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TAC09: DE, RU, TR and...? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6401 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 118 27 January 2009 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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JAN. 19 - JAN. 25
This has been one of my least productive weeks since I began logging. Many pressing responsibilities in real life have prevented me from enjoying languages. I did find time to browse around the forums a bit for fun -- at first I was alarmed at the frequency and intensity of teacher-bashing, but that was simply a knee-jerk reaction. I've had my share of poor teachers too (I am one sometimes!), and I've been disgusted with some of my children's teachers or school systems. So I can't blame anyone for their vitriol. All I know is I can only be concerned with myself, and continue to strive for improvement in my own instruction by breaking free of some of the traditional, ossified practices which plague education. GERMAN In addition to reading a chapter or two of Der, Die, Was?, I listened to some dialogues from the Living Language: Ultimate German Advanced set which I borrowed from the library. My ears have been very hungry for listening practice! Because I don't have Internet access at home, and my classroom is still uninhabitable from the flood, I haven't listened to German for several days. Today I received a glimmer of hope that I can move back in in two days. Zusätzlich mit einem paar Kapiteln vom Buch Der, Die, Was?, habe ich auch etwas Zeit zum Hörverständnis verbracht. Aus der Bibliothek habe ich Living Language: Ultimate German Advanced ausgeliehen, denn die Ohren waren äußerst hungrig nach Übung zum Hörverstehen! Nämlich, ich habe Deutsch tagelang nicht zugehört, nicht nur weil ich bei mir zu Hause kein Internetzugang habe, sondern auch weil meine Klassenzimmer wegen der Überflutung noch nicht verwendet werden kann. Aber ich habe eine Hoffnungsfunke heute erhalten, dass ich am Donnerstag einziehen darf. Some phrases from my reading: Ihr war ein wenig flau. She felt a little faint/queasy. Von wenig! You've got to be kidding! (Liebe Muttersprachler, ist das richtig oder stehe ich im Wald?) Wenn sich das so verhält... If that is the case... Ich freue mich wie ein Schneekönig. I'm pleased as punch. 5.75 hrs RUSSIAN Stilman textbook: Partial review of Pattern Sentences from Units 1-16. For the sake of variety, I curled up with Beginner's Russian Reader as well. 3.0 hrs TURKISH FSI, Unit 23, text and audio. 1.75 hrs Cumulative time since Dec. 25: DE: 31.0 hrs RU: 18.75 hrs TR: 11.25 hrs CZ: 2.0 hrs GK: 1.0 hrs IR: .5 hrs edit: fixed some embarrassing German participle errors Edited by magister on 28 January 2009 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magister Pro Member United States Joined 6401 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 118 02 February 2009 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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JAN. 26 - FEB. 1
A long-time member PMed me this week to start up a conversation. I was very excited about it, because he had always been one of my favorite contributors here thanks to the sheer depth and quality of his posts. He lamented the gradual decline in civility in the HTLAL forums, and an increase in the "Dude, how do I learn x?" posts, as though few bother to access the treasure trove of valuable information contained in archived threads. As a result, he logs on less and less frequently as time goes by. This is disheartening, as he's certainly not the first of the "names of old" to slowly disappear. This will be a bare-bones entry. I don't feel like writing much, I'm rather bummed, and my daughter is waiting patiently for me to finish so we can go home and have dinner. This week saw even fewer hours devoted to language learning than the last: about nine and a half hours. Again, life's responsibilities. GERMAN Continued reading my book. I also spent time (uncounted) reading posts in German in various fora, mostly in Türkish Lernen Online. 3.25 hrs RUSSIAN I didn't touch the textbook all week. I derived much more joy from reading in Beginner's Russian Reader. Пари by Chekhov (abridged for beginners, of course) was especially fun. Are there any Russian learners out there who can explain the most efficient way to type in Russian? As I mentioned in a previous entry, I'd like to hit up lang-8, but it takes me about a month and a half to find each letter... 3.75 hrs TURKISH FSI, Units 24 and 25. 2.5 hrs In addition, I valiantly withstood the temptation to Wander my Lust over to Linguaphone Irish, opting instead for a little more Turkish time. Cumulative time since Dec. 25: DE: 34.25 hrs RU: 22.5 hrs TR: 13.75 hrs CZ: 2.0 hrs GK: 1.0 hrs IR: .5 hrs 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5696 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 35 of 118 02 February 2009 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree: when I joined this forum in April (or March, I'm not sure) it was wonderful and interesting, but when they made me to be invisible I was very upset (my nick was sênmurw) but then many nice people asked that my posts would be visible. It didn't occur, and I decided to leave, and during about 2 months i didn't visit. then I've received PMs and therefore I visietd again, and since this I write some posts and read things everyday, but it's *very* few interesting things, mostly only arguments, all the people telling they are correct, the others ones aren't, etc... I would like to read about interesting things about languages, but 90% of the posts are arguments now and people who don't speak other languages. I liked the mulitlingual lounge, but very few of people write there. I don't understand why the people don't want to practise the languages, but only to argue in English about boring things and those people are arrogant. I think that I will visit lesser although for me it's the only possibility to practise Dutch, Spanish and German. some people are nice and write interestign things, for example Iversen, Volte, fasulye. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5696 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 36 of 118 04 February 2009 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
I think that your level is *much* higher!!!!!! Some weeks ago, Fasulye told me that my German (written) is C1. I read all your LOG and definitely your German's better than mine, therefore your level is C1. It's possible that mine's B2. I like very much how you write your LOG and I hope that you will feel better and not disheartened soon. I read many of the posts and LOGs but few are interesting. German's my favourite language as well, I love it. When you tell us what you've read and studied, and a list of phrases this is great. Please not feel so sad like on 3 feb or upset about teacher bashing. I'm very sorry I wrote I hate the nasty teacher of my old school, but other teachers I don't hate at all, and i know that some people bashed them on this forum as well, but they don't refer you, but the teachers who they had, don't be upset :-) Edited by Jar-ptitsa on 04 February 2009 at 11:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magister Pro Member United States Joined 6401 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 118 05 February 2009 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Jar-ptitsa,
Thank you for the compliments, but I disagree with you that my level is C1. For whatever it's worth, I took Dialang's vocabulary test a few days ago and scored B2. Comparing my posts with yours in the Multilingual Lounge, I think your German sounds more natural than mine. And don't worry, I'm not upset. Nasty teachers deserve the bashing :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jar-ptitsa Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5696 days ago 980 posts - 1006 votes Speaks: French*, Dutch, German | Message 38 of 118 06 February 2009 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably my German sounds more natural because I've learned it from two native-speakers, but your vocabulary is extensiver, especially phrases like those in your LOG (I didn't know those).
I'm very happy that you're not upset :-) I'm sad when the people are upset (excepted the nasty ones). Yes, those nasty teachers deserve the bashing, for sure!!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5680 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 39 of 118 06 February 2009 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Magister. To easier type in the Cyrillic alphabet, this is what I have over the keyboard in front of me right now.
I've bought more than one set for future new keyboards, and no one need to believe me that I'm in no way associated to the salesperson :-)) In my opinion, it seems obvious that mankind doesn't know how to live together. It would need a miracle to make internet much different from that. Moreover, the written word is not always very good to convey what we really want to say, specially when we need to use a foreign language. I lived in USA for a year. In spite of the many mistakes I did then and continue to do now, I had no difficulties to talk to people, discuss complex matters, attend classes in the University or date women. However, I'm quite sure that I still lack and miss many subtleties that only native speakers or people who study English harder than I'm willing to do understand. Of course, different cultures in a forum like this make things even harder. Finally, there is also here, at least, one generation gap. Edited by Flarioca on 07 February 2009 at 12:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magister Pro Member United States Joined 6401 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 40 of 118 09 February 2009 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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FEB. 2 - FEB. 8
I added Russian this weekend to my Language Bar in Windows. Inexplicably, I hadn't realized before that Russian was an option there, so I have been copying/pasting from "online Russian keyboards." That was beyond tedious. And thank you, Flarioca, for directing me to those Cyrillic keyboard stickers. I don't know if I will buy them – I want to first try printing out a "map" of the Russian keyboard. Where did you live for a year in the US? GERMAN Although I dismissed Anki earlier in my log, I haven’t been able to forget about it. So I made it a point to revisit it daily this week. I added a couple dozen new words, phrases and sentences to the deck, and I think it's going to be a valuable addition to my learning process as long as I am able to view it as "enjoyment" rather than "work." In addition to time spent with Anki review, I read several pages of Der, Die, Was?; listened to audio from Living Language: Ultimate German Advanced; studied writings of German natives (glossa.passion, Fasulye) in the Multilingual Lounge and entered some of their utterances into Anki; read and listened to Darwins Revolution, a Top-Thema at Deutsche Welle, a few times. 6.25 hrs RUSSIAN No reading at all. I simply did a couple of units at LiveMocha, where uploading a bunch of speech samples for critique by natives has proven to be very worthwhile. 2.0 hrs TURKISH A friend of mine here at this site shipped me some Turkish books in need of a warm, loving home! He had an extra copy each of Yusuf Mardin's old Colloquial Turkish, as well as a great Redhouse dictionary (Çağdaş Türkçe-İngilizce Sözlük). I am extremely grateful! This unexpected gift served as a spark of inspiration to spend more time with Turkish in the coming weeks. This spark is overdue -- one can't expect to make significant progress with a mere hour a week... 1.25 hrs WANDERLUST Spending some time observing my Japanese teacher colleague has caused me to miss this language. I took a year or two of it at the university, and I've dabbled with it off and on for many years. I acquired a copy of Heisig's RTK, which I've heard so much about. In addition, I began listening to Michel Thomas' Japanese Foundation Course. It's my first experience ever with MT. The jury is still out. 1.0 hrs I will always spend a little time satisfying the Wanderlust, and I do not consider it at all to be time wasted. However, I'm beginning to question the wisdom of trying to either improve or learn three languages at once because my available time is so finite. I've already effectively dropped Czech because, to quote Bilbo Baggins, I feel like too little butter spread over too much bread. I guess I have some thinking to do. Cumulative time since Dec. 25: DE: 40.5 hrs RU: 24.5 hrs TR: 15.0 hrs CZ: 2.0 hrs GK: 1.0 hrs JP: 1.0 hrs IR: .5 hrs Edited by magister on 10 February 2009 at 11:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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