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Organising the multilingual chaos | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 52 31 January 2012 at 7:01pm | IP Logged |
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Hi everyone! This is my first attempt at keeping a log here, so let's just see how it goes...
I've decided to start this log because I feel like I need to better organise my language learning. I hope that writing about and analysing my learning process is going to help me with that. In the past years many different languages have come to me one or another way, some I had to study at high school, some I started to study because I travelled to a place where they are spoken and some just somehow "happened" to me. These are quite a lot of languages to deal with and that, I realised, requires a plan. And discipline. And passion (that's the easiest part of it). At work I'm a very disciplined and well organised person, whenever I had to study for a certain exam at university (or something similar) I was, too. So why can't I be as disciplined in my language learning? What always helps when I have a lot of work to do and don't even know where to get started is getting an overview of what needs to be done and having deadlines for everything. So that's what I want to do first now: get an overview of where I'm at with every single of my languages, what I want to achieve in, say, the next 3 or 6 months and what materials I want to use to get there. These are the languages I plan to work on: French, Spanish, Swedish: I can use mostly native material for these and that's what I've been doing so far but only in a passive way (listening to the news, watching TV, reading books). In addition to that I plan to actively work on my grammar and vocabulary and also write texts on a regular basis (I've registered at lang-8 to have my texts corrected there by native speakers). Russian: This is the language I want to focus on for the next months. I have a textbook called "Russisch mit System" that was recommended to me by a native speaker who teaches Russian and that is supposed to take you to level B1 (we'll see about that when I'm finished with it). I've already worked my way to lesson 11 (of 18). Turkish: I took a course in Turkish from April-June 2011 (evening classes, twice a week, 2 hours each). It was a good course with a great teacher but I haven't done much since then. Only a few weeks ago I started to revise what I had learned last year and am now about ready to go on from there. The book I have is called "Güle güle" (German base) and consists of 20 lessons, 8 I've done so far. For vocab I decided to give the "Pons vocabulary trainer" a try, see if I like it better than Anki (I'm still typing in words...). Bengali: After about 3 or 4 attempts at the Teach Yourself Bengali I decided to let it rest for a while and instead try the Introduction to Bengali course on the Digital South Asia library website. It's too bad you can't just download it easily but besides that it looks good so far. Arabic: Once a week I attend an evening course at an adult education centre in my town. It's held by a native speaker and I quite like it, she tries to get us speaking as much as possible. The course doesn't proceed as fast as I would like to but it's fun and I can still study more on my own if I like to. Portuguese and Chinese: They are not among my priorities right now but I don't want to drop them completely. So for Portuguese I can use native material (listening to the news and reading newspaper articles), for Chinese I've downloaded some vocab on Anki (so I do a little bit every day). In case you've managed to read all the way down here: If you have any suggestions for me don't hesitate - I'll be happy to hear everybody's advice on how to make my language learning more successful! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| WentworthsGal Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4728 days ago 191 posts - 246 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Spanish | Message 2 of 52 01 February 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged |
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Yikes!! You're one busy person!! How do you manage it? How many hours a day do you study? I love Turkish and want to study it again soon :o)
Good luck with all your languages! :o) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 52 01 February 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, Turkish is great!
Usually I just study for as much time as I have (and feel like, some days I'm just not in the right mood). Sometimes I can do 5 hours a day, sometimes it's just one hour in total. What makes it easier now is that I've had a new job for a few months where I only work ~40 hours/week instead of 60-65 hours. Today was a good day in terms of language learning, I didn't want to go outside because it's so cold right now. So I had most of the afternoon and evening for my books and my laptop. Chinese and Turkish: some vocabulary study, maybe 10-15 minutes each French: listened to the news, 45 minutes Bengali: repetition of what I studied the last 2 weeks, text, grammar and vocab, 45 minutes Swedish: watched the game show Vem Vet Mest, 30 minutes (and was delighted to find out that there are new episodes of Så Ska Det Låta available) Portuguese: listened to some Brazilian Portuguese music Russian: focus on grammar today, about 30 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 52 02 February 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
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I couldn't go to my Arabic class this evening because I had to work but I hope to get something done (write a dialogue and some phrases) now.
What did I do in the afternoon? Not much... Chinese and Turkish: some vocabulary study, 10-15 minutes each Spanish: watch a documentary, 30 minutes, and read a few online articles Swedish: read today's newsletter from Netdoktor.se 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 52 03 February 2012 at 7:35pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday night I really did get some Arabic writing done... which is a big thing for me because writing (especially in a foreign script) is the thing that I like least about studying. Seems I'm just too lazy for it (so here's the problem with discipline again!) but I'm trying. It took me forever but I managed to write a dialogue and 6 phrases with different verbs (even if I very much doubt that a native speaker would be able to read my Arabic handwriting).
Today was not much different to the days before: Chinese: 15min Anki Turkish: 15min Vocabulary trainer Spanish: listen to CD "Gato Negro/Dragon Rojo" by Amaral French: listen to the news, 15 min, read a few newspaper articles Swedish: watch Vem Vet mest, 30 min Bengali: practice reading, 10 min Portuguese: lesson 4 of my Brasilian Portuguese script, 15 min, watch videos 10 min, read a newspaper article I'm seriously thinking about getting the Assimil Brasilian Portuguese course (Brasilianisch ohne Mühe) but I haven't decided yet whether I should or not - on the one hand I need some better learning material if I want to get anywhere with my Portuguese but on the other hand it's not exactly cheap (with audio) and I promised myself to focus on Russian for a few months before buying any more language learning stuff... we'll see about that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 52 04 February 2012 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
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Most of today I spent with friends, so even though I didn't work today I couldn't spend as much time on language learning. It's usually like that, there's always something planned for the weekend so my studies have to step aside a little. But that's ok, there's more to life than languages!
Today I worked on: Russian: 45 min Assimil (audio) Arabic: 20 min Usrati (audio) French: watch TV5, 45 min Chinese: 15 min Anki, 20 min listen to music Turkish: vocabulary trainer, 40 min Spanish: watch videos online, 20 min 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 52 05 February 2012 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
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Today my main focus was on Russian grammar (60 min)... it's really hard to memorize all the declensions. But I'm just going to revise them as often as it takes.
Besides that I worked on: Turkish vocab and grammar: 45 min Portuguese: 30 min Chinese: 15 min Anki Swedish: 30 min ("Vem vet mest" again) Bengali: 15 min (audio from BBC's website) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kat0 Diglot Groupie Austria Joined 4550 days ago 89 posts - 97 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin, Bengali, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 52 06 February 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
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I think I'll be able to finish my Russian textbook "Russisch mit System" within the next 2 weeks. After that I will be returning to Assimil. I've already done the first 36 chapters (twice) so I'm going to start with lesson 37 which is also the start of the active wave. I really hope I can stick to it this time (I don't really like the Assimil dialogues that much). In case I forgot too much of what I've learned before I've started to relisten to lesson 1-36 but I won't open the book again until I've finished the other one. In addition to that I listen to some native audio or watch short videos. I still don't understand most of what's being said but I do notice some improvements (let's hope it's not just my imagination).
To supplement my French studies I would like to buy a decent grammar book (German base). I've been looking around on the Amazon webpage but I haven't made a decision yet. Maybe if I have enough time this week I'll go to my local bookstore to see what they have (if possible I like to leaf through a book before buying it). I haven't had a look at French grammar since I graduated from high school and that's really been a while... Today's work: French: news (audio) 40 min Swedish: read today's newsletter from Netdoktor.se, listen to some songs from "Chess" Chinese: 10 min Anki Russian: videos on DW's website 10 min, Russian dialogues and grammar 25 min, Assimil 25 min Bengali: news (audio) 30 min Turkish: vocabulary trainer 10 min 1 person has voted this message useful |
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