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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 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 65 of 360 14 November 2012 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Experiment
Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine. I'm two weeks into this experiment and today I've finished lesson 14, i.e. I've completed my second review lesson. I was a bit disappointed last week when I found out that starting from lesson 7 they no longer use phonetic transcriptions. If you consider that Assimil French gives the phonetic transcription of the dialogues up to lesson 14, I found it slightly disconcerting that in Il nuovo russo senza sforzo they opt to let you wade through a sea of Cyrillic symbols without help less than a week into the course. In the last few days, though, I've come to realize how much quicker you learn the new alphabet when you have no other option. If they had continued with the transcriptions I would probably have used them instead of focusing on the Russian. Of course, I haven't mastered the alphabet completely yet, but I made great progress in the last seven days. From lesson 8 they introduce a little bit of Cyrillic handwriting, by printing a few words or sentences in a handwritten script and inviting you to read and copy them (unfortunately they offer no other explanation to the exercise). Another little disappointment about the review lessons is that the dialogues are not included in the CDs, so you can only use them as a reading exercise. In other Assimil courses I know (German, Swedish, etc.), dialogues in the review lessons are recorded, but that may be true only of the latest generation of Assimil courses (published starting from the 2000s). So far I've presented my "objective" observations about the book, but now I'd like to add a few personal observation about my experience with this course. I'm trying to use the relaxed approach Assimil so fervently advocates and that's why I limit my study-time to half an hour every day (when I have time -- and most days I don't--I try to spend an additional half an hour working on the Cyrillic alphabet and handwriting). In that little time I hardly finish the entire lesson. In particular I usually skip the written translation exercise at the end which I leave for the active wave. I'm not retaining much of what I'm learning, just some words and snippets of language, and this is not the way I usually study; but I must admit that moving on to the next lesson every day in any case is a very liberating aspect of this new way of studying. Edited by Emme on 14 November 2012 at 8:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 66 of 360 20 November 2012 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Experiment Update
What I've found out about Russian so far: - the alphabet takes time to get used to, and what gives me the biggest problem are those letters that look the same as in the Latin alphabet but indicate a totally different phoneme: it's hard to get rid of automatisms acquired and perfected over years and years of reading and writing. - Russian pronunciation is tough. Even though I'm aware that the audio on the Assimil CDs is unnaturally slow, I still find it hard to listen and repeat what I hear. I find it incredibly difficult to tell apart all the different sounds, and even harder to try and imitate them. - Russian grammar is not as scary as I thought. I've always heard that Russian grammar is tough for speakers of Romance or Germanic languages, but actually I've not encountered anything yet that confounds me. Granted, I've only just scratched the surface and I've been exposed to just a tiny fraction of all the rules I'm sure there are (and I've hardly met irregularities yet), and one thing is understanding the theory of a grammar point and another thing is mastering its active usage, but right now I find pronunciation and vocabulary much harder to navigate. - there are many more cognates with Romance and Germanic languages than I expected, and that is a very pleasant surprise. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 67 of 360 22 November 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Experiment Update
Three weeks into this experiment and I'm starting to feel the need to slow down to have more time to try and learn something. Rushing through one lesson every day in only half an hour is really just that: rushing. I'm not saying that these 3 weeks have been badly spent: on the contrary, in just 21 days I've been exposed to a fairly big chunk of the language both in terms of vocabulary and grammar structures. Even taking into account different formats and layouts, I doubt there are other courses out there that cover 150 pages of content in just three weeks. The problem is that I don't have the time to focus on that material in a reasonable way and the hope that any of it may stick is very little. So I suppose now it's time to start reviewing the previous lessons while at the same time moving forward with the new ones. So from today I will start what we may refer to as a 'First & 1/2 Wave': I'll go through the lessons one more time, hoping to be able to assimilate something more. Remember that my Russian course is just 70 lessons long, so if I keep my pace I will end almost at the same time with the other partecipants anyway. I plan to alternate a review lesson and a new one on successive days. I'm not putting any pressure as far as the results I'm expecting at this stage. The work will be just as passive as before, with no attempt at translation or anything like that. Basically I'm just beginning the first wave of Assimil again, but with a little more background in the language this time. I'm quite sure that the hours spent up to now have prepared a modicum of foundations on which it will be easier to build my knowledge. Three weeks ago, I knew absolutely nothing about Russian, now, in a sense, I'm starting again as a false beginner: I have a decent grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet, I have an idea of the basic rules of grammar, and I have acquired a minimum of vocabulary and even though for the moment all these skills are just of the passive kind, I'm sure they will be very helpful. Edited by Emme on 22 November 2012 at 10:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 68 of 360 05 December 2012 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Experiment Update
I’m rather frustrated by today’s review lesson. I’m on lesson 28 but it turned out to be just a list of grammar points covered during the past 6 lessons with some examples but no real explanation! For instance, one of the points covered was the prepositions we’ve encountered up to now: за, по, перед , под, and к. For each they gave the case it is followed by and a couple of examples, but I’ve yet to see an explanation (even a temporary, simplified one) of what morphological changes the various cases require in the following nouns. How can I learn these prepositions then? Just by rote memorizations? That’s not really my learning style. Anyway, the important fact of Assimil is that thanks to it I’ve been studying a little bit of Russian every day for the past 35 days and hopefully I’ve learnt something. I’ve been especially encouraged in the past couple of weeks by my second passive wave (what I’ve called a 'First & ½ Wave' in my previous post) of the first 7 lessons: things do start to make more sense the second time! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 69 of 360 23 December 2012 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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With a very uncharacteristic display of initiative, I’ve decided to take part in TAC 2013, and with all the enthusiasm of the newly-converted not only did I sign up for TAC 2013, but I even joined two teams (Mir and Viking). I’m either very brave or very crazy these days. I wonder if I will come to regret it.
Right now I’m still deciding whether I want to start a new log for the TAC or whether I’ll continue with this one and just modify its title. One thing is for certain: if I just add something like “TAC 2013 – Team MIR & Viking” (which is what I’m contemplating doing right now) I end up with quite an oxymoron, given the original title of this log (“Small Steps”) and the complete meaning of TAC (“Total Annihilation Challenge”). They do represent two very different attitudes towards language learning and more generally two different philosophies towards obstacles in life. And now for something a little more mundane: Assimil Experiment Update I’ve begun the “second wave”. It came to me quite as a surprise a couple of days ago when I reached the end of the lesson and read something like “tomorrow you will begin the second wave”. What with all other Assimil courses being much longer and therefore starting the second wave after 50+ lessons, and the fact that I’ve added a “first and a half wave” to try and give me a better chance of retaining what I’m learning, I had totally lost track of where I was in the journey. The first lesson went reasonably well and it didn’t take too long to do, but I don’t delude myself: they will soon get much harder and longer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 70 of 360 01 January 2013 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Review of 2012
2012 is over and so it’s time to take stock of my language learning over the past twelve months. Low points of 2012 The worst part of the year came last summer and continued into the early autumn, when following the irreparable breakdown of my laptop I lost all my Anki decks (I know, I know, why didn’t I make sure I had a backup copy of those files?) and with those I also lost the will to learn languages. I simply stopped from one day to the next, and it took me almost 5 months to get started again. Highlights of 2012 Two different periods deserve the title of highlights of the year: the first was last spring when thanks to the Super Challenge (actually my version is a mini-Super Challenge) and to the consistent use of the Pomodoro Technique I saw a few weeks of very productive language learning. The second highlight of the year came as a complete surprise. After a summer when I completely neglected language learning, this autumn I was beginning to feel like going back to studying just when Kanewai was organizing the Assimil Experiment. Russian was one of my hit languages, but not one I expected to tackle soon. But as I had Il nuovo russo senza sforzo laying around on my shelves I decided on a whim to try learning Russian, and now I’ve been working on Russian every day for the past two months and for the most part I’ve been enjoying it so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 71 of 360 01 January 2013 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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TAC 2013 – TEAM MIR & VIKING
This year I will take part in the TAC and be part of two teams: Team MIR for Russian and Team Viking for Swedish. I wish all Team MIR and Team Viking members and anybody else who might read this post all the best for 2013 and not only as far as language learning is concerned! I re-post here the introduction to my languages I wrote in early December in the team log of team MIR (so fellow MIR-ers might prefer to skip it).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 72 of 360 01 January 2013 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Current goals for the upcoming year
I’m not very good at making plans, and I’m especially hopeless at keeping them, but here we go anyway (with the caveat that they may be scrapped or overhauled repeatedly over the coming months). FOCUS LANGUAGES Russian My plan is to finish the Assimil Experiment, which means that I shouldn’t use any other learning resources until the experiment is over, even though I sometimes desire to review the grammar, the structures and the vocabulary I’ve encountered in Assimil by using other textbooks. Could you believe that right now I’m longing for some nice grammar exercises? After finishing Il nuovo russo senza sforzo I’ll probably try one or more of my other courses, either online or print ones, just to consolidate the basics. Level goal: go from A0 (more or less) to an A2 would be more than great for me, given how difficult Russian is. Swedish Right now my level is somewhat hard to judge, as my passive skills are not too bad (maybe in the B1 or even B2 area), but my active ones are simply appalling. I’m not even sure I reach an A2 level, probably a more honest appraisal of my writing and speaking abilities would relegate me to the A1 level. That’s because I’m a book hoarder and I’ve been jumping from one beginner’s course to another without ever finishing one. So I’m an ace at introductions and similar opening chapters’ stuff, but when it comes to topics you find just a few chapters later, like adjective agreement, I’m already in trouble. Last spring I spent a few days searching online to find out what textbook is used in which course in various schools around the world so that I could prepare a list of my textbooks approximately graded from A1 to B1/B2. Naturally that’s another useful (but not backed-up) file that got lost when my laptop broke down. I’m not sure whether I will repeat that research, but I think it gave me the right idea to try and stick to one textbook at a time and move progressively to more advanced materials. Apart from traditional textbook learning, I also plan to keep watching a lot of Swedish TV (through SVT Play), and maybe add a novel or two just for fun. Level goal: go from A1/A2 to a solid B1. German I’m in the middle of a mini-Super Challenge with German: i.e. I’ve modified the rules of Cristina’s Super Challenge to adapt it to my needs. As an advanced learner the only option available to me was the Advanced Super Challenge (200 books + 200 films) which was way too demanding for what I could realistically aspire to achieve. So I set myself a completely unofficial mini-Super Challenge with just 25 books to read plus the classic Super Challenge 100 films (or podcasts etc.) to watch by the end of 2013. Apart from the mini-Super Challenge, I might pick up Assimil again or some other textbook. I intend to focus in particular on improving my vocabulary and getting a better feeling for the language in general. Level goal: I’m not sure of my level right now, as my German is rather rusty, but if I could go back to a solid B2, that would be nice. UPKEEP LANGUAGES My upkeep languages are English and French. I’ve not yet planned what to do with those, but don’t be surprised if they get mentioned on this log. DABBLING LANGUAGES I hope to keep wanderlust at bay, but knowing myself, I won’t succeed. Languages that I may end up studying are: Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, … 1 person has voted this message useful |
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