|
 |
5 languages in a year | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes  Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 33 of 54 06 April 2009 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hi again,
Am done with the Maths teaching for the time being and, come July, will be taking a year out to revive this project. Have cheated a bit in that I have spent the last half year working through bits of three of the languages that I am planning to do: Russian (via the excellent Michel Thomas method cds, which I have finished); Spanish (by reading Westerns - the language fits the atmos perfectly, I find); and German (by cramming vocab). I will be creating a healthy set of German flashcards at www.quizlet.com and would be grateful to receive suggestions for words that I may have omitted. Links will appear shortly... Bob 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 34 of 54 12 April 2009 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Here are some vocab sets that I have put up at quizlet:
http://quizlet.com/user/Vocabash/ Arabic is my fourth choice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 35 of 54 31 May 2009 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
|
Have found a nifty way to cram vocab: records sets of test-yourself format vocab pairs (eg. 'box office hit...Kinorenner' x 2) to mp3 player; play sets continuously.
Early signs suggest that this is my most effective method. Tested my ability to do hard brainwork over the Easter holidays a month ago by ploughing through Schaum German grammar drills. Managed to solve 1500+ problems over 12 hours on the first day; almost matched this the second day; achieved mental collapse after the two succeeding days after having a) written a book proposal for sth b) written a book of simple geometrical puzzles (unrelated to a). I spent the next two days flat out on the sofa unable to do anything even remotely taxing - reading made me feel physically sick (!). Moral of the story: avoid mathematical puzzles and protracted periods in front of VDUs. German, Russian and Spanish ticking along nicely - no confusion between them registered (some confusion between Spanish and my comparatively stronger existing knowledge of Italian, however). Arabic script embarked upon. Swedish is lined up next and have done some vocab work already. Am a little worried of crosstalk with German. Might attempt to take A-Levels in the languages if things going well by Christmas (has anyone decided to do this, as mature students?) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5654 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 36 of 54 07 June 2009 at 9:41am | IP Logged | ||
|
New here, as of yesterday. Hello! I have more language learning curiosity than innate talent, but I've learned the value of persistence. Being lazy, though, persistence for me cannot be about flashcards or list-learning or any sort of boring slogging. I have to get motivated by good material (and my goals usually involve learning to read languages), ideally materials that can be pieced out and taken day by day. Right now, I'm doing Persian, German, and Italian, and am about to start Arabic.
I've been doing Persian (with a friend at about my level) intensively for four years (with a foundation from decades before), and we've arrived at an advanced reading level for classical (i.e., medieval) Persian poetry. We do a goodly chunk every day and discuss it, and then check it against a translation (if we have one), and one night a week we meet and go through that week's portion of a long novel-in-verse (we're on our third one of these). I read a bit of German every day (recently Goethe, Hesse, and Hauff) and also some Italian (Petrarch). I don't fret if I don't grasp every nuance. I didn't know any Italian at all, but it's not too hard to grasp how it works with a good grammar and dictionary at my side. Everything comes with time, but it's important to keep the effort steady and not get too anxious or frustrated by what I don't know. I try to focus on what I *do* know. My friend and I plan to go through 1,001 Nights in Arabic (which is apparently written in a sort of not-quite-classical language), working very slowly at first, as we did with Persian a few years ago. First crawl, then walk, and maybe even run someday. Crawling feels pretty good, though, compared to complete immobility! We already know the writing system, of course, from Persian, and we have good Arabic vocabularies because there are so many Arabic words in Persian. Plus, my friend already has a pretty good handle on Arabic. I don't have any trouble so far keeping these languages straight, and I enjoy the material I'm reading so much that I don't feel like I'm working. This is just what I do for pleasure. I enjoy a bit of success, then, each day, as long as I enjoy myself, and I have confidence that I will improve over the long run. I tried adding Tamil last year, and got as far as learning the writing system and a few initial chapters in "Tamil for Beginners" by Hart, but let it go because I didn't really see a clear path to my goal, which is to enjoy a treasury of ancient Tamil poetry. There simply weren't enough resources (not even a good and available dictionary), I didn't have a partner, and there seemed to be too many obstacles to eventual success in getting from modern conversation Tamil to the ancient language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 37 of 54 19 July 2009 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||
|
And so it has begun in earnest: yesterday I ploughed through about 1000 words of German vocab (am attacking these in order of probability, Scrabble word-learning style). Today: 100 words in Swedish, 500 words in German, 100 words of Spanish, some basic German translation, Disc 4 of Michel Thomas Foundation Arabic. About 10 hours work in all. Set a target to nobble the top 4000 German words by probability by Friday. An examination will be set; 80%+ is the target, on pain of emptying my pockets of £20. Motivational techniques proliferate until addiction sets in, whereupon it might be harder to stop studying (some hope)...
Ultimate aim is 5 As at A-Level come summer. Might be some kind of record (concurrent language A-Levels without preceding study?) Would be interesting to see whether this intensive work will bring about some kind of cognitive restructuring and so may hassle the local psychology department to conduct some kind of before/after comparison. There is a dearth of information on the neurological effects of monomaniacal practice, especially as, for obvious reasons, subjects are typically examined after the fact. Edited by vb on 19 July 2009 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 38 of 54 25 July 2009 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
79% Hmph. Thus my estimated passive vocabulary is now at least 3160 words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 54 30 July 2009 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
In Germany it is so that once you have obtained your Abitur school-diploma, the procedure is finished. So nobody can afterwards decide to qualify in some extra school subjects. Of course it is possible to do the whole Abitur-exam as an adult. For Abitur the amount of subjects is fixed to 4 subjects, of which 2 can be languages. As far as I know the system in Britain is different because you can chose as many A-levels as you want (with a certain minimum - of 3 subjects?). Among my 4 Abitur subjects there was only one language: English. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 30 July 2009 at 3:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 40 of 54 31 July 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged | ||
|
Yes, the system sounds more flexible in the UK. Students tend to take at least three subjects as that is the minimum requirement for most degree courses.
The record for simultaneous A-Levels was 7 when I took them - I know this because one of my friends set it. Since then, the bar has been raised somewhat: Ali Moeen Nawazish from Pakistan nobbled 23 of them last year. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
