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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 281 of 392 01 July 2011 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
Quarter 2: Greek 
Week 26: June 25 – July 1 Total Study Time This Week: 15.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 374.25 hours Average Study Time This Week: 2.18 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.06 hours/day 
In case I haven’t mentioned this, I got tired of doing the big end-of-the-month/quarter summaries so instead I’ll just mention some of the statistics in the weekly update that is closest. Since today is July 1st, yesterday marked the end of both June and the second quarter of the year. Sometime between today and tomorrow is also the exact halfway point in 2011. So, some quick stats for the past couple months: April: 42.25 hours (1.41 hrs/day) May: 47.5 hours (1.53 hrs/day) June: 59 hours (1.97 hrs/day) QUARTER 2: 148.75 hours (1.63 hrs/day) This past quarter was honestly a gigantic mess with all sorts of unexpected changes and unforeseen complications in my plans. While it comes up more than 75 hours short of the total time I spent studying in the first quarter of the year, I still spent almost 150 hours studying languages in the past three months and that’s not an insignificant figure. I also just barely (by 0.25 hours!) beat March’s study time in June. Progress! For the next quarter lasting from July through September, I originally planned to focus on Russian and Japanese and I still hope to do so, but Persian and possibly Finnish could also see some emphasis during this time. I plan on taking part in the 6WC again in August, but actually follow through with it this time because I’ll be entering with Russian as my challenge language since it’s one of the sponsored languages this time. Perfect timing! Now for this week. I spent quite a bit more time studying this week than I had anticipated because of having to get ready to leave Greece, the 26-hour trip home during which I was unwilling/unable to do any studying at all, and then being back here where I would probably be busy seeing people and preparing for my next trip, which I’m leaving for in a bit less than two hours. I, however, forgot about the mixed blessing that is jet lag, which allowed me to wake up at four in the morning or earlier almost every day and thus be very productive in the early hours of the day.  ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ
Total Study Time This Week: 0.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 51 hours - Immersion in Greece - Vocabulary Just a little bit of speaking with people in Greek this week before leaving Greece and then going over some Greek words of the day which I’ve had piling up in a special folder in my email for over a year and have barely so much as glanced at…  Français
Total Study Time This Week: 6 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 46.25 hours - Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu: Ch. 30-37 - Vocabulary I finished reading the rest of Harry Potter in French almost all in one sitting last Saturday and then the vocabulary I have listed here was some more of indulging myself in some of these exciting words, such as l’if (yew). And I’ve been meaning to mention this next bit for the past couple weeks but keep forgetting. I find it very interesting how the translator of the book chose to show the French accents of the characters from Beauxbâtons, given that the book is in French and I’d imagine that representing a French accent in, well, French would be somewhat tricky. Here’s an example from something Madame Maxime said: Normal French: Je n’ai jamais été autant insultée de ma vie ! Une demi-géante ? Moi ? Sachez, monsieur, que j’ai simplement une forte ossature ! French-accented French: Je n'eu jameus euteu autant insulteu de ma vie ! Une demi-geuante ? Moi ? Sacheuz, monsieur, que j'eu simplement une forte ossature !  Português
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 3.25 hours - Harry Potter e a Ordem da Fênix: Ch. 1 - Vocabulary Since I finished my last foreign language Harry Potter book, I decided to continue onto the fifth book, which I happen to have in Portuguese. I then decided that if I was going to spend the time reading it, I might as well count it as study time (I estimated the little time I had spent on Portuguese earlier in the year based on what activities I had listed in my spreadsheet). So, I read some of the first chapter and went over some vocabulary words. This reading is very good because my Portuguese was beginning to get a bit rusty and it’s helping me to remember some things I had forgotten.  Русский
Total Study Time This Week: 3.75 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 22.25 hours - Speaking in Russian - Анастасия (film) [1.5x] - Singing and deciphering songs in Russian - Thematic vocabulary (animals) This week had an interesting convergence of events which were all Russian-related so I’m convinced that I was destined to get back into studying Russian this week. The first thing was that I had a sudden mini-obsession with the music from The Nutcracker, which of course was written by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky. The second thing was that when I was getting a haircut there was a hairdresser from Russia and I was attempting to speak to her in Russian for a short while, which was something of a failure given how long it’s been since I’ve done anything with Russian. She did say my pronunciation is very good, though. Finally, I watched the movie Anastasia with a couple friends earlier this week and liked it so much that it gave me a huge boost of motivation for Russian. I even continued to watch the movie again in Russian (actually, 1.5 times since the third time I watched it I did so half in Russian and half in English). The songs I mentioned above were also from that movie. Not one of the events but just some honest studying, I spent a while going over some animal vocabulary and putting it all into Anki. I suppose I could share the song I liked so much: Как узор на окне, Снова прошлое рядом. Кто-то пел песню мне В зимний вечер когда-то. Словно в прошлом ожило, Чьих-то бережных рук тепло, Вальс изысканных гостей, И бег лихих коней! Вальс кружил и нёс меня, Словно в сказку свою маня. Первый бал и первый вальс Звучат во мне сейчас! Зеркала в янтаре Мой восторг отражают. Кто-то пел на заре Дом родной покидая. Будешь ты, в декабре, Вновь со мной, дорогая! [EDIT: I started watching that movie yet again (the Russian version is the easiest to access...) and counted it as study time.]  فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 1.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 41.5 hours - Pimsleur Farsi 3-5 I started listening to Pimsleur Farsi again this week which I originally went through last summer and fall. I skipped the first two lessons because they were mind-numbingly simplistic but even so, I must have remembered a lot more than I thought because I was getting bored of listening to the following lessons because I already knew everything, or if I didn’t I remembered it right away.  Suomi
Total Study Time This Week: 2 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 11.25 hours - Assimil arrived! - Assimil Lessons 1-6 - Reading about Finnish grammar The big thing for Finnish this week is that Assimil arrived on Wednesday! This was perfect timing because that was exactly what I was hoping would happen by ordering it in advance while I was still in Greece. I’ve gone through the first six lessons and I like how it’s presenting the material so far and it’s not making me want to punch someone like TY Finnish was, so I’m pleased about that. I also was reading a bit of a Wikipedia article on Finnish grammar while I was on my trans-Atlantic flight but soon got bored of the format and stopped reading. [EDIT: I did one more lesson from Assimil on July 1st, so I did the first six lessons, not the first five.] OTHER I have to leave for the airport in about half an hour so that’s why I’m posting this in the morning instead of this evening. I’ll most likely be working on something at the airport and on the plane though, so this will probably be updated at some point to include that time. [EDIT: Added later study time, as promised.] Edited by ellasevia on 09 July 2011 at 5:24am 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 5337 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 282 of 392 02 July 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
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You've probably put in more than twice the hours I've managed this year, and all whilst managing the TAC, living abroad, and juggling enough languages to make the keenest learner dizzy. What an achievement!! I'm really looking forward to what's coming up in the second half...
♪ Beautiful Russian song by the way ♪ :) Edited by Teango on 02 July 2011 at 6:18pm 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 283 of 392 09 July 2011 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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I've realized that I truly benefit from the structure of a rotational schedule and have decided to reintroduce it for this next quarter. I'm also returning to a similar design as last summer's using different blocks of time, which worked out beautifully. Since Russian and Japanese are my focus languages for the third quarter, they are emphasized heavily here with Russian receiving slightly more weight. I'll just include the schedule and explain how it works afterward.
Weekly Study Schedule For July 9 to August 15 Monday:    
Tuesday:   
Wednesday: 
Thursday: 
Friday: 
Saturday: 
Sunday: 
This schedule is quite a bit more complicated than the others because the time assigned to each language also depends on the order in which it is listed on a specific day. The first language listed, which alternates between Russian and Japanese, is to be studied for 2 hours. The second language, which is the other of either Russian or Japanese, will be studied for 1.5 hours. The third and fourth languages are one of the remaining six that I'm working on and are to be studied for 1 hour and ½ hour respectively. This adds up to five hours per day and works out to the following total time by language: Russian: 12.5 hours Japanese: 12 hours Persian: 2.5 hours Finnish: 2.5 hours Dutch: 2 hours German: 1.5 hours Swedish: 1.5 hours Greek: 0.5 hours TOTAL: 35 hours/week As was explained previously, Russian and Japanese are heavily focused on with Russian receiving just a little more emphasis. Just behind those are Persian and Finnish, followed by Dutch. In the same category as German, I'm bringing back Swedish because I feel like it could do with some more study, and the fact that it's summer and I'll have plenty of time combined with the fact that I currently have no materials for Greek at at all (my search for books while in Greece was something of a failure) gives me the perfect reason to work on it again. Then we have Greek, which I'll only spend a small amount of time on each week just for maintenance until I can get my hands on some new materials. This schedule takes effect tomorrow and I hope that I'll be able to get off to a good start. What else? I've listed the ending date as August 15th because that is the last day of summer for me and school begins the next day. At that point I'll assess the amount of work I have to do for school and devise a new schedule accordingly. Now to squeeze in a little more study time today and then write up a summary for this week. 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 284 of 392 09 July 2011 at 6:39am | IP Logged |
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Quarter 3: Russian, Japanese
Week 27: July 2 – July 8 Total Study Time This Week: 5.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 379.75 hours Average Study Time This Week: 0.79 hours/day Average Study Time in 2011: 2.01 hours/day 
Well I’m back from a week in California. It actually feels strange to be writing this log post already because it seems like I just wrote the last one yesterday. Hm. Anyways, this week was not the greatest but that was to be expected, considering the situation. I’m not sure what else there is to say here on the matter. Without further ado, here is the breakdown of the week, beginning with my new focus languages.  РУССКИЙ
Total Study Time This Week: 1.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 23.5 hours - Анастасия (film) - Game in Russian + vocabulary Somewhat of a disappointing week across the board this week and that includes Russian, but that was to be expected. I did watch Анастасия (or should I say Анастасию?) again and this time, through a combination of paying more attention to the dialogue and having seen it in Russian once already, I understood quite a bit more than the first time. I was also playing a game for a while with it set in Russian, and was collecting a surprising amount of new vocabulary words from that. Not all that much in other words.  日本語
Total Study Time This Week: 0.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 28 hours - Conversing in Japanese Among the twenty or so people who were at this house in California with me all week was a native Japanese-speaking friend of my grandfather’s, so I spent at least half an hour (probably more, in fact) conversing with her in Japanese. Result? WOW my Japanese is rusty. Not paying the slightest attention to it in over a month will do that, I suppose. I was literally searching for all but the most basic words and expressions at first and that was quite embarrassing considering that I had been having a fairly fluent conversation in Japanese with the same woman back in April. It went alright after I had some time to get used to speaking it again but it was still not as natural as I’d have liked. Thankfully I will be spending a lot of time on Japanese in this new quarter. Practice makes perfect! فارسى
Total Study Time This Week: 0.5 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 42 hours - Pimsleur Farsi 6 Unfortunately I only listened to one Pimsleur Farsi lesson this week. I should have had plenty of time to work on it because of all of the airport and airplane time but I ended up not using any of it. Suomi
Total Study Time This Week: 3.25 hours Total Study Time in 2011: 14.5 hours - Assimil Lessons 6-14 I spent more time on Finnish than on any other language this week, probably because of the simplicity at this point of just running through the Assimil lessons and adding the vocabulary to Anki. Or maybe it's just because my Assimil Finnish book is still shiny and new. Whatever the explanation, I’m still very much enjoying my Assimil Finnish book and am also glad that it’s using French as the base because so far it seems like the Finnish usage of the partitive and accusative (were the latter to exist in French) matches up well with the French equivalents and thus avoiding all those confusing explanations in English-based resources. Also, I’ve been surprised at the number of Germanic loanwords which I’ve encountered. I had read that Finnish had borrowed many words from especially Swedish, but I had read that they were usually very well masked and hard to spot. I’ve had very little trouble in that respect, however, so that’s a nice little surprise. Finally, either Finnish sounds like Japanese to everyone but me or my family just has no idea what either language sounds like. While I was reading the dialogues aloud this week from Assimil I was asked multiple times by several different people what language it was and they were surprised to learn that it wasn’t Japanese. Huh. OTHER The new schedule outlined in the previous post starts tomorrow. I’m so excited! Also, did I mention that this is my birthday month? I’m not sure how that’s relevant but it’s also exciting. @Teango: Thank you very much for the kind words of encouragement! I’m also very much looking forward to the second half and am hoping that it will by far eclipse the first in its productivity and awesomeness. :) Oh, and that reminds me…I need update those TAC threads soon. I’ll do that tomorrow. Maybe. Edited by ellasevia on 10 July 2011 at 4:45am 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 285 of 392 11 July 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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WARNING: I am extremely excited right now, which may result in me sounding crazy. Not that that would be untrue, but let's not get into that...
The reason I'm writing this now is because only moments ago I received the long-awaited scores for the AP tests which I took at the beginning of May. If you'll recall, I took the French and German exams (along with two others unrelated to foreign languages). I felt very good coming out of the German one and so-so coming out of the French one, but apparently the way I felt coming out of the exams had no bearing on my results because I got a FIVE on both of them! For those unfamiliar with the AP grading scale, it goes from one to five, with five being the highest possible score. I can hardly contain my excitement!   Edited by ellasevia on 11 July 2011 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5116 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 286 of 392 11 July 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations! That's so exciting! Does this mean your German and French are at similar
levels (since you have one listed as advanced and the other as basic fluency)? Oh, and I love the flags. Can't stop looking at the flags. 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 287 of 392 11 July 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Renee. No, I would still say that my French is definitely better than my German, it's just that the AP exam for German was testing for a much lower level (noticeably so, in my opinion) than for French. Where the German exam had us reading short journalistic articles about language education in Germany and a story about a girl obsessing over a boy she sees on a train for reading comprehension, the French one gave us an in-depth description of the renovation on the Eiffel Tower and excerpts from works of French literature without any context or background information. Where the German exam had us simply narrate a sequence of pictures to test our speaking, the French exam had us narrate the pictures, analyze and compare them, and then talk about our personal opinions on subjects relating to them. I'll be interested to see the level that the AP Japanese Exam tests when I take it next May.
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 288 of 392 11 July 2011 at 10:55pm | IP Logged |
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That is amazing! Not that I am actually surprised, because I was sure you would do great, but those results are still fantastic. I hope your parents are really, really proud of you. What are you going to do in the way of celebrations?
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