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TAC 2010 - This Is It. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6877 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 1 of 8 11 January 2010 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
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11 January 2010
Excuse my somewhat tardy entry to this year's TAC, my first ever. It's great to be here! For the past few days I've lurked around reading the TAC logs of others and wondered if I could pull it off. Wow... Great... Inspiring... But can I do it? I've decided to take the plunge this year in order to give myself the best shot at reaching my goals. So in effect, for me the year 2010 is 'it' for my wish to take my languages to the next level. I've had enough of not giving sufficient attention to the languages that I love! I've decided to do this individually and not in a team, but that's just more of a personal learning preference! So, I've decided to kick off this wonderful 43 degrees celsius day here in sunny Melbourne by presenting my first TAC 2010 post to the HTLAL community. I'm going to try and keep this post quite brief. It's already 33 degrees at 10.30 in the morning and some say the heat does strange things to my brain! I'm currently working with two 'primary' languages: Japanese and Tagalog. My heart is with these languages primarily. I have two other languages which interest me at the moment, Indonesian and Mongolian. I'm afraid that this year I will be putting the most effort into developing my Japanese and Tagalog as these are the most important for me professionally and personally, however I would still love to devote some time to Indonesian and Mongolian if time permits. I've decided to make a list of some English websites I can continue to visit, however, others are off limits to the extent that not visiting them does not harm my academic/professional endeavours. English music is fine, but I will try to limit its playtime on my iPod as much as possible. Here is where I am now, and what I plan to do (at least in the short term) with my languages: JAPANESE (Primary) Current level: Basic Fluency, holding a JLPT 2 certificate and sat for JLPT 1 certificate in 2009. Goal: Advanced Fluency. Be able to write association football match reports in Japanese, digest and analyse academic papers, understand the news a bit more effortlessly and without the assistance of a dictionary. Time: 2 hours per day, more if time permits. Activities: - Watch at least one film per week. This week's film might be Okuribito. - Read 'light' material such as a manga even if manga don't interest me too much. - Read more intensive material such as academic works. - Take 1 news story per day and understand it fully. Read up more about the issue on Google. - Watch NHK news online OR on local television if I am awake at the time of the bulletin. - Separate Japanese music and podcasts from the rest on my iPod. Not brave enough to wipe my iPod unfortunately! - Write letters and emails to friends in Japan. I just love snail mail! - Continue to input vocabulary into Anki. TAGALOG (Primary) Current level: Intermediate. Goal: Basic Fluency, meaning that I can work on development projects/efforts in the Philippines in Tagalog to a competent standard. It makes it so much easier to work with Filipinos in development at the grassroots level with Tagalog. Time: 1-1.5 hours per day, more if time permits. Activities: - Watch at least one film per week. - It can be difficult to find decent news in pure Tagalog, so here I'm going to be using the dated but excellent 'Basic Tagalog' and 'Teach Yourself Tagalog' books. - Separate Tagalog music and podcasts from the rest on my iPod. Not sure what's so popular in the Philippines these days, but I think I need some new music! - Resume Tagalog language classes every Saturday morning. I did these in 2007 and I miss them! - Set up a blog in Tagalog if I can find topics of suitable interest to write about. - Continue to input vocabulary into Anki. I may or may not count my total study hours. I must admit that I haven't tried this before, so I'll have a further think about its merits/demerits and then decide. INDONESIAN, MONGOLIAN Unfortunately I don't think that I will have sufficient time to devote to these languages, but I will give them what I can. My Indonesian is fairly rudimentary and my Mongolian is even more basic. I became seriously interested in Mongolia some months ago through a television program, although my interest in this mysterious nation goes back a bit further. I'd like to be able to read the cyrillic alphabet and reach a basic level. Resources and interest in Mongolian are very limited, so it's not the easiest Asian language to study. That fact merely adds to its aura of mystery, however. Anyhow, I think I will wind up here and check on the weather outside before beginning my study later this afternoon. I certainly hope my PC doesn't melt in the meantime! I have many sources for the lesser studied languages of Tagalog and Mongolian, so if anybody is interested in these please don't hesitate to let me know. Good luck to all of you! Keep up the great work. - Clint 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6724 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 2 of 8 11 January 2010 at 2:29am | IP Logged |
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Go for it Clint!
I can't wait to read up and see how you're going! And don't worry about the iPod thing... I 'thought' about it for over a year before I had the guts to actually do it! LOL 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6877 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 3 of 8 13 January 2010 at 2:21am | IP Logged |
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13 January 2010
Will have to make this short as I am getting ready for football practise soon. JAPANESE Yesterday subscribed to about four podcasts which seemed interesting. Listened to two of them - one a Nikkei-related podcast and the other a football podcast for the J-League team Jubilo Iwata. Would like to listen to both of them more closely again. Today's article from the NHK is 外国人参政権同意できず, which talks about suffrage for foreigners in Japan and some politicians' reluctance to give it. I also watched my film for the week, which is called 誰も知らない (Nobody Knows) and is intensely fascinating even if the ending is somewhat annoying. Will listen to my other podcasts on public transport later! TAGALOG Still gathering my resources for Tagalog, and hope to get started in an intense manner soon. Yesterday I chatted to a Mongolian on MSN, and it looks like I've found myself a Mongolian penpal! I really recommend Nobody Knows as a film, it's one of those films that will have you thinking about its message for days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Slacker Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 5459 days ago 62 posts - 99 votes Speaks: Spanish, English Studies: German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic (classical) Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 13 January 2010 at 5:04am | IP Logged |
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Cilantro,
I'm highly encouraged by your TAC challenge (like ATM machine) plan! Sounds like you've got some excellent goals and great ideas for what to do to reach them. By your post above, it looks like 3-3.5 hours/day on language study. I've only been doing this for about two/three weeks, and I've found that I've been able to make plenty of time each day by cutting out things that really weren't all that beneficial -- do I REALLY need to listen to Rush Limbaugh for example? (hint: no). Also, like you mentioned above, I also looked at tracking the amount of time that I spend each day/week/whatever on language study, but I've found that I tend to treat this more of a "chore" (i.e. something I don't like doing)... so, if I do it or not is no big deal as long as I think/know I'm progressing. Best of luck to you! -Slacker 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6877 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 5 of 8 14 January 2010 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
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14 January 2010
Hi Slacker, Thanks for the post. It's really gratifying for me when other people comment on my efforts, and it just makes me want to work that little bit harder. I'm still not 'formally' counting my hours although I do have a pretty rough idea in my head of what I've done so far. It reminds me of when I applied for study abroad in Japan back in 2007. The exchange advisor asked me if I had done 300 hours of Japanese study (in order to satisfy the requirements for entry), and since I had mostly self-studied, I had no idea how many hours I had done and said I could not possibly answer the question definitively. I think she didn't trust my abilities, but then I remembered that I had passed JLPT 3, which according to the JLPT syllabus is somewhat equivalent to 300 hours. So I was accepted due to holding that certificate. I had a lot of trouble convincing people that self-study could indeed be done, and that I had learnt the majority of my Japanese without the boring classes offered by the university. I'll slot in the hours just for the hell of it now, but might stop counting them. Here's what I did yesterday and this morning: Japanese (8 hours 15 minutes total) - Great day yesterday. Managed to listen to the Jubilo Iwata podcast before my football session in full again. There's a good mixture of interviews with players, match reports and so on. After my session I met up with some Japanese people and spent a good 3 hours chatting, drinking, and eating. I took a while to get into the conversations but was so pleased with the upkeep of my listening skills as I followed almost everything at native speed. There were a few words I didn't know, but I've looked them up already. This morning's NHK article was titled ハイチ地震、救助活動が本格化 which talks about the deployment of relief efforts in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. I've also developed an Excel document and intend to list all resources I have utilised in my studies for future reference. Tagalog (30 minutes total) - Found some decent Tagalog podcasts from SBS Radio Australia. These podcasts present topical issues in Tagalog and are not mere podcasts designed to teach one how to say 'good morning' and 'how are you' like a lot of Tagalog podcasts. Still moving along slowly with Tagalog, but will ramp things up soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| FlyingFin Bilingual Triglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 6647 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish*, English Studies: Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 8 21 January 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged |
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Clint,
Looks like you are getting on well with your two languages! I am myself about to start learning Tagalog, and have acquired a few books and such. Too bad that Pimsleur only has Level 1 in Tagalog though... Good luck! Cheers, Fin 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MmeFleiss Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5988 days ago 58 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog Studies: Japanese, French, Spanish | Message 7 of 8 22 January 2010 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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A link you might be interested in for Tagalog. Edited by MmeFleiss on 22 January 2010 at 12:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6877 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 8 of 8 22 January 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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22 January 2010
Thank you for the messages Fin and MmeFleiss. Fin, I believe I used Pimsleur a little bit earlier in my Tagalog studies. There aren't a lot of resources out there, but try to shop around on the internet to see if you can get some Tagalog resources direct from the Philippines. Good luck! As for me, I have been a little bit busy over the last week. I managed to go and watch the Australian Open tennis amongst a throng of Japanese fans who were there supporting one of their players. I've done little Tagalog, alas. Here is what I have done over the last week: Japanese (15 hours total) - I actually forgot to count the hours for some of my study, so I'm going to guess that I've clocked up about 15 hours by now. This week has been strange. I've bumped into Japanese people everywhere, including at the Australian Open and even near my house. While watching the tennis I had some great listening practice. Earlier in the week I was reading some work by the great and enigmatic Japanese writer Dazai Osamu, including 人間失格. I listened to an audiobook of his work 桜桃. A friend taught me some of the literary terms used in old Japanese literary works. I also managed to get through four NHK articles, including: 温暖化対策へ基本法案の骨子, 松山外国人の日本語弁論大会, 広島市長 米で核廃絶を訴える, and 火災 女性２人の遺体見つかる. I've also had not one, but two dreams in Japanese over the last week. Maybe the language is really starting to enter my subconsciousness! I've dreamt in Japanese before, but certainly not twice in one week! Unfortunately I can't set any goals for dreams in Japanese, but may more be on the way! This week I am still yet to watch a film, but hope to do so tomorrow. For the first time I shall also introduce five words of the day with one example sentence, with translations and examples thanks to WWWJDIC. 法案 【ほうあん】 (n) bill (law) その法案は議会を通過する必要がある。 It is necessary that the bill pass the Diet. 通知 【つうち】 (n,vs) notice; notification; report; posting 次の会議は４月１５日に開かれることを通知 いたします。 Please be advised that the next meeting will be held on April 15. 訴える 【うったえる】 (v1,vt) (1) to sue (a person); to take someone to court; (2) to resort to (e.g. arms, violence); (3) to appeal to; to call for; (4) to raise; to bring to (someone's attention); (5) to complain 君をうったえるぞ。 I'll sue you. 関税 【かんぜい】 (n) customs; duty; tariff 関税申告所が必要になります。 A customs declaration is required. 暗殺 【あんさつ】 (n,vs) assassination 彼は自分を暗殺しようという陰謀を知らなか った。 He was ignorant of the plot to assassinate him. Tagalog (2 hours total) - Unfortunately my Tagalog studies have been less profitable, although I did manage to listen to all four of my Tagalog podcasts from SBS Radio. I must say it's still disappointing to hear just how much Taglish is contained within the podcasts, but I'm not really surprised. I'll get back to basics with the best 'Basic Tagalog' book I have found over the next week hopefully. I've also been looking for some Filipino films to watch and have found a series of films called Sigaw. Hope to watch these too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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