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TAC’10 - Team M - 汉语 - 日本語 - DE - FR - ES | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 41 of 54 21 January 2010 at 7:45am | IP Logged |
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January 20
Mandarin: • added another 150 characters from Reading & Writing Chinese to Skritter • listened to an episode of ChinesePod (Can't Get to Sleep) Japanese: • did Lesson 33 in Remembering the Kanji (28 characters), practiced on Reviewing the Kanji (I'm re-working my Skritter list to be more faithful to the Heisig keywords) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 42 of 54 22 January 2010 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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January 21
• listened to an episode of ChinesePod (Western Zodiac) • practiced characters on Reviewing the Kanji and Skritter • started building both Skritter lists over from scratch, including adding all (!) 33 lessons I've completed from Remembering the Kanji (with correct Heisig keywords, and broken down into several lists of ~200 characters apiece) Edited by Levi on 22 January 2010 at 10:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 43 of 54 23 January 2010 at 5:51am | IP Logged |
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January 22
Mandarin: • listened to an episode of ChinesePod (Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes) • practiced characters on Skritter, re-worked my character list Japanese: • practiced characters on Reviewing the Kanji and Skritter (I'm working again through all my previous lessons one by one on Skritter) Some circumstances in my life have gotten me contemplating my future plans. Specifically, it seems increasingly likely that I am about to lose my job, and I need to start thinking about moving on. I am now starting an intensive job search, whether or not I get fired (I need a better job anyways), so that is likely going to make my language studies suffer in the short term. In the long term, my languages are really my only asset. I don't have any particular marketable skills besides my passion for languages (my bachelor's degree is in linguistics), and I also want to move overseas. So, as has been clear to me for a while now, this probably means I will be limited to working in translation/interpretation or teaching English (and probably the latter as my foreign language skills aren't nearly good enough for the former). Considering how few jobs there are in this area that I can do, how many people in the rest of the world want to learn English from knowledgeable native English speakers like me, and how much I just want to go see the world, among other factors, it's become more and more obvious that I need to start investigating the possibility of teaching English oversease This raises some obvious questions. Where do I want to go? How do I find these jobs? How much is the transition from here to there going to cost me? How do I prepare? What if it doesn't work out? I don't know the answers to these questions yet, but I'm beginning to work through them. Unfortunately, from my cursory research on the subject, it does not look like I will be able to seriously consider Europe, since the European Union has set up enormous obstacles to immigration that appear to be near insuperable for someone in my situation. I hope to find out I'm wrong about that as I do more research. On the other hand, China and Japan seem eager to hire Americans to teach them English. In any case, if it's clear I'm going to be moving overseas that will mean concentrating on a single language and putting the rest of them on the back burner. If that happens, it will mean of course that I will not satisfy my TAC 2010 goals, and I may have to withdraw entirely from the team challenge if my language isn't Mandarin (though neither of my teammates has posted a single update since the challenge began...are you guys still there?) That's a lot of ifs. I may end up deciding to stay or being forced to stay in the United States, and even if I don't I may end up trying to continue juggling all or some of my languages (particularly if I find a way to get to a French-speaking country). For now though, expect to see my studies suffer as I spend my days frantically looking for a new job, and don't be surprised if at some point I announce a change to focus on a single language. Regardless of what happens, my long term goal stands. There will be a day when I speak French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese with a high degree of proficiency. That day is far in the future, but it is something I refuse to give up on. My plans for 2010, however, are up in the air. Those plans will be dictated by either pragmatism or wanderlust, and I won't know which until I decide where my life is going from here. I have a lot of thinking to do. Edited by Levi on 23 January 2010 at 6:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6473 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 44 of 54 23 January 2010 at 11:47am | IP Logged |
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Good luck!
As an American, you are more lucky than others, because you may enter the EU without a visa for the purpose of looking for a job, you don't need to have one upon entering. Then, you can apply for a job visa right there, without needing to return to the USA. In Germany, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a visa if you have a job offer for at least 20 hours a week and decent pay, as long as there is no reason to suspect that you're taking away a job that Germans could do. Teaching English is an obvious case where nobody will demand any justification from your employer for wishing to choose an American over a German. With a German visa, you can visit the entire Schengen area without further formalities. Normally you can even use that visa to study or work anywhere in the Schengen area, except when you first come here, your work visa is limited to that company that made you a job offer, so you need to re-apply if you change jobs. If you manage to work for the same company for two years, you can apply for a visa that is independent of employer. Then it gets easier and easier to renew your visa for longer periods of time. I'm aware of this because my boyfriend is an American living in Germany. I can't say about the other countries, but Germany has not been hit nearly as hard as the USA by the economy crisis. Unemployment for example is not significantly higher than before. Also, you may like the minimum 24 days of holidays (in addition to bank holidays and sick leave) and the universal affordable health care, which even covers glasses and dentistry. Give it a try! Look for the Wall Street Institute or any number of private language schools. A particular bonus would be to find employment at a university, because they can get visas approved within 24 hours, while with any other employer it takes weeks. Look for job postings in the "Amerikanistik" or "Anglistik" faculty, the "Linguistik" people might take you as well. As a bonus on your resume, I recommend getting some ESL teacher training or some experience in the area. At the very least, read a learner's grammar of English before the interview. Edited by Sprachprofi on 23 January 2010 at 11:53am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 45 of 54 23 January 2010 at 5:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the advice! I will definitely take that into consideration.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 46 of 54 27 January 2010 at 4:50am | IP Logged |
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I haven't posted here in a couple days, not because I've stopped studying, but because I don't find it necessary to continue doing daily logs. First of all, they don't capture everything I'm doing language-wise. I've been doing a lot that I haven't been putting in here. Besides continuing with ChinesePod and my character studies, I've been eavesdropping on the conversations of French Canadians at work, I've had my cell phone set on Spanish and some programs on my computer set on German. I've been listening to Deutsche Welle for news here and there. I've even been chatting a bit in Esperanto online. I've been listening to a lot of Chinese and Japanese music. I can't keep track of all the things I'm doing, nor do I have the desire to. Also, the daily log has been encouraging me to just write boring quick summaries of what lessons I did, instead of adding real substance about how my studying is going. I will continue to update this log, but not every day, and I hope to have more interesting content in my updates.
I've decided I want to continue studying all five of my languages (though I may juggle around which ones I study at any particular time). And instead of saying "I'm going to study X and Y on day Z", I want to do more of what I feel like doing at the time, and I want to feel more like I'm making real progress toward a significant goal that's in sight. So I've decided to take the focus off of one-day short-term goals and work on some medium-term goals (on the order of weeks or months). My homework for tonight and tomorrow is to come up with some medium-term goals to pursue, and to prioritize them. The first of these goals, I believe, is finishing Remembering the Kanji as quickly as I can. I'm eager to dive into learning some real Japanese! But I won't allow myself to start the actual courses until I've thoroughly learned all 2,042 characters in RTK. I'll let the eagerness build for now. :) Edited by Levi on 27 January 2010 at 4:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5509 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 54 27 January 2010 at 6:13am | IP Logged |
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"..... concentrating on a single language and putting the rest of them on the back
burner. If that happens, it will mean of course that I will not satisfy my TAC 2010 goals, and I may have to withdraw entirely from the team challenge if my language isn't Mandarin (though neither of my teammates has posted a single update since the challenge began...are you guys still there?)" Regardless of what you ultimately end up doing in regards to your language study, you're welcome to be a honorary member of Team H for Hanyu, which we all know is many times cooler than M for Mandarin anyway. Sprachprofi and I are clearly following your thread already! What kind of Chinese music are you listening to? I always have a hard time finding Chinese music that isn't quite so soft pop. But I also haven't looked very hard, so I'm sure there are lots of great bands out there that I just don't know about. And as for your job hunt, 祝你好运! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dragonfly Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6482 days ago 204 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, Mandarin | Message 48 of 54 28 January 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
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The third member of the team H also keeps track of your studies. You have been doing really well!
You know, here in Russia English teachers are also welcome! I'm one of them, though non-native. I think, having majoured in linguistics, you'll surely find a teaching post abroad. Have you considered taking CELTA or smth similar? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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