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TAC 2012, Team Sputnik, Teango | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5365 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 25 of 96 13 February 2012 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
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Russian, German and Irish: Weeks 1-6
Total language learning for this period: 26 hours, 7 mins Total language learning this year: 26 hours, 7 mins  Russian (20 hours, 37 mins)
Studying films: 15 hours, 11 mins Checking film vocabulary: 4 hours, 4 mins Conversation: 25 mins Crosstalk: 25 mins Grammar test: 22 mins Active listening: 10 mins  German (3 hours, 25 mins)
Studying films: 2 hours, 25 mins Checking film vocabulary: 1 hour  Irish (25 mins)
Study and click: 25 mins - Buntús Cainte 1.1-3  Wanderlust (1 hour, 40 mins)
Assimil: 1 hour, 40 minutes - Egyptian Hieroglyphics 1-6  Notes
With so many other things on my plate, it's been a less-than-galactic start to 2012. Yet I've still managed to score a few hours this February and am rapidly climbing up the charts like a retro re-release in the first 6 week challenge (6WC) of the year. This is made all the easier by my team mates, a phenomenal bunch of language learners who light up the TAC scene with bags of enthusiasm and abundant support. So I really want to do them and my Russian girlfriend proud and reach a half-decent level in Russian this year. I've thought a lot about how I'll approach studying my target languages over the last week, and have reconsidered my intial notion of studying all 3 at once. Therefore Irish and German will have to take a back seat over the next month or so, and I'll instead focus on getting to grips with Russian first. This may even help increase my odds of a high score in the 6WC (lol...yeah right), for which I did very little in the 1st week and fell far behind, but the main reason is that I'd like to make swifter progress, as there's a good chance I might be travelling to Russia again soon. So far, I'm really enjoying studying Russian films as my central methodology (it's even more fun than my mariachi escapades with Spanish back in 2010!). I can't honestly say that I've noticed any quantum leaps in overall comprehension yet but I guess it's only early days and things may move much more quickly once I establish a consistent schedule and get into the zone. Edited by Teango on 20 February 2012 at 8:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5365 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 26 of 96 19 February 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
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Russian (and a tiny morsel of German): Week 7, 2012
Total language learning this week: 24 hours, 13 mins Total language learning this year: 50 hours, 20 mins Russian (23 hours, 53 mins)
Studying films: 21 hours, 14 mins Checking film vocabulary: 1 hour, 34 mins Conversation: 1 hour, 15 mins German (20 mins)
Watching TV: 20 mins (German channel in hotel - bonus!) Notes
I've managed to put in more study hours this week and risen from 47th to 10th place in the 6 Week Challenge...rockets away! I'm still trying to settle into a good routine but this is at least a move in the right direction. With exposure to a variety of interesting films and series, I'm becoming ever more absorbed in Russian culture, and already take great delight in recognising several well-known themes, sayings and characters across different films and genres. And according to my girlfriend (who I ashamedly try to cajole into assessing my Russian each week), I seem to have much faster and easier access to words during conversation now and my overall speed has noticeably increased (although that's not saying much if you knew how embarrassing I sounded before lol!). In terms of listening skills, I'm still a bit of a distance away from understanding the gist (and by this I mean at least 80% of the meaning) of fast colloquial dialogue throughout an entire film. And even when I do understand most of the words in a sentence, misunderstanding or failing to catch just one word can make all the difference in comprehension. Even so, as I learn to adapt more to a variety of contexts and different people's voices and way of saying things in Russian, I find I spend less time translating words in my head and more time thinking about the overall meaning. As a result, I definitely recognise far more words and phrases than I ever did before and my progress in this area over the last week has been particularly encouraging. Edited by Teango on 20 February 2012 at 8:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 27 of 96 20 February 2012 at 2:27am | IP Logged |
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Congratulations! Both on making it to the top ten of the 6WC but even more on seeing such tangible
progress in Russian! You are an inspiration, and it must be great to have access to so many Russian films. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5365 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 28 of 96 20 February 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
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@Serpent
Hi Serpent! Sorry for neglecting to reply for so long and thanks for dropping by my little corner of the forumverse. I'm actively studying Russian films/tv and vocabulary as my main methodology for the 6 Week Challenge but have also thrown in a few other tags here and there at the start. "Studyandclick" is a method I've used before for acquiring vocabulary very quickly (which I won't be using in the 6WC now but might try out with Irish after I return from Russia), and "crosstalk" is the term I use when listening to someone in Russian but replying in English (for which I award myself no more than 50% of the time spent on the activity). The grammar test was just a basic online test I tried out of sheer curiosity, following in the suit of some other more enlightened members of Team Sputnik. @Solfrid Cristin Thanks and let me consign a big bag of congratulations your way too for all the incredible progress you've made over the last few weeks. My word...is it my imagination or did you rack up 12.5 hours yesterday...you and Woodsei have really rocketed ahead like there's no tomorrow. Keep up the amazing work comrades! :) Edited by Teango on 21 February 2012 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5143 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 29 of 96 20 February 2012 at 11:51pm | IP Logged |
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Well, it is just 7.55 in 6WC time, but when I counted it all in real time, it actually came to 12 hours and 25
minutes. First I could not sleep, so I did some Russian for a couple of hours during the night. Then I had a 1 hour " Welcome meeting" which they held in Swedish and I listened to my I pod while sunbathing plus did some extra written work before a late lunch. Then between speaking with a variety of shop assistant, waiters and receptionists, I spoke Spanish for 40 minutes. Then there was a show on in the afternoon in English about Whitney Houston plus a reality show about a teenager losing weight, and a number of children's shows that I watched in Spanish and partly translated for my daughter, and then I did a bit more Russian before going to bed. No wonder I feel exhausted and my family complain that I am no fun to be around! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4606 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 30 of 96 29 February 2012 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
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Doing great there, Teango! Your method for the 6WC is intriguing. I also love studying
from films, shows and songs, it's just that addictive. A plus is that you actually do learn! And that ground you covered in just a week is phenomenal. I have a lot of time on my hands currently, so I'm putting in the hours, so to speak. :) Never know when I might have a chance again, and I just adore Japanese and Russian :) Keep it up. I joined the forum primarily because of you, Christina, M.Medialis, and LR :) So keep on inspiring! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4524 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 31 of 96 05 March 2012 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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Hey Teango, have you found yet the subtitles for the sequence "О Чём ещё говорят мужчины"? I've looked all over the internet, but I've only found it in Latvian =/
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5365 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 32 of 96 05 March 2012 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
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Russian (first small epiphany): Weeks 8-9, 2012
Total language learning over this period: 19 hours, 27 mins Total language learning this year: 69 hours, 47 mins  Russian (19 hours, 27 mins)
Studying films: 16 hours, 37 mins Checking film vocabulary: 1 hour, 33 mins Conversation: 50 mins Listening and reading: 17 mins Emails: 10 mins Notes
The first week went quite well and I managed to bag almost 20 hours of study. By Thursday (23rd February), I'd already noticed a big improvement in my overall listening comprehension: namely, a shift from understanding short phrases...to the occasional longer double sentence! This might not seem like much but it was a big jump for me. It's the first time I've ever experienced this level of continuity whilst listening to fast spoken Russian in films and tv, and it marks a small but significant epiphany moment in my studies. :) However, even before the second week hit, I'd already succumbed to the temptation of completely rewriting the algorithms I'm using to help me study (an inevitable consequence of sampling soup and playing around with the salt and the pepper). The upside of this is that the new version is now at least one Michelin star ahead of the original software, and I can't wait to start using it tomorrow. The downside, of course, is that I haven't done anything apart from programming in every spare hour thrown my way over the last week and a half! Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end though... Edited by Teango on 15 April 2012 at 10:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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