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Estival Ambitions: A Linguistic Odyssey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 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 217 of 242 06 December 2010 at 9:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello! I do believe it’s time for my weekly update. The first two days of this week were not good in terms of studying, so I fell slightly behind on my goals because of that, but it’s nothing that I can’t handle. I also forgot when typing out my weekly goals sheet, to include the “weekend extra study time” that I’ve been doing for the past couple months, so some of the numbers aren’t very impressive because there was not much to work for. I’m thinking that I might do away with that bonus time system…or maybe I won’t. It doesn’t really matter either way because in just a few short weeks my schedule will be completely changed…
DEUTSCH: 1.5 hours Yay, back on track for German this week. Activities included letter-writing and grammar study from my old workbook (the one I have barely touched since August). SVENSKA: 1 hour Swedish is right where it needs to be too. I did some reading and vocabulary mining, and then lesson 20 from Assimil. ROMÂNĂ: 1.5 hours Everything is just fine with my Romanian too. I completed lessons 27 through 30 from Assimil this week. ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ: 1.5 hours Πολύ καλά κι εδώ. All I did this week was reading, from Harry Potter and from some other stuff with my grandmother. РУССКИЙ: 2.5 hours Oops! Last week it was German, and this week it was Russian. I simply didn’t get around to dear Русский this week. I was going to do some tonight, but an unexpected change of plans left me unable to, and I’m too tired for my alternative plan of study right now. Anyways, I did extra study last week, so… 0.5 hours :فارسى I only did 30 minutes of Persian this week, but that’s all my goals sheet required because of this week’s particular alignment of study days. I did lesson three from Colloquial Persian, but have not yet studied the vocabulary from it. Actually, I probably spent more like an hour on Persian, but whatever. KISWAHILI: 1 hour So close! I almost met my goal of 1.5 hours of Swahili this week, but I decided to stop studying early so that I could write this update before I got too tired. For Swahili I continued my discussion with strikingstar in the Swahili thread of the Multilingual Lounge and studied the Mwana Simba’s grammar lessons 35-37. I feel like I keep saying this, but I really am quite pleased with how my reading and writing skills are coming along in Swahili. I don’t think my listening is horrible either, but I have a sinking feeling that I would still struggle to speak. 日本語: 1 hour Again, so close! Like Swahili, I had a goal of 1.5 hours. Oh well, better luck next time. This week I studied lesson 32 of Assimil and then began my review of Ultimate Japanese, and reviewed the first three lessons of that. I tried to begin a new lesson from that earlier in the week, but found that I had forgotten a lot of stuff, so I’m going back through to review now. I have been paying especially close attention to the Japanese pitch accent, which I had largely ignored before, even though it seems that somehow I subconsciously picked up the correct patterns. Whenever I try to say something with the correct pitches, it feels natural and quite like how I would normally say it, but I think now that I’m deliberately making an effort it really is making a difference in how “Japanese” I sound. ESPERANTO: 0.5 hours Esperanto is not a huge priority right now, so I’m not worried about not hitting my goals. While I worked on Esperanto this week, I was mainly combing through wordlists for interesting or useful words, and I also reviewed quickly the first three lessons of TY Esperanto, which I used this spring. I don’t remember when exactly I made this change, so it might have been mentioned already, but I’ve upped the number of Esperanto new cards in Anki to 50 words per day, because I used to know all of them anyways and I can handle it. NEDERLANDS: “A while” I wasn’t exactly keeping track on how long I spent on Dutch this week, but I can’t even give a good estimate because I don’t have access to some of the information right now as I’m using a different computer. My best guess would be a couple hours. Anyways, I listened to quite a bit of the Michel Thomas Advanced Course (until my iPod decided to break, a huge inconvenience—but it was five years old anyways and Christmas is coming up soon…) and completed lessons 1-12 of Assimil Dutch With Ease, as well as reading up through lesson 16, I believe. I guess that’s all for this week. Now I have to write my goals for the upcoming week—which reminds me: finals are the week after this one so I might not get quite so much done as I would like. Maybe I’ll halve my goals or something like that… Good night! Edited by ellasevia on 06 December 2010 at 9:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 5850 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 218 of 242 06 December 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Best get the finals out of the way first so you can concentrate on languages later. I always set myself a 'treat' language when I have assignments to do. As soon as I complete my assignments I can concentrate on the language a great way to unwind.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5366 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 219 of 242 07 December 2010 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
Good idea. On a similar wavelength, I try to reward myself for putting in x hours of study during the week by relaxing with a fun project on Wednesdays and Saturdays with my partner (currently it's salsa dancing, before it was learning sign language together). :) Edited by Teango on 07 December 2010 at 9:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 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 220 of 242 10 December 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, this is simply too stressful. I'm swamped in work this week and have decided to suspend my language studies up through the end of next week, which is when finals will be over. Any studying that I do will just be extra. I will, however, try to keep up as best I can on Anki and kanji.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5366 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 221 of 242 10 December 2010 at 9:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I know just where you're coming from when you say things are simply too stressful.
So wise move, Ellasevia - finals come first (no pun intended), and there's no need to feel guilty at all about taking a rain cheque on language studies in the meantime. Hope you pass all the exams with flying colours! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 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 222 of 242 13 December 2010 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Nightmarish week. Here's the little I've done for languages (mostly before Thursday, when I suspended all studies):
日本語: 15-30 minutes - Reviewed Ultimate Japanese Lesson 4 - Practiced Pitch Accent ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ: 1 hour - Harry Potter Reading - Greek with grandmother KISWAHILI: 30 min - Mwana Simba Lessons 38-39 DEUTSCH: 30 min - Miscellaneous Vocabulary 45 min :فارسى - BYKI: Colloquial Persian Lesson 3 Vocabulary Other news… - I spoke with the exchange student from Tajikistan briefly in Russian earlier this week and didn’t have to be corrected! I asked how to say one or two things, but what I came up with on my own didn’t require corrections. :) - This was a bit silly and pathetic… I was considering buying an Irish book (this one) because it has a picture of sheep on the cover. I don’t particularly like Irish, but I like sheep, and I thought it would be cool to have a language book with sheep on it. Wow. Apart from having a couple mental breakdowns about the unexpected amount of work that I have this week, not much else has happened. I have also just brought all my new cards in Anki down to zero. My guess is that I will not be studying languages very much in the next week either. I’m not even setting goals. Good night… (Just keep swimming…) Edited by ellasevia on 13 December 2010 at 6:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| polyglossia Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5214 days ago 205 posts - 255 votes Speaks: French* | Message 223 of 242 13 December 2010 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi ellesevia !!!
I'm just amazed ! I just discovered your logbook and I'm just thrilled (enthralled?) by your achievements... Now, what level would you say you reached in your different target languages according to the european language frame (A1...C2)? And what about your first or second post where you said you wanted to take an exam for some of the languages you learnt? A very useful website for you (but I'm sure you know it) could be this one: www.alte.org There you'll find a lot of exams to take in a wide range variety of languages (namely european languages though, I dont know much about swahili exam). Now, I am fighting with (and not against :D ) dutch... But I'm really slow accordind to my method which differs totally from yours... actually I'm a big fan of draughts and Ton Sijbrands (a genius !) Here is a link about him (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lq-sp80YcA)... Maybe you could have a look and just tell how much you understand (some parts are English spoken since he visited some russian people and since he doent speak russian)... Now, as I said, my method is way different from yours... I do learn languages like a child... Listening a lot, shadowing a lot, and learning paragraphs or small texts by heart and only after, looking at the translation... and no grammar at all... I never do grammar skills... I used to, once, but unfortunately it didnt look as it leads to some significants achievements (at least for me)... Bust I do trust a method consiting in listening dialogs and learning it by heart, so you're able to keep track of them in your mind and once in a while recite them by heart, just like a poem f.e. Now, it worked out well in Spanish... I learned Spanish between january 6,1998 and february 4, 1998... So, basically once month studying, 10 hours a day (I was jobless!! :D) At the end of May, I found an ad for linguistic exchange (french/spanish)... I phoned, I met and I ...spoke!!! Amazingly, it worked out well, first time of my life I was speaking to a native speaker, and I studied Spanish a month!! Now, this kind of method may well be suitable for me, but may be 'inadequate' for so else... So, here are two questions: 1) how do you know you feel proficient in a language? What kind of clues do you have to testify you reached basic fluency or intermediate fluency? (exams not counting ) 2) about exams... did tou take any exams (certificates) in your target languages so far? and if so, which ones ? Keep swimming !!!!! You're just amazing!!! (it's your daily pace that strikes me most and your ability to stick to a program certainly helps in reaching your targets!!) Edited by polyglossia on 13 December 2010 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5952 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 224 of 242 14 December 2010 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks polyglossia! I'll try to answer your questions the best I can.
From what I can gather from the explanations of the CEFR levels and demonstrations of them on the Internet (I haven't yet taken any of their exams), these are the average levels (meaning that the skills would average out this way; some might be lower and some might me higher) that I'd give myself, excluding English: Spanish - C2 French - C1 Portuguese - C1 Italian - B2 Greek - B2 German - B2 Swedish - B1 Swahili - B1 Esperanto - B1 Japanese - A2-B1 Dutch - A2 Romanian - A2 Russian - A2 Persian - A1 So as you can see, Persian is my weakest foreign language and Spanish is my strongest. Also, some of those might be more "active" than others. I used to use the first four on that list quite frequently, but now very rarely, so my abilities have degraded somewhat. I'm returning to them in 2011, so we'll see what I can do to fix them up a bit. As for your other questions: 1. Hard question! I try reading things, listening to things, and try writing and speaking too. I attempt to compare myself to others who have achieved similar levels in the language. To give an explanation that may or may not make any sense, if I think I might be approaching a specific level (intermediate/basic fluency/advanced fluency, etc), I submit my language into a sort of evaluation period where I try to notice everything that I can and can't do, and how well (or badly, as the case often is) I do them. One of the most recent examples of this was with Swedish. One of my goals for 2010 was to bring Swedish to basic fluency, so recently I entered Swedish in this "zone of evaluation" to see if I might be there. My verdict was that I'm getting closer, but still not there yet. Another one was for Russian and Romanian, which I considered updating to "intermediate" on my profile. Again, after much deliberation I decided against it, leaving it until I feel more ready and confident in my skills. 2. I haven't taken any exams that would show up on this website. All of the ones I've taken have been through my high school, like the National Spanish/French Exam (and as of Wednesday, the National German Exam) or the AP Spanish Language Exam. I'd like to try my hand at some of the CEFR exams in the future -- it's just now I simply don't know how to go about it! I hope this has helped clarify. Ellasevia 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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