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TAC 2010, Team K, Teango - GE SP SW RU | ||
Tags: Kanji | Turkish | Listening-Reading (L-R) | Swedish | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Russian | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 1 of 185 30 December 2009 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi everyone,
I've been following this forum as a sprachspectre for a good while (long before I eventually registered) and have spent many hours enjoying reading people's various posts, personal logs, and amusing dialogues. I particularly enjoyed Adrean's TAC 2009 log in French recently, continually draw motivation from Volte and Iversen's extensive experience and well-written notes, and look forward to trying to work out where and when that “infamous Pole” will pop up next to stir up the mix like a kind of amusing yet thought-provoking “Where's Wally”. After years of “Krash'n Burn”, I've finally decided to take a sabbatical from the eternal quest for the Philosopher's Stone of Polyglottery, dedicate some real time for full-time studying, and actually do something productive I hope over this period. To start the year off on a constructive positive language-learning note, I'd like to join this effervescent menagerie and start a personal log for TAC 2010. This is my first posting – and I apologise here and now in advance, it's a “bit long” but I mean well... A LITTLE ABOUT ME FIRST I absolutely love languages and always have for as long as I can remember. I guess it's a kind of sickness, but with positive cultural and social benefits. Perhaps some of you out there may empathise with the following symptoms of my linguistic infatuation. Whilst everyone else is trying to locate their nearest oxygen mask or finish off a bag of dry roasted, are you the only person on a plane actually enjoying listening to the instructions in several languages at the beginning and end of a flight? Do your eyes light up when you pick up a packet of jammy dodgers or jaffa cakes at the local supermarket and notice that there are several translations of the ingredients on the back, including magical symbols like Greek, Arabic and Hebrew? Do you migrate to the foreign language section every time you enter a bookstore, remain there for ages leafing through their whole language library, whilst dreaming about the couple of hundred languages you'll hope to learn by the end of the year...usually I dare say only to leave the shop with a phrasebook in Ojibwe or Yorkshire slang that is destined only to gather dust in your extensive language museum back home? Is your girlfriend virtually a reluctant assistant professor in second language acquisition after years of enduring your latest and greatest new theories? Enough said :) The long and short of it is I've talked, and read extensively, and loved learning about “how to learn” languages, but done diddly-squat about it over the years much to my chagrin. The best advice I ever read in any forum was to stop procrastinating and just start doing. So here goes... BACKGROUND I completed 1-2 years of French at high school and 5 years of German, but this was over 20 years ago, and I'm now as rusty as a barnyard rake. I've been flirting with Russian on and off for the last 5 years, always meaning to sit down and do some serious study, but with long work hours and other commitments, I never really got down to brass tacks, sickles and scythes. GOALS, MOTIVATION, MORE BACKGROUND My main goals this year is to reach an upper-intermediate level (B2) in these 3 languages: German, Russian and French. This includes listening, speaking, reading and writing. Having recently moved to Germany, it would be a crying shame not to dab a bit of oil on my latent “Deutsch Heute” skills from school, dust off the passive linguistic cobwebs, and use this opportunity to step out of my English PG-Tips-und-gebackene-Bohnen bubble here. I'm probably already B1 level I hope. Next year I hope to move to Geneva, so a good knowledge of French would come in very handy later in the year, especially with regards to securing a new job when I get over there. French film and literature is also a wonderful treasure trove to dip into, and I look forward to the dipping. My level in French is most likely a rusty “Tricolore” A2 now. As for Russian, well it's something I've wanted to do for a very long time, mainly because I just love the sounds of this voluptuous language and am a great fan of the extensive literature and soul-searching culture. The unnatural number of beautiful women in Russian music videos may also have something to do with my undying motivation. Despite toying with various bits of self-study courses, I'm still around the A1/A2 mark, as I'm finding the complex grammar and numerous exceptions a particularly tough nut to crack. If I manage to achieve these main goals this year, and there's a bit of time left over, my extended goal is to add Irish to the mix too. I know, this sounds a little optimistic, but a guy's gotta dream. Being half-Irish, and with Irish language rapidly dwindling away despite the lack-lustre efforts of the Irish government, I really want to support and promote the growth and use of Irish in the future. As corny as this may sound, it's a really magical and beautiful ancient language which lends itself so easily to poetic allusion and heart-warming colourful expression, and if it vanishes forever over the next 50 years, the world would have lost something very special. METHOD As you can imagine, I have a “special recipe” of my own. Well, to be honest, it's a collection of all the best bits I've read over the years, and what I hope works for me. I won't bore you with a full elucidation of the details, but in a nutshell it involves a “passive” stage, an “active” stage, and an “interactive” stage: Passive Stage: 1.1 Gathering resources, setting up a study environment, and identifying motivators and goals. 1.2 Brief reconnaissance and deconstruction of the language to get a useful early heads-up. 1.3 Listening-Reading in bite-size sections for 40 hours of new literary text/audio. Active Stage: 2.1 Speaking using Shadowing and Chorusing, with some advanced phonetic training. 2.2 Writing and analysis using Scriptorium, and some grammar work to fill in knowledge gaps. 2.3 Essay writing and discussion for a short play, story or article. Interactive (continuing development) Stage: A little bit every day, drawing from a range of useful productive activities, including to name but a few: - Speaking with sympathetic native listeners, and other general correspondence in the lingo; - Creative writing in the language and vocabulary building using SMS flashcards; - Going through proficiency test preparatory materials and past papers; - Lots and lots of listening, reading and watching media in the target language. MOTIVATION TECHNIQUES range from wild to wonderful...because with my short bee-flitting-from-flower-to-flower attention span, I NEED A LOT of motivation to keep everything on course...they include using Lego building to reward completed activities, breaking down everything into 15-30 minute sections and no longer than 2 hours at a time, drawing crazy wizard pictures to chart progress on a whiteboard for fun, dealing with distractions constructively using time micro-management, including warm-ups and exercise as part of the programme so as not to turn into a linguaphillic couch-potato, and scheduling regular breaks & time-boxing tallies for listening-reading. If you got to the end of this veritable tome, even if you skipped lightly to the end, then you have my fullest heartfelt congratulations. Thanks for your patience, and I look forward to updating throughout the year. Cheers, Teango Edited by Teango on 29 November 2010 at 10:18am 2 persons have 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 2 of 185 01 January 2010 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A NEW BEGINNING:
Today marks the first day of my TAC 2010 odyssey. For the next few months I'll be focusing soley on soaking up German, and then hopefully if all goes well, move on to Russian and French. Following a night lit up in crazy fireworks and partying, I was a little worse for wear this morning. My first language lesson of the year - a good night's sleep before any study is essential, otherwise you end up casting as an extra in Zombieland all day long... ;) The day has mainly revolved around preparation. I managed to get all my German resources together, set up a cosy immersion study environment, and arrange all my music playlists and audiobook files. All accompanying transcripts and translations are ready to go, and I've even got spreadsheets to keep a track of everything. PROGRESS: Preparation: 5h Listening-Reading: 52m ("Siddhartha") Background Podcasts: 3h ("Schlaflos in München") Background Music: 1h40m (currently listening to Sido and Peter Fox :) ) Total hours today: 10.5h RESOURCES - I'll be using the Listening-Reading method with these texts: Hesse, "Siddhartha" (and maybe "Steppenwolf") Kafka, "Das Schloß" Mann, "Der Tod in Venedig" Schlink, "Der Vorleser" Süskind, "Das Parfüm" LISTENING-READING: I listen first in German whilst following the German text to see what I can understand and to prime the words and sounds in my head, after this I read the translation in English to find out what the section's all about. This is finally followed by 3 sweeps through Listening-Reading "proper" - i.e. listening to German audio and following the English translation. Each section is approx. 5 minutes long, although this varies depending upon the recording (some I had to cut up myself using Audioslicer software). This means I don't get too crazy having to read a whole book several times over and over again, and move forwards dilligently, interested to find out what happens next. LANGUAGE TEST I understood about 87 out of 100 words taken from both the beginning of "Qual" by Stephen King and "Der Vorleser" by Bernhard Schlink. I generally understand a good gist of what's going on, but miss out on specifics. I spent a while yesterday evening testing my current language proficiency using some excellent free online client software which is available in a dozen languages including French and even Irish [http://www.dialang.org/]. Each element took about 30-40 minutes to complete, which was "echt anstrengend", but it's good to know my starting point for German now and try this again later in the year: Listening: B2 Writing: B1 Grammar: B1 Vocab: B1 Reading: A2 [edit: even though I scored A2 here, I understood at least 87% of new texts, so I believe I was B1 at the time and just very tired when I did the test late at night.] PHONETIC TRAINING / GRAMMAR REVIEW I looked through the Internet and was able to find 2 good websites for phonetic training, one for introducing the sounds for beginners ["German Steps - Language notes - The sounds of German", http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/german/lj/language_notes/quizengine?quiz=dsc_lj_langnote_sounds;templateStyle=sounds], and the second more in-depth for later [http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/abinitio/pronounce/]. I already have a good overview grammar book for German ["Upgrade your German"], and an advanced German linguaphone course for further study (about German, in German). I'll try to post a log at the end of each week to keep you up-to-date with progress and let you in on any useful tips or tribulations I encounter along the way. I look forward to reading how everyone else is getting along in the New Year, and wish you all the very best of luck! Edited by Teango on 20 February 2010 at 9:18am 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 3 of 185 06 January 2010 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A hearty welcome to my new team mates Papillon, M. Medialis and Aloysius. All the best with realising our goals in 2010, and I look forward to working towards them together! Edited by Teango on 06 January 2010 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| papillon Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5498 days ago 29 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English*, Vietnamese* | Message 4 of 185 07 January 2010 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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Welcome to the team, Teango. Oh, how I envy your living in German while studying your language.
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 5 of 185 07 January 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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PROGRESS IN German, WEEK 1/52
L-R: 14.1 hours ("Siddhartha", Hermann Hesse) Podcasts: 8.2 hours ("Schlaflos in München", Annik Rubens) Music: 8.1 hours (68 songs in playlist so far, need to get much more though...) Movies: 3.4 hours ("French Kiss" and "Footloose") Radio: 0.5 hour (2 hours, but most songs are in English, so I only count 25%) Email: 0.5 hour (it's SO hard to write emails to friends in German) Preparation: 7 hours (1st week, so required a fair amount of prep work initially) --------------------- Week Total: 41.7 hours LR Total: 14.1 hours Year Total: 41.7 hours It's certainly been a challenge to get into the swing of things this first week, but all the bouts of study here and there do seem to add up. My first lesson was how important it is to get into a healthy sleep pattern and not have to fight forty winks during study. Temptations and distractions (Internet, emails, snacking too much, anything etc) require a fair amount of willpower to control, which I really need to work on over the coming weeks. Fitting in breaks to micro-manage all these, as well as chill out regularly, made life much easier. I've changed my version of the L-R method early on, so that I now read German text along with German audio on the final pass through each section. This helps me realise how much my understanding of the text has improved since the first pass, which is much more motivating. I feel that multiple passes for each section are having some kind of accumulative effect on my overall passive comprehension too, and that the key is to keep on going even if you feel you're making little progress. Quick L-R Summary again (section by section): 1. Listen to German audio, read German text. 2. Read English translation. 3. Listen to German audio, read English translation. 4. Listen to German audio, read English translation. 5. Listen to German audio, read German text. The toughest aspect has been to just let go and relax about knowing everything at the beginning. I'm picking up some new words already without realising it half the time (recognised the word "Kürbiskern" in the supermarket today and felt proud hehe), and repeated exposure is helping me make faster connections each time between what I hear and read too. L-R doesn't exactly give an immediate sense of progress, unlike completing vocab flashcards or grammar exercises, but if you really get into the story, it can be a lot of fun. I'm still at a loss how I can understand the majority of Kitty Kat's rap lyrics, yet hardly a word in "Footloose". Does everyone else find TV and movies without subtitles a nightmare to follow too? As much as I love listening to old skool British 80s/90s classics, if anyone out there knows of a German radio station in the Darmstadt/Frankfurt area that plays predominantly modern German songs, that would be an amazing help? Edited by Teango on 11 February 2010 at 11:15pm 2 persons have 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 6 of 185 08 January 2010 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello Teango, and welcome to the team!
It's good to have you aboard, and I enjoy reading your detailed logs. Speaking about phonetic training. Last summer I devoted a couple of days to some serious russian pronounciation exercises. I just loaded a sound file of a word into Audacity and tried to mimic the individual sounds, the beginning of the word, the end of the word and the whole word until I "got it". I constantly recorded myself using my headset. I wholeheartedly recommend it, if you haven't tried it. It can become pretty addictive, and you get the chance to catch nuances that are hard to get if you're not very talented (which I'm not).
Oh yeah. But the feeling when you actually understand a few lines 100 % is unmatched! I can't think of a better method than LR to cure this problem.
Couldn't agree more. I think I'm going to log all the times during the day when I think about doing something, and actually start doing it immediately. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 5987 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 7 of 185 08 January 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think we are nearly all in the same position here as you. Talking about language learning is to me like a football fan discussing his favourite team because you get as much of a high talking about the team or players then simply watching them play. I think the most important thing to do is to enjoy and look foward to your study. I really don't look foward to Listening-Reading in the middle of day but come night time before bed I really enjoy to Listen-Read. In the mornings at the moment I find Anki a very suitable form of study. And I know at some point you are going to study French so this is a resource you can use anytime because it's always enjoyable. Best of luck with TAC! 3 persons have 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 8 of 185 09 January 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the cool tip with pronunciation exercises and Audacity. I've already got a pronunciation exercise book that I brought back from Russia last Autumn along with a bunch of TRKI prep materials. I'll definitely give this a whirl later on, I'm intrigued now.
It's so true about finding delight in recognising an entire phrase in a film or TV programme, sometimes to the point that I almost jump up and riverdance and miss the next few minutes of audio (hehe). It'll be interesting to see how much more I can grasp after a decent amount of of L-R. Edited by Teango on 09 January 2010 at 11:29am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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