Julie’s NL FR SV EN DE (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Julie’s NL FR SV EN DE
Tags: 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) \| Swedish \| Dutch \| Multilingual
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

140 messages over 18 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 1 ... 17 18 Next >>

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 1 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:16pm | IP Logged

Welcome to my log!

If you're reading it, please let me know: all comments, corrections, reflections,
ideas, inspirations... will always be strongly appreciated. And it's nice to know that
someone is actually reading what I'm writing.

Contents:

6WC Dutch, August-September 2012 - page 1-7
http://6wc.learnlangs.com/stats/earlier_user/JulieLanguages/ 201208

September & October update - page 7

6WC Swedish (and French), November-December 2012 - page 7-8
http://6wc.learnlangs.com/stats/user/JulieLanguages

TAC 2013 - Swedish and French - page 9

Team Viking
Team Nebun

Edited by Julie on 18 November 2015 at 1:26pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 2 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged

31/07/2012 - my 6WC adventure begins

I've decided to take part in 6WC with Dutch (although I don't really have a lot of time
for that right now!). I learned a little bit of Dutch four years ago but I decided to
take a break from it because I was leaving for a year abroad and therefore wanted to
focus on other languages.

In the meantime, I've collected quite a lot of courses and books for Dutch. I will
start with Michel Thomas and, depending on how much time I'll have and how much I will
like MT, I may want to supplement or replace it with other language course, e.g.
Assimil.

During these 6 weeks, I will probably spend much more time on English and German,
though: reading, listening, watching news and practicing simultaneous and consecutive
interpreting for an exam this September.

Depending on my workload, I will try to find some time for my other languages. However,
I'm writing my thesis this month (and working part-time), so I won't have a lot of time
for that.

If you read my learning log, please let me know - I will enjoy writing it much more
knowing that someone actually reads it :) Any advice, questions, comments etc. as well
as corrections of my English are always welcome.

tarvos wrote:

I'm reading this log, like I read all the Dutch learners' logs if they
update regularly :)

Hekje wrote:

I'm reading your log too, of course. Much luck!

Edited by Julie on 15 December 2012 at 11:31pm
1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 3 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:18pm | IP Logged

Now I feel obliged to update my log regularly which is a good thing :). Hekje, I hope to
be able to learn the Dutch parts of your log soon :) (BTW, your progress is impressive!)

Right now I understand quite a lot but it feels like "decrypting" rather than reading,
and Dutch texts look like some kind of a funny code/strange German to me. I'll definitely
need a lot of audio input to understand spoken Dutch and to avoid developing a heavy
German accent. I want to focus on my passive skills, though.
1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 4 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:20pm | IP Logged

02/08/2012 - first steps in Dutch

No idea if someone is going to read my log here but let me post anyway. Any feedback is
welcome :). Any corrections of my English - very much appreciated!

I started learning Dutch short after midnight when 6WC started. So far, I've used
Routledge Intensive Dutch Course, Michel Thomas Dutch Foundation and Anki.

The Routledge course seems to be very comprehensive (from what I've read about
it, it takes the learner to B2 level!). So far, I've enjoyed the course. However, I
believe it would be quite hard if I didn't speak German. There is a lot of material on
every page, a lot of new vocabulary, usually at least a couple of ways to say something
are presented, which is great and comprehensive but may be intimidating in the
beginning. Numbers are quite hard, too: there is a long list of them (1-100),
introduced on one of the first pages, and only one short exercise. I don't think the
learner is expected to master all of that at this point (numbers are given so that
sentences about age can be introduced) but still, it's not very learner-friendly. I've
added quite many new items to Anki, which should help.

Michel Thomas is very enjoyable: I used the original French course before and
this one is even better (MT's pronunciation was quite annoying, and so were the
students; those learning Dutch aren't). I enjoy this method because it doesn't feel
like learning at all :) - it's more like solving some linguistic riddles, if you know
what I mean. Like those riddles used as part of language learning aptitude tests, where
you're given a couple of sentences or vocabulary items in an unknown or made-up
language, and you have to figure out how the language functions. I really like it,
despite of the fact that I'm very much a visual learner, and I hated e.g. Pimsleur (I
know, very different from MT, but still audio-based).

I wonder how much I'll be able to say in Dutch after completing the course... and I'd
like to try MT later on, with a language outside of Germanic/Romance/Slavic families.
1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 5 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged

Kerrie wrote:

Julie wrote:

No idea if someone is going to read my log here but let me post anyway.
Any feedback is welcome :). Any corrections of my English - very much appreciated!

I'm reading. =)

I will be starting Dutch just for you, but only as an 'extra' for the 6WC. I might keep
it after that. Who knows? :-)

I will be putting my log over here, too, until HTLAL is back up (or longer). I am just
a few days behind because of life stuff that should settle down in the next day or two.
=)

Good luck with your Dutch studies!

1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 6 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:24pm | IP Logged

You're starting Dutch for me, and I'm starting Dutch for 6WC... we're HTLAL's slaves,
apparently. Just kidding :)

I don't know if I continue Dutch after 6WC actively (I'm starting Swedish in October, and
that's probably my next 6WC language anyway) but I would like to get some good basics.
And, let me quote your words, I might keep it after that. Who knows? :)

Nice that you're reading my log, and good luck with your life stuff :)
1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 7 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:25pm | IP Logged

Kerrie wrote:

Julie wrote:

You're starting Dutch for me, and I'm starting Dutch for 6WC... we're
HTLAL's slaves, apparently. Just kidding :)

Nice that you're reading my log, and good luck with your life stuff :)

Life stuff (this time around!) is no big deal, though. I love watching women's
gymnastics, and the Olympics was on Sunday, Tuesday, and tonight. I've had my neighbors
kids the past few days more than usual because she was in the hospital with her son for
some tests. (Plus, I'm not feeling very good, but that will be gone in 2 days. Things
should be back to normal soon.)

Haha. I'm not an HTLAL slave. Dutch has been on my list for a long time, and I'm at a
point where I need to add a little something new into the mix. I've been focusing very
strongly on Spanish and French, and doing Italian for this 6WC will overload my brain
on Romance languages. I'm doing German Assimil, too, but German is harder for me to
wrap my brain around. I've done the first few lessons of Assimil Dutch, and it seems a
lot closer to English. Maybe it's because I'm Dutch - my grandparents spoke Dutch, and
I heard it a little bit when I was younger.

Since I figured out all my food issues and starting feeling so much better last year
(long story), I actually have the ability to make progress in my languages now.
For years, I would basically sit and stare at books and not be able to retain anything
or concentrate on anything. Now that I can make progress, I want to make up for
all the years lost. So it is my goal for 2012-2013 to make enough progress in my 8
languages (SP, FR, IT, PT, DE, RU, Croatian, and Turkish) by the end of next year to
read comfortably. I know I won't be fluent in all of them (and Turkish will probably
have to wait), but I can make good progress on all the rest of them, and I can probably
get to a B2 or C1 level with the Romance languages if I push myself.

And Dutch, Swedish, Catalan, Greek, and Polish are on my short list. The Assimil books
are sitting on my bookshelf just begging me.

So, I'm not a slave to HTLAL, but I am (voluntarily) a slave to language learning for
the next few years. I'm working from home right now, I have the time (to a point,
although I still have to work!), and I am finally healthy enough to do it, so I am
doing it. :-)

1 person has voted this message useful

Julie
Heptaglot
Senior Member
PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6900 days ago
1251 posts - 1733 votes

5 sounds
Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French

Message 8 of 140

09 August 2012 at 5:25pm | IP Logged

montmorency wrote:

I don't know if you had time to read my comment on your log on HTLAL today, before it
went AWOL again, but I'm a sort of failed student of Dutch, but who has been in touch
with the language off and on, over the years. My best chance of getting back into it was
when our daughter lived in the Netherlands for a period. We thought she would be there
longer, but things didn't work out. C'est la vie. However, on the visits that we made,
and on occasions passing through the NL or Flanders, I've occasionally tried reviving my
residual Dutch (with a little help from German). But for the moment, Danish is a whacky
enough language to keep me out of mischief, so I won't have time for Dutch as well.

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