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Gary’s 2015 TACtivation: FR, IT | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 57 of 187 04 March 2015 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So we're back! And I've not lost any posts, as I hadn't realised there were workarounds to access the forum. And that's not a bad thing: I had a productive week without the forum :).
Anyway, I've been in French mode for the past week or so. More Engrenages and a couple of films, more reading, a bit of pronunciation practice, and writing. I had a "journal intime" document that I used to write in, which I opened and discovered I hadn't updated since 2012. I was surprised that my written French back then really wasn't bad! A few silly mistakes and dodgy phrasings, but good overall. I've been writing a few paragraphs most days and it's a great way to really get my head into the language and find nice ways of expressing my thoughts. For pronunciation I'm just trying to polish it up a bit and push out some of the bad habits that I keep fixing but then keep coming back. For example, not pronouncing some of the vowels quite right, particularly the nasals. I've done some reading aloud and recorded myself a bit. Pronunciation seems to be the hardest area in which to correct mistakes and get rid of bad habits: the moment you stop consciously working on it, they start coming back again very quickly. Maybe pronunciation is something that I should do a little bit of work on frequently, something like a weekly "check-up", as opposed to what I generally do which is alternating between periods of working on it intensely and periods of neglecting it. My previous philosophy was that after the work periods, the changes would subconsciously take effect, but it doesn't seem to happen that way after all. That works well for things like grammar, but in pronunciation the bad habits are just too tenacious. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| suzukaze Triglot Senior Member Italy bit.ly/1bGm459 Joined 4600 days ago 186 posts - 254 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Spanish Studies: German, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 58 of 187 06 March 2015 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I didn't know…good thing I saved what I wrote on your log yesterday!
That’s similar to what I did when I started to learn languages by myself. I used to spend too much time reading about all the different learning methods, best materials to buy and things like that instead of actually studying. It’s hard to balance everything! While I am happy with the amount of time I dedicate to study, I wish I could update my own log more often or be more active on the forum.
Learning several languages together, I too had to deal with a “time management” problem. During the first year and a half I tried to dedicate the same amount of time to each language as well as doing the same activities. Although I was able to pull it off thanks to a very strict study schedule, it eventually became a bit too stressing. Improvements were coming very slowly…not to mention that constantly switching from one language to the other made me feel a bit like a flipper ball XD This year I’m going for a different approach. I opted to focus on one language only (French) and do maintenance or basic exercises with all the others depending on the objectives set for them. I also ditched the super strict schedule in favour of a more flexible one. I wasn’t able to study a lot during February because I was sick for the most part of it, but my new plan seemed to work well in January. Now that I’m slowly recovering I hope to keep it up and see if it will turn out to be effective. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 59 of 187 06 March 2015 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've just been catching up a bit with the posts that were lost from the downtime (see Iversen's post about the server/IP address change. Here's a reply Suzukaze posted on here that got lost:
Good to hear your experiences (and that you're feeling healthier!). I've found that any sort of strict study schedule doesn't work for me, at least beyond a short period. My schedule, my mood, and what I feel like working on are all a bit unpredictable so it's hard to plan. I prefer to just go with the flow, but while keeping some notion of priorities in mind. This forum definitely seems to have a bias towards studying multiple languages at once, with posts overstating the benefits of "synergy" and encouraging people to just go for it and not wait if they're thinking of adding in another one, so it's good to know that there are some of us who just seem to do better focusing on one or two at a time. Regarding time spent on the forum, I found that the downtime put things in perspective a bit for me: I instead spent the time doing more productive things like studying and work, and it made me conscious that I do indeed spend a little too much time here. I have also gained a lot from the discussions though, so there's a balance. Edited by garyb on 06 March 2015 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 60 of 187 06 March 2015 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think it's better to concentrate too, my problem is that my better languages get rusty.
So I need to maintain them in some kind of cycle at some point, though I do not do it in as organised a fashion as some people do (like Arguelles). And because I live in China, it means that when I have x hours of Chinese class a day I want to do something else afterwards. And that then ends up being another language... but sometimes it's an old one just because it's fun to deal with something you're good at (which is why I keep coming back to Russian all the time even though it doesn't need that much improvement from a practical point of view). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 61 of 187 06 March 2015 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Challenges
As I said, I signed up for the Italian output challenge. Also, in the lost posts, some people in the French team were talking about a mini version of the output challenge for French. Both should have started five days ago, on the first of this month. Also as I said, I've been doing a bit of French output work. I've written around 2000 words in my "journal" since the start of the month, although it's personal stuff so I'm not keen to post it. I'll try to do some more shareable writing soon. French is the priority for this and next month, so my Italian challenge will start very slowly. Maybe the French work will give me a chance to prepare, experiment, and figure out what works, then I'll be able to apply to that to the Italian challenge. I saw Serpent's "diversity" challenge suggestion for Team Caesar, and it's true that almost all of my Italian reading so far has been male authors. Variety is good so maybe I'll change that for my next book. But again, Italian is going slowly at the moment so I don't know if I'll finish my current book (Esche vive) in time to fit it in this month. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 62 of 187 09 March 2015 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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tarvos: I only saw your reply now, you must've posted it while I was typing my last one. You do juggle a very impressive number of languages, and you were one of the people I was thinking of when I mentioned that a lot of people here tend to do cycles of focusing mostly on one. I see what you mean about coming back to a language because it's fun... There's always some level of compromise between doing what you feel like and doing what you feel you "should" do. At the end of the day, I'm doing this for fun, so doing what I feel like usually wins even if it's less efficient.
A few French things worth mentioning from the last few days. - Finished reading Les particules élémentaires. Great book, although it didn't have quite the same "magic" as La possibilité d'une île. Next up will be Guillaume Musso's L'appel de l'ange, as discussed a few pages ago. I want to read more Houellebecq but several in a row would be too much; right now I'm up for something lighter and with more dialogue. - Finished Engrenages season 5, and loved it. I might re-watch a few earlier seasons since it's been years since I saw them. I do however find that watching exciting and violent crime drama late in the day can be bad for my sleep, so I think I'll start on something completely different, Fais pas ci, fais pas ça season 2 for evening viewing. Although if I'm still in a crime mood, Profilage is also an option: nowhere near as well written as Engrenages but much lighter and easier. - Had a good length conversation with a real French person at the weekend. Pronunciation started off well and got progressively worse, as did my speaking in general. It's just hard to keep it up for a long period, especially when you're a bit tired. In two weeks I'm going to spend a week in the Austrian Alps. I'd like to learn a bit of survival German if I have the time. I doubt I'll need it to get by, but it would be nice to be able to say and understand a few phrases, and it's an interesting and useful language that's been on my "someday list" for years. And I should have a reasonable bit of spare time for French and Italian reading when I'm not on the slopes. Edited by garyb on 09 March 2015 at 12:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 63 of 187 09 March 2015 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It doesn't have to be a book though :) And it still counts even if you finish your current book late in the month and read one chapter of whatever you choose for the challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 64 of 187 09 March 2015 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Great, thanks for the clarification :). Should definitely be possible then. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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