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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Mistral Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5920 days ago 160 posts - 179 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, German | Message 9 of 44 03 December 2009 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Guys, I love you for telling me about Leechblock. Facebook, youtube have been my weak point for a long, long time so, not knowing how to deal with that addiction, I was blocking those pages in windows' system files so my "hosts" file looks like
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com Oh well.
Żeby znacząco podnieść ilość czytanych słów na minutę, niestety miesiąc nie wystarczy. Nie wiem czy nawet dwa. Chodziłam na kurs i efektów naprawdę nie widać długo i to przy bardzo sumiennej, codziennej pracy po 1h-2h. Samo poszerzanie pola widzenia to pikuś i całkiem przyjemne zajęcie, ale wyeliminowanie subwokalizacji to jest coś. Może nie sama eliminacja, co rozumienie tekstu bez niej, bo to właśnie to zajmuje te miesiące. Zależy też, jakie książki chcesz czytać przy pomocy tej metody. Jeśli biologiczne - nie polecam. Jeśli PROSTE lektury szkolne - jak najbardziej. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 10 of 44 03 December 2009 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Leechblock is working like a charm.
Sprachprofi: thank you very much for the link. I'll read it soon and I'll report on the progress. Mistral: sam chodziłem kiedyś na kurs technik pamięciowych, i choć szybkie czytanie nie było w programie, robiliśmy trochę ćwiczeń na poszerzanie pola widzenia. Nie pomogły mi one zbyt wiele. Teraz czytam linijkę na dwa "rzuty okiem" - ale co z tego jeśli i tak czytam całość w głowie. Mam nadzieje jedynie na szybsze czytanie prostych książek - takiego Dana Browna, czy Folleta - i artykułów. Nie mam raczej szans na czytanie podręczników w ten sposób. Ile ostatecznie dał Ci ten kurs? Być może spróbuję znaleźć czas i popracuję nad sobą, jeśli naprawdę daje to efekty. (Translation: Mistral said 'no dice yo, a month is not enough', so I whined a little bit, and asked for more tips. ) Thank you for your feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 44 05 December 2009 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm having a hard time coming up with specific goals for this year. What I want to do is Listening-Reading with books I like. The problem is - I'd like to do it in Spanish, and I can't find that many audiobooks in this language. The easiest of all would be Russian - my hit list, wanderlust language. I'm very tempted to try it despite definitely not having time for it. I figured that if I really enjoy it, I WILL find the time, and my other plans will adjust to accomodate it.
My question is: have you tried LRing several languages within a short period of time? If I try to do them in 3 month chunks, it shouldn't be a problem, right? Would it still be beneficial? If everything worked out the way I want, I would be improving my already conversational French and Spanish, while also learning Russian from scratch. Would LR still be beneficial in this situation? btw I hit the 500 mark with Heisig today... Yet another language to fit in. Anyway, I'm not backing out yet ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 12 of 44 06 December 2009 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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My languages for this year will be
French - I have some very specific goals for this language, and a generic one as well- improve my bad listening skills. Spanish - I just want to improve as much as I can. Japanese – wanderlust guard – only if I have leftover time, and I need a change. I know I need at least one, to keep things fun. No Russian for me this year. I promised that I’ll at least try to be realistic (is this against TAC rules? :P ) I haven't decided on all of my pecific goals yet. Today: general guidlines that I’ll try to follow. I reassesed my motivations, personal goals, all of my resources, curriculum for the next semester, plans for the summer and past experiences with learning languages. I tried to answer one question honestly: What has benefited me the most when I was studying English? What to avoid? - English classes between age 7 and 16? It allowed me to reach the B2 level, as proven by the FCE certificate. At that point I knew quite a bit of grammar, and I could solve mock exams like a beast. Becoming conversational was a side effect (and a rare one, my friends went on with the classes, got CAE and CPE and are still not fluent). Conclusion: the grammar approach is not for me. - I think I learned more words from authentic sources than books even during early school years. Early on (7-10) I had a lot of exposure to English because out the ten TV channels we had three were in English and one of them was Cartoon Network – the single most effective tool for young learners. I knew words like ‘coward’ and ‘courage’ before I could say ‘train’, because there was a cartoon called ‘Courage, the cowardly dog’. This is just a memory trip, I’m not going to watch cartoons in Spanish now. - Age 13-16. After the TV stage I played computer games, read comic books, watched a lot of movies and shows, and finally read books in English. That was around the time when dial-up connection was slowly being replaced with a cable connection (dunno what it’s called, it wasn’t broadband for sure, it wasn’t much faster than the dial-up at first). That opened up the world for me – in English I could read about anything that interested me (and borrow some movies and South Park, while we’re at it). - Age 16-17. Rotary exchange student in the US. I became fluent in English. How? The obvious element was interacting with native speakers all the time. Also, I said goodbye to Polish – I used it only during my monthly telephone conversations with my parents. Since school was a big joke, instead of studying at night I had the TV on (it’s surprising to me now, I haven’t watched TV for almost 4 years). My exposure to English either in spoken or written form equaled to all of my waking hours. During the first 3 months or so my only friend was the school librarian – I read a book a day on average. I thought it was the wordlists that I ardently created that helped me the most in becoming a competent reader in English. When I examined these lists last week, however, I noticed that I only retained around 30% of the words in the long run. I read a lot, but it was also intensive reading – I noted down each and every single unknown word, copying its definition from a monlingual dictionary by hand next to it. Terribly time consuming, but then I felt good about putting in the work. It was the sheer amount of new and interesting material I ingested that helped me. Btw, I forgot all the grammar rules while I was assimilating the language. So much for my FCE. - 18 – 20 (present) – Upon returning to Poland I tried to relearn the grammar for a national English competition. I also did various translation exercises, which were quite a pain – the effects of assimilating a language. Since then I’ve been using English daily, but I’m not consciously trying to improve. My grammar is getting rusty, I make more mistakes in writing. I deduced that: - I enjoy reading. - Using native materials shouldn’t be scary – it should be engrossing. Learning becomes a side effect of spending time in an enjoyable way. - Jotting down words is not very effective. Extensive reading is better than intensive for novels. - Hearing new words in diferent contexts (life, movies, TV shows) is great for reinforcing the common and words (as opposed to the literary vocabulary) that I may want to use actively later. – This will be hard to recreate due to time constrains. I’ll use articles, podcasts, radio and occasionally movies as a substitute. Drilling will be facilitated by anki. The final step should be finding a language exchange partner or spending time abroad. I'll see what I can do about that. - Having good passive skills thanks to reading made for a smooth transition from intermediate to advanced. - Pronunciation is very important to me as I like conversing in my languages. In English it took a lot of effort to relearn. I'll try not to botch my Fr and Sp pronunciation more than it is already. These guidlines are mostly for French and Spanish, because I outgrew most language courses, and I want to move to authentic materials. I still want to use Assimil Perfectionnement – Espagnol, but either my idiomatic French is not good enough to use it fully. I’ll look at what I have, what my library has, and what I can borrow from the Internet before I decide on this. Cheers Edited by Kubelek on 06 December 2009 at 9:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 13 of 44 12 December 2009 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||
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TAC 2010 goals (and 2011 I guess if I fail)
Japanese 1 finish Heisig 2 Tae Kim (not even in depth, but to get a decent picture of what’s going on) 3 Assimil 1 4 a podcast (not sure which one yet) during commutes French 1 get very comfortable with medical and health related vocabulary (such as is understood and used by laymen), through reading websites and listening to podcasts on these topics. 2 refresh medical terminology and professional voccabulary (equipment, procedures, tests) the above will be either high priority or normal priority. I will need them for sure for the school year 2011/12, as I’m going to spend a year in France on an Erasmus exchange. In addition to that, I’m trying to find a hospital in France where I could do my summer month-long internship. If that works out, this will be my primary goal for French. 3 Intensive reading: read enough press articles to feel very comfortable with journalistic language. It’s hard to quantify how many I will have to read. I’ll record my milestones here, should there be any. 4 Extensive reading: proper LR, listening to French while reading French, regular reading. I’m not even sure if I’ll get to this point. No or very little anki here. 5 fall and winter of 2010 probably – Start refreshing grammar in preparation for a pre-Erasmus language exam. Other: I have a vocabulary builder for French high school upper classmen (1000 mots pour réussir), which I’ll try to complete. I have a reading based curriculum, as you may have noticed. Listening and speaking skills should follow with little effort if I significantly improve my passive knowledge (especially since I’m planning on spending a bunch of time in France). The high register is easy enough to understand. Original French movies are pretty hard. Movies and shows dubbed into French are very easy, but the scores I have watched were not that helpful. They were very fun to watch, however, so for the days when I’m too tired to read or study I have dubbed simpsons and Nip-Tuck. Spanish My previous Spanish journal (no replies though... ) My goals have changed since then. 1 Intensive reading: read enough press articles to feel comfortable with journalistic language. Read BBC mundo at first, because the language used there seems very simple, and then move on to other online newspapers. Journalistic vocabulary is generally high-yield, so I’ll add unknown words to anki. 2 Extensive reading: read several books. Preferably proper LR, if not possible then I’ll listen to Spanish while reading in Spanish. I don’t think I’ll get to the stage where I can read interesting literature without any aid. I’ll listen-read to Hunded years of Solitude first, since I’ve already LRed it twice, and it’s pretty easy to me as far as vocabulary goes. It’s such a wonderful book that I don’t mind if I don’t learn a lot from it the third time around. 3 Listening: I think podcast are the best bet for now. I’d have to learn more colloquial language before I move on to original Spanish shows. Movies are not as difficult, and I enjoy them a lot. I’ll see how many I can watch in my limited time. I like Viajero del mundo and several podcasts from rtve.es site (alimento y salud, esto es vida, el mundo de los videojuegos). 4 Speaking: probably none. I know there are quite a few Spanish speakers in my city, but I don’t know if I can befriend any of them. I usually use Spanish on public transportation. Since the Spaniards or Mexicans never have tickets, I offer them one for free, and they feel obliged to talk to me ;) 5 Grammar: only when needed, and not before reading or LRing several books. Plan of action: Spanish – extensive reading phase, some articles French – medical vocab, a lot of articles, some grammar, vocab builder When I’m bored or tired of if – Switch. Japanese – continue with Heisig until I’m done with it as fast as I can while avoiding burnout. 100 cards a week seems the to be my upper limit. If you have read my post, please give me your feedback. If you know any websites that would benefit me, share like crazy. I’d appreciate it. If you’d like to LR a good book in French or Spanish and you have all the necessary parts (text in Fr/Sp, text in Eng or Polish, a decent audiobook in Fr/Sp) BUT you’re not ready to put the time needed into making a parallel text – contact me. I could make one, if it’s a book I’d like to LR as well. Thanks for reading, I’ll come back next week to report on my progress. Edited by Kubelek on 12 December 2009 at 2:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 14 of 44 13 December 2009 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you're looking for podcasts aimed at native speakers, and not learners, get iTunes, and change the country settings. Go to the home page of iTunes store, and click on a flag in the lower right corner of the page. Then choose the flag you want. You'll see that some countries are.. 'defective'. Poland or Croatia for example do not even have the podcast section. Spain or France, however, have tens of wonderful podcasts on history, science, health, comedy shows and many others.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 44 22 December 2009 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I collected enough materials to last me for a year. Itunes is great for podcasts - all in one place.
I'm currently reading a few articles every day intensively, adding words to anki. Anki reviews take up an hour a day, which I think is great for the amount of vocab that's consolidated in my memory thanks to it. I am also LRing One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish. I should be done with it in a couple of days. It would be great if I didn't have to stare at the computer for hours every day - a big time disadvantage for LRing parallel texts (unless you print them out). I don't know if LRing without parallel texts will do me much good at this point, when I'm filling the gaps (sizable ones!) rather than trying to make heads or tails of it. I'll experiment with a pop up dictionary + L2 text + L2 audio. When that gets boring or tiring, I'll read more on paper. Plan for holidays: Spanish - Finish LRing 100 years of solitude - LR La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela. It will be my second time. - do a few chapters of Read & Think Spanish annotated reader. French - finish the last 20 lessons of Assimil Using French. I stopped using it a couple of years ago. It seems boring now, but I want to mine it for idioms. - Read 20 articles intensively (look up every. darn. word.) - read Nana by Zola or Voyage au bout de la nuit by Celine in Polish, to see if I like them, and if it's a good choice for LR. I have reached the natural listening stage in this language, but LRing several books will hopefully give me a confidence boost before I start to read extensively. Japanese - continue with Heisig. I reached 700 today, so I hope to be around 800 before New Year. That's more than enough, as I have a couple of exams coming up in the first week of January. I'll report when I'm done with these objectives, hopefully soon :) Edited by Kubelek on 22 December 2009 at 11:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6843 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 16 of 44 01 January 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've reached most of my objectives except the LR ones. I had a hard time sleeping this last week, I couldn't sleep at all for 2 nights which ruined my ability to concentrate. LR is pointless if you can't focus.
Heisig was going pretty well, I'm at 885 right now. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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