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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 17 of 21 08 February 2010 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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February 8th
عدت! الآن انا في الغردقة وبعد ستّة سنوات سأسافر إلى القاهرة وبيتي ان شاء الله. الأسبوع الماضي كنت أسافر على نهر نيل والآن أنام كثيرا قريب من البهر. سفري كان ممتاز I am headed back to Cairo this evening, and will be getting back into full swing tomorrow. I'm working out my study plan for second semester, and will be posting that shortly. My trip was excellent, and I will be posting more about it over the next few days. Edited by Woodpecker on 08 February 2010 at 10:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kinan Diglot Senior Member Syrian Arab Republic Joined 5570 days ago 234 posts - 279 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, English Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 18 of 21 08 February 2010 at 10:21am | IP Logged |
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Welcome back Woody :)
You wrote you will travel to cairo in six years? or is just a typo in Arabic? Also some correction: عدت! الآن انا في الغردقة وبعد ستّة سنوات سأسافر إلى القاهرة وبيتي ان شاء الله. الأسبوع الماضي كنت أسافر على نهر النيل والآن أنام كثيرا بالقرب من النهر. رحلتي كانت ممتازة 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7169 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 19 of 21 15 February 2010 at 12:10pm | IP Logged |
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What's the plan for your second semester? How was your trip? :)
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| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 20 of 21 15 February 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
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طبعاً عنيت ستّة أَيام. شكرا يا كنان
Thank you for reminding me about my log, Sprachjungie. Again, I have lots of excuses for not posting, but I'll spare you, because I have some very exciting news. I am switching schools! Because the semester students on my program have now returned to Amreekuh, the powers that be have decided it makes sense to combine the remaining seven of us into one class for monitoring purposes (this is the program's first year and they've told us in no uncertain terms that we are guinea pigs). We are now all taking class (two lessons so far) at the most well-reputed school in Cairo not named AUC, and the difference is amazing. First semester, I attended a small school near my home in مصر الجديدة, and though it was not bad, it can't even be compared to the new institution. To make matters even better, my class is with the founding teacher. He is brilliant, and he looks like Barack Obama. Amazing. الحمد لله The change was discussed somewhat before the trip, but was only confirmed after we got back, so I am still coming to terms with it as far as how it will affect my study plans for second semester. Based off what I've seen so far, the new classroom format will consist of us going through something that bears a strong resemblance to a GLOSS lesson (so strong, in fact, that I think some of them might actually be GLOSS lessons) and then discussing it. Or in other words, lots and lots and lots of vocabulary. Exactly what I need. So, I will have that study plan soon. I want to see what the ECA class tomorrow is like, and see a few more MSA lessons after that before I set anything in stone, but I do know one thing for sure: thanks to my brand new 90 minute commute to class, I will spend a lot of time this semester listening. I plan on writing something about my trip soon (in Arabic), but I haven't done so yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5815 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 21 of 21 03 March 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
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March 3rd
So clearly I suck at posting, as this is my first entry in three weeks, but I definitely am not falling by the wayside in my studies (and that's the important part, right?). I've been averaging about seven hours per day for quite a while now. It's actually getting to the point where I feel a little monkish. I suppose it's probably time for a State of the Monastery. العربية الفصحى The State of the Monastery is strong. - The new classes are still a bit unsettled because we had to change teachers after the first two weeks, but they're definitely more in place now. As I stated in my last post, things look like they're going to be largely text-driven and more focused on vocabulary than grammar, both of which seem desirable to me based on my current level and general feelings about class study. (In short, I think of language teachers as very efficient dictionaries. I haven't had a teacher here whose grammar explanations compared favorably to those I can find in my now absurdly large collection of textbooks and grammars. However, having someone to explain what's going on in a difficult text and work through it with me is incredibly useful.) Anyway. My plans for classes still aren't set in stone, but I think it's going to involve studying the vocab, reading through the texts a lot, and doing some scriptorium-style copying exercises. - My independent study is currently focused on the Al-Kitaab series. I initially messed around with this set of books, decided I didn't like it, and moved onto other things. I eventually learned to appreciate it after I'd arrived in Egypt and discovered how hard it was to get a good grammar explanation from my teachers here. Also, I found out the first two volumes are used by my university-to-be in the first four semesters of Arabic study, which provided further motivation to bite the bullet and learn to like Brustad's monster. I am currently hammering through Volume 1 at a rate of a chapter ever two days (I am racing one of my colleagues to keep us both motivated, and she's got a serious headstart), and I see no reason that won't continue to the end of the book. I have epic commutes to work or school five days a week which provide plenty of time for studying the vocabulary sentences, my major hangup. After four days with the sentences (and the last two with the main and listening dialogs as well) I can move the vocab into Anki with about 90% recall, which is high enough that the last few problems work themselves out while I'm actually working through the chapter the next two days. Except for the vocab, the book itself is serving more to clean up uncertainties than teach a whole lot of new things (though I must admit, I was very weak on irregular verbs beforehand, and it's been helping a lot). I finished Chapter 11 this morning, and will start on 12 tomorrow. My goal is to be done with the book by the end of March at the latest. - Other things: If any of you read my old, old, old log you know that at one point I started shadowing Linguaphone. I got about a third of the way through it, and really liked it, but I didn't have the Arabic textbook, so I had to make my own texts from the transliterations, which was very time-consuming. After a while, I got sick of it and stopped. Recently, however, I found the needed textbook at the Cairo bookfair! By itself! It was pretty neat. As such, I'd like to return to Linguaphone, because I think it's really a great course. I don't have time for shadowing right now, so I'm planning more of an Assimil-style passive-only wave to start. More about that, إن شاء الله, in a few days. I also found an amazing Teach Yourself Arabic from the 1950s at the bookfair, which looks like it would make a perfect 1-week grammar revision after I finish Al- Kitaab 1. العامّية المصرية I am really not sure how I feel about my ECA. I think there are two important sides to it. On the one hand, no matter what I'm going to be way ahead of my peers in college. I had a conversation about Israel on the bus today, I can teach a children's beginner English class or an exclusively Arabic geography class, I can survive here entirely without English. I am certainly not failing. On the other hand, I am not where I wanted or expected to be at this point (exactly 6 months into a 10 month program). 10 months is probably long enough to become fluent in ECA, assuming it's one's only primary focus. As it most certainly was not for me, fluency would have been an unreasonable expectation, and I never really expected to get there given my almost nonexistent exposure to Arabic, and general lack of experience as a language learner, when I signed up. However, compared to where some of my peers are at, I am disappointed by my results so far. Here are the reasons I suspect I'm lagging behind: 1. My host family situation (a single man) is very unconventional, and one major consequence is that I actually don't spend a lot of time with my host. We certainly talk every day, and we have a very good relationship, but most days we don't talk a lot, because we aren't around at a lot of the same times, I have lots of studying, and we both are tired at the end of the day. In contrast, a lot of my peers are surrounded by big Egyptian families all the time, and are certainly more immersed to that extent. My situation does have a lot of other benefits, and I wouldn't ever trade it, so I can't complain too much. 2. I have not manned up and memorized a bunch of verbs. I simply must do this soon. It's my biggest weakness, I just don't know enough verbs. This is entirely my fault. 3. I had a bad teacher for ECA for four month, and it took the bureaucracy a long time to correct that. This one was out of my hands. 4. This is the biggest one, I think. Outside of work and home, I'm just kind of shy about speaking. Egyptians are fascinated by me (I'm crazy tall, rail-thin, and very, very not Egyptian) and pretty much always want to talk to me, so I should be striking up conversations left and right. I am immersed, and I just need to immerse myself more. What I'm going to do about it now: - Try to come up with something to have a serious conversation with my host about every day, and if necessary bone up on vocab before dinner so I can discuss it articulately. - Turn one of my best English students into a conversation exchange partner one or two nights a week. I think having that sort of structured practice will build my confidence and improved my fluidity a lot. - I started this project two weeks ago: Shadow through Kullu Tamaam! It is actually the first ECA book I bought, but it initially moved far too fast for me. Now it is perfect: it has full-speed dialogs with lots of verbs and good grammar explanations. I'm currently shadowing 4 through 9 of 17, and doing the grammar exercises right behind. I have been trying to do a lesson every day, but it usually ends up being two every three. - After I finish Kullu, start playing with the amazing, ancient U-Michigan ECA course for which audio is finally available online. I am excited about that. Structured study is what gives me the confidence to do real stuff, and that course is just amazing. Le Français This is the one area where I've definitely been coming up short. It's already March, and I've gotten very little done. I planned on starting with Michel Thomas (I'd already done the Foundation course before) and I was going through it very slowly as time allowed. I realized two weekends ago that the course seems to be far more useful to me when I do a lot of it at once. So I started from the beginning, did the whole thing in two days, and then went back and reviewed disks 6-8, the ones that I hadn't done during my slow progression. Last weekend I only had time for Advanced discs 1 and 2, and now I'm facing something of a conundrum. I love MT's style, and it's already helped me a lot in getting back what little French I learned in school, but I really do profit much more from it when I do it at a rapid pace. If I'm doing MT, I want it to be the only thing I'm doing. Unfortunately, French simply isn't that high of a priority right now. I will probably have time to finish Advanced this weekend, but I feel like I would need to go through it at least two more times to get maximum benefit from it. Then I'd want to do the Foundation review disks and the Builder. That could take me another month, assuming I keep up my trend of only having time on weekends. As such, I think I'm going to finish the Advanced this weekend, but then move on to my next planned stage, even if I don't feel like I have a great handle on the material. Studying daily, I've found, matters far more than anything else, and MT is keeping me from doing that. Edited by Woodpecker on 03 March 2010 at 11:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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