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TAC2010 - Mimesis - Team K (Fr Ru It) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6059 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 1 of 23 29 December 2009 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Background
Back in school I took English, German and Spanish as foreign languages, and I then went on to study English and some German at university (no exam, though). This was twenty years ago and since then I have time and again dived into short intensive periods of language study. This has been a lot of fun and rewarding in itself, and it has made the language shelves grow in my personal library, but it has not lead to any significant progress. Too much wanderlust, too little consistency and stamina. Which is why I am taking on the challenge of TAC: I badly need to annihilate bad study habits! I am completely self-taught in French, Russian and Italian. Although not an absolute beginner in Italian I have spent very little time on it, however it is clear to me that my English, Spanish, French and rudimentary Latin takes me a long way towards comprehension. In French I feel that I am on the brink of breaking into real understanding. Reading an unknown text or watching television I can usually get the gist of the message but there are still a lot of gaps. I have spent much more time on Russian than Italian but I still feel like a beginner here. I can read the alphabet, I am reasonably familiar with pronunciation rules and the basic grammatical categories and I have a limited (mostly passive) vocabulary. I have not spent any time on Russian since last summer, but hopefully a heavy revision phase will get me back on track. Maybe I should do some diagnostic tests to pinpoint my levels. I might add another language later on, if everything goes well, but three should certainly keep me busy for some time. Of course I need to spend time on maintaining and developing my German and English as well. Goals It might seem stupid to state my goals in terms of quantity, but I am convinced that if I am able to meet them, then the rest (i.e. real skills) will follow. I intend to study at least 1080 hours in 2010. Every day I must study at least twenty minutes in each of my languages. I will specify detailed goals and follow them up on a weekly basis. I aim for an overall B2 (active vocabulary of 4000 words) in Italian, French and Russian by the end of the year. For Italian and French I will need a passive vocabulary of at least 15000 words, as I am going for the airplane test in these languages. Method I will go for passive first, active later, mainly using Assimil and native resources (literature, radio, TV, movies). I independently discovered the technique of reading in L1 while listening to L2 many years ago, when my public library started to buy cassette books in English. I have always enjoyed it and will continue experimenting with various takes on L-R. Resources (I will add resources, as I start using them). Russian Assimil: Russisch ohne Mühe (book with audio) Assimil: Russisch ohne Mühe heute (book with audio) Hertz et al: Møde i Petersborg (book with audio) Fält: Intensivryska (book with audio) Fält: Rysk minigrammatik French Assimil: Französisch ohne Mühe (book with audio) Saint-Exupery: Le Petit Prince (with English parallel text and audio) Coben: Juste un regard (with English parallel text and audio) Italian Assimil: Italienisch ohne Mühe heute (book with audio) Saint-Exupery: Il Piccolo Principe (with English parallel text and heavily abridged audio) Kafka: La Metamorfosi (audio) Last but not least, I would like to welcome my fellow team mates Papillon and M Medialis aboard! Edited by aloysius on 03 January 2010 at 3:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6059 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 23 29 December 2009 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Accumulated study hours
Russian French Itali an L-R 2.25 ; ; 1 Listen 0.5 Read Assimil 2.5 Sorry about the formatting! Will have to find out if the forum allows me to create readable tables... Edited by aloysius on 03 January 2010 at 3:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5666 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 23 29 December 2009 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Aloysius, which languages will you study during the TAC 2010? I have read through this introduction, but it's not clear to me, which languages. Oh, now I see, French, Russian and Italian, but you should explain your goals per language because otherwise it's not precise enough. I wish you a good start for your TAC 2010!
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 29 December 2009 at 9:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6176 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 4 of 23 01 January 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well. The new year is here, and I'd like to encourage you to make it the best year ever.
I really hope we'll be able to transform our study habits to something that's part of our daily lives. As natural as eating or reading the newspaper. I find it very interesting that you've discovered LR on your own. I personally find the strange feeling ("drinking the language" as Volte put it) of LR so amazingly rewarding, that I'd do it even if I didn't learn anything from it. So I wish you the best of luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6059 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 5 of 23 03 January 2010 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Fasulye: Thank you for commenting. I have tried to make my TAC goals more clear.
@M.Medialis: Thank you for your kind words. I think this will be a lot of fun. TAC 2010 has begun, and so far all is well. Today is Sunday, the day of the week I have set out for mandatory progress reports. I have decided to make my weeks beginning rather than ending by a Sunday. The reason for this is that on an average week this is the day on which I will have several hours to devote to language studies, and it simply feels better to use them to give me a head start of a new assignment rather than for a strained finish of an old one. Last week was pretty short, and I did not set out any expressed goal, but just begun working on what I felt was useful and fun. What I need to do, since I have neglected my studying for several months, is to revise in order to rebuild old knowledge, and a good way of doing this is starting all over with Assimil, going through it at a quick speed. However, I did find that I could start using native sources right away for Italian and French, which is a good thing, as it makes studying less monotonous. Last week In Russian I ended last year by going through chapter 0-7 in Russisch ohne Mühe, and begun this one by progressing to chapter 8-17 (150 min). In French I did L-R chapter 1-12 of The Little Prince (60 min), and up to chapter 2 in Just One Look (75 min). In Italian I did L-R chapter 1-12 of The Little Prince twice (60 min), I have also listened to 30 minutes of The Metamorphosis. All in all 6 hours and 15 minutes of studying in two days, which is about what I should do, in order to reach my TAC goals. I will try to keep track of my study time and publish weekly summaries as well as accumulated numbers in the second post of this log. Apart from that I have listened to some French radio, while doing kitchen work, and also watched some television in French and Italian. These more extensive activities are useful, and I find it encouraging and rewarding that I can follow along reasonably well in for instance news reports, but I will not include them when counting hours, unless I listen in a more concentrated and active manner. Goals for next week I will have more time on my hands than usual next week, which explains my rather ambitious goals. In Italian I will do Assimil up to chapter 28 and L-R The Little Prince four times. In French I will do Assimil up to chapter 28 and L-R The Little Prince until I have a thorough understanding of the text. I will mark and try to learn passively all unknown words. I will also finish one pass of Just One Look. In Russian I will continue with Assimil up to chapter 28. This week I will concentrate on pronunciation and the case system (nouns and pronouns). To that end I will work through chapters 1-12 in Intensivryska, which ideals with one case per chapter. Edited by aloysius on 03 January 2010 at 3:30pm 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 5375 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 6 of 23 06 January 2010 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Buttons has added me as the team's fourth member now, and it's good to be aboard.
I know just where you're coming from with the snowballing language books and wanderlust...even had to buy a second bookshelf recently for my dust-gathering hopefuls ;) I never really got with the programme properly before...but I feel really good about this year being the one for Team K, full of focus and great progress. Good luck with achieving all your goals and especially geting through this first week. Cheers, Teango Edited by Teango on 06 January 2010 at 8:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6176 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 7 of 23 08 January 2010 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since you're studying the cases of russian, you might be interested in this dictionary:
http://russian.cornell.edu/rdt/ It's a dictionary with usage information that lists all the possible cases of the entries. I made a firefox tool before so that you just can mark any russian word on a wesite, do a mouse-gesture and get a pop-up from the cornell dictionary. Please let me know if you're interested. I'd be very interested in hearing the results from your LR-sessions this week. Hope the end of the week gets to be productive. Edited by M. Medialis on 08 January 2010 at 4:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aloysius Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6059 days ago 226 posts - 291 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: French, Greek, Italian, Russian | Message 8 of 23 10 January 2010 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you! I have that link buried somewhere deep in my disorganized bookmark folder but I had forgotten all about it. That tool of yours could certainly come in handy later on, I’ll let you know when the time is ripe.
I did successfully end my first pass of Just One Look earlier this week, finishing the book in a time span of 48 hours, so it was rather intense. I cannot say that this is great French literature, in fact it is neither French nor great literature. It was enough well-crafted though, to keep my interest alive (I had not read it before), but I certainly felt no urge to start it over right away. Its merit is of course that the language is contemporary and uncomplicated. I cannot comment on the quality of the French, but I hope it is acceptable. This was the first time I used a parallel text for a full novel. Although I mainly followed along in the English column I can certainly see the value of this arrangement, and even more so when going through the same text several times. I am not a quick reader, so I find it hard to scan both columns while following along in the audio (Volte style) but maybe I can improve with some practise. It is difficult to measure progress here, but I am totally convinced that this is an efficient way to improve my comprehension. I will do another novel this week, not sure what I am in the mood for yet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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