Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

TAC 2010 - Team K: M. Medialis - RU JP FR

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
115 messages over 15 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 1 ... 14 15 Next >>
M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 1 of 115
27 December 2009 at 6:36pm | IP Logged 
Team TAC 2010 - Team K
Personal log of M. Medialis - Weekly sprints.


Introduction
Firstly, I'd like to welcome my team members: Papillon and Aloysius.
Let us make this year insane!

As for me, I am a student of computer engineering at the Royal Technical Institute in Sweden. On my free time I love to play the piano and learn languages.


Ideas for my TAC 2010
In order to increase my chances of getting significant improvements, I will set up Weekly Sprints. Every Sunday, I will post a study plan for the upcoming week, consisting of goals that should be reached (i.e. do x pages of active scriptorium, learn y new words, read z chapters of a book etc).

During the weeks, I will post my progress, write notices when I reach goals, and write out different thoughts and ideas that might be of interest.

So, my greatest obligation in this TAC is, besides helping my team members, to create a new plan every week, and actually use it! However, I may deliberately choose to alter the plan during the week if I find it necessary.


Creating a fail-safe environment
I have some plans on using some AJATT concepts for this TAC, such as using Total Overwhelming Force and setting up an immersion environment. I still have some things to think about before I decide to actually do it. Stay tuned.


Language skills and goals
So this is my current language list. In the end of this TAC, I hope to post a similar list with some significant changes. ;)


Russian
Skill Level: Intermediate
Priority: Very High.

A lovely language. With the use of parallell texts, LR and Prof. Arguelles Scriptorium and Shadowing techniques, I've gained a strong foothold in the language. I know pretty well how it's supposed to sound, the cyrillic is becoming close-to transparent and I can listen to spoken russian without getting confused. I don't have any problems catching words when listening to normal or fast speech (as I have with french). However, my vocabulary is still limited, making it hard to speak and follow the plot in movies and audiobooks etc.

Things to do: Need to study the grammar actively. Increase my vocabulary with several thousands of words.

By the end of this year, I'd like to be able to pick up a russian book and read it, only using the dictionary for clarification. I want to be able to watch movies and speak to natives, without any major limits.

My pronounciation should be very good. Speaking in a "russian" way.

Japanese
Skill Level: Beginner
Priority: Medium.

Have been dabbling with the language. Trying to learn the kanji a couple of times, but always lost steam. This has been due to bad planning - for when school gets tough, I've needed to drop my low priority languages. By planning ahead and evaluating my weeks, I think I could detect the things that would make me sink.

By the end of this year, I'd like to be at a level close to my current russian level (or higher). I find LR, Scriptorium and Shadowing to be the most interesting alternatives, so I will have to work in order to find good material.

Things to do: Learn the kanji. Get to the Natural Listening stage (as explained by Atamagaii). Have a feel for the grammar and all the basic words that are needed to create sentences etc.

French
Skill Level: Intermediate
Priority: Low.

I already have a somewhat solid foundation in french from school. But I cannot really use the skills due to my limited vocabulary. I think the cure to my problems is to LR a couple of books, and reach the Natural Listening stage.

If I plan my life wisely, I hope I can have french and japanese as background processes, doing sprints when time allows me to.


Closing words
Alright. That was an outline of my plans for the upcoming year.
Any ideas, questions or comments would be highly appreciated.


------------------------------------------------------------ -

Member of Team K - Team TAC 2010
M. Medialis


Edited by M. Medialis on 03 January 2010 at 8:33pm

1 person has voted this message useful



aloysius
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6000 days ago

226 posts - 291 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, German
Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 115
29 December 2009 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
I just wanted to pop in and say Good Evening (C.E.T.) and Good Luck!

It will be very interesting to follow your progress in Russian, seems like you are a bit ahead of me there.

I had a flirt with Japanese last summer and it was great fun, but I doubt I will have time for it in the foreseeable future.

Your idea of weekly study plans is appealing and I will adopt something similar.

Counting down … the race is about to begin!
1 person has voted this message useful



M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 3 of 115
01 January 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged 
I also wish you the best of luck, aloysius! Hope Papillon joins us soon.

Since I have chosen Sundays to be my scheduling day, my first Weekly Plan will only span a couple of days.

These holidays are notoriusly hard for me to schedule, so this log will not be very detailed.

-----------------------------------------------------

TAC Log nr 0/52


Actions during the past week

Bought two japanese books translated to swedish, and downloaded the japanese audiobooks to my cell phone. The books are: Kokoro and I am a cat by Natsume Soseki, and I greatly look forward to LR them.


Current plan

Learn 10 strategic words in japanese to aid the LR (such as "because", "when" and "then").

Activate the japanese language by LR-ing the first chapters of I am a cat.

Activate the russian language by having an extensive Scriptorium session with a russian novel.


Reasons

Previous experiences (especially from piano playing) have shown that it takes a while to return to "piano mode", or "language learning mode".

Scriptorium is a great way to do that, since it forces you to pay attention to meaning, script, pronounciation and grammar at the same time.

And I simply can't wait to do LR with japanese. This will be very exciting.

-----------------------------------------------------

Team K - M. Medialis


1 person has voted this message useful



M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 4 of 115
03 January 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged 
-----------------------------------------------------

TAC Log nr 1/52


Actions during the past week

Installed a trial of the ru-en pop-up dictionary "ABBYY Lingvo x3". It seems to be fast and detailed and it can hopefully increase the efficiency of my studies.

Made an attempt at LR-ing I am a cat, but didn't get very far because of limited time. Noticed that I constantly see romaji characters dancing in my inner vision when I listen to japanese audio. I already know the kana, and I think I will benefit from doing some scriptorium before I dive into the LR, so that the true characters can come alive in my mind.

Successfully managed to activate the russian language by doing two 1-hour sessions of intensive scriptorium. It was a great feeling and after that I could think in russian again (using the words I know), and getting surprisingly much out of watching russian television.

After having done the scriptorium, I was completely exhausted and had to rest for an hour. My language learning stamina seems to be pretty low at the moment.


Current plan

Begin japanese scriptorium on I am a cat,

Having russian scriptorium sessions every day.

Devoting one day exclusively to language learning, with the purpose of squeezing in as many hours as possible.

Collect materials for passive listening that can make immersion more interesting.

Actively experiment with vocabulary learning techniques.


Reasons

I feel that I need a more well-defined method for learning vocabulary than just pure LR, parallell texts and scriptorium, since I tend to miss common words that are not important in literature.

-----------------------------------------------------

Team K - M. Medialis

Edited by M. Medialis on 03 January 2010 at 8:01pm

1 person has voted this message useful



M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 5 of 115
05 January 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged 
Apparently, most of my kanji knowledge is forgotten, and therefore I've restarted my kanji studies at http://kanji.koohii.com/. My plan is to have all the kanji memorized on the 14th of march. -No excuses!
1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5316 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 6 of 115
06 January 2010 at 8:03pm | IP Logged 
Hi M. Medialis,

I've been added to Team K by Buttons, and hope this is all fine with you? :)

It's great to see that we all have very similar approaches to TAC 2010 in Team K, and I think the Shadowing and Scriptorium will really help with speaking and activating all that passive knowledge. You're probably at the stage now in Russian where I want to be at the end of the year. I'd love to be able to just pick up Nochnoj Dozor and read it, but I'm sadly far away from this level right now...even Cheburashka cartoons are a grammatical mystery to me. How long did you study Russian with L-R etc by the way?

I like the idea with the AJATT fail-safe environment. Although I haven't put it in my initial log, I've (not so) secretly ordered a kanji wall poster from www.kanjiposter.com, and plan to fit in 7 kanjis every day using Anki over this period, hopefully to learn how to write the joyo kanji in Heisig's book by the end of the year in prep for learning Japanese in 2011 (lol). I know, but it's so hard to keep completely away from Japanese, it's such a cool language. I spent 4 months in Tokyo a while back and absolutely loved it.

Good luck with the sprints and surpassing all your goals!

Cheers,
Teango


Edited by Teango on 06 January 2010 at 8:44pm

1 person has voted this message useful



M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 7 of 115
08 January 2010 at 5:21pm | IP Logged 
Hi Teango,

I started to LR russian in march 2009 (when I at last bought a walkman cell phone). Since then, I've been LR-ing Kafka's The castle a couple of times, and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. -Both of the books were completely wonderful.

After that, I could speak naturally to a russian man (making insane grammar mistakes). It was a strange and exhilarating feeling to have a real conversation in a language I had never "studied". He didn't know any other languages so there were no English back-door.

That's when I reached the natural listening stage. After that, I continued to LR The castle and George Orwell's 1984, while building vocab using scriptorium. One of my strategies is to LR a section of a book in the morning, do scriptorium of it in the evening, and just simply listen to it the following days.


I like that you bought the kanji poster! The kanji is supposed to be a life-long relationship so why not start now? :)
2 persons have voted this message useful



M. Medialis
Diglot
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6117 days ago

397 posts - 508 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Russian, Japanese, French

 
 Message 8 of 115
08 January 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged 
TAC note

While being at my parents' house during the holidays, I find it extremely hard to study. I just can't focus when I know there are people around me, and that stresses me. I don't really know how to fix it, and I'm definitely not like the professor who easily can walk around in the neighborhood shadowing loudly.

I try to fit in some LR or scriptorium in the night-time when everyone has gone to sleep. It will probably get easier next week when I get to have the house for myself during the first part of the day.

Have you guys had the same feeling?


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 115 messages over 15 pages: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.4844 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.