|
 |
Languages for Maximum Contact | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 1 of 9 08 March 2011 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
|
Greetings,
I found this forum at the beginning of last year and ever since then my language studies have been considerably more successful. The forum is very inspirational, particularly these language logs. I tend to start a bunch of things and not keep up with them (it seems to be a fairly common trait among language learners), but this year I have been going strong since January 2 so I feel like I have been diligent enough now to justify beginning my own language log. Hopefully I will feel as if I need to remain accountable to it. As implied in the topic, my main focus in learning languages is to be able to communicate with as many people as possible, but literature is a significant factor as well. I am currently studying French (just below C1), Japanese (slightly rusty B1), Spanish (A1), Russian (beginning), and Czech (beginning). This is a lot to work on, but I have a lot of free time and will continue to have a lot until mid-August or September, with the exception of most of May when I will be taking the CELTA. The first week of May I will take an intensive Czech course in Prague, which I hope will enable me to choose between Czech and Russian. I intend to spend at least 6 hours on language study every day (with an exception perhaps once every two weeks) with the following goals and methods: French: I am currently living in France so this language is high priority for the moment. When I go to the Czech Republic in May I will probably drop the priority level, but continue trying to improve it and not just maintain it. My current goal is to study at least 2.5 hours a day by L+R with novels, listening to audiobooks, watching the news every day, reading aloud to myself, adding and reviewing vocabulary flashcards from one of the novels I am reading, and either speaking or writing for a few minutes every day (the hardest part). I will try to do each of these activities every day, and except for the last, I have usually succeeded in doing so since January. I’m also reviewing French by using it as my base language for my other language studies (except Japanese). Japanese: I'm just trying to maintain my Japanese, however I am pretty excited about this method of maintenance so I'm investing a bit more time than I probably should. I’m doing scriptorium on Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru by Miyazawa Kenji for about 20 minutes every day, then adding up to five unknown words into Anki, then trying to find one puzzling grammatical construction and spending a limited amount of time trying to figure it out. I will then add the explanation (if found) to a journal that I’ll skim over every other day. Once I have gone through the book in this fashion, I will reread it a chapter (or half-chapter) at a time, first in English and then in Japanese, perhaps writing down vocabulary with kanji for practice. Spanish: My brother speaks a little Spanish and my parents are going to learn, and I also have some friends who speak Spanish, so I’ve got plenty of motivation. I would like to reach an intermediate level of speaking and basic reading fluency by midsummer, so Spanish is really the language I need to put the most effort into. Between my knowledge of French, English, and Latin, this has been going pretty quickly so far. Right now I’m going through Assimil as the core of my studies (doing shadowing and scriptorium à la Arguelles), but supplementing it by L+R with Harry Potter y Piedra Filosofal (which I’ve nearly memorized because I listened to it in French so many times), the BBC Program Mi Vida Loca, a short daily news program, and verb conjugation exercises. I’ll probably be changing my methods a lot for Spanish to ensure maximum interest and progress. My current daily goal is at least 1.5 hours. Russian: I love the sound of Russian and Dostoevsky is probably my favorite author. Next school year I would like to be teaching English in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, or Russia, depending on my experience in Prague and my conclusion about Czech at the end of an intensive language course. I think if I have a solid foundation in Assimil using shadowing and scriptorium, then by the time I sit down to study it seriously (which will be at least after the Celta), it will go more smoothly and be more fun. For right now I’m being relaxed about it, just trying to get a handle on the sounds and writing, which is plenty difficult. Czech: Although Prague seems like an ideal place to live, I don’t have much other incentive to learn Czech, and I became quite exasperated while studying it through Teach Yourself. Hopefully learning by Assimil (again, shadowing and scriptorium) will go more smoothly. My main goal with Czech is to have a solid base so that I can whiz through the intensive Czech Express course at the beginning of May. As such, my deadline is to get to lesson 25 by May 1. So, although the motivation of enjoyment isn't as present at the moment in my Czech studies, it has the most concrete and short term goal, which I think will suffice for motivation. I’ll also mention that I’d like to learn German, Italian, Latin, Arabic, and maybe Chinese in the future. I hope to start German and Italian next year sometime, ideally with Spanish as a base language. Latin ought to be easy by the time I'm comfortable with Italian. The last two I probably won’t get to for a few years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 2 of 9 08 March 2011 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
|
I had a nearly perfect study day so I'll provide a more eye-friendly list of my resources by enumerating my studies today.
French: -News (20 minutes, TV5 Monde) -L+R Crime et Châtiment (40 minutes) (Note that I mean target language audio and text for L+R) -L+R Les Misérables (35 minutes) -Anki reviews, and adding a few vocabulary words from Crime et Châtiment (I try to stay in the range of between 25 and 40 reviews per day, so I don't usually spend more than five minutes in Anki). -Journal entry on Lang8 (15 minutes) -Reading Psalms aloud (15 minutes) -Scriptorium, which I'll explain later. Spanish: -BBC Mi Vida Loca (almost done, and glad of it--it was fun but feels like a waste of time). -Assimil shadowing and scriptorium, currently on lesson 30 (totaling just under an hour) -L+R Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal (15 minutes) -Spanish verb conjugation drills on conjuguemos.com (35 minutes) Japanese: 20 minutes of scriptorium with Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru. Then I added the two words I was not very familiar with to Anki and did reviews. I had no problems with the grammar. Russian: Assimil shadowing (35 minutes), began lesson 11. Should have done scriptorium too--my sole failure today. Czech: Assimil shadowing (10 minutes) This time will increase and I will add the scriptorium exercise. As far as my Assimil method goes, I'm not sure if I do it exactly like Professor Arguelles, but it seems to me that what I do should work. When I start a new lesson, first I write the French text so that I know what to be listening for in the lesson (and also it helps to reinforce my French). I listen to the new lesson at least three times, first to understand as much as possible, then to repeat the easiest words, then to try to identify the difficult sections. Later in the day I do scriptorium with the lesson--that is, I read a sentence or a phrase out loud, then I copy it to a notebook, saying each word individually as I write it and frequently combining it with surrounding words (I'm a slow writer). Sometimes when I've finished a line I read over it out loud again, but I find that this step is easy to forget. For review, I do my best to shadow the past five or six lessons at least twice through, and the harder ones until I start to feel discouraged. By the fifth or sixth day that I have reviewed a lesson, I try to be able to match the audio as much as possible with my voice, so generally I've nearly memorized the lesson. I use the text quite frequently in Russian, but with Spanish I only use it with the harder lessons to help me keep up with some of the lines. I've found that Spanish is quite fun and easy to do while walking like Professor Arguelles suggests, but in Russian I think I need to pay more attention to the text until I get more used to the correspondence between the audio and text, and I've found that it is difficult to give a book that level of attention while walking (the evidence being limbs many times bruised by various objects). For Czech I think I will try something different and do the scriptorium for the lesson after the third day of shadowing it. Edited by Rhadryn on 08 March 2011 at 11:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 3 of 9 15 March 2011 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
|
Although I consistently studied between four and seven hours every day this past week, I became frustrated with my lack of ability to express my thoughts in languages other than French or English. I recently watched Glossika’s youtube video on his sentence method, and I feel like this would be a very effective way to improve my active language abilities, maybe even in English. I don’t have any textbook resources at the moment so I’m going to try to do the best I can with the internet. This should be plenty really, but I would greatly appreciate suggestions for where to find good sentences (I think I’m set in Japanese though).
I’ve decided that five languages (at their current levels) is too many for me to study at one time. Once I form a habit and can transition between studies more easily it would be feasible, but at the moment I take way too long to decide what to do next and how to do it. I think three languages would be ideal, but I’m going to do the best I can with four. French is going well--I'm consistently accomplishing my goals. Saturday I finished L+Ring Crime et Chatiment and have since begun Bel Ami by Maupassant. I’m getting close to the end of Le Rouge et le Noir as well (my audiobook for listening practice), after which I’m planning to listen to l’Avare by Molière until I get sick of it, probably three or four times. In Spanish, I finished the BBC program so I need to find something to fill that slot of time. I've consistently overachieved in Spanish by studying it at least two hours per day, and I find it quite easy and fun so I'll be trying to continue that trend. In Assimil I’m up to lesson 38. Japanese is slightly frustrating because I feel like I'm doing little more than whetting my appetite with that half-hour. I’m probably going to add the sentence method, and I’m playing with the idea of revisiting the RTK method when I get my cast off (hopefully this week). Though it's quite difficult (to pronounce and read mainly), I'm thoroughly enjoying Russian. It's very tempting to look up more grammar explanations, but I really want to have the patterns cemented in my head before I find the logic to them—I think I'll remember them better that way. In Assimil I’ve gotten to lesson 13. I also watched a quarter of Kin-Dza-Dza, which further established my love of the language and gave me a slight ego boost when I understood things (even though they were basic like “What’s your name,” “nice to meet you,” and “violin.”) Finally, Assimil Czech is so much better than Teach Yourself. It's pretty fun now that I can actually understand what they are saying and figure out a few things, but it can't compete with the other languages. I’ve been trying to make a decision about Czech and I think that unless I feel a strong call to live in Prague after my time there, I’m not going to study the language systematically. Due to various circumstances, it makes good sense for me to drop the intensive Czech course, which will take away most of my motivation. Also I think there will be interference if I continue Russian simultaneously, and I definitely want to keep Russian. Maybe once I’m comfortable in Russian I’ll return to Czech. Edited by Rhadryn on 15 March 2011 at 11:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| polyglossia Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5244 days ago 205 posts - 255 votes Speaks: French* | Message 4 of 9 15 March 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
|
Good luck with your schedule !! Dont worry about not being able to express your thoughts: keep sticking to "passive ability" and listening until you feel confident with "the music of the language" !!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 5 of 9 22 March 2011 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
|
Thanks for the encouragement polyglossia, and for keeping me accountable!
I had a slightly slower week last week—I was relatively busy over the weekend, with my worst day being just over two hours of studying. Nevertheless I managed to study my three main languages every day, including Assimil for Spanish and Russian. - French: I’m enjoying Bel Ami more than I expected. I listened to the recording of L’Avare one time and felt like half the recording was music, and therefore listening to it again would be inefficient. So I’m going to start listening to Le Château d’Eppstein by Dumas. - Spanish: I finished Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal so I’m skipping to the third book next. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand, but I think I get enough of it to keep the book interesting, and it helps that I’ve read it so many times before. I definitely am learning new words through it. I’m also using conjuguemos.com to drill myself on verb conjugations that I’m learning purely through trial and error, with fairly good results. And finally, in Assimil I’m on lesson 45, so I’ll be starting the active phase pretty soon. I’d like to add something new to my Spanish routine, but I guess I’ll wait to see how that goes first. - Russian: Now on lesson 21 in Assimil. I’m also force-feeding myself vocabulary words through Anki, which isn’t working very well. I might try Iverson’s list method, or something similar. I’m frustrated with my progress in Russian even though I know that I shouldn’t expect anything different. I found audiobooks that I am very excited about reading (Yevgeny Onegin!), but when I realize that I’ll probably won’t be able to do so for a few months at best, I’m a bit discouraged. Maybe I’ll try (for the first time) some real L+R with both L1 and L2. - Japanese: I haven’t done much, but I’ve started back with RTK doing 20 kanji a day for now (I got up to 1700 last year, so I should be able to keep this pace for a few weeks). Since I’ve been meaning to read 銀河の鉄道の夜 and haven’t done so, I must not have enough motivation for that at the moment. So I guess for now I’m going to do some sentences in Anki, but suggestions are very welcome (for Japanese or Russian). In the three languages in which I was doing scriptorium, I’ve found that I want to use it as an excuse for not studying. I don’t have a desk, and until today it was very hard to write because I had a cast on my arm. So I’ve eliminated scriptorium from my schedule for now, and will probably add it back when I have a desk (in Prague, or when I get home in the summer). Next week I’ll probably be able to start adding my total time spent this year studying each language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 6 of 9 30 March 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
|
So this week I didn’t do as well. I got a strong longing for video games, and even
though I didn’t play much, I wasted a lot of time looking for games to play. Nevertheless, aside from Friday and Saturday, no great casualties. My solution to avoid letting this travesty repeat is two-fold: first, find more interesting things to read or watch that have a fun factor equivalent with video games; second, longer term, try to program something that will make my language progress more visual and remind me of my short term goals. Because this is what is so appealing to me in video games—easily apparent progress and achievement of short-term goals. French – I’m slightly frustrated with my speaking ability, but otherwise this is going swimmingly. I finished Bel Ami (a good read), started le Seigneur des Anneaux for fun, and I’ll probably pick something else out that is more classic. I’m almost finished with le Château d’Eppstein as well, which has been sufficiently captivating. Spanish – on Assimil lesson 53, halfway through Harry Potter 3, and continuing to do verb conjugation drills. I should start the active wave of Assimil, but I keep forgetting. Maybe tomorrow. Russian – Assimil lesson 27, and I am struggling. I’m tired of not being able to understand half of the lesson despite having read the translation ten times before. I don’t know why I’m having such a block, but I suspect that it’s mostly because I have to learn lots of vocabulary with no real basis for it (unlike with Spanish). I think I’m going to take Assimil more slowly, not worrying if it takes me three days to feel comfortable with continuing, focusing on the importance of hearing and speaking for half an hour a day. Also with Russian, I’m doing flashcards in Anki (which is getting slightly more interesting now that I’ve covered most of the prepositions and pronouns). I’m also going through the course at www.russianforeveryone.com. I really like the exercises—they force me to examine the rules carefully, and my poor test results are pretty motivating to study harder. Japanese – continuing RTK, and currently at number 280. I’m also learning (as in, making sure I know the meaning and pronunciation) of 15 Japanese sentences per day, via a list in Anki. I was doing another list for a week that was a bit more explicit about the grammar, but I dropped it because the Japanese Anki reviews were getting too stacked. I’m planning to start back reading Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru pretty soon, adding vocabulary from that to Anki, but I guess I haven’t been sufficiently motivated to accomplish all my language goals. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 7 of 9 26 April 2011 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
|
Almost a month later, I’m still at it… to varying degrees. I went to Barcelona and
found out that Spanish wasn’t as helpful there as I would have liked. If I want to live there (a possibility), I would definitely have to learn Catalan, even though the limited scope turns me away from it a bit. I will be in France for only a week and a half more, so I’m entering the maintenance stage of French. I haven’t been doing well as far as studying goes, at least in the past few weeks. I rarely watch the news and read novels. Right now I’m on chapter 5 or 6 of Germinal, and chapter 6 of le Seigneur des Anneaux. I have kept up with Anki though, and I’ve conversed a good bit in the past two weeks and feel much more comfortable with that now. From now on I’m planning to keep up with Anki and read about half an hour a day. I’m doing terribly with Spanish. I dropped Assimil at lesson 58 because I got bored with it, but it really is effective so I’m trying to pick it up again by reviewing the most recent lessons. I’m also going to continue with Harry Potter y Caliz de Fuego (right now on Chapter 3), listening to audio while reading the text. I’d really like to find a news broadcast in Spanish like the one I’ve found in French, between 10 and 20 minutes long that covers all the important news, but I haven’t been able to find that yet. I think continuing the exercises on conjuguemos.com would be profitable, but I don’t think I’ll have the time. In Russian I’m doing equally poorly. I dropped Assimil at lesson 29 because it was too frustrating, but I’ve been listening to it recently trying not to worry about how well I can actually understand it. Lately I’ve been listening to one of my favorite pop musicians, Vitas, who is Russian, and that has given me a bit more motivation. I’m planning on working through the book called “Russian in Exercises” whenever I get the time. The good news comes with Japanese. I recently played through a visual novel (Muv Luv) which has a sequel that is only half-translated into English. That made me furious to learn Japanese ASAP, so I dusted off my copy of Ever 17 (in Japanese) and started playing through it, copying the words that I don’t know and adding them to Anki. After working at this for almost two weeks, I can now understand almost every word in the first two scenes. In the past couple weeks, I've watched quite a bit of anime as well, so that's motivation and keeps the language bouncing around in my head. Also, I haven’t missed a day of RTK, and I’ve gotten to 900 kanji now. I’ve kept up with the Japanese sentences too, but I haven’t added many new ones. I probably won’t post again until mid-May or perhaps June because I’m expecting to be busy and not make much progress. I need to remember that just a little bit every day builds up and makes a solid foundation. Edited by Rhadryn on 26 April 2011 at 10:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Rhadryn Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5223 days ago 53 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Latin, German | Message 8 of 9 29 August 2011 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
|
Hah, I'm sure you thought you were rid of me, but now I'm back! (From outer space!) Four months later, life has been a struggle. Prague was more strenuous than I expected, and I've been looking for a job through most of the summer. The official language update:
French: Hah. If nothing else, I wanted to watch the news daily in French. I think I might have done that once this entire summer. I've read a bit more Le Seigneur des Anneaux and started another book, but really I haven't worked on it. I think my goal for the future will be to do these two things (watch news and read), if not every day, at least every other day. Japanese: I've done a lot better in Japanese. At the beginning of the summer I did a fair bit of reading and vocabulary through video games, in addition to RTK and sentences. I played through Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X at least getting the gist of every spoken conversation. At the beginning of August though, after applying for jobs in Japan for a month and a half with little response, I decided that I needed to look elsewhere for jobs and since then my motivation for Japanese has faded. I was up to 1800 characters in RTK, but my old computer with Anki is dying, so that has further discouraged my Japanese. I think the sentences are the most vital part of study, so in the future I intend to do just a few sentences per day in Anki to keep me fresh, and if I feel like doing more I'll read or do something that doesn't involve piling up more things to learn for the future. Maybe in a few weeks I'll pick up RTK again. Spanish: My parents have been learning Spanish, so I've helped them a bit and kept up with my own in that way, but I haven't really improved it, and I don't have plans to in the near future. I may change my mind soon; we'll see. Russian: I've been tutored in Russian for most of the summer until three weeks ago. We got stuck on the numbers for about half the time which really took the wind out of me, but I still feel like continuing (though I don't know that I'll ever use it). I do feel much more comfortable with pronunciation and aural comprehension. So I think I'll do a bit of a textbook every other day or so, to keep that up. Despite the fact that I have quite enough languages already that I intend to learn, I feel obligated to dabble in two new languages. Korean: I've wanted to learn the Hangul for quite a while, but I don't have much more interest in the language than that. However, I might start tutoring some Korean students in English soon, thus I should know some basic grammar and vocabulary at least. Vietnamese: After three months of job-searching, I finally got an offer in Ho Chi Minh City. So of course I'm going to need to learn some Vietnamese, if I'm going to have free lessons and spend a year there. Plus, as I understand it, it ought to help me a bit with Chinese in the future. For these latter two I don't have any real plans yet, except skipping from website to website. I hear that Vietnamese is extremely difficult to pronounce correctly, so I'll probably focus on passive input until I get to Vietnam. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
