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2010 a Language Odyssey (Team H) - CLOSED | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5931 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 81 of 85 18 December 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Sprachprofi,
I just have one last question regarding your method. How many hours did you aim to put in per focus language each week? I was revisiting my plan for 2011 and realized that, for example, six hours per week for a three month period and then 1.5 hours per week for the other nine months only amounts to about 136 hours of total study. The same set-up but with seven hours per week during the three month period only yields another ~14 hours, and with two hours instead of 1.5 it leaves the total at about 169--I was expecting higher figures, but I suppose I wouldn't really know what to expect, as I've never quite kept track of hours like this before. So how did you make out? What were your goals, and what did you find was realistic? Thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6259 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 82 of 85 26 December 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just a quick reply, since I just came back from spending Christmas with my family and
I'm leaving for the Esperanto New Year's party week in a little over 12 hours. Also, forgive me if I'll post my final evaluation on the 31st or 1st. I believe that for somebody who is working or studying full-time, an average of two hours of independent language study a day (one for each focus language) is an ambitious goal. However, I do not want to recommend this or any other number. The key is to focus whatever time you have on your chosen languages for that period, with the goal of seeing synergy effects and falling in love with your materials, so that you might over some time actually put in a lot more hours if you can free them. In the course of this year, I've had days where I spent 5 hours or so on one language because I couldn't tear myself away from my materials in order to eat or sleep! Normally I would have felt very guilty for not having studied all my other languages yet, but this idea of segmentation allows me to go wild and enjoy myself all I want with the languages of the season. I don't even have to do both focus languages each day - since there are only two of them, it's very unlikely I'd abandon one for a week straight; they'll each get enough exercise. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6259 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 83 of 85 01 January 2011 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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My final results for 2010 were:
Chinese: 236 hours - Success! I was hoping to work on Chinese a lot, and I actually did so. I practised all parts of the language, too, including pronunciation, speaking and writing - and I did lots of listening (Romance of the Three Kingdoms TV series) and reading. At this point I can sort of read "A Dictionary of Maqiao", but long sentences tend to throw me off and it's still not fun. I shall voluntarily continue with cartoons and Harry Potter first, or read "A Dictionary of Maqiao" in parallel with the English. Actually I read quite a bit of Harry Potter in L-R, except I got annoyed with having to invest as much time in aligning the text as in reading it, so I got side-tracked into writing a better aligner and stopped reading. Oh well. My active language usage has much improved, and I've learned more than 3000 new words this year. I will keep plowing ahead, but I hope that Chinese can be less of a focus in the coming year. French: 140 hours - Success! I read a whole bunch of classics, though not one-a-month as originally intended. I'm happy with the overall count though, because I also read two French-language fanfictions of 1700 pages (!) and 950 pages, both of them within the same two weeks. Reading French can be addicting when it's not university-assigned stuff. I also completed about 40 pages of essays in French; in return I didn't write much on lang-8 despite my good resolutions. The aligatorejo showed that speaking French comes more easily and naturally now, about as effortlessly as speaking English, so I'm happy with that. Writing French doesn't feel the same yet, but I'm blaming it on lack of opportunity. Swahili: 92 hours - Mostly success! Staying true to the plan, I've used nothing except the Assimil course (and Anki, but no outside source of vocabulary) for Swahili. I finished all 100 lessons of the passive wave and I did a first pass over the first 50 lessons of the active wave as well, but I still need to enter a couple of them into Anki, the deck creation takes about as much time as the studying itself. Today I had my first Swahili conversation and it went well. I gave a talk on Swahili at the Esperanto New Year's event. Around 20 people attended the talk and I then found out there were 2 other Swahili speakers at this event. Annoying that they didn't show up for the aligatorejo so I had little time to talk to them. Anyway, a quick test shows that I can understand 90% of the words in the "Little Prince" in Swahili and 85% of a random Wikipedia article; however, my book of Swahili poetry is still incomprehensible except for a few phrases here and there. Even though it's hard, I shall complete the active wave and do more tests before reading the little prince or studying any other materials in order to get the full assessment of Assimil. I am unhappy that I planned my time unwisely and didn't finish the active wave yet. However, I spent a lot of time working on vocabulary and the extensive Swahili grammar, so the active wave is going smoothly, it's mostly an issue of entering all the phrases, linking the audio etc. Italian: 13 hours - who cares anyway? At first I delayed it because I wanted to do a 1 Month Challenge for Arabic, then later I couldn't get into my books while finally finding the motivation to do more French, in other words Italian fell by the wayside. I did finish an Italian novel though and I greatly improved my reading speed so the next one should be more enjoyable. Hopefully I'll find someone interesting to practise speaking with too. Greek: 91 hours - success! I read the entire first book of Harry Potter, my first monolingual Greek novel, amongst other things, and I did so without consulting a dictionary. Right now, my reading level is definitely B2. My active language usage has improved a lot, too, but it's still borderline B1/B2 I'd say, because I lost my tandem partner in the second half of the year. I'll keep working on Greek. Arabic: 43 hours - cancelled Started with a 1 Month Challenge, which was fun, but then my Anki was piling up too quickly and my textbook didn't have nearly enough exercises for all the things it was throwing at me, so I got overwhelmed and burnt out, cancelling this in favor of more Chinese and French. Will try again in 2011 since I found other materials now; if all goes well, I shall focus as much on Arabic in 2011 as I did on Chinese in 2010. Others - Success! I spent 28 hours actively improving my Esperanto and Latin. For these languages I'm not counting the countless hours I spent talking/reading in them or even teaching them, just the time I spent studying and trying to improve myself. Another bright aspect is that I successfully avoided wanderlust this year - only 3 hours of Spanish, 3 hours of Russian and one hour of Maori all year! All in all, I reached an average of about 12 hours a week of language study, including the time I was traveling or sick. It's a good result, but leaves room for improvement, and that's what I shall do next year, with the help of my new awesome spreadsheets. Took me a while to optimize everything, now I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do when everything is set up right right from the start (hopefully). Edited by Sprachprofi on 01 January 2011 at 9:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5184 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 85 01 January 2011 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sprachprofi, where do you find fanfic in French? I am a big fan of that kind of stuff, and it would be pretty cool to find some in my target languages. =)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6259 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 85 of 85 02 January 2011 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I haven't found a particular site for that, so I just go to www.fanfiction.net . If you find a site dedicated to French fanfic in particular, let me know. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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