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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 121 of 706 07 March 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
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@Brun Ugle - I completely understand. Lang-8 seems like such a good tool. I want to find a way to make it work. And I'm glad somebody understood my "Greyskull" remark. :)
@Expugnator - Probably extensive reading is a good idea on the weekend, at least for me. My house can be kind of crazy on the weekends, so I can't keep focused for too long. I do manage to get my Anki reviews done, though; for some reason I can do those even when it is noisy around. @The Real CZ - Hey, thanks for dropping by! Yeah, I'm trying to think of alternative ways to use the book. As a placemat, maybe? Just kidding. I do get some use out of the grammar exercises, so I do those as is. The dialogs are sometimes boring, but the accompanying audio is great for comprehensible listening practice. Maybe I could just do those two things, and everything would be okay. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 122 of 706 08 March 2013 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
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I put a few links to the Brazilian music information that Expugnator kindly wrote on my links page for easy reference. (That post with the links is a bit long; scroll down a bit to find the links.)
Now, as promised, music time! Expugnator suggested "samba-reggae" to me since I like reggae. Here's a link to a nice song by a Bahia group Olodum, "Protesto Olodum". Also, Vem Meu Amor (warning: some racy photos in that slide show) and Rosa. Great music! Also, while listening to the radio yesterday I heard a reggae group that Expugnator mentioned called Natiruts (as in Natty Roots?). One of my favorite songs right now is their song called Supernova. Edited by kujichagulia on 08 March 2013 at 1:46am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 123 of 706 08 March 2013 at 5:24pm | IP Logged |
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I'm glad you liked Olodum =D I've danced to those songs at several carnivals when I was in my teens.
Regarding Natiruts, its first name was Nativus (native, in the plural, and the u is written because that's how it sounds, just like people write warez appz etc in English). Then it changed to Natiruts obviously because of the English word Roots, with a portuguese spelling. That's a common theme for reggae bands, as you may know. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 124 of 706 12 March 2013 at 1:51am | IP Logged |
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@Expugnator - Very interesting. How lucky you were to go to such carnivals! I can't wait to go to one.
* * * * * Studying some DLI today... So, let me get this straight. O avô is "grandfather", and a avó is "grandmother", but "grandparents" is os avós? Interesting. Also, this is the moment when I realize that, hey, maybe I really do need to pay attention to the Portuguese open "o" and closed "o", so that I don't confuse avô with avó in spoken speech! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 125 of 706 12 March 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know if you are already aware of the alternation of closed o -> open o in singular x plural, Kuji. This is just one more example of this rule. It's not that the plural is "feminine", it's just that the closed o in avô becomes open in the plural. This is more usual in the penultimate syllable:
o olho (closed o) -> os olhos (open o) The distinction of open and cosed o's and e's is essential in Portuguese, especially in stressed syllables. In pretonic syllables there are differences according to dialects, and in posttonic syllables these o's and e's may be reduced to i's an u's respectively, but in stressed syllables they are very distinct vowels. A remarkable example is the word sede, with closed e, meaning thirst, and sede, with open o, meaning headquarters. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 126 of 706 13 March 2013 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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@Expugnator - Thank you for the explanation! As always, it's very helpful and easy to understand! I'll concentrate more on this in my studies.
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 127 of 706 13 March 2013 at 3:37am | IP Logged |
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As I continue with my language-learning journey, I often I get this feeling... I don't know what to call it... a sort of uneasiness, frustration or something, when I think about certain learning techniques and how to improve upon them. And that "feeling" always derails my consistency.
Let me explain with some examples from this past week: (1) Anki - Instead of single words, I study vocabulary as a part of an example sentence. The sentence with the new word is on the front, and an L1 or L2 definition of the new word and any extra notes go on the back (along with the reading for Japanese.) For tricky words or grammar, I throw in some cloze deletion cards. I've found this to be generally effective for learning new words. The problem is that it takes so much time to add sentences to Anki. Typing and adding new sentences is quite boring. And sometimes it takes so much time to find a somewhat comprehensible sentence for some words - 5 to 10 minutes in some cases. This is especially the case with Portuguese, because I have not found a free online Portuguese-English dictionary with short example sentences (Linguee.com is good, but the example sentences are above my level). So every now and then (like this week), while inputting new sentences into Anki, I become frustrated and just turn it off. (This is only after 10 or so sentences.) Then I think, "Geez, adding sentences is just too long. Why not just do single words? You can even do it automatically for Japanese with something like Rikaichan." It does save time, but a long time ago I did single words, and I found that reviewing became the boring, tedious thing. That doesn't work. "Why not get rid of Anki altogether? People have, and still do, learn tons of vocabulary and grammar without Anki." True, but before I discovered Anki, I tried other ways to learn words. Write them on paper 10 times, alternating L1 and L2. Write sentences. Worked for me short-term, but I retained very few words long-term. Seriously, I go through this in my head every two or three weeks when working with Anki, and then I have to just stop doing anything with Anki, because I get that "feeling" I was talking about earlier. I quit for a day or two, then decide, "Hey, I'll just stick with sentences." Then I go back to Anki, and everything is okay for another two weeks. What a vicious cycle. (2) Reading - Every few weeks, I feel a need to force myself to start reading native materials. For example, I want to build up some Portuguese vocabulary. I find a sports web site, and I say, "Okay, start reading this article. When you come across unknown words, look them up, find a sentence, and put it into Anki. Don't do too much, just go until you have 10 new words, then stop reading the article." But even with those guidelines, I end up feeling frustrated, because I am just a beginner in Portuguese, and it only takes two or three sentences until I reach my 10-word limit. I am not able to enjoy the article because of that. But then you hear people say, "Dive into native material. Read what you enjoy. Use more than one resource." I really do want to use a variety of resources for Portuguese, instead of just DLI (DLI is going well for me, by the way; I enjoy it). But I wonder if, because I am just a beginner, I should just stick to one course for now, learn the basics of the grammar and a lot of basic vocabulary from that source, then later on dive into native material. Again, this is what I think about in my head, and it frustrates the hell out of me. With these examples, I don't even know if it is frustration or not. Rather, it's more like a feeling that I want to do the right thing with my studies. I want to use the techniques and study methods that are effective for me, but also that are as painless and carefree as possible. I know that using sentences in my Anki cards are most effective for me for learning vocabulary, but I loathe the process of finding those sentences. People say, "No pain, no gain." But is that true? You can't have fun doing that? I know that reading native material is good for my language studies. But I don't know how to approach it, and it makes me angry. Why am I angry? Finding out what works for me should be somewhat exciting, like discovering something new. But it is frustrating. Anyway, what I am sure about from my past experiences is that these frustrating feelings will lead to burnout if nothing is done about them. I have learned that an effective way to prevent burnout in these cases is to "switch it up". Don't stop interacting with the language, but do something easy and refreshing for a couple of days, like listen to the radio, watch some TV, something passive - just enjoy basking in the language, if you will. Usually I come out feeling refreshed, then I can go back to my studies. But my goodness! How much easier would it be if I were never frustrated in the first place! How much more enjoyable studying would be if I could banish frustration into a little dungeon somewhere, and install some sound insulation so that I don't have to hear frustration screaming at me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4845 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 128 of 706 13 March 2013 at 4:21am | IP Logged |
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Some things I can do to ease the frustration I was talking about in the last post, especially in regards to Anki:
1. Don't feel like you have to add "every" word you come across. That is what you do now. No wonder finding and adding sentences is so tedious. Add a new sentence for a word ONLY if you REALLY want to learn that word AND it would be useful to you IMMEDIATELY. Be selective. 2. Limit the amount of new sentences that you add to Anki every day. 3. Consider NOT adding all new words/grammar points into Anki from your textbook lessons. There are TONS of new things to learn per lesson, and it is tedious to just add them all. Why not just do the lesson, using the provided wordlists and/or a dictionary to understand the new vocabulary/grammar you come across? See what sticks, and if a word or grammar point doesn't stick, THEN put it into Anki. Some words you don't need Anki for. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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