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Ellasevia’s TAC 2011: Team Ohana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 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 225 of 392 07 May 2011 at 7:58am | IP Logged | |||||
Quarter 2: Indonesian, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, Persian     
Week 18: April 30 – May 6 Total Study Time This Week: 18.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 278.75 hours Average Study Time This Week: 2.64 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.21 hours/day 
Well this was rather unexpected. This week was the first week of AP testing, which I thought would mean less studying for me AND I got sick on top of that. Somehow, though, between watching The Little Mermaid approximately 12 times (I wish I were exaggerating about that) and pretending to prepare for my AP exams I managed to squeeze in almost 20 hours of study time this week. Success at last! Oh right. I just remembered where all those extra hours came from. See German for details.  BAHASA INDONESIA
Total Study Time This Week: 3.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 4.5 hours - Learning Indonesian Podcast, #2-10 - TY Complete Indonesian Lessons 1 (+BYKI) and 2 - Writing in Indonesian (in my 6WC log) - Anki I’m starting to warm up a little more to Indonesian. At first I was having some trouble liking it for some unknown reason, but that negative attitude seems to be dissipating somewhat. Perhaps ironically, trying to motivate myself with Indonesian this week has made me nostalgic for Swahili. With Indonesian I’ve had to trick myself into liking it to an extent while with Swahili I felt an instant connection to the language and loved it immediately. That love was eventually followed up with lots of neglect and ultimately a (hopefully temporary) separation, but this week I remembered just how much I like Swahili still.  NEDERLANDS
Total Study Time This Month: 0.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 47.75 hours - Writing/reading in Dutch - Trying in vain to decipher very quickly spoken and mumbled natural Dutch speech In case you hadn’t noticed, I seem to have abandoned my Assimil book which I was so excited about a while ago. I hope to get back into that soon, but for now my exposure to Dutch is coming mainly from using it. I’ve been informed that based on my pronunciation, I sound like I’m from Morocco, Turkey, Belgium, France, and Australia all at the same time. No one seems to believe I’m American, however.  РУССКИЙ
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 15.25 hours - MT Vocabulary Yay, Russian. I’m trying to remember something to comment on this past Russian study session, but it was last weekend and it’s very vague in my memory. I was at the park… On a swing… And it was windy and cold… Right! I remember now. I was going to mention that I find it interesting how I seem to almost always come up with the preferred word order for the Russian sentence before the teacher on the MT course requests that the student change it. I think it could be because Greek tends to use similar syntactical patterns as Russian, so I’m just applying what sounds natural to me from Greek. On a humbler note, I still fail miserably at stressing the correct syllable throughout the declensions most of the time.  فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 38.75 hours - Assimil 57-58 (passive), 8-9 (active) Still moving along slowly with Assimil. I didn’t spend much time on my supposed focus languages this week because of the 6WC and preparing for my German and French AP exams. I did, however, give an impromptu lesson on writing the Perso-Arabic alphabet in my science class yesterday. Out of that experience I learned that either it’s much more difficult to learn than I remember it being or I’m just a terrible teacher. It was rather painful.  Français
Total Study Time This Week: 4 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 16 hours - Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu, Ch. 5-10 - French radio I started panicking this week, realizing that my AP French exam is next Tuesday and that I haven’t spoken French in months and whenever I tried speaking to myself I would unconsciously switch to German within a few sentences. That would be a really bad thing to do on a French exam. I’ve been reading and listening as much in French as my short attention span will allow me and I’m not having any real difficulties with it, so I’m mainly concerned about the active skills. I spoke French a couple times this week and I managed not to switch languages mid-sentence, so I’ve made progress. Also due to lack of exercise recently, my tongue seems to be reluctant to produce French sounds again so I’ve been reading Harry Potter aloud to myself to get used to it. It takes me longer to read aloud than in my head, but I’ve noticed some improvement in my pronunciation since last week, so it seems to be working. I should probably practice writing some French, but the one time that I actually motivated myself to open the review book that I’ve had sitting next to my desk since January, I saw that all of the practice prompts are really annoying philosophical questions that I didn’t feel like wasting my time on answering.  Deutsch
Total Study Time This Week: 7.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 26.25 hours - German Project (for school) - Reading stories - Writing in German (for fun) - Correcting an essay in German for a friend - German radio - Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Askaban (movie) - AP German EXAM!!! (<-- yes, I counted that as study time) I’m assuming nobody cares about any of the stuff besides the last one, right? Okay, good. So the AP German Exam was this morning and I was one of exactly five students at my school to take it. In general I would tentatively say that it was the easiest AP exam I’ve ever taken (so far I’ve taken six, eight after next Wednesday). I’ll divide this up to give my impressions on each section: - Listening: Easy. The people spoke very slowly and the subjects weren’t at all complicated. My only complaint here is that the questions were also spoken so you couldn’t answer them as you went along and instead had to remember everything from the selection and wait for the end to hear the questions. - Reading: Also very easy. There was a very entertaining story as the first reading, followed by some moderately interesting articles. One of them was on foreign language instruction in Germany, so that was a nice gift. :) I finished very early on this section so I went back and read the first story again because I thought it was funny. Oh, and I was upset that I we weren’t allowed to take anything away from the test because I so wanted to write down some of the amazing vocabulary that they had in those articles. - Writing: Mostly easy. Writing is usually one of my stronger skills, but that’s assuming that I know what I’m trying to say. I didn’t particularly like the prompt they gave us so my essay’s argument was probably awful, but they mostly grade on your usage of the language and not what you actually said. Oh, and the other part of the writing section — the one where you are given an article with blanks and you have to fill them in with an appropriate word — that was another gift. It was on bilingual German-Turkish education in Germany. - Speaking: My least favorite part, but that has more to do with the fact that I don’t speaking in general and much less so when I’m being recorded and don’t know what to say. I’m fairly certain that I sounded like a complete buffoon making up random stuff for all of the impromptu questions (they ask a simple question like “That’s a nice T-shirt, where did you get it?” and you have to fill up the remaining 20 seconds with a response that makes sense) and the story I created based on the pictures they gave us sounded so much better in my head… Meh. So yes, I counted that as study time because it was extra…and I wanted to bump up my score for this week (it was about three hours). I also counted that Harry Potter movie even though we were watching that in class, because that would have been something I would have wanted to do on my own if I had the resources. As for the essay correction, a friend of mine who is in a lower level of German at my school wrote an essay on fairy tales and asked me to proofread it for him. It had a lot of mistakes and I got a bit carried away, and ended up turning it into an exercise in trying to find the most natural way to rephrase everything. I felt a bit bad afterwards because there was more red than black and I had essentially rewritten the entire essay for him.  Ελληνικά
Total Study Time This Week: 0.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 22.5 hours - Writing in Greek - German project (it makes sense, I promise) I didn’t spend very much time on Greek this week other than writing in it a little bit on one day. I also have had to redo my entire project for my German class because after turning in the one about the Mkhedruli (Georgian) alphabet my teacher told me that she thought that it might go a bit over my classmates’ heads and that to expect them to learn the entire alphabet in a single class period was kind-of ridiculous. So now I’ve made a new presentation on very basic Greek instead (greetings, introductions, languages, etc.). I have to present this next Thursday and then the next day for their “test” (an assessment is a required part of this project, and it counts for their grades!) they have to do a short oral presentation on themselves in Greek. I’m evil. OTHER TixhiiDon, thanks for that explanation. I didn’t know that it was acceptable to mix the plain and polite forms so I’ve probably always sounded much too formal or horribly informal all the time. EDIT: Fixed graph color. Edited by ellasevia on 07 May 2011 at 8:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5116 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 226 of 392 07 May 2011 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's kind of sad how excited I got when I saw your total study time for this week. Congratulations on a great week and keep up the good work!
Have you tried playing it at half-speed? That's what I did when someone sent me a long ramble in Spanish recently and it helped a little. It also sounded really funny. ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 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 227 of 392 07 May 2011 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks! :) No, I hadn't thought of that before but I just tried and it made it even harder to understand. I guess I'm not very good at understanding Dutch giants with mental illnesses, which is what the result sounded like. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 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 228 of 392 10 May 2011 at 7:10am | IP Logged | |||||
 Demain c’est le grand jour de mon examen d’AP du français!
J’ai passé des heures ce soir à réviser le format de l’examen et à m’immerger dans la langue française, et pour la plupart je me sens assez préparé et prêt. Il semble que l’examen est pour la plupart très similaire à celui de l’allemand avec de petites différences qui le rendent un peu plus compliqué. J’ai pratiqué l’écriture, la lecture, et la compréhension auditive et tous les trois me paraissent assez faciles. Le seul problème sera, à mon avis, la section orale puisque je n’ai guère parlé un seul mot de français depuis des mois et ma prononciation s’est détériorée visiblement (ou, peut-être mieux dans ce contexte, audiblement). L’autre problème que j’ai avec cette partie de l’examen c’est qu’il faut qu’on décrive l’histoire de ce qu’il se passe dans des images qu’on nous fournit, mais je n’arrive jamais à comprendre ce qui se passe ! Les examples dans mon livre de pratique sont tout à fait impossibles pour moi, donc j’espère pour mon bien que les images sur le vrai examen demain seront plus simples. À part de cela, les tâches de l’examen d’AP ne posent pas de problème. Je vais quand même continuer à réviser et étudier pour le reste du soir. On ne peut jamais être trop préparé. Je suis en fait un peu énervé avec moi-même, parce que j’ai passé des mois à regarder ces livres de pratique à côté de mon bureau et j’aurais dû faire beaucoup plus de révision que celle que j’ai déjà faite, la plupart de laquelle j’ai fait pendant cette dernière semaine avant l’examen. Je ne les ai pas ouverts que deux ou trois fois pendant toute l’année. Il y avait des listes de vocab, lectures avec questions de compréhension, des sujets pour les essais, pratiques pour les sections dont on doit remplir le space avec un mot ou une forme verbale qui convient, des images pour la section orale – c’est-à-dire, il y avait tout ce que j’en avais besoin là-dedans et je l’ai tout ignoré. Mais ça c’est typique de moi. Edited by ellasevia on 16 May 2011 at 1:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| polyglossia Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 205 posts - 255 votes Speaks: French* | Message 229 of 392 10 May 2011 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Salut Philip !! Juste deux ou trois corrections... rien de méchant !! :)))
4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| freedom_2011 Newbie Egypt Joined 4777 days ago 21 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: English | Message 230 of 392 10 May 2011 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Goodluck ! I want to express my admiration about what you're doing, It's really very impressive efforts to study languages, I wish you all the best in your studies! If you want any help in Arabic language (Egyptian or standard), I'm here! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 231 of 392 10 May 2011 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good luck! I am crossing my fingers for you, but I am sure you'll do splendidly!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 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 232 of 392 11 May 2011 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, that ordeal is over at last. Honestly, I don't even know what I was thinking when I decided to take the AP test even though I wasn't in the class. I don't know if it's because French is considered easier than German and they have higher expectations, because I have had comparatively so little exposure to French recently, because I had had so little practice with the format specific to the French exam, because the exam was in the afternoon instead of the morning and I had already been mentally drained by my other classes, or because I had worked myself into panic mode beforehand because I was so nervous, but the French exam today was noticeably more challenging than the German one last Friday. It certainly wasn't impossible, but I would have hoped it would be easier. Like with the German AP exam, I'll give a short summary of each section.
- Listening: Not too bad. I had little trouble with understanding the actual French, but similar to the problem I encountered last year on the AP Spanish exam, I'm much more accustomed to hearing natural French, so the artificial-sounding exchanges were a bit disorienting. Unlike the German though, they do give you the comprehension questions beforehand, so that was a nice surprise. - Reading: Reading is probably my strongest skill in French so I wasn't all that worried about this section. The readings we were given were much more complicated than the simple stories and articles on the German exam, and especially for two of the fiction selections we had no context as to where they came from, so it was hard to know what they were talking about. - Writing: The writing section went better than I expected, seeing as it's an active skill and those are the ones which have suffered most during my semi-abandonment of French. The fill-in-the-blanks exercises were very straightforward and the essay went well too. My main difficulty with the essay was thinking of a good argument. The topic was the educational value of sports, which I did not like at all, and I had to lie my way through that essay because I thought it would be easier to think of an argument to support the statement than to go against it. - Speaking: Ew, just ew. Besides this being the hardest section, I went into it fairly blindly because I really didn't understand its format since the review book which my former French teacher gave me was a bit outdated. The first time I saw the what the task would be like was...well, when I opened the booklet to begin. That combined with me not having spoken much French in a long time and my dislike of being recorded probably made for a very unimpressive speaking performance on my part, even though I was able to converse with people in French fairly easily before and after the exam. So, I don't think I did horribly but for sure not as brilliantly as I had hoped. We don't receive our scores until the middle of July, though, so I'll just have to wait and see. Thank you to polyglossia for those helpful corrections and to freedom_2011 and Solfrid Cristin for the nice encouragement. :) As far as my continued studies of French are concerned, I'm undecided at this point. Between yesterday and today I added a full 10 hours to my total study time for French, which made me exceed my minimum goal of 25 hours by one hour. I changed the status in my profile to "not studying" as soon as I arrived home today, but this morning and last night I was feeling strangely motivated for French (why couldn't I have felt this way sometime earlier in the year when I could have done more to prepare!?) and had the crazy idea of wanting to continue with it. That's option number two, the first being simply to drop it at this point and just to maintain it from now on. The third option is that I thought I might revisit my Italian now that my French exam is over and bring that back up to working condition. Decisions, decisions... Edited by ellasevia on 16 May 2011 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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