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Team C:Kill wanderlust, become a polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6934 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 4 10 January 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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TAC 2010: Team C - Japanese, Korean, French
How to learn Japanese and Korean at the same time when you're having trouble just to keep up with a single language? A question I've been asking myself for the past few years. Japanese has been my main language for over three years. And the only language besides English that I've ever studied consistently. I hate to confess it, but I have a hard time to keep my mind on one thing for a longer period of time. A classic case of wanderlust. Languages that I've dabbled with in the past four years: Korean, Romanian, Mandarin, Swedish, Cantonese, French... the list is long. And I probably forgot one or two languages that I've studied just for a couple of days (like Russian). On the other hand, despite a heavy case of wanderlust... or maybe because of... I do enjoy putting in long hours to get things done. Whether studying Kanjis or reading up on topics I'm interested in. I have spent complete days doing nothing than studying Japanese... or spent 24 hours straight to shoot and edit a video. So... the energy is there. I've learnt a lot through studying a lot of things. But, I'm an expert in few areas. Lots of my energy just gets lost in some endeavor that will never show any results. And that's a good enough reason to join the TAC 2010. To challenge myself to focus my energy on a small area to gain some expertise. To master something. The most fun I enjoy are from starting things... and doing things that I do well - like speaking in Japanese... or holding a speech (a new hobby I found - Toastmasters)... or practicing Karate... or cook a meal that I love. I'm a little late with my log, so I'll just keep this short to get started. What are my main languages in 2010? Japanese, Korean, French - In this order. How am I going to study? I'm not sure yet. I had to fight with an acute case of blood poisoning in December, christmas came and went... a new year began and two weeks in sitting in front of my computer with a cold, wondering why I'm not better prepared for the challenges of learning languages this year. Well, I can make things up along the way. The approach I'm going to suggest in this introductory post is simple: I'm going to use the methods that have proven useful in the past (shadowing, wordlists) and if I manage to handle my three languages well enough, I'm going to experiment with some other methods (like L-R, chorus, memorization) What are my language learning materials?
How am I going to record my progress? I'm not the most active blogger, nor have I ever been an active member on forums, so I'll keep my goals low:
How will I fight with wanderlust? I won't. I don't have any intention to avoid the desire to learn new languages. There's a long list in my head of things I want to do. Like doing some Chinese, or getting back to Romanian, improve my English vocabulary,... I will make a list of sub-goals that I will award myself with from time to time. As long as I do a minimum of work daily on my major languages, this should help me keep my motivation going and should prove to be a lot of fun. Okay, that's it for now. 2010 is going to be a great year. To all the language learners out there... Tom Vo Edited by Thuan on 12 January 2010 at 4:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6934 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 4 12 January 2010 at 4:50pm | IP Logged |
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Okay, I just updated the introductory post and added information about the materials and methods I'm going to use.
How to become a polyglot when health gets in your way and you're still looking for a system to manage your time? I've spent the past few days in bed because of a cold, so I have yet to actually get myself into the challenge. Most of the polyglots that I admire (Prof.Arguelles, Iversen) have a clear system of learning languages. That's probably something that develops over time and with the amount of languages you study. I don't have a typical approach to study a language. The only language that I've really studied consistently these years is Japanese and I've probably tried out every method and program that I could learn about. You know what? The astonishing thing is that any method that I've tried out for some time gave me results. Yes, it doesn't matter if it was Assimil, FSI(Jorden), Shadowing, wordlists, sentences or memorization - any method that I've put some effort in has yielded results and improved my language. Wow, what a surprise. This knowledge should've helped me to better manage my time and be more effecient. Nope, I'm still as curious as before about different methods of studying languages; can't sit down and decide on one simple method to follow. People often ask me how I could reach such a high level in Japanese on my own, and I'm hard-pressed to find an answer. Consistent work would be the obvious answer. But usually I end up telling people about shadowing and encourage them to have some fun. The TAC is a good opportunity for me to do more experiments with different methods, while staying consistent with my languages. (At the very least, I won't change the languages together with the methods!) French French is the least important language in my list (it's the simplest), so this would be a good opportunity to see how far an Assimil approach would take me. Shadowing and Scriptorium are the only methods I've planned for French. No real experiments, just shadowing through both volumes of Assimil and see what level I will reach. Korean This one is tough. Korean looks like a hard language and I don't have a lot of material to study. I would've loved to learn Korean with Assimil, but it's only available in French (I actually own this one). From what I've read on this forum, the quality is rather bad (I think Andee wrote about this). I've read and shadowed the first five lessons of TYS Korean a few years ago, but I've forgotten most of it by now. But I've kept the ability to pronounce the Korean language (did back TYS and Pimsleur back then in parallel) My Hangul knowledge is completely lost (I can still write Kim Ki-Duk in Hangul though, Park Chan-Wook didn't make it that far). Not a real problem, as it's easy to learn. My plan for January: Shadowing the lessons of either Elementary Korean or TYS. I haven't decided yet. Add to that Scriptorium. Japanese I have literally hundreds of books in or about Japanese. More than I could manage to work through in a single year. My conversational level of Japanese is rather high (intermediate), but I'm lacking vocabulary (around JLPT2), so vocabulary has been my main focus recently. I began to combine Iversen's wordlist method with the Gold List method in December; to keep things simple that's what I will continue to do in January until I get through the newbie phase in Korean. If everything goes well, I'm going to upload a video or audio of me speaking in these three languages to record my progress. Moses McCormick has been the inspiration to shoot videos of yourself while studying (to get some feedback and to motivate yourself). That's it for today. Time to get my mp3 player and start the challenge. Edited by Thuan on 12 January 2010 at 4:59pm 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 3 of 4 13 January 2010 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
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Hey! I just wanted to say good luck with your TAC this year--I empathize concerning unexpected medical events that turn into slight setbacks. Luckily, the year is still young; you can do it!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Nocturne Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 6152 days ago 67 posts - 70 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishB2 Studies: Korean, Swedish | Message 4 of 4 19 January 2010 at 10:59pm | IP Logged |
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Hi there,
good luck with Korean! It's a hard language, but it's very rewarding. As far as materials go, I found this book extremely useful thanks to its clear and concise grammar explanations - your mileage may vary, of course, but I suggest you take a look if you ever get the chance. Regarding your question, my Japanese is not really as good as my Korean - I know a fair amount of kanji (though nothing extraordinary) yet I can't really hold a conversation beyond the very basic level, let alone read anything worthwhile. I'm very slowly working on it though. I tend to find Japanese grammar harder to grasp, for some reason. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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