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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 33 of 85 26 February 2010 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
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Great job with all of your studying! :)
How interesting that you are reading Candide right now (have you finished?). I just started to read it yesterday for my English class at school. Unfortunately, it's in English and not French, but perhaps sometime I'll read it in French too. Are you liking it? Keep up the good work. :) --Philip 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 34 of 85 28 February 2010 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the encouragement, Philip!
I finished Candide last night. It was quite an interesting read. I got the Reclam version that many German schools use, with German vocabulary annotations, so it was not difficult at all. Reading one book a month is not the only thing I do for French, I also practise using the DALF C1/C2 exercise book, read French news, study some vocabulary and watch the occasional movie in French. Speaking of movies, I can't recommend "Le mépris". Had to stop watching that after one hour last night. It starts off really nice but then gets really boring and meta. Oh and I recently posted a French entry on lang-8 about a Chinese historic story I had read; nobody corrected my post there yet, maybe some forum member could do it? http://lang- 8.com/25308/journals/386477/Contes-chinois:-Lin- Xiangru At this point, my French writing is far behind my other abilities in French, because I stopped taking French classes before we got to the essay-writing parts. Edited by Sprachprofi on 28 February 2010 at 10:50am 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 35 of 85 04 March 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
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Week
Chinese: this week I focussed on getting lots of Chinese input and studying the HSK words (686 reviews / 186 new); I neglected the Chinese sentences Anki file (no new sentences but not falling behind on reviews) in favor of that. I found that seeing words in the larger context really helps things stick, and right now I'm really enjoying working with the history cartoons and with Boya Chinese (Pre-Intermediate book 2), which features really interesting texts. I spent 10 hours on Chinese this week - a new record for this year. I spent 5 hours on French this week, and I've started to read "Le rouge et le noir", which will be my book for this month. I am hoping to increase my French reading speed because this book is very thick and I'm afraid of not being able to finish it in time given my current time constraints. Considering the correction I received to the "Lin Xiangru" text, I should make an effort to better use imparfait vs. passé composé / passé simple, and I definitely need to study passé simple forms as well. On the bright side, I did not make many mistakes other than that, so if I can fix this one issue, my written French won't look too bad. In terms of Assimil, I studied 2 Greek lessons this week and am now on lesson 38. For Swahili I'm on lesson 31, so also two new lessons this week. I always mean to study more Assimil lessons per week, but especially for the Swahili it's not going easily. This time, it took me a long while to learn the new words of lesson 30 because they concern kitchen things or spices that I didn't know in French either and that my brain has hence filed away as not useful. Edited by Sprachprofi on 04 March 2010 at 9:52pm 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 36 of 85 11 March 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged |
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Week 10
Chinese: 6 hours on Chinese this week. Again I'm focussing on using Chinese rather than spending as much time on Anki - I find that I really enjoy getting Chinese input through the cartoons, the Boya Chinese textbook (where even some of the exercises are funny!) and my lessons, while Anki is not so interesting, just rewarding in its regularity and the progress that it tells me I'm making. This week I did 630 legacy reviews of Chinese characters, 786 reviews of HSK words and learned 156 new ones, 501 reviews of Chinese sentences and 58 new sentences. As I sometimes skip one or more of the review for a day or so, I want to make sure not too much reviews are piling up, because huge piles discourage me from even getting started on them. That is why I officially swapped my X-new-per-day rule for simply doing new cards until I have 45-50 ones that I failed on the first run, including old cards I had forgotten. I rarely do more than one run either because I always remember them today and will be no closer to knowing them tomorrow. Does anybody else have the same issue? 3 hours on French - but I did some speed-reading exercises, to eliminate subvocalisation when I read "Le rouge et le noir" and allow me to progress faster. I also found an audiobook version of it, which may help me with my diction, and I want to exercise my accent using that Japanese university's Quebecois lessons - thanks to whoever recommended them! I translated one of my Chinese textbook texts to French and put it up in the Multilingual Lounge as a translation exercise. Hope somebody will find it and correct it! I studied 2 Greek lessons this week, up to lesson 40, and did more written exercises. I'm looking forward to the active wave! Several times I wanted to start it early, but I did not. For Swahili I also did two more Assimil lessons (up to 33), and I got "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" to help me with those pesky implosive sounds. I like the approach of this book, which is experimental / practical. I shall simply work through it all because I want to learn how to make other cool sounds as well. For this reason I shall not count it towards my Swahili studying time. As I only just got the book, I only did 20 minutes worth of exercises so far, and already I've run into trouble: I can't close my glottis or at least the exercise is not producing the expected sound. Edited by Sprachprofi on 15 March 2010 at 1:31pm 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 37 of 85 19 March 2010 at 9:50am | IP Logged |
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Week 11
Chinese: 8 hours this week. I got good practise reading those cartoon stories - now it only takes me 15 minutes to read one of them. And I've definitely overcome the point where looking at some Chinese text felt so daunting that I wouldn't even try to understand it. Apart from the cartoons, I've spent quite a bit of time on the Boya Chinese textbook because I like the texts, and the exercises are right for my level. In terms of Anki, I've reviewed 591 characters, studied 286 new HSK words and 165 new sentences. Actually it may be a bit more, as I'm looking at the stats this morning rather than last night as I did before. Not sure how Anki calculates those statistics. French: 4 hours this week, also because I've been working on my essay on "Camus et les intellectuels". The essay itself is in German, but I have to do research and cit e sources in French. And somebody finally corrected my "Questions de la vie" translation on Lang-8. Still no reply in the multilingual forum - it's a pity, because I found the text really nice. I studied 3 Greek lessons this week, I am now at lesson 43. Same for Swahili, where I'm at lesson 36. Wow, they are already introducing the subjunctive! I've now started to occasionally play Assimil dialogs in the background while surfing as well, not just when I'm shopping or washing dishes. I'm hoping that the added exposure will keep the growing numbers of dialogs fresh in my mind. Wow, it looks like this week was a lot more productive than the last, in terms of both language-studying and work! 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 38 of 85 20 March 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
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I recorded a part of the Boya Chinese textbook text I worked with last week. I know my
reading is still not very fluent because my brain has trouble reading ahead while pronouncing Chinese, and I'm not sure what to do about that. However, this upload is actually about another thing: is there any Mandarin speaker who can recommend which sounds I most need to improve? I want to do a lot of loud reading and speaking in the next few weeks, and I don't want to let mistakes become ingrained. Download the recording 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5295 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 39 of 85 21 March 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged |
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Hi Sprachprofi, glad to see you're still going strong! I think Dragonfly updated her
log recently too, so I'm pretty proud of Team H's stamina right now. Anyway: I'm not a native speaker, as you know, but if you're really looking for a suggestion... this might be nitpicking, but the first thing I noticed was that your tones are still a little shaky. They're not bad and I certainly understand what you're saying, but you know, might be something to keep in mind. ETA: I did a quick recording to try and clarify what I meant by the above - I don't know if it will help any, but here it is anyway. It's so weird to record your own voice. I got really self-conscious actually. Edited by annette on 21 March 2010 at 4:16am 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 40 of 85 21 March 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much!
I wasn't aware of this issue with the 3rd/4th tone or the "我第一次", that was definitely very helpful. I know that my pronunciation of the 幼 in "幼儿园" was shaky because it was a new character for me. With new characters, I usually remember the Pinyin but forget the tone easily. As for grouping words... it does require reading ahead. When I read a new text, I very often start doing that and then there's a 的 and my entire understanding of the sentence (and hence its intonation) are changed around completely. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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