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My Language Learning Log (TAC14)

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151 messages over 19 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 16 ... 18 19 Next >>
sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 121 of 151
04 August 2014 at 12:41am | IP Logged 
Week 31 Review (Jul 28 - Aug 3)

German: 8 hours
Korean: 3 hours
Kanji: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 31 Total: 14 hours, 30 minutes

Year To Date: 455 hours, 15 minutes

At the start of the year, I ditched all my "courses" for German. Assimil, Teach Yourself, etc. went on the bookshelf. I took them off again to test out several techniques and they worked pretty well. I realized how neglectful I had been when it came to listening, and doing this really boosted my German listening.

But I think it's time for me to put these courses back on the shelf and get back to digging into native/more advanced content full time. Intensive reading, extensive reading, audio books, movies (with transcripts), etc. I skimmed ahead in the Assimil German book. I have never actually studied that last 2 dozen lessons or so, and while they do have some vocab I didn't know, it still wasn't much. And as anyone who has done Assimil knows, the speakers never really get up to native speaking speed. So, it's time I take the training wheels off for German again and jump back into native content.

Edited by sabotai on 04 August 2014 at 12:42am

1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 122 of 151
11 August 2014 at 3:43am | IP Logged 
Week 32 Review (Aug 4 - 10)

German: 2 hours
Korean: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Kanji: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 32 Total: 8 hours

Year To Date: 463 hours, 15 minutes

Oooh, what happened? Well, Monday I decided to spend some time following a few leads on my family tree research and yada yada yada, I didn't get back to doing anything for German or Korean until Saturday (yesterday).

And didn't you have a recent post on SRS? Yeah, I deleted it because I've already stopped doing it.

Over the past two days, I've finally gone back to reading Charlotte und Wilbur. I have a notebook that I write all the words I look up in so that when I reread it, or while listening to the audiobooks, I can refer to it quickly if the meaning slipped my mind again. I might do something else with the list too at some point, but not for now. For now I'm just going to keep reading and keep listening to the audiobook. I'll decide on whether or not to do something with the list if and when I see that my retention is not good enough.
1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 123 of 151
18 August 2014 at 7:35am | IP Logged 
Week 33 Review (Aug 11 - 17)

German: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Korean: 30 minutes
Japanese: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 33 Total: 9 hours, 45 minutes

Year To Date: 473 hours

So what happened this week? Well I just slacked off.

I'm also burned out on Korean. I felt the same thing last year, and dropped Korean for a bit. I'm doing the same now. I don't know how long I'll be pushing Korean aside, but for the time being, I'll be replacing it with Japanese.
1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 124 of 151
25 August 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged 
Week 34 Review (Aug 18 - 24)

German: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Japanese: 7 hours, 30 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Week 34 Total: 11 hours, 15 minutes

Year To Date: 484 hours, 15 minutes.

German - Didn't do much. Most of that time was doing Duolingo reviews. Not sure if I'll keep that up. I dropped it awhile back and just went back out of boredom, really.

Japanese - Tons of listening. Threw all of the JPod101 Newbie dialogs onto a play list and listened to that a lot as well as going over the PDFs for those lessons, refreshing my memory on some grammar and vocab.
1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 125 of 151
27 August 2014 at 1:27am | IP Logged 
I have a theory. I think the reason I get burned out is because I spend too much time in my comfort zone and I don't force myself to progress.

I have a routine for working on my listening comprehension, and it works pretty well I think. It is slow moving, though. With Korean, I was listening to a lot of the same basic dialogs over and over. With the transcript they were no problem, without it some of them they were difficult to follow, a few I was even lost on once the transcript was taken away. So I go back and remind myself of what the dialog is talking about, put it back into my playlist and repeat the process. Eventually I get it, or I get tired of a particular dialog and just jettison it from the playlist all together. It really helped to boost my German listening and it was working well with Korean.

But I also held myself back when it came to reading and grammar. I wouldn't want to study ahead of where I was with the dialogs, so I wouldn't push ahead into chapter 8 of Yonsei 1 if I was still working on the chapter 6 and 7 dialogs and my playlist had gotten long. And that's fine, but I also have grammar specific resources I could use to push forward with my grammar/vocab/reading, but didn't. So I got burned out, going over essentially the same basic stuff over and over while not learning anything new until I made it to a dialog that taught me something new.

With Japanese, I'm going to experiment with grammar specific study. I'm going to challenge myself to learn a new grammar point, however small, every day (well, most days, i don't study every single day). I have several Japanese books that are focused on particles, grammar, sentence patterns, etc. I'll pool my books, study a new particle/word usage/sentence pattern/etc. out of them, scriptorium out 10-20 sentences demonstrating the grammar point, then type them up and put them in Anki (yeah, Anki), put the English translation plus any additional context clues I need on the card, and cloze out the grammar point from the sentence, and then review it using recall rather than recognition. I won't cloze out new vocab or other grammar points, just the grammar point that I learned that day.
1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 126 of 151
01 September 2014 at 6:51am | IP Logged 
Week 35 Review

German: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Japanese: 7 hours, 45 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 35 Total: 12 hour, 45 minutes

Year To Date: 497 Hours

It's been a month of me just mustering up 2-3 hours a week for German. I tried several times to do something with it this week and I just couldn't. Just like I burned out on Korean, I think I hit a big wall with German. I tried listening to audiobooks, extensive reading, intensive reading, etc. several times during the week, and I'd do it for a few minutes before putting it down.

I guess I'm bowing out of TAC now that I've stopped both of the languages I signed up for. Got a ton in, so not a failure.

Maybe the best thing I can do is to push through it. Just force myself to do 15-30 minutes a day on German until I finally get motivated and it becomes fun again. But this is a hobby, not my job, and even if it means pushing off advanced proficiency in German a good deal, if I'm not enjoying the process, it's time to let the language sit for awhile.

Don't know if I'll pick up a 2nd language to go with Japanese. Maybe I'll just do Japanese and indulge some wunderlust for awhile by jumping around in several languages.
2 persons have voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 127 of 151
09 September 2014 at 3:17am | IP Logged 
Week 36 Review (Sept 1 - 7)

Japanese: 7 hours, 15 minutes
French: 1 hours, 45 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 36 Total: 10 hours, 45 minutes

Year To Date: 507 hours, 45 minutes

And I'm back on French. Just started that up again on Saturday. As of right now, my goals for French is just to get it to a conversational level, while my goal for Japanese is to be awesome at it. I figure one language that I have high goals for and one I have mid-range goals for seems like a good pair to learn at the same time. I considered a few other languages, but decided to go back to French. The plan is to get through Assimil, FrenchPod (newbie and beginner) and Teach Yourself by the end of the year and see where that puts me.

As for Bengali, I am on chapter 8 of 12 in the Teach Yourself book (12 chapters on the writing system). A few more weeks and I should be done that.

Edited by sabotai on 09 September 2014 at 3:18am

1 person has voted this message useful



sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 128 of 151
23 September 2014 at 4:05am | IP Logged 
Week 37 Review (Sept 8 - 14)

Japanese: 7 hours, 15 minutes
French: 5 hours, 15 minutes
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Week 37 Total: 14 hours, 15 minutes

Week 38 Review (Sept 15 - 21)

Japanese: 7 hours, 45 minutes
French: 4 hours
Bengali Script: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Week 38 Total: 13 hours, 15 minutes

2014 Year To Date: 535 hours, 15 minutes

French Progress: Assimil #22, Teach Yourself Chapter 4 completed
Japanese Progress: Jpod101 Newbie Seasons done, up to Jpod101 Beginner Season 1 lesson 24 done, Assimil #8 done, Genki 1 Chapter 1 done, PMP Basic Japanese Chapter 4 completed, Grammar - Japanese Sentence Patterns #24 finished
Bengali: Chapter 9 finished. 3 more to go.


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