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TAC 2010 (Team D) - My Fantastic Four | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| anni_online Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5615 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 1 of 4 01 January 2010 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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Hei, moi, hæ, hola!
Now this is going to be my TAC 2010 log. When I decided to be a part of the TAC 2010, I had the naïve assumption I would have some sort of learning strategy worked out until - today. Why does January 1st always come so surprisingly fast? For a start - instead of presenting my non-existent learning strategy - I'll write down my status of abilities in my four TAC languages plus my goals for 2010. NORWEGIAN: My absolute priority now and forever, I absolutely love Norwegian - don't ask me why, I don't have a clue. From the moment I started learning it, I had the feeling of "this was my mother language in another life"...no, I don't really believe that, it just felt like that ;-) I'm somewhere between B1 and B2, I would say, my passive knowledge is much better than my active knowledge. I understand it pretty well, but there are only few occasions to speak. I want to get as close as possible to native fluency...yeah, I'm known for my decent goal-setting ;-) FINNISH: I've been learning Finnish for three years now and I'm having doubts whether I've already reached A1-knowledge. It hurts to pin it down like this, but it's the brutal truth. And I'm fully aware of the fact that that is not only due to the difficulties of the Finnish language, but also my lack of commitment and the fact that taking part in a language course is not only not the perfect way for me to learn a language, but rather hampers any learning at all. I might go a bit more into detail about this some time in the future, I do have my own theories about why it doesn't work for me. My goal for 2010 is to at least reach a solid A2, anything better would be very much appreciated. I'll spend a week in Finland on a language learning trip starting next week, so hopefully that will fuel my motivation! ICELANDIC: My current knowledge is close to zero, but this is such a fascinating language that I absolutely had to add it to my TAC languages. I find it hard to set a goal, since I have no experience with it. My minimum goal is to be able to read it (pronounce and understand it) correctly by the end of 2010. Anyone who's ever dabbled in Icelandic phonetics will agree with me that pronounciation alone should take some time. SPANISH: I learned some Spanish in school and even started studying it at the university, but stopped after three semesters, which had little to do with Spanish, but a lot with career opportunities. I was pretty good at it then, but it's such a long time ago...11 years, to be honest. I have concentrated on other languages since then, so Spanish is kind of buried at the moment, but I'm optimistic that it will be possible to revive it relatively easily. I'm hoping to be at B2 (again) by the end of this year. Methods? I worked out a pretty sophisticated spreadsheet, but it became more and more complicated, so in the end I had to admit that if I work with it, I'll spend more time with the spreadsheet than the actual language learning. I'm trying to come up with something more simple now and may present it if it's ever going to be finished, but until then my method is: SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE ON LANGUAGE LEARNING WITHOUT LOSING FUN OR GOING CRAZY. Instead of continuing to babble about language learning I'll switch to some serious training exactly NOW! Have fun with TAC everyone! Edited by anni_online on 01 January 2010 at 9:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5570 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 2 of 4 07 January 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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Buenas tardes amiga! cómo está? ...and that's the extent of my Spanish for now. Good luck with all your languages
Anni! Very excited at reading your findings and progress through the year, as all your chosen languages intrigue and interest me so incredibly much. Take care and enjoy, Vos 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5645 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 3 of 4 09 January 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged |
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You have an interesting batch of languages, ones that I'd be interested in studying later. Since we don't have any languages in common I might as well say it in Norwegian...
Lykke til! :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| anni_online Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5615 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 4 31 January 2010 at 1:21pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, it's been some time since I was here for the last time, but I've been very busy (yes, in language learning also) and couldn't find the time to post here.
Iolanthe, Vos, so great to be in your team! And thanks for your encouragement! I've already been following your logs and promise to update mine more regularly in the future ;-) As I wrote in my first post, I went to Finland on a language learning trip. It was incredibly great, it's hard to put into words. As for language learning, I finally realized that I do know so much more Finnish than I thought, I was able to understand a lot and also spoke quite a bit (with many mistakes, I bet, but people never had any problems understanding me, so that is not so bad, I believe). On the way back on the plane and at Helsinki airport I never even considered speaking anything but Finnish, I had suddenly lost this "I do have to be able to speak perfectly, otherwise I won't say a word" attitude, which is stupid anyway. The people who cared for us during the trip were just incredible, they organized whatever we wanted to do (from instructing us in preparing typical finnish food like pirogies and salmon to stroking reindeers, going to the sauna, sledding etc.). And of course they never took any money for it... As an effect of this trip I also decided to join a different Finnish course. The trip was organized by my Finnish teacher, and the participants are all taking part in one of her courses. There is one course that is on a higher level than the course I've been taking part in, and there were some guys from that course on the trip. And they convinced me to join their course because they think I can do it (yeah, that felt reeeaaaallly good to hear that ;-) and because I'll have the chance to advance faster with them. So here I am now in a course that is 18 chapters ahead in the book! Since returning from Finland I have used most of my free time to study hard to reach that level, and it looks like it's going to work. So obviously Finnish is my No.1 priority at the moment. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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