were mainly dedicated to reading, but now it’s time I worked some more on my Swedish and German (and if I can manage it, even my French). Last week, for instance, I spent a fair amount of time with all of my languages: 6hrs ¼ with German, 2hrs ½ with French and 2hrs with Swedish. I know that because I’m trying to implement the Pomodoro Technique to improve my productivity, and make sure that the time I spend studying is really spent studying and not wasted mucking around. Anyway, the forum is abuzz right now with the Super Challenge that Solfrid Cristin proposed some weeks ago (100 books and 100 films in 20 months between 1 May 2012 and 31 December 2013). I must admit that I admire the chutzpah it takes to take on such a challenge, and while I’d love to take part I know it’s really not for me and I would only set myself up for failure if I chose to try it. Moreover, my focus language now is German and I’m well beyond the B1 level (at least on paper), which is the cut-off point for the official challenge. Yet, the idea of forcing yourself to get huge amounts of input in the language is probably just what I need right now to get the kind of fluency I sorely lack in German, so I’ve decided to try my own personal mini-Super Challenge: 25 books and 100 films (or TV-programmes or radio/podcasts) from the 1st of May to the end of 2013. While it is much more manageable that the original one, it’s still challenging enough and I’d be surprised if I actually could do it given the fact that I’m so hopeless at finishing long-term projects. Well, we’ll see how it goes this time. 2 persons have 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 48 of 360 01 May 2012 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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One film watched, 99 still to go.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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