shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 1 of 37 02 May 2008 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
OK so here are my plans:
German - I have some knowledge of this having completed the Michel Thomas beginner's course, one unit of FSI basic and the first part of Deutsch Warum Nicht? by Deutsche Welle. Unfortunatly after doing all that, I proceeded to do nothing for over a year so I am a little rusty. I am now going through Assimil and am up to the 14th lesson.
French - I studied this at school four years ago. I was never very good at it then and have not touched it since so I am pretty much back to the beginner level. I have an Assimil course in this also which I intend to complete.
Russian - A totally new language that I have never studied in my life before.
A mea culpa in advance, I have exams until June 4th so I will not be "totally annihilating" these languages until then. In fact, due to the limited time, I will only actively learn one language until my exams are over which will be German. I am hoping to have finished or almost finished all 100 Assimil lessons in the passive phase by then.
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 2 of 37 03 May 2008 at 9:19pm | IP Logged |
Day 1:
I listened to Assimil lessons 8-13 again. Then did lessons 15, 16 and 17.
The way I am going through the lessons at the moment is to listen to the dialogue while reading the English translation several times. I am able to pick up a few new words by doing this and pick up on the structure of the language. Then I listen to the dialogue while reading in German several times. As I will know the meaning of the dialogue from reading the English translation and most of the German words from the previous lessons, I am able to gain a very high level of understanding of the dialogue. As the dialogues are very short at this stage, I can go through a lesson in just over 10 minutes.
At the end of the session, I listen to the dialogues again to review them.
Time taken: 53 minutes
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 3 of 37 04 May 2008 at 11:11pm | IP Logged |
Day 2:
Lessons 17-20 of Assimil. I have started to forget some of the words from the earlier lessons so I used Mnemosyne to make flashcards of these words which I will keep reviewing and adding to as I go on.
Time taken: 47 minutes
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 4 of 37 06 May 2008 at 6:22pm | IP Logged |
Day 3:
Its mea culpa time. I spent most of the day in bed with a migrane so no studying.
Day 4:
Listened to lessons 15-20 again then moved on to 22 and 23. The lessons have suddenly gotten noticeably harder as I am now coming across more new words and the grammar rules are getting more complex. This has slowed down my progress as I am now repeating the lessons more.
Time taken - 54 minutes (Total time: 2h 34m)
Edited by shyopstv on 06 May 2008 at 6:22pm
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 5 of 37 09 May 2008 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
Mea culpa again. Friday was the end of term at university which means loads of deadlines for reports and stuff and if you are as lazy as me means furiously writing loads of reports just before the deadlines. In short, I didn't do very much language study. But I feel I have made amends with one day of sickening, brutal, total annihilation:
Day 5:
Went through flashcards. Time taken - negligible
Day 6:
Went through flashcards. Time taken - negligible
Day 7:
Listened to Assimil lessons 22 & 23 twice more for review then did lessons 24-32. Added loads of flashcards for these and I think I will need to go over some of these again simply because I did many in one day. After that, I got bored of Assimil so did the first CD of Michel Thomas Advanced German and went through an article on the Die Welt website armed with a dictionary and a lot of patience.
Highlight of the day: Looking through a dictionary to find the gender of the singular form of the German word for "ships", I found that in German, the word meaning "to navigate" and the much more vulgur equivalent of "to urinate" are homonyms.
Time taken - 6 hours (Total time: 8h 34mins)
Edited by shyopstv on 09 May 2008 at 9:41pm
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 6 of 37 10 May 2008 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
Day 8: Listened agian to Assimil lessons 24-32, moved onto 33 & 34 then did the first half of the second CD of Michel Thomas Advanced German. I am starting to build a healthy collection of flashcards - I have 66 now.
Time taken - 1 hour 42 minutes (Total time: 10hr 16mins)
Edited by shyopstv on 10 May 2008 at 6:37pm
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 7 of 37 12 May 2008 at 3:32am | IP Logged |
Day 9: Lesson 36 and went over my flashcards. I was tired and that was all I did yesterday. (Total time 25 mins)
Today, I will experiment with learning the dialogue earlier and reviewing it throughout the day as opposed to spending 20-30 minutes on it at night
Total time: 10hr, 41 minutes
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shyopstv Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6663 days ago 86 posts - 91 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Esperanto
| Message 8 of 37 13 May 2008 at 1:07pm | IP Logged |
Day 10: I found that apreading the learning period throughout the day was a more effective method of using Assimil. Unfortunatly, I only managed one lesson and 35 minutes over 3 seperate periods on it. The exams I mentioned in my first post are getting closer, there are just two days to go until my first now and I waste enough of the time I should be using to study as it without spending hours on languages!
Total time: 11hr, 11 minutes
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