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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4946 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 521 of 706 19 June 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe you were right about keeping reading as you felt like doing it. The reason
i'm so strict with timeboxing is that it would be always more likely to keep reading the book that is most interesting and/or in the language I know better, and this would make the better language get better and better while the not so good ones keep deficitary. You know, I'm currently doing activities in French, German, Norwegian, Russian, Georgian, Chinese, English, Papiamento and Estonian. If I kept doing what was easier or most fun, i'd just watch TV with English subtitles or read French literature or German non-fiction. I can't let this happen, because I'm learning languages in order to broaden my horizons from an Eurocentric view of the world. I don't want to become an eurocentric polyglot, I think I wouldn't need languages if all I wanted to know in depth was the western european culture. We have good translations for that, and I can say so because I double-checked some Brazilian books translated into other languages. In your case, you're learning two languages at a similar level; you have more contact with Japanese but Portuguese is easier and culturally closer. One helps with giving your brain a rest from another (yes, that's also valid for). So, you don't need to be so strict about timeboxing really. You can treat each commuting event as one timebox and do an activity that you like doing at that commute. then the next one you do another one. Just don't procrastinate the necessary chores forever: for example, writing dialogues. You seem to be more keen at doing that than I am. Also, keep in mind that those 20 minutes you spend on writing a paragraph equals several hours of passive reading or listening. So, don't worry if active x passive or even intensive x extensive tasks seem unbalanced, just don't fall for the 'easy' path of doing only extensive tasks. I just recently realized how harmful it was and now I can almost say I'm restarting things after a 'break' of several months doing only "immersion'-like activities. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6377 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 522 of 706 22 June 2014 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I still disagree about extensive work being harmful :) See this thread too: extensive is not the same as lazy or leisurely. I've already said this, but the mindset is important. You shouldn't just read for content and pay zero attention to the language. Be serious and take note of the things you want to be able to say/write but can't yet. Language learning can be painless but not effortless. On the other hand, intensive work can be the easy path too, I know it was for me in Finnish.
Specifically about you, kuji - I think you're already doing more than enough intensive activities, maybe even too much. 20 min of writing can be very powerful indeed, but you're still reading only your own text when you write. Also, writing and speaking are not necessarily intensive activities. I think they are usually considered to be outside these categories, but if you try to classify them, this depends on whether you get corrections/look things up/etc. Oh and of course the importance of extensive/intensive activities depends on one's goals. I just think it's pointless to speak better than you understand. :) Edited by Serpent on 22 June 2014 at 1:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4627 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 523 of 706 24 June 2014 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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@Expugnator - Thank you for the advice. A lot of my struggle is making sure I do the things I need to do, or the things that are not so lazy, compared with things that are more lazy. For me, writing is intensive in that it can be a lot of effort - not only because I have to look up words I don't know, then figure out how to use them, but also because it is simply difficult to think about what to write sometimes. The topic, sure, but also what sentences to write, etc. So it's really easy for me not to want to do that. But I know it is good for finding weak points and gaps in my L2s, so I want to make sure to do it regularly. I'm kind of getting better at it, but I'm not so sure.
@Serpent - That's funny... I thought I wasn't doing enough intensive activities. I write twice a week in both languages, so 40 minutes a week. The rest is input - articles, listening, books, etc. Although I guess textbooks has a few intensive activities as well. Well, DLI doesn't. It's mainly drills. * * * * * * * UPDATE: 23/24 June 2014 Two things: (1) I usually write updates during breaks at work. So it's easier for me to write what I did from midday-midday, instead of midnight-midnight. So instead of 23 June, it's 23/24 June. (2) I can already see that it is difficult to update every day. So you will get updates when I feel like it. HA! Yesterday on the way home I intended to write some Portuguese, but I was too tired to concentrate, and the train was noisier than usual. So instead I listened to a Deutsche Welle podcast. I tried listening "like a bloodhound" since it was mostly incomprehensible. I say "mostly", but I found that I could understand more than I expected, certainly more than at this time last year. The DW podcast uses European Portuguese, and I'm surprised at how many more words I can pick out, despite the fact that most of my listening is from Brazilian sources. Despite all that, I probably got a good 10-15 minutes of attentive listening done before I lost concentration, then lost consciousness (I fell asleep). I didn't do anything except Anki reviews at home last night because (a) I went swimming at the fitness club, and (b) my wife needed assistance planning for her upcoming vacation. I did listen to some Brazilian radio, but I wasn't concentrating on it. This morning on the train, I finally did the writing that I didn't do yesterday. I talked about writing dialogs before, but as I said, just thinking about a situation to write about can be frustrating. So instead, I decided to summarize the Mauritania sketch artist article I read last week. It was only six sentences or so, but it was satisfying. Summarizing the article helped me to reinforce some of the more important vocabulary in the article. I know where the accent goes on Mauritania now! :) I also feel very acquainted with the word "desenhar". Not sure how great that is, but if I need it, it's in my arsenal now. Just thought of an idea... I could combine the two ideas and write dialogs about what I wrote. So instead of... "Yesterday I read an article about XXXX. He runs a cafe in the middle of Paris. He..." I can write like this: A: "Yesterday I read a cool article." B: "Really? What was it about?" A: "It was about a guy in Paris who runs a cafe." B: "What's so special about that?" A: "Well..." Hey, that has potential! I wouldn't have to worry so much about creating dialogs from scratch. Wait, wait, wait... there I go again with these grand schemes. <slap face> Quit it, Kuji. P.S. Before I forget, I watched the second half of both Brazil-Cameroon and Mexico-Croatia in Japanese. Not at the same time, obviously; I was channel-switching. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6377 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 524 of 706 24 June 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, the extensive/intensive divide isn't about how much effort it takes. Extensive activities can be quite intensive in the traditional meaning of the word ;) And if you do intensive activities calmly and leisurely, that's great :-)
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5042 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 525 of 706 24 June 2014 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
I know I've quoted this before but I think you are beginning to embody this:
HTLAL is highly "goal driven". Goals have their place. But as you have discovered, after a certain point, goals, grand schemes, or overly elaborate plans, may tend to actually take away from the very thing you want. The process itself can become more important than, and overwhelm, what you want to learn. "Simply doing" is what's important to me. By doing we can see where it leads us. I may watch an episode of a novela or read a comic book, see a tweet, listen to a song or read a news article and it may take me on an exploration of idioms or a grammar aspect- especially if it features prominently in what I'm listening to or reading. I may decide that I need to explore a subject in greater depth and that may lead me to drills, specific grammar study, etc. That's the quintessence of a multi-track approach. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4946 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 526 of 706 24 June 2014 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for sharing this again, iguanamon. I rest as a goal-oriented person. I believe
been goalless would mean doing much less than I do now. I still haven't set any goals for writing and that's why I write almost nothing, unlike kuji. I'm not at that level of spiritual maturity to turn into a goalless person =D It's an interesting goal to reach, too! (Oops, now I'm getting it wrong by setting a goal for becoming a person without goals :P) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4627 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 527 of 706 25 June 2014 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I second what Expugnator said about the link, iguanamon. When you first showed it to me, it really made an impact. Yes, a lot of people here at HTLAL are goal driven, and that is certainly not a bad thing in itself. But for me, I think that having grand goals adds a lot of pressure and breeds impatience. Obviously I have the goal of learning languages, but keeping things as simple as possible is probably the right track for me.
You said that I'm starting to embody that philosophy; I certainly hope so! I do know that I feel as if a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Among other things, I think I was frustrated because I thought that, two years into this journey, I would be at least C1 in Japanese and B1 or B2 in Portuguese. Some people can do that in two years under the right circumstances, but for me that was asking a lot. I'm now trying not to care about how long it will take me to reach basic fluency in both my languages. Portuguese, in particular, is just a fun hobby. Who cares when I will become fluent? I should just enjoy the ride. As for Japanese, sure, living in Japan, there are situations when knowing how to speak Japanese fluently would be beneficial. But I'm not under any urgent deadline. I don't need Japanese for my job, home life, or social life, at least not right now. Why not just go at a moderate pace and enjoy the ride? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6377 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 528 of 706 25 June 2014 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I was looking for something else and found what you wrote less than a year ago:
Success? :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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