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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 1 of 39 30 April 2008 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
Count me in for TAC2.
Here are my plans/goals for this time around.
General principles:
a) Focus on one language at a time. I don't intend to banish others entirely, but I'll take exactly the opposite tactic of last year, and try to do serious study of only one at once, until I hit a benchmark level, which I'll define as being able to hold 15 minute conversations with native speakers 'without undue difficulty' and reading 10 books, without audio, that I hadn't previously read in another language. This does not preclude planned wanderlust at specific times, when choosing which language to do next, or extensive reading in any language I've hit basic fluency in.
b) I'll aim for at least 3 hours of language-time a day, including listening to music, and at least 30 minutes of active 'study' (L-R, working with grammars, shadowing, etc).
Languages:
1) Polish.
2) Dutch.
3) A review of my Italian, systematically clearing up my grammatical weaknesses, followed by extensive reading. If I can do this by late July, all the better, but I'm not counting on this.
4) To be decided: something non-Indo-European. I'll plan at least a week or two of 'controlled wanderlust' at this point to assess materials available for candidate languages.
5) It's fairly questionable if I'll get this far. If I do, top candidates are Russian, French, and German, with a chance of Irish, Farsi, or Modern Greek, depending on whether I want to go for breadth of available learning material or expanding my view of the Indo-European languages.
I may or may not try to sneak Esperanto in at some point. I'd like to solidify my knowledge of it.
I intend to try the Michel Thomas Mandarin course, because of what I've heard about how it teaches tones, but don't intend to tackle Mandarin.
Tools/techniques I plan to use:
a) L-R.
b) Language exchanges with native speakers
c) Books, music, and movies (in the target languages)
d) Grammars
Tools I may use:
n) Assimil
o) other language courses (Colloquial, Linguaphone, etc)
p) Any suggestions?
I will start tomorrow, on May 1st, by doing L-R of Tolkien for Polish.
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6140 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes
| Message 2 of 39 30 April 2008 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
Heh, Tolkien. I've got that set in Polish as well.
Did you make a parallel text? I'm not studying Polish at this moment, but it would be nice to have a parallel text if possible.
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| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6439 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 3 of 39 30 April 2008 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
Hello Volte! It's been a while.
1 How's your Polish? Can you read with the help of a dictionary?
2 Why? Not that I disagree with the choice. Do you have any previous knowledge? It may help later with German.
4 Japanese? You've already invested time in it.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 4 of 39 30 April 2008 at 9:48pm | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
Hello Volte! It's been a while.
1 How's your Polish? Can you read with the help of a dictionary?
2 Why? Not that I disagree with the choice. Do you have any previous knowledge? It may help later with German.
4 Japanese? You've already invested time in it. |
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1) I haven't found a good Polish dictionary. I can read for the gist without using a dictionary, but miss a lot. With isolated phrases, it's not rare for me to be entirely lost. I have almost no active use. I'm starting a 3rd L-R trial later today; at the moment, I'm listening to Polish music, and just took a break after reading 20 pages of simple parallel situations in English and Polish.
2) I have some previous knowledge; I did a fair amount of it during TAC 1. I prefer Dutch to German, know some helpful native speakers, and will definitely be in Amsterdam for a while this summer, due to a conference I always attend being there.
4) Possibly. I'm torn between several choices; I'm thinking I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6895 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 5 of 39 01 May 2008 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
Volte, there are at least two decent dictionaries: Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej and PWN.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 6 of 39 01 May 2008 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
Thank you; I hadn't known of either, and both look good. Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej even comes with an electronic version on CDs, which is a big plus: I find, in practice, that I don't use paper dictionaries unless I have absolutely no alternative.
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6895 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French
| Message 7 of 39 01 May 2008 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
The other one comes with an electronic version on CD as well. I have them both and use them on computer only because just like you I don't use paper dictionaries unless I don't really have to.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6431 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 8 of 39 01 May 2008 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
Day 1:
I started off with a bit over an hour of Greek music. I then listened to about 4-5 hours of Polish music. Interspersed with the latter, I read atamagaii's handbooks with simple Polish-English text; the two longer ones consisted of several short scenes per page and 109 pages, and I went through them in about 2 hours, maybe a little longer. After that, I slept for a while.
I got my day (re-)started with a half hour workout to Italian and Dutch music, followed by stretching to a Persian song.
Around 3PM, I started L-R'ing Tolkien. There was a ramping-up curve, as the audio had a prologue which my parallel text didn't; it took me about 40 minutes to get everything figured out. After that, I did about 3 hours of L-R over the next 9 or so; my concentration was faltering by the end, as I'm very tired.
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