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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 161 of 360 23 May 2013 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
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Jag är ganska trött den här dagarna. När jag kommer hem på kvällarna orkar jag bara titta på tv eller läsa någonting lätt. Jag hinner inte använda mina läroböcker.
I’m rather tired these days. When I get home at night, I only have the energy to watch TV or to read something easy. I can’t manage to use my textbooks. Corrections are always welcome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 162 of 360 03 June 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
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As I wrote in my last update, I’m going through a few rather tiring weeks. I’m not managing to be very productive at the moment, as I’m so exhausted when I get home that I simply can’t stand the idea of sitting at my desk and do my exercises.
The result is rather predictable: most of my languages (Russian, Japanese, even German) have fallen by the wayside and my Swedish is hardly improving. Whereas I hoped to rush through the Mål textbook in May and June, I’m barely crawling. It’s not that I overestimated the amount of pages one can reasonably cover in a daily study session, it’s that I overestimated the number of days in which I can apply myself diligently to the task at hand. Luckily for me, the 6wc is at least helping me to make the best of my downtime and maintain a daily contact with Swedish. I know it’s not as good as studying, but at the moment extensive reading, listening and a little TV-watching is clearly better than nothing, given the circumstances. Minutes studied in the weeks of May 13-June 2 (and in 2013): Russian: 60 (3805) Swedish: 420 (3465) Japanese: 0 (840) German: 40 (420) French: 0 (195) Chinese: 0 (20) Mini-Super Challenge update. Films / Radio dramas: 39/100 Bella Vita (89’) 40/100 WDR Hörspiel: Zwei Menschen, endlich von Marianne Zückler, ©WDR 2012, 54' 41/100 Nach all den Jahren (89’) 42/100 WDR Hörspiel: Oops, wrong planet! von Gesine Schmidt, ©DLF/WDR 2012, 53' 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 163 of 360 23 June 2013 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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I wrote this post a week ago, but could not post it due to technical problems. I tried again almost every evening this past week, but I always got error messages. Has anyone else noticed that the forum is particularly slow in the evening (CET) on weekdays or is it just my internet connection?
Anyway, here is the post. ---------------------------------------- 17 June 2013 – Update The 6wc ended on Tuesday. It was my second attempt and my first completed 6wc. Surprisingly, I finished in 11th place in my target language (Swedish) and – unbelievably – 8th as far as the total score was concerned. These numbers are really flattering for me, but ranking aside, I must confess that overall I was less productive than I expected and hoped for. So let’s get some things straight: almost 80 hours of Swedish in 6 weeks do sound impressive, but they were mainly given over to TV-watching, and far less serious studying took place than one would imagine. The truth is, I find it quite difficult to dedicate a lot of time to a demanding activity on top of my usual “real-life” commitments. In late April I tried to prepare for the 6wc by getting as many tasks and obligations due in May out of the way, but there is only so much you can do in advance, and while the first couple of weeks were indeed the most productive, soon my daily chores and routines started bogging me down. Anyway, I think I’ve learnt something from the challenge and I’m not against trying it again in the future. Someone (was it you, Serpent?) mentioned in his/her log that the tags for the 6wc could be used to analyse what one actually does when one says he/she’s learning languages. After all, the nature of the challenge invites you to log everything you do in your TLs, and so it offers you a data mine too valuable to ignore. Considering that I don’t normally consciously and deliberately reflect much on my method, this is probably a good moment to take stock. Here are some reflections: 1 – I’m more of a tortoise than a hare kind of person: whereas the idea of 6 weeks of intense study is incredibly attractive, I get out of steam far too quickly to really profit from the challenge as much as other learners probably can. 2 – Textbook studying is still the core of my learning, even though I like to add variety with extensive activities like reading and watching TV. Textbook studying is the second activity after TV-watching for time devoted to it, and it took up about 20% of my logged time during the 6wc. Considering the difference in effort and productivity of extensive vs intensive activities, I think a 20% vs 80% division is rather balanced. 3 – No wonder my English is my strongest language! Even though I was careful not to log run-of-the-mill activities in English (so no podcasts, no commercial novels, no forum-post writing, no BBC listening, no TV-channel-surfing, no online reading, etc. were posted), but only those activities where I put some attention to the actual language (which in the end came down only to watching entire films or reading literary novels), yet English was second only to Swedish (my target language for the challenge) as far as time dedicated to it. 4 – If I ignore the longer sessions spent reading extensively or watching TV (episodes vary from about 25 minutes to an hour and films are usually over 90 minutes long), I usually spend about half an hour doing an activity. It seems that I’ve found a sweet spot between 30min and 45min: most of my study sessions seem to fall into these two length categories and this is in line with what I had already noticed in the past about the efficiency of the Pomodoro technique. What I’m not good at, is taking advantage of dead time: I’ve logged very few activities lasting 10 minutes or less. This aspect was exacerbated in May and June because this time around I didn’t spend one single minute on Anki, in which I’ve set the time limit for every session at 10 minutes. 5 – It’s almost impossible for me to study two or more languages in parallel. Even though I may try to juggle several, at the end of the day I can’t seem to be capable of organizing myself so that I can progress at a steady pace in more than one language at a time: one TL will always absorb most of my energy so that very little can be achieved in the others. (Actually, this aspect of my learning method – or lack of method – was already apparent at university, where it was hard for me to concentrate equally on both English and German and every semester I would end up focusing either on one or on the other). EDIT: added some more reflections. Edited by Emme on 24 June 2013 at 7:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 164 of 360 23 June 2013 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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23 June 2013 – Update
This has been another unproductive week. Certainly, it did not help that we were in the middle of the first real heat wave of the season. In summer, when the temperatures rise, if I have a little time for myself I much rather plop down on a deck chair with a novel than do anything else. With a bit of luck and doggedness, next week I’ll be able to report something more interesting from the learning front: they’ve promised milder weather for a few days! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 165 of 360 08 July 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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The forum is still unbearably slow for me: I wanted to post this a few days ago but gave up after a quarter of an hour getting errors when trying to load any page of the forum. Anyway, here’s my post.
---------- Here we are in July: that means we’ve turned the half-way mark of the TAC. So I guess it’s time to have an overview of what I’ve done so far and what remains to be done in the next 6 months. FOCUS LANGUAGES Russian My plan was to finish the Assimil Experiment and then work with other courses aiming to an A2 level (more or less): I’ve dropped the Assimil Experiment a while ago because it wasn’t working for me at this stage in my study and instead started learning with other materials more suitable for beginners and false beginners. I must admit that I don’t see the A2 level happening by the end of the year. I knew Russian was difficult but I have to be honest here and confess that I’m not putting in the time necessary to make such progress in just a year. Swedish My goal for 2013 was to reach a solid B1 and this one is actually doable. I’ve seen that when I put in a little effort, I can manage to work quite a lot on Swedish without burning out. My active skills are still much weaker than my passive ones, but I’m getting more confident that I’m on the right track. German The aim of this year in German was to get back to a solid B2 after years of neglect. I’ve done very little textbook study and I’m way behind schedule in my mini-Super Challenge, which has just 25 books to read plus the classic Super Challenge 100 films (or podcasts etc.) to watch by the end of 2013. I’m about half way through with the film part, but only 1/5 through in the book part, so I’ll need to up my game if I hope to actually finish it in time. I’ve read very little so far this year, not just in German, but in any language and I really need and want to change this. UPKEEP LANGUAGES My upkeep languages are English and French. I’ve done almost nothing for these two languages. Kanewai has proposed a new experiment with TY or LL (maybe to coincide with the August 6wc) and I might actually use it for brushing up on my French or even to start Spanish. I have to think about it. DABBLING LANGUAGES Languages that I denominated as dabbling languages were Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, … and actually I managed to do some Japanese for about a month during the June 6wc. Who knows what I might do in the coming 6 months? ---------- Now I’m off on holiday for a couple of weeks and I don’t think I’ll be able to log in until towards the end of this month. I’m packing a German novel to get my mini-Super Challenge book count moving and I’ll bring my mp3 player, but I don’t think I’ll put much effort into language learning. I need a holiday, and I just want to relax and spend a couple of carefree weeks with the important people in my life. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4505 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 166 of 360 09 July 2013 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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Language learning is not everything in our lives after all. Have a nice trip! =)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 167 of 360 30 July 2013 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
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@fabriciocarraro
Thanks! The holidays were really fantastic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 168 of 360 30 July 2013 at 9:02pm | IP Logged |
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Here I am, back from a few weeks of total indolence also known as “holiday”.
As I expected before leaving, apart from reading some novels (mainly in English, but – luckily for my mini-Super Challenge – also in German) I did nothing with languages. Actually, right now I’m more in a “reading literature” kind of mode and I’ve lost much of the enthusiasm I had earlier this year for language studying. As I wrote at the beginning of the TAC, my two great passions are languages and literature, but somehow they tend to exclude one another. I find it hard to do both at the same time, and generally I go through cycles when my fervor for the first wanes while my passion for the other increases. In my last post before the holidays I had hinted at my interest in the TY or LL experiment that Kanewai had proposed for August, but after a quick look at this forum it doesn’t seem that his project went anywhere. I would have liked to use it as an excuse to ease myself back into studying mode. Right now I feel rather unfocused with the TAC and my mini-Super Challenge and languages in general, and I’m not sure how productive the coming weeks will be. Of course, there’s still the 6wc, but I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll take part or not: my previous two attempts started quite well, but I soon lost momentum (in February real life events were to blame) and struggled to finish. Right now it seems slightly pointless to start the challenge when my enthusiasm is at rock bottom. What do you think? Should I try anyway and hope to work my way out of this apathy or do you think it is counterproductive in these circumstances? Edited by Emme on 01 August 2013 at 5:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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