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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 273 of 331 25 June 2014 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Well that was quick ... I'm not ready for five at once, not at the level I'm at. I
think I need to bail on Turkish. I'm past the elementary stage, and would need to dedicate a lot more time than an hour per week to moving through the intermediary stage. I'll still play around with ideas & see if I can work it in, but my time is already pretty maxed out. Français It's midnight in Shanghai, May 22, 1927. At dawn the revolutionaries are planning on a worker's uprising. Tchen has just assassinated someone for the first time, Kyo has made contact with the Baron Clappique to intercept a stash of weapons, and Kyo's father has slipped into an opium dream. And all this in the first twenty pages of André Malroux's La condition humaine (1933). As usual with French novels, I suspect that this is going to end badly. I remember something from history class about the "Shanghai Massacre." sigh. Moving much more slowly, I'm ninety minutes into De la terre à la lune (Jules Verne), and so far the members of the Baltimore Gun Club have only made it to Florida. The whole podcast is just two hours, and I'm starting to wonder if they ever actually go to the moon. Still, it's a fun podcast, and much closer to my level than others I've listened to. Italiano Dante is having a grand old time in hell. In the first circle Virgil introduces him to Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. They welcome Dante as the sixth of the great intellects of the world. Which is kind of arrogant of Dante to write that about himself, but also accurate. Life (well, death) is a bit harder in the second circle, where dark winds toss around the souls of those who committed sins of the flesh for love: Dido, Helen, Tristan and Isolde, Cleopatra, Semiramis, and Dante's aunt Francesca. Dante starts to cry, and then passes out. Back in Hogwarts, Harry Potter has been kicked off the Quidditch team. Which is rough for him, but fine by me ... I'm not a sports guy, and for me the most boring parts of the series have been the Quidditch games. Assimil pales in comparison, and I'm rapidly losing interest. I'm down to only two chapters a week. It's useful, especially for my pronunciation, but just not as exciting as real books. At this point I'm finding the exercises in Living Language much more fulfilling. I picked up some interesting looking books at the Friends of the Library sale: Arco di luminara by Luisa Adorno, Giallo uovo by Carlo Flamigni, and a fat book full of Petrarch. I don't know much about any of them, but it's hard to find Italian lit here & so I grabbed 'em. Türkçe I just don't know what to do. I finished Chapter 20 of FSI, but it was exhausting. "One hour" of study took me all morning on Saturday. I don't have the time to work in Turkish each day, but I still have too much to learn to try to touch on it once a week. There are three Turkish movies playing on Mubi this month, so I'll watch these and see how I feel afterwards. ελληνικά Line 50 of the Iliad: Apollo is sitting on a ridge shooting arrows into the Greek camp. First he kills the mules and the dogs, then he takes aim at the men. Achilles has a plan to stop the killing. Greek is perfect for studying once a week plan. I enjoy reading it in small doses; and at this point it's more fun than work. العربية I finished Michel Thomas, and have moved on to Pimsleur. I'm glad I already have a general understanding of the basics, because otherwise Pimsleur would be driving me crazy. I also took an advanced peak at the Living Language course (you can download the first two chapters for free). I think it will be a smooth transition from audio to LL when I'm ready, though I did not like the LL method of transcription at all. I think I know the alphabet enough that I won't need to use the transcriptions. Time will tell. Español I picked up some Spanish books at the library sale also - Paula by Isabel Allende, and El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I'm itching to read both, but I'm still worried about interference with Italian. Hopefully soon I'll be able to balance these two languages. Edited by kanewai on 25 June 2014 at 3:45am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 274 of 331 26 June 2014 at 8:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I think I've figured out how to balance five. I just had to approach it from a
different angle. My new plan is to think in terms of "slots" - what I have time for, and what fits where. Assimil Italian twice a week wasn't really helping, but Assimil Turkish twice a week would help a lot. An hour with Turkish FSI on the weekend was too hard, but an hour with Italian would help my reading a lot. The slots: Assimil - Turkish. A couple times a week. Audio - Arabic. Weekday commute. Books & Movies - Italian and French. Reading daily; movies when I can. Podcasts - French. A couple times a week. Studying - Italian. Living Language for an hour on the weekends. Special - Greek. Aim for five to ten lines of the Iliad per week. ___________________________________ This seems a good summer pace. Fitting in enough movies to keep on track with the Super Challenge will actually be the hardest part. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4699 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 275 of 331 26 June 2014 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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It will be interesting to see how that works for you. That recent thread about studying
multiple languages got me thinking about how I would do it. I was thinking of something like slots, but on a rolling basis. You do the slots for language 1, then language 2, then 3, then 4, etc. Then you don't need to worry about "fitting it all in" in a given timespan. Sometimes you'll complete all your slots in less than a week, other times you'd take 2 weeks to cover it all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 276 of 331 27 June 2014 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
I rearranged my excel sheet so that it's organized by type of study (native material, assimil, pimsleur, and courses. It was easier to see patterns then. The more languages I can move onto the left hand "native" side the easier it will be to balance them all! The catch is it will take a long time to move Arabic and Turkish over there ...
I had a huge burst of activity earlier, but that was prepping for travel; it wasn't a really sustainable pace. Edited by kanewai on 27 June 2014 at 12:31am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4699 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 277 of 331 27 June 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I really like the way you make your spreadsheet. Do you update it every week and expand
the relevant boxes, or update it when you finish a box, set of lessons, etc. Also, it looks like you are recording only reading, and not films/listening. Am I right, or is it somewhere else? I started the year with a spreadsheet on which I put a daily number of pages, minutes, etc, etc. It was a nightmare to keep up. And a nightmare to read. Yours is far more useful. Thanks for the inspiration, I think I'll play with Excel tonight! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 278 of 331 27 June 2014 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I pretty much update the list the sheet as I go, and then go back and clean it up later
to make less cluttered boxes. And I haven't found a good way to integrate movies and audio yet. I tried, but it got too messy. When the SC is running I just use the twitter bot to track listening. I jump around a lot, so this really helps in remembering where I was in the longer courses, like Assimil or FSI. I don't think I have the patience to do those courses all the way through in one stretch, even though I always start off thinking that I will. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4999 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 279 of 331 28 June 2014 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
I love your idea of framing/ arranging it by type of study! As for the long time for the Arabic and Turkish; well, isn't language learning a lifetime process anyway..? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 280 of 331 11 July 2014 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had a long holiday weekend that involved two long (12 hour + flights) and one
hurricane day. I thought I would've made huge strides in the super challenge & finished both my books; instead I managed to keep pace & no more. I blame all the wine that comes along with long flights and hurricane days. It's hard to read when you're seeing double. Français I'll be using L'homme qui plantait des arbes for the July mini-challenge (read, listen, re-read, repeat). I watched the animation, and followed the basic plot but missed a lot of details. I read the short story the next day, and understood most of everything. I'll re-watch the film tonight, then re-read and look up the words I don't know. I like the idea of really learning one text, and this is the right length for it. 10 pages of text = 21 minutes of reading = one 30 minute film. The film was all talking; so many French films involve long shots of people looking pensively at the horizon that I figure ten pages of script probably equals a full hour of a normal film. Italiano I've hit the point in Italian where I feel like I know nothing, and am more aware of how damn much there is that I don't know. I met an Italian guy at the bar and it was a total fail. I was all "oh I'm studying Italian! Uhmm ... ciao ... uh ... " I really admire people who not only know multiple languages, but can switch easily between them. I still need a lot of time to switch over, even for languages I am confident in. I've abandoned Dante in the third circle of hell. I need to get back to him this weekend and descend a few more levels. I want to do a couple chapters of Pinocchio for the July mini-challenge, but also want to finish Harry Potter before I add another book. Hopefully I can do that by the end of next week. I listened to a couple chapters at the gym this morning, but only understood a few words and phrases. It was raining, there was a piece of oak, Gepetto was on his knees, and it might have started raining again. And that was all I got out of 20 minutes. Türkçe Stalled again. Part of the problem with Turkish is that I don't really have an end point in mind beyond 'don't lose what you've got." And I'm no where near the point where I can maintain by just using the fun stuff. ελληνικά Line 83 of the Iliad: Calchas the seer knows why Apollo is mad, but is worried that revealing the truth might anger a king - and kings always take their vengeance. Achilles promises him his protection. And so Calchas rises to address the assembly ... العربية Still plodding along. songlines: isn't language learning a lifetime process anyway..? This is definitely my approach with Arabic! It looks like other good options for Arabic are coming online. In another thread Crush recommended Language Transfer for Greek, and I saw that they'll have an "Introduction to Arabic" in the fall of 2014, and "Introduction to Turkish" in fall/winter 2015. Español Still on hold while I work on Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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