|
 |
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 41 of 54 31 July 2009 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Learning vocab from context (from translating passages in the target language into English) appears to be somewhat more effective than from flashcards. I must run an experiment on this to confirm.
Am ploughing through my Colloquial Swedish Teach Yourself at a rate of knots, but have to obey certain self-imposed constraints: all Swedish passages must not only be understood but also translated into English (the book only asks that one answers comprehension questions on the excerpts) and every grammatical exercise is to be attempted. Writing, writing, writing 'til RSI sets in. Am 1/3 of the way through the book in 2 days. Once finished will buy another Teach Yourself and repeat the process to consolidate. Beginning to get a routine: 6 hrs written work from Teach Yourselfs and Grammar Primers during the day, 1 hr flashcarding, 2 hrs watching foreign telly (mainly German and Spanish) and taking notes. 20 mins jogging for energy and 20 mins doing a concentration/memory exercise ('dual n-back') to combat my high innate distractibility. Edited by vb on 31 July 2009 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5768 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 42 of 54 08 August 2009 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I am very impressed by this project of yours vb, tell me, do you have a job? I find it very hard to study intensively when I have to go to work as well- I'm just bad at juggling lots of commitments and I get tired easily. I'd be interested to know what your daily schedule is like- for example, do you get up very early in the morning?
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 43 of 54 09 August 2009 at 12:35am | IP Logged | ||
Nope - I quit the job to give it a go. The daily schedule at the mo' involves 4-5 hrs written work (going through Teach Yourselfs or grammar books) and 2-3 hrs vocab work, reading and satellite foreign telly watching (particularly subtitled German tv). I do the written work in chunks of 1 1/2 hrs, with 20-30 minute breaks. I get up at 8ish and start work at half nine (when I was working I would be up at 6). Grammar work and close, analytical reading seem to have been the most useful tasks I have done so far with short-term, reasonably ambitious projects the most effective way to structure the work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6033 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 44 of 54 20 August 2009 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I am trying to learn 5 languages at a time but I'm not going to attempt fluency in them in a year! Then again I'm still monolingual...haha
I hope this works well for you vb. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| polyglossus Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie United States theunixgeek.livejourRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5577 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, Catalan, French Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Swedish, Greek, Latin | Message 45 of 54 21 August 2009 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm studying French, Mandarin, German, Dutch, and Catalan simultaneously. Building on my experience and your last sentence, I must agree that, even though one should ideally only study one language until fluency at a time, if one wants to study various, it is best to study only two or three per day instead of all five at once, which can get to be quite exhausting. 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 46 of 54 22 August 2009 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My learning technique is moving inexorably into grammatical analysis and memorisation, of both grammar rules and vocabulary - target language as code. So I'm ending up doing exactly what I did at school and at university, but in an accelerated fashion. I must say that I find it incredibly satisfying to be able to spot little grammatical points occurring in the natural medium of the target language, having learnt them beforehand - great for reinforcement. The moral of the story might be to acquire explicit grammatical knowledge, memorise common patterns, as soon as possible. I'm just hoping that I'll brave enough to begin writing and speaking the language as much as I should do...
Found a fascinating book on Spanish vocabulary: Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach The fantastic lomastv.com has also been getting some heavy use. 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 47 of 54 21 January 2010 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Update: my goals have shifted a little from all-round fluency to fluent decoding. I can read German reasonably well (c. 8 unknown words per page reading Der Spiegel) and can understand most German tv. I am reading Swedish non-fiction with similar success.
I'm now attempting to capitalise on German/Swedish knowledge by trapping Dutch in a pincer movement. There are so many connections to German it's untrue. The method I'm trying is graded reading. I am not noting down any vocab or grammar rules as I suspect that in the act of committing these to paper one's mind feels less compelled to remember them. Read Teach Yourself Dutch once through today. Will do it again tomorrow and then three days on before proceeding to an intermediate learner. Once the Dutch is reasonably good will do Afrikaans. Similarly, once Swedish is at 90% comprehension (original fictional text), then I'll attack Norwegian and Danish. Have got to get a shift on with the Russian. Edited by vb on 21 January 2010 at 10:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andrés... Diglot Newbie Colombia Joined 5403 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 48 of 54 11 February 2010 at 3:33am | IP Logged | ||
|
I learnt Esperanto in 2 months, maybe. But in 1 week, I could have a conversation with another Esperanto-speaker .. If you REALLY wanna learn it, well, don't give it so much importance due the fact that is very easy, regular, and you'll almost learn it without trying :) (I am not sure if it's legal to post websites here, but I learn Esperanto here: lernu.net
Have fun with the other 4. 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. |
