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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 57 of 217 20 March 2015 at 4:03am | IP Logged |
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Spanish:
+watched an episode of Isabel +finally finished El palacio de la medianoche. It is not a bad book, not at all, I can recommend it with clean conscience. However, the subjects and caracters resonated somehow badly with me, so I kept struggling to get through the damn last fifty pages for more than a week! I hope the third part of the trilogy will be more like the first one than the middle one. Now I am reading another Pratchett and I'm already in one third :-) -no "hard work" done, however my Assimil El Alemán brought a few nice pieces of Spanish. At leaast one word I have previously found in a book and a different view on the grammar. the SC bot says I've read 18 "books" and watched 33 "movies" so far. Not bad but not stellar either. German: +Assimil. I am getting back to doing at least a bit every day. Yay! (I know this sounds stupid but I am happy about it :-) ) passive wave: I've just finished lesson 56, or rather the other half of it. I needed two days as this review chapter was quite huge: yesterday, I kind of learnt to decline adjectives, depending on whether or not they are accompanied by articles determining the gendre and so on (I was so lost and confused I was getting scared the declinations might as well depend on the season or moon phase... really not a pleasant bit of grammar) but I believe it's one of the things I'll get used to with more practice and lots of input. today's dose: the future tense is quite simple, I've seen it before. Translating the Spanish "para" was an informative piece on both languages, even though not too much (fortunately). I am struggling a bit with sentences like this Assimil example: Wir brauchen das Auto, um nach Hause zu fahren. It is not that hard, it basically corresponds to Czech sentences with "aby". But I need more exemples in situ and practice. The rest of posesive articles:nothing new, even though I still need lots of practice to stop making declination mistakes. Los verbos de posición y los verbos de acción correspondientes an awesome piece of information! basically an overview of stehen (gestanden), sitzen (gesessen), liegen (gelegen), hängen (gehangen).(my favourite example: Das Buch liegt auf dem Tisch, aber es steht in der Bibliothek. I love this Assimil :-D ) and their action counterparts stellen (gestellt), setzen (gesetzt), legen (gelegt), hängen (gehängt) I loved this part since I've just realized how much I had missed it. The review dialogue made me a bit less worried as the lessons of "the previous week" were quite heavy in weird vocabulary and proverbs. This dialogue was sane again :-) active wave: I got through Elfte Lektion and decided to take it slower already, one per day. (so, if I keep going, I should be finished in three months) I have improved my active wave routine. I am repeatedly writing (while saying out loud) all the words or sentences in which I made a mistake. It seems to be working at least partially as I avoid making the same mistake in the next exercise usually. However, time will tell whether it is really that useful (I think it might be a similar method to prof Arguelles'es "scriptorium", at least it is inspired by it). At least, it cannot hurt. French: +0,5 movie= 3 episodes of Héro Corp (season 5, episodes 4-6). I've just made more space on my hard drive by admiting I am not likely to ever learn a few of the languages on the bottom of my hitlist and I deleted 4GB of hoarded material and now I can download more Héro Corp again! By the way, why can't they simply make an rtve-like site or a site where I could simply pay per view from abroad? I spoke with myself a bit, just to make sure Spanish isn't usurpating the space French needs to occupy in my brain. Yes, I can still speak after a few weeks without practice. It sounded worse (and my comprehension was worse) when I had a call with my former tutor recently, as I hate the phone calls. The networks in the Czech Republic are overcrowded these days and the sound quality leaves to be desired. Sticking to the plan, I'll write another post when I have something to write about, hopefully soon. I am quite surprised an assimil review lesson left so many impressions :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4146 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 58 of 217 21 March 2015 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
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You've been busy! I hope we both find something better to read this time around.
I'm interested to read all of your thoughts on Assimil. I have yet to try Assimil. If I ever start learning another language, I'm definitely going to look at it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 59 of 217 22 March 2015 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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Well, trying to keep on track even though my laziness is a strong enemy. As I read (no idea where or what
the exact wording was): if there was a competition in laziness, I'd send someone for my gold medal :-D So, I did nearly no studying for my university subjects during the last two days, that changes tommorrow. Languages: Spanish: Five doublepages of the vocabulario book. It is quite good (except for the "fun" exercises that just waste space in the book) even though very easy. But i still learn two or three words per page (as word like carrots dont often come up in my input) so it is worth the time. And it's practice. Four doublepages of the gramatica de uso. I love it. These lessons were easy but i still learnt a tiny bit in each. The book is much better than the gramatica by anaya. The anaya one is good but the authors may have dumbed the easiest level a little bit too down. Which is probably true both about the gramatica and the vocabulario by the publisher. The lessons are not that dense and some of the exercises are not that perfect. This one, de uso, has tons of awesome execises and good explanations. And much more content. It costs more but the value/price ratio is better, in my opinion. And I am still reading my Pratchett book and I am totally happy with it. And I watched one episode of Isabel yesterday. I love it. But it takes a lot of time at once as I don't like stopping in the middle and,upon rturn, searching for a looong while where exactly have I stopped. I need a series with shorter episodes as well, when I am busier. I could try Caso Cerrado Stelle wrote about or The Simpson as I got a nice link recently. But those might be too hard, I don't know. German: Two passive and two active lessons total. It looks like I had done a lot more before writing the previous post than now. Well, there had beenjust many more and stronger impressions to mention. This time: Passive lessons 57 and 58 were of reasonable difficulty and quite fun Active 12 and 13: 12 was a record lesson. It holds the record in the largest amount of mistakes I made on such a small space. Ever. What was wrong: quite everyting! I hate the subject of phone calls in general. I am bad at those things in most languages, some would say even in Czech. 13 was standard again, a few mistakes and a few words forgotten, no drama. My new approach to the active wave seems to be really good. I only wish I had the money to buy the CDs (or I wish to find the audio to this assimil version somewhere but I've given up trying) Thanks a lot for your encouragement, Stelle! It always works miraculously. I'll probably write a review about Assimil in three months or so. If you happen to be curious and considering Assimil before that: it is great but I think it is more than useful to learn from a grammar book alongside it as well (or a traditional course but the grammar book seems to be a better option). And get the damn audio. :-) Edited by Cavesa on 22 March 2015 at 4:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 60 of 217 22 March 2015 at 6:18am | IP Logged |
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I personally think that Assimil is great, but the price is the problem sometimes,
especially for the audio. Often the book itself is around something like 25€, standard deviation maybe of 3€, especially if you buy it from an online bookshop instead of the Assimil bookshop, but the audio is often close to double the price of the book. I believe that the full package is usually set around. For example, I was looking at Russian: Le Russe sans peine The book alone is 24,90€. But click on book + CD audio it goes to 65,90€. I have bought quite a lot of these packs for my languages, but as a student this is still a bit hefty. Still I find it worth it though. However, for some reason, the euro plummeted like hell these past weeks something like 0,20€, so one of the few advantages hereof is that it costs less if you use a different currency... Edited by 1e4e6 on 22 March 2015 at 6:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 61 of 217 22 March 2015 at 6:23am | IP Logged |
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Yes, the whole package price varies by language, base language and seller. Anything between 65 and 85
ueros is possible :-( the book is quite affordable, the value/price ratio is really good, the audio is the pain. But it is just so much better with the audio, thankfully the audio for many assimils is on the internet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5478 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 62 of 217 22 March 2015 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
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I had not heard of Assimil until I started to take notice of this forum. Thinking I
knew best when it came to courses I paid it little attention for quite a while. Then having read so many good reports on it I opted to try it out. I love French Assimil of what I've used so far (3/4 way through Assimil New French with Ease). Great to hear you're applying yourself Cavesa to some German Assimil everyday. Keep up the good work, you seem to be finding your groove again. Now I need to follow suit. I must look back through your log at some time to nut out how you made it to French C2 in the end. We all have our own methods but it doesn't hurt to see what others have used for their success and perhaps apply a little of it to our own situation. Keep up the German! bis später 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4084 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 63 of 217 23 March 2015 at 3:27am | IP Logged |
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Are you revising the previous day's akktiv lesson before moving on to the next?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 64 of 217 23 March 2015 at 6:05pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Cavesa, I wanted to give you a belated congratulations on your C2. I posted a congrats just before loads of posts disappeared, so you probably missed it. So here you go: well done!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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