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Chci mluvit česky-I want to speak Czech | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tajosto Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4646 days ago 54 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Czech | Message 57 of 60 08 January 2014 at 3:35pm | IP Logged |
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I worked on grammar exercises today, the plural form of nouns, and it was torturous and terrible. Bleh. I am awful at
producing declensions, so of course I avoid dealing with it, with predictable results! ;-) However, I was saved from complete confusion thanks to Czech: An Essential Grammar, by James Naughton. This is a wonderful book, but I keep forgetting to use it. Usually when I have some question, I try to find the material in New Czech Step by Step, which is a decent textbook for learning the material, but a terrible reference guide. So, I think I'll spend some more time going over the noun declension material in the Naughton book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tajosto Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4646 days ago 54 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Czech | Message 58 of 60 21 January 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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I'm 15 days into the Add1Challenge, and so far I have done my required hour every single day. Of course,
sometimes I do more than an hour, and other times I'm watching the clock count down the seconds until I can finish. I've never before done 1 hour of Czech consistently for this many days, and I really am seeing what a difference commitment and consistency make. I'm going to try my hardest to complete this challenge and do 1 hour for 90 days. I am very curious to see what my Czech will be like at that time. This past week, I spent most of my time doing textbook work with New Czech Step by Step. I'm up to Chapter 16, so for the first time ever, the end of this book is in sight! This is definitely a result of consistent Czech time every day. I generally dislike textbooks, so usually can only stand to work from them for a few days before I get bored and veer off into more interesting material, like reading children's books. Consequently, it's taken me 2 years to get this far in the textbook. Because of that lengthy time frame, I plan to go back through and review the grammatical material in each chapter, before I move on to anything else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tajosto Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4646 days ago 54 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Czech | Message 59 of 60 24 January 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged |
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It finally dawned on me why I dislike New Czech Step by Step so much: it's just not a suitable book for self-
teaching. Which is fine, except I feel like that should be stated clearly on the cover of the book, "Intended for use with a teacher or in a course". Here's an example of why this book doesn't work without a teacher. I just finished Chapter 17, which is 8 pages of material. Apart from the explanatory material (which is mostly grammatical tables), there are 13 exercises to complete, yet there are answers available for only 4 of the exercises. That's crazy! Without a teacher (or language helper), most of the material is useless because you can't even check your answers. So while I think this textbook may work quite well in a classroom environment (and it actually is the textbook my teachers used in class), it just can't be the primary course material if you're teaching yourself Czech at home. It simply has to be used in conjunction with another course, perhaps Teach Yourself Czech or Colloquial Czech. Anyway, I feel relieved now that I finally figured out why this book bothers me so much, despite its high recommendations from many sources. I will finish it, especially now that I am so near the end, but I will definitely supplement the material with other textbooks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tajosto Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4646 days ago 54 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Czech | Message 60 of 60 28 February 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged |
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Wow! I can't believe it's been over a month since I've updated. February has just flown by.
Here's my one month video update on the Add1Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9DBmXy6KXk The first month of the challenge I was really enthusiastic and had no problem doing one hour per day. This second month has been harder. I've missed about 3 days total, which isn't bad. Even when I didn't manage a full hour on those days, I still did some Czech, which is the whole reason I decided to do this challenge, for consistency. I've cancelled my language exchange the last couple of weeks. Partly, it's because of being busy with work and home, and partly I was just getting too frustrated trying to speak for 30 minutes twice a week in Czech. It didn't feel like I was really retaining much from the sessions, so it doesn't seem like the best use of time right now. So I've decided to concentrate on more input, and return to the output later on. I think I may also try Skype tutoring rather than language exchange; more structured conversation would be helpful at this point. I've been going to the local library every couple of weeks, grabbing children's books and comics. Recently, I've been listening to the audio book of Kvak a Žbluňk jsou kamarádi while looking at the paper book. It's really at the perfect level for me right now, for bedtime, when my brain is already fried from the day. I don't understand everything, but I understand most of it, and can infer most of the unknown words from context. So I'm going to look for more books in the Kvak a Žbluňk series, and more books in the "první čtení" series from Albatros books. I've also discovered a Czech dub of an English language cartoon, Prasatko Pepa, on YouTube. These are great videos for beginning language learning because they are very short, about 5 minutes, and the storyline and dialogues are very simple and clear, with the key words and phrases repeated many times during each episode. So, while I'm definitely in somewhat of a slump with my enthusiasm, I'm still learning and doing a fair amount with Czech, thanks to the 1 hour commitment in the Add1Challenge. This Challenge has been a great help to me. :-) Edited by tajosto on 28 February 2014 at 4:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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