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MrWarper finally takes on TAC’12/de/ru/jp | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 33 06 February 2012 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I joined the last 6WC but failed to participate (not only but mainly because I hate Twitcher). Maybe joining a second challenge I'll go a step further and actually partake.
As a warning for everyone, if all goes according to plan this should be an extremely boring and dull personal log as long as my own comments go. After I detail my plans and goals below, all my entries here should be something along the lines 'done as intended', or 'found the material I needed for X' every few days, 'didn't get to do it today, damn!', changes in my plans (a positive reaction to a negative turn), or no activity at all, which unless I state otherwise later would mean I'm doing no study at all. This shouldn't be surprising, most of the stuff below is directly pasted from my post at Language Goals for 2011, which shows I've done almost nothing for a year... OK, so here we go. Target languages: German, Japanese, Russian Goals: -Improve as much as possible my German, Russian and Japanese using a variety (not really) of methods and resources, so I get practical feedback on my current theoretical perception of what learning a language takes and the most efficient way to do it, depending on the actual language, resources, etc. -field-test my custom made programs and tools to produce massive quantities of high-quality input material. -When official examination dates approach I'll take whatever exams are available (for a reasonable fee) as an external reality check. German B2 is already scheduled, as a requirement to later move to Germany. -See how much self-discipline I can maintain and how much I can learn in 6/9 months of (hopefully) optimized background learning (I want to maintain a full-time activity). Techniques: -Initial grammar books chomping and vocabulary cramming alongside with: -Flash cards, on paper (digitally stored and generated as PDF via a home-brewed web tool) and mobile phone (via a home-brewed JAVA application). Manual review and distillation, no automated SRS. Applications will hopefully be ready to go public by the end of the year. Stay tuned. -Selected input for intense study: read and watch as much 'authentic' material as possible, from a previous selection of things I'm really interested in: like, i.e. [re]read books and watch movies and series in my target languages. -Automated vocabulary collecting from subtitles via a home-brewed web application. -Conversation (and hopefully feedback) with native friends. Initial proficiency (current as of 2012/02/05): -German: what's left of a fake B1* proficiency level after 3 years of neglect (* = I passed my A2/B1 exam through intense study after 15 years of neglect, but felt like I didn't deserve to pass). -Russian: nearly full command of the alphabet + sound system, a handful of isolated words. No problem mimicking simple sentences. -Japanese: command of the kanas, Pimsleur 3-level vocabulary, ~20 Kanjis, memories of a 3 volume series on Japanese and a grammar book. All of them rusty. -My four main skills tend to stay at the same level in every language, with a light difference between passive/active ones, but I'll try to keep written and spoken input balanced. Initial materials ("already on my desktop"): -German: (no available friends, parallel English/German "Sie Belieben Wohl Zu Scherzen, Mr. Feynman" (Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman), Futurama Seasons 1-4, and my study books from the Official Languages School. -Russian: (several friends, native-made simple vocabulary lists, a couple of DVDs, a parallel Spanish/Russian text of Boris Akunin's "Azazel" and the Princeton Russian Course by David Freedel) -Japanese: (one native neighbour and 20-year-long friend, no written/video materials yet), level-graded Kanji sheets, some notes I took from my other Japanese friend when he lived with me. Oh, and whatever comes up from interaction from the TAC teams I want to join, f.ex. parallel texts that people are/should be preparing using my tools ;) Intended time to devote to study: I'll try to start with 30 minutes per language (2 hours total including 30 minutes of English teaching) twice a week and see if I can increase my work rate. So, no cramming -> Feb'12 6WC is out. Edited by mrwarper on 06 February 2012 at 6:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5134 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 33 06 February 2012 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck mate. I wish I could go into a TAC for my German and Russian and maybe Persian.
Also, well you could join us on irc.freenode.net in ##Deutsch for people to talk to in German. There is also ##russian and ##japanese. Edited by zekecoma on 06 February 2012 at 9:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 33 06 February 2012 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks zeke! Actually, the fact that I'll start with 3 hours a week for 3 languages makes the 'Total Annihilation' part kind of laughable, doesn't it? The 'challenge' so far was just getting something done... :)
OK, I've never been very fond of IRC (I've just been there and now I remember why) and I have absolutely no idea how to type Japanese here but I'll give ##russian and #Deutsch a shot again as soon as I feel more or less comfortable. Update: I've been accepted in Team Sputnik, Team German and Team Japanese so I'll enlist in the TAC2012 official thread for Teams and Inds now. Edited by mrwarper on 06 February 2012 at 8:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6410 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 33 06 February 2012 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want parallel texts for Japanese (also audiobooks) try this list. The list was made some time ago so some links may be broken, but when I was looking up some of the links, I found even more materials had been added.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 33 07 February 2012 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
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We're off to a pretty good start:
2012/02/06: Managed not to study a single minute. </irony>. Changed my mind about updating entries: I don't want to clutter the log with one line entries, so I'll keep updating individual posts until I have something lengthier to say. 2012/02/07: Reviewed Russian phonetics descriptions and went through the audio part of the Princeton Russian Course lessons 1-3. Immediate goal: automate reading, with vowel reduction, etc. Maybe 1 hour total. 2012/02/11: Spent half an hour trying to read along with a native (recorded book). I don't get lost any more, but I can't do it yet. I'm too slow recognizing the letter so anything too long or too new makes me choke. I guess I'll be stuck with the 'simple' stuff from the PRC for a while. No big deal, I'll keep chomping through it. 2012/02/12: Forgot to add an entry for 02/11. Fixed. Done reading automation exercises for an hour. Gone through PRC Chapter 1 (11 lessons). 2012/02/19: I'd like to say 'one week gone by but I've been busy with other stuff'. Bollocks. One week gone by :( 2012/02/21: Diverted on studies again reading "The quick and dirty guide to learning languages fast". It was great fun which only makes me feel guiltier for not doing real study :) 2012/03/05: Been on vacation a whole 10 days. Little progress: Practised a little Russian at my friend's, no study. 2 English classes for a mixed Spanish/Russian audience. No Japanese. I translated a sample German text (8 pages) for a publishing company. Apparently got myself a contract to translate the whole book. I hope to get back to regular study while everything is settled and I catch up with everything else. 2012/03/10: Spent the whole morning and afternoon sitting through the Cambridge CPE for my official English C2 qualification with my younger brother. If I weren't tougher than tough I'd want to cry ;( The Official Languages School is undergoing major reforms and I won't be able to sign up for my German test for now. It'd be cool that they're back AFTER Cambridge publish their results so my brother knows if he needs to sign up for English as well, or if it's optional for him. Off languages until tomorrow. OK, I'll probably be reading a novel in English but I'm not sure that counts any more. 2012/04/27: Not much happened in the world of real studies... as expected :( I was kind of expecting to read a lot of advance report in my mates' logs but most of them have been just as MIA as I have, so at least I'm not lagging behind so badly - phew! ;) -Update threshold for own posts is hereby known to be > 48 days :) -No Japanese yet, I still have to ring my neighbour from across the street. +German: -No official sign up dates for the German test. -Contract to translate the photography course is firm, and the deadline is set (one month time from now) so I better get going. How about tricking people into paying you for studying? ;))))) +Russian: -Lots of passive listening to people talk talk talk. -Got drunk twice with some other Russian regulars which obviously obliterated any learning that might have been taking place. At least it tightened bonds with some of them, I hope. -Two 'girls' were 'very interested' so I confessed knowing a few cuss words. They quickly forgot and chatted away -- until I pointed out I understood they were calling another girl names :) 2012/06/15: Not a very productive interim... -Russian: last time I went to the coast and did some Russian was like a month ago. Since then, all I have done is one Team Sputnik meeting in which I heard Tecktight and Tarvos 'speak' Russian for one minute. -Japanese: still zero, except for visiting the Furiganizer to play around a bit. +German: -Crazy amounts of Google translate to check every unknown word, then not so long to fully understand what I read, then way too much to express it in Spansih the best possible way, then two days off it until I felt ready again. Repeat N times over the last two months. I feel I'll probably be ready to start using German normally again by the end of this week though. We'll see about that. -Missed the B2 Certification exam. See ranting post here +English: -Normal everyday use, every single day - a lot of reading, some writing, programming, etc. I have lost count of when I stopped counting this. -C2 marks are out. I'm officially C2 certified, grade C in English now. See ranting post here. Edited by mrwarper on 15 June 2012 at 1:30am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5134 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 33 07 February 2012 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
You should do it from the start to ask questions, and what not. If you are using Windows you can use Windows IME to be able to input Japanese. Here is a well written guide on using Windows IME: Windows IME 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5016 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 33 07 February 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged | ||
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zeke, the issues I face are fairly beyond that.
First, I need to feel comfortable enough to know what to ask (there's nothing worse for me than asking something that I ignore simply because I didn't get far enough reading my materials), and then I need to be able to formulate the question and digesting any answers. A long long way :) Then there's the tech part. Anyway, I may dust off my 10" netbook and use the JaIME and use UTF8 encoding for Russian so I don't need to tweak anything anywhere else. After all that's what the KVM switch and VNC servers and clients are supposed to be for. Thanks for reminding me there's a simpler solution ;) 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 5346 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 33 08 February 2012 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to our team of hopeful linguanauts this year, and good luck in that German B2 exam!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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