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Getting nowhere with Swedish | ||
Tags: Placement Test | Swedish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5119 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 1 of 5 13 July 2010 at 10:47am | IP Logged |
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So, I've been intensively learning Swedish every day for two months. In late May I did a placement test at
http://www.folkuniversitetet.se/Kurser--Utbildningar/Sprakku rser/Svenska-Swedish/ . In may I was at B2-level with points: A34 B28 and C14 out of forty in each case. I didn't get enough points from the second test to advance to the last test, but I wanted to see how difficult it would be. I was surprised at how well I did. Yesterday I did the same tests again and got these points: A 35 B26 and C15. They are essentially the same. So it seems I'm still at the same point. Is this the plateau everyone keeps talking about? Because it seems like I started here in the spring (when I resumed learning Swedish) and I'm stuck on the same level. Or is it something in the tests? Because, I feel I've made a lot of progress when I study. I'm able to read and write in Swedish quite well, which I wasn't two months ago, and Ive learned a lot of grammar and vocabulary. I don't get it, and it's really frustrating. Even more so since I have an important test in only one month. I need to pass this test. (And the worst part is, I have no idea how easy or hard it will be.) I guess I need a word (or two) of incouragement. Edited by chirel on 13 July 2010 at 10:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6718 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 5 13 July 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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It could very well be a plateau, possibly due to ineffective methods. I don't know about your study techniques and materials, but personally I have a couple of languages which I feel won't leave the plateau this year (either)...
I have a test in a month (a test I should have taken in December 2008...) and although I should "know" the stuff, I'm not at all sure that I'll pass it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5119 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 3 of 5 13 July 2010 at 12:21pm | IP Logged |
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Oh, I meant to write something about my techniques.
I go through the grammar one area at a time reading two books simultaniously (and I have a link to an online dictionary, if I feel I didn't understand something). I enter most of the example sentences to Anki. Earlier I also added a lot of nouns and adjectives to practise the declination and which article to choose. After each section I do some grammar exercises, if I did badly, I enter the phrases to Anki. I read texts, sentence mine, translate the text into Finnish and back to Swedish to see how close I could get to the original. Any difficult or important sentences/words I enter to Anki. I also read a lot and listen to Swedish music almost all the time trying to understan us much as I can. I listened to an audiobook and I think I understood it well. I'm planning to start a second one, but I've had some technical problems with it. Every day I do my Anki cards and whenever I'm on a bus I test myself using an exercise book that always gives two options for filling a blank space in a phrase. After I've chosen, I can check the answer and there's commentery on the right answer. I've also written short texts in Lang-8 a couple of times a week, and it really looked like I was doing a lot better (I clearly made less mistakes). So I feel I'm doing a lot, which doesn't necessarily mean that my methods are effective. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6125 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 4 of 5 13 July 2010 at 1:41pm | IP Logged |
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Keep up the audiobooks. Your method sounds pretty solid.
There's some very good content available at LingQ (which is free) which include casual and authentic conversations, fully transcribed, which should be a very nice compliment to the generally less colloquial nature of literature that you'll find through listening to audio books. Jeff has even contributed some content there. If you feel your French is up to the task, you might try looking into Assimil's "Le Suédois sans Peine" - particularly the second volume which in addition to providing a kind of cultural immersion course, will also provide you with a good source of model sentences for your Anki deck. You seem to have achieved a lot in two months! I've studied Swedish on and off myself for a couple of years, and the level I have attained to show for it is absolutely shameful... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5119 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French | Message 5 of 5 13 July 2010 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the suggestions.
I didn't do it all in just two months. I have a pretty solid base since I learned Swedish at school ten years ago. Sadly I didn't use it for ten years and forgot almost everything. I spent the spring activating my skills and now I'm trying to learn more/the stuff that I still don't remember. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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