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Revive my old languages and add ...... | ||
Tags: Brushing up a language | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 17 24 August 2010 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
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Back in the olden days I was conversationally capable in a few languages at various times: here are my estimates of where my skills once lay
French: B2: Egyptian Arabic, A2 (struggled with writing) Russian, A2: German, B2 Japanese, B1 (my first language passion - hence knew Joyo kanji) Italian, B2 due to infrequent use and me being lazy my skills have deteriorated over time. I now deal with so many people across the globe, many of whom speak very good English, I want to be able to reciprocate and have a command their own language and acknowledge the effort they have put in to learn English. I want to revive these old languages skills and add a few more: I am actively studying Polish with a native language partner. Other languages on the 'nice to have' list are, at the moment, Danish, Hindi and an African language, Kishwahili perhaps ? and for when I want to watch Star Trek, Klingon? I have a way of learning a new language which, though not perfect, does get me to a position of CEFR-A2 capability quite quickly. I have no expectation of being accepted/mistaken for a native . . . . it happens in Japan but that is purely physical appearance and completely goes away when they see my gaijin face. I don't expect anyone to read this log but as I don't blog anywhere else, if you pop in occasionally I'd be grateful if let me know, as any words of encouragement are welcome. I'm happy to trade English language training online. As I regain skills I will hopefully post in other languages. I am not bothered about saying something incorrectly, if its going to be corrected. I worry about having my mistakes visible forever. I think I need to get over that, eventually. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 2 of 17 24 August 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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Well, considering that I told my language buddy that we would start Polish yesterday I have just had a fair grilling on my Polish pronunciation. ..... every mistake was corrected by her but I have asked her to be ruthless.
I will Anki my Polish vocab later this evening or tomorrow morning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 3 of 17 25 August 2010 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
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POLISH
Didnt get chance to do much Polish speaking today as we had friends round at the time. I managed to get time to practice my reading though. She picked me up on about 10% of my words from a 'blind list' of 100. I can annunciate the word but apart from about 30 words I dont understand what they mean. The target for this week is to read fluently every word I see. I might actually make this! FRENCH: I read Petit Prince online today and understood about 75% of the vocabulary: there were a few participles that I struggled to reduce to infinitives but I am happy with that. RUSSIAN I can still read block Cyrillic: Ok so I sometimes have to voice letter by letter but I realise I can read road signs, placenames et al. I have no intention in delving back into Russian grammar until my Polish improves: I may as well make use of having Polish language buddy, hadnt I. GERMAN Comes tomorrow..... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5237 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 4 of 17 25 August 2010 at 7:34pm | IP Logged |
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What is your system? I am always curious about what people do and try to incorporate things into my regimen all the time.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 5 of 17 26 August 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
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JPike1028
Thanks for reading and asking the question. In one of the other threads which asked about language training I realised I had a huge amount of language exposure over time. I was lucky enough to be given over a year of intensive language traing by the government here which is probably equivalent to FSI courses. I am in a revision stage with Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian and Japanese I recently followed a University course in Italian but found it so slow .. I couldnt be bothered writing the assignments so failed the course but still have jolly good Italian. To learn a language with zero previous knowledge I follow these steps 1. Memorise a phrase book (ideally this will be phrase book spoken by a native where you learn to mimic the rhythm speed volume and pitch of a phrase or sentence: together these make you sound more native). I have an MP3 player loaded with phrases. Experimentally: I have the phrase in English. Once in the L2. Once again in L2 and you are supposed to shadow the second L2 phrase. 2. I learn a load more words which can replace some of the words in my phrase book: In this way I learn 30 - 50 new constructs and 30 - 50 new words per day to slot into my toolkit of phrases. 3. Then go and have a go with the language: it isn't going to be perfect, it will probably not be pretty but it gets you over the (my) hump. Nowadays this could be via Skype etc 4. Watch the Telly !!!! or listen to the radio in your target language. Current affairs are good because you will probably get the same information in your own language when you are not actively studying your target. 5. Once you have had a number of verbal exchanges, buy a decent grammar book and dictionary and study them. 6. Buy/borrow/steal from friends who won't report you to the police; a childrens book and see how you can get on with that. I earned a pay rise for learning German this way. I knew I was going to Germany two weeks before I arrived and two weeks after I arrived I took my first German language exam. If the language you are studying has a Latin script with additional characters - which is my current case with Polish) I was always taught to bring the letters into your usage one by one.... I have materials for Cyrillic but as you are already studying Russian I presume you have mastered Cyrillic. To understand written Arabic I just sat down and learned the 'initial' form of the letters: our teacher then gently led us into various arrangements of initial, intermediate and final letters. Actually it wasn't that gentle!. I am working on a set of materials to recreate something similar to this to be used at ones own pace. To speak Arabic I learned 30 phrase per day and did the same vocabulary building exercise I mentioned earlier. I realise that not all learners have the same mindset & motivation as each other so the numbers may go up :-) or down :-( I also taugh EFL for a year or two and there I consciously examined my own use of English an dpicked up a good smattering of some other languages Urdu, Somali ? but this especially taught me the inconsistancy that a native speaker of English should be aware of. Edited by maydayayday on 26 August 2010 at 12:39am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 6 of 17 27 August 2010 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
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Due to family circumstance this was a particularly poor day for language study.
However, having said that, I can read speak lots of polish words and can give an English word equivalent for about 100 of them. My vocabulary isnt particulary useful because it is structured around examples of the written language. I will think about that learning opportunity over the weekend as it is a [bank] holiday after tomorrow. French Revisited the subjunctive: hhhmmm. That was deceptively simple to recall the correct verb form. Goes back on the plan for Saturday revision class. Russian Read some BBC news feeds but didnt feel at all comfortable with this...... German OMIGOD did i speak this for two years? I have a comprehension of what is going on but HELLO........ not much else I believe German must move up my language list. Japanese Added 20 to the deck. We shall see 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 7 of 17 28 August 2010 at 12:03pm | IP Logged |
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Ignore the date this is the log that I didnt get done yesterday evening.
POLISH: No polish buddy today so I spent half an hour reading my Polish wordlists and adding a few more useful words - my original word list from the pronunciation guide contains some words I am unlikely to need anytime soon, for example, rifle barrel. I plan to dig out a list of the 500 most common polish words and write out some flashcards over the weekend. RUSSIAN: Reading fluency has improved more but as I am not revising any Russian grammar yet, that will do. FRENCH: Listened to an hour of French radio and did a few exercises from my old text book, following advice from forum members to work through the same text books I used before, but at a higher rate. JAPANESE: Learned another 10 kanji. Read a couple of chapters in the Japanese text book. I am in no rush for Japanese yet so will take my time. I have converted my Japanese language tapes to MP3 and can start getting my head around them soon. SPANISH: As this is my number one target language at the moment I will concentrate on this. Today I read several short stories in my parallel reader, did an hour of MT, plus started with "A Spanish learning grammar" which is a set book in the "ab initio" language degree at Cambridge University. I feel my prosody in Spanish is improving. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5059 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 8 of 17 01 September 2010 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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Spent most of the weekend feeling like rubbish, sore throat and temperature.
POLISH: I spent half an hour reading my wordlists and adding the 500 most common polish words and wrote out some flashcards over the weekend. I will convert them to Anki when I can type in Polish, which should be quite shortly. RUSSIAN: Cyrillic Reading has improved more but as I am not revising any Russian grammar yet, that will do. FRENCH: Watched a French film which had a pathetic plot but relatively easy dialogue: some of the terms of speech were modern so I didn't recognise them, so I probably still say the equivalent of 'Ace' from the 80's. Did a few more exercises from my old text book, following advice from forum members to work through the same text as I used before. Task to update modern french slang. JAPANESE: Learned another 70 kanji. Read a chapter in the Japanese text book. SPANISH: Target 1 language of the moment: Over the weekend I read several short stories in my parallel reader, did two hours of MT Advanced, which I am finding quite tedious plus got as far as revising Present, Future, Perfect, Pluperfect, Future Perfect and Conditional perfect tenses in "A Spanish learning grammar". I feel my prosody in Spanish is improving.I still cycle around shadowing my mp3 set. I have set myself a target of DELE C2 Spanish by twelve months. GERMAN: I believe I have worked out what has happened to my German. I can understand the spoken word and speak myself, though at a pitiful level as my range is drastically reduced. This is probably a side effect of how I learned German in the first place by memorising a phrase book and some additional vocabulary and then just getting out there to use it. I only superficially studied the grammar once I could carry on the basic daily colloquial conversations. Other languages I was positively drilled in.... French from a young age until I took high school exams, Arabic & Russian for over a year 45 hours per week between them. I will work up an approach to this over time. I have an hankering to add in another language too and feel a strong attraction to Swedish but as I've seen two Swedish films albeit with sub-titles that may have something to do with it. Edited by maydayayday on 01 September 2010 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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