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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 345 of 360 31 December 2014 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Emme, I took the Iiberty of reproducing your list of resources at 2015's thread, as there was no way I could
come with anything similar in a short time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 346 of 360 31 December 2014 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Emme, if that's "total failure" in TAC terms, you've still accomplished a lot more than I did (log update within a day or two). Thanks for keeping us all inspired and motivated!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 347 of 360 01 January 2015 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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@agantik
Thank you! I hope the resources will turn out to be helpful for your Norwegian this year. Have a fantastic 2015! --- @Expugnator You did well. I tried to salvage the links from the sinking team Asgard thread by copying them here, but they will certainly be easier for people to find in the new Scandinavian team home. --- @jeff_lindqvist Thanks! I meant “total failure” only in the sense that I didn’t “annihilate” any language I planned to seriously study in 2014. Not that I ever really thought I could annihilate a language in a year, but I wished to at least skim the surface. Looking forward to your update and wishing you all the best for 2015! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 348 of 360 01 January 2015 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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TAC 2015
Posted on 20 January 2015 Last year was all about massive passive input. It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun especially with the Super Challenge which gave me the perfect excuse to binge-read and to binge-watch TV. I’m sure it wasn’t without some kind of improvement to my language skills, but still I didn’t experience a very strong sense of progress. So this year I want to go back to “real” studying: i.e. focussed intensive work on the staples of language learning: grammar, vocabulary and production all served with a healthy side-dish of passive input. I’m aware that the latter on its own is insufficient to progress quickly in a language, but I think it’s too important to simply leave it out. But above all, this year I want to go back to the original spirit of this log: “Small Steps”. I know I’ve signed up with the TAC and I’m really happy to have some fantastic teammates to help me along the way, but honestly I don’t aim at annihilating anything this year, neither a language nor any bad study habit (which is the second way in which some people here on the forum interpret the “annihilation” part of the TAC). I just intend to ease back into a comfortable study routine and see what the future brings. Edited by Emme on 20 January 2015 at 3:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 349 of 360 02 January 2015 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Godt nytt år! I wish you happiness and success in your language study!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 350 of 360 20 January 2015 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Gosh! It took me almost three weeks just to get a clear(ish) idea of what direction I want my language learning to go this year. I’ve finally written something for the introduction to TAC’15 a couple of posts back. For twenty days there was only a placeholder there.
Now, for what I’ve been doing so far: I was on holiday from work and from languages until the Epiphany and so I’ve only a couple of weeks to report about. I’ve revived my old Anki decks for Swedish and German. I never opened Anki in 2014, not even once, and so when I first launched it, there were almost 5000 expired cards in Swedish and probably upward of a thousand in German. After a fortnight of daily sessions, I’m back at about 3000 in Swedish and 600 in Geman. I’ve already started adding new cards, so any progress I make with the expired cards is undone by the new additions, but I’m in no hurry. It’s not the first time I’ve let Anki unattended for months on end only to then have a humongous mountain of repetitions to climb. But past experiences have shown me that it’s doable and so I keep plodding along. Going back to Anki is my way of admitting that I need to work on my vocabulary for both languages. For Swedish, vocabulary is only one part of a more global learning strategy. In fact, I’m going back to my textbooks and I have more than plenty for a few years’ of serious study at the very least. To be honest, I think I’ll burn out and take a break of months or years before I can actually finish all the formal studying materials I’ve hoarded over the years. But as I wrote somewhere else, Swedish is a long-lasting passion of mine and I know I’ll always come back to it no matter how many times I drop it. For German I’m too bored by textbooks. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t benefit from using them again, but only that right now I’m not in the right mood for them. Instead, I’ve started using the Learn German page of the Deutsche Welle for some intensive studying. My focus at the moment is using the podcasts there to widen my active vocabulary. I’m quite ashamed to confess that I’ve often recommended the DW website to other learners because it seemed rich and well structured, but that was just an impression I had after quickly exploring what was available. I actually never exploited it for myself but now it seems the right time has come. Lastly, nudged on by the great examples and encouragement from some good people here (Josquin and dampingwire, I’m looking at you in particular), I’ve (re-)started toying with Japanese. I don’t know how serious I’m going to be, but maybe, just maybe, this time it may be different from my previous attempts. In the past, when I dabbled with Japanese, it was always with the conscious levity of someone aware that the conditions were not right for committing to such a difficult language and so having fun was ok but real studying was out of the question. The conditions have not changed, but perhaps my attitude has. After all, unless I become long-time unemployed and go back to university to study languages properly, I’m not going to have the kind of free time for language learning that the supposedly “ideal conditions” require until I retire (and who says that people of my generation will ever be able to actually retire?). So, why keep postponing? I know I may change my mind a few weeks or a few months down the line, but for the moment it’s working and I’m happy. Minutes studied in 2015: Japanese: 850 Swedish: 300 German: 255 Edit: formatting. Edited by Emme on 20 January 2015 at 3:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 351 of 360 02 February 2015 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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The second half of January went rather bad. About two weeks ago I went down with the flu and I still haven’t shaken off the after-effects. So I don’t have much to report on the language front.
In the past fortnight my biggest effort language-wise has been composing the Swedish text for Team Sleipnir’s monthly challenge. Here’s what I wrote. January Challenge Hej! Jag heter M*** och bor i norra Italien. Jag studerade litteratur och språk på universitetet. På universitetet läste jag bara engelska och tyska men genom åren har jag sysslat på egen hand med flera andra språk. Nu talar jag också lite franska, spanska, ryska och naturligtvis svenska. Jag vet inte varför jag lär mig svenska. Räcker det att säga att jag älskar språket och kulturen? Det finns inga praktiska grunder i mit liv för att använda svenska: jag är inte gift med en svensk och i mitt arbete behöver jag absolut inte svenska, men jag gillar att läsa och att lyssna på språket. Jag har få möjligheter att tala svenska: kanske ett par gånger varje femte år, när jag träffar svenska vänner och bekanta. Men det är ok med mig. Jag har aldrig försökt att skapa möjligheter att tala svenska till exempel med Skype och jag tror att det kommer inte att ändra sig i år. I fjol fokuserade jag på mängden på den input av mina främmande språk (särskilt engelska och tyska), men i 2015 vill jag fokusera mer på kvalitet av mina ansträngningar. Därför planerar jag att fortsätta med läroböcker. Att arbeta med läroböcker kan bli jobbigt, men det ger bästa resultatet. As always, corrections are very welcome and appreciated. --- Minutes studied in January 2015: Japanese: 910 Swedish: 380 German: 305 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5345 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 352 of 360 10 March 2015 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, now the forum problems seem to be over, but everything posted during the “lost week” has disappeared.
Luckily, I usually keep a backup copy of my posts so here’s what I had written at the end of February: --- After a few days in which I wasn’t able to access the forum receiving this message
So I’ve compiled a little directory of the pages I visit most often, in case I lose the open tabs should my browser suddenly crash. For the sake of convenience, I’ll post a copy here: General Discussion Methods and Technique Language Programs, Books & Tapes Specific Languages Question about your target languages Advice Center Language Learning Log Skandinavisk & Nordisk Multilingual Lounge Music, Movies, TV & Radio Links & Internet Resources More on the forum’s current technical issues here. Now, back to my TAC monthly update. February started off fairly productive and I was able to study reasonably well during the first week. Then RL caught up with me and I ended the month with nothing much achieved. :-( Since I am striving to see the glass half full rather than half empty, I have to point out (first of all to myself) that I’ve managed to go back to my default extensive reading in both English and German, which is good for my still ongoing Super Challenge. Actually, I’ve got great news about my German Super Challenge: even though I’m still horribly behind in the reading part, I’m inching towards the end of the watching/listening part. So far I’ve logged 96.5 “films” in German which means that I will probably cross the finish line pretty soon. Yay! As usual, I re-post here my entry for Team Sleipnir monthly challenge. Reading again at a few weeks’ distance what I wrote, I’ve noticed and corrected one mistake that I had completely missed while checking the original entry before posting. Naturally, now I’m wondering how many other mistakes there are that I still can’t see. Corrections and suggestions are welcome as always! February Challenge Jag hatar mitt vardagsliv så jag hoppas att det är lika bra om jag berättar om min rutin på helgen istället. På helgen måste jag inte åka till arbetet därför kan jag slippa ställa väckarklockan och så vaknar jag klockan åtta eller halv nio. Varje lördag efter frukosten åker jag till stormarknaden och storhandlar. När jag kommer hem städar jag lägenheten och sätter på tvättmaskinen. De nytvättade kläderna stryker jag vanligtvis på söndagsförmiddagen. I min familjen delar vi sysslor, därför behöver jag inte laga mat när jag städar och vice versa. Efter lunchen diskar jag och sen går jag en lång promenad ut i naturen. När jag är tillsammans med min familj eller mina vänner, snakar vi hela tiden. När jag är ensam, lyssnar jag på min mp3-spelare. Jag lyssnar på en språkkurs eller på en podcast på en främmande språk. Tillbaka hemma läser jag en roman eller övar jag svenska eller tyska. Om jag har lust, bakar jag en kaka eller en limpa bröd som alla i familjen tycker mycket om. Strax före middagen duschar jag snabbt. Ibland går vi på bio eller på konsert på kvällen, men vanligen stannar jag hemma och tittar på tv, läser en bok eller tränar språk till efter midnatt när jag går till sängs. Ofta har vi gäster eller är vi bjudna på lunchen hos släktingar eller vänner på söndag, men jag älskar när jag har ingenting bestämt att göra och jag kan tillbringa min fritid som jag vill. Då kan jag koncentrera mig på mina språk. --- Still counting the minutes (hangs head in shame at the paucity of this month’s results). Minutes studied in February (total in 2015): Japanese: 205 (1115) Swedish: 265 (645) German: 265 (570) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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