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Sg1’s TAC2013 Pax Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4429 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 57 17 December 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged |
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Hello.
This will be my new log now that I have entered into the TAC for the 2013 year. I'm going to give a rundown of my current status, some problems I'd like to fix, and some of my goals for this year. French: Right now, I feel like a solid B2 at the minimum. I'd even say more so in comprehension because that's really all I've been working on so far. I watch a bunch of movies, tv shows, and listen to the radio too just about everyday. I'd like to really get to a near native level as far as informal speech goes so I'd like to make a French friend to play video games with occasionally. I plan on going all out this year and just keep watching and listening to whatever I can get my hands on. I'd also like to try to spend a month in Montreal/Paris if I can. Right now, I can understand just about any news broadcast, radio program, and dubbed movies/shows. I want to work on my comprehension in native movies/shows because even though I know most of the words, they pass right over my head due to how they are pronounced. The only thing that will fix this is just watching movies and shows. Right now, I'm going through Very Bad Blagues (difficult at times), Bref (despite how fast he talks, not as difficult as Very Bad Blagues), and Kaamelott (besides the outdated words and made up words, I can watch just about any sketch quite comfortably) After my little break from French, I'm going to start "Le coeur a ses raisons" and just snowball from there. I'm excited to see where this year takes me. Italian: No problems as far as I can tell. I can understand basic conversations, some radio, and some songs thanks to French. I'm not quite done With Ease but by the time the New Year rolls around, I will be. Then the fun starts! I'm looking to be able to watch TV and read comfortably. I plan to L/R at least one book then jump into movies. Due to the little number of shows and movies from Italy these days, I'll have to make do with dubs. I also have to master conjugation. Spanish: I'll have to do a bit of Perfectionnement to get comfortable. No problems besides a few problems with v+b and g+j. Basically the same as Italian, except there are more shows and movies. I'd like to make this more of a passive language just for entertainment. In sum: French -> C1, nearing C2 Italian -> B2/C1 Spanish -> C1 Those are my goals. Let's see if I can make it happen! Good luck & have fun to all in the challenge! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5586 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 2 of 57 17 December 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4429 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 3 of 57 31 December 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
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French:
Frustrating. But just today I accepted that I won't be able to understand EVERYTHING for awhile, even if I know the words. For this reason, I'm going to listen to the radio instead of music when I play a game. Sports radio. Why? Well, they talk a lot faster than normal on the sports station. I've listened to Parisian/Quebecois talk shows and understood just about everything. I tried a sports station randomly, and boom. 60% without "paying attention" and about 70-85% when actually listening depending on what they talked about. So from now on, I'm not going to stress if I can't understand something because eventually my brain will "unlock" it and one day when I wake up in a few weeks, months, or maybe years, I'll understand 95-100% of everything thrown at me. It's odd though because I understand more of Bref/Kaamelott than Very Bad Blagues (still) and in Bref it's WAY faster. I even looked up subs and I knew all of the words that I missed in VBB. I finished Season 1 of VBB and doing season 2 right now. I'm going to finish it within the week hopefully then finish Kaamelott & Bref. I'm doing this to "warm up" for harder shows like season 4 of Engrenages, Les hommes de l'ombre, 30 vies, un gars une fille, etc. So to sum up, I'm basically just not going to worry about catching every word. I'm going to watch, get enjoyment out of it, and wait for my brain to do the work. Whatever I catch, yay for me. If I don't get much, I realize that it will come sooner or later. While also listening to 20-30 minutes of sports radio a day. Italian: Listening/reading Harry Potter Azkaban. The mistake I made when doing HP in French was worrying about looking up EVERY word which drove me insane and made me not enjoy HP. With Italian, I'm going to let context & my French to do it's thing and just read through. Unless I run into a word a lot and still don't know it's meaning. I also realized that I should utilize the radio more often. Radio streams are such a great resource and I just realized it a little while ago. And I have Taken, Trading Places, Due Date, a Family Guy special, and Harry Potter Deathly Hollows 2 all in Italian audio with Italian subs. Woo! Not too mention a bunch of Giallos and casacinema.eu. Giallos are awesome. My weakness right now are the conjugations, especially the subjunctives. Spanish: I have HP & the Goblet of Fire book/audio also. Same stuff as Italian basically. I'm going to watch movies a lot after I finish. Probably gonna start with Volver. There are a lot of great movies from Spain & Argentina, and also some fun telenovelas from Mexico so accent exposure should be fairly easy. I find the conjugating is fairly regular and simple so I'm probably going to pick it up with context. General/Summary: I'm not going to really try to look up words anymore or stress not understanding every sentence for French. I'm going to laissez-faire it up! Plenty of fast radio and TV shows. Same thing for Italian & Spanish. If I stress too much on comprehension, I'm not going to want to listen in fear of failure. Whatever happens, happens. My brain will do the work and I trust it 100%. :P Happy New Year Edited by sillygoose1 on 31 December 2012 at 7:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4429 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 4 of 57 04 January 2013 at 12:25am | IP Logged |
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First post of 2013! Woo! There isn't much to say, just looking to give a 2013 post.
French: Been listening to more radio lately. Comprehension is going up everytime. I rewatched an episode of Very Bad Blagues that was one of the first ones I watched, and I understood 90% of it about compared to substantially less than that the first time. I watched part one of Carlos. I understood all of the French except for when I was glued to the English subs and had too much going on in my head. And one sort of loud scene. Still have to work on fast speech comprehension. Italian: Finished HP. I'm going to jump right into subtitled movies/RAI shows now. Comprehension isn't going to be as much of a problem as active skills will be. Spanish: Finished HP. I'm going to start watching movies and all free, subtitled shows on Univision & Hulu. Active skills are a problem also. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5127 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 57 04 January 2013 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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Wow, juggling three Romance languages at the same time is quite a task.
I have the same three languages, but Spanish will just have to make do with whatever conversation practice I get, French I do for the Super Challenge, and Italian is what I really need to focus on. From your evaluation it looks like you are a ahead of me in Italian. What do you do for conversation practice? So far that has been the biggest challenge for me. I will follow your log with interest! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4429 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 6 of 57 04 January 2013 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Thanks!
I think Italian is a bit more "natural" sounding to me because I heard it for hours and hours when I was younger. How would you rate yourself in it? I'd honestly say I'm about B1 with listening and A1 active skills right now. I don't really get much conversation practice at all. Everyone online wants to speak with me in English, so I just make small talk here and there. I agree that finding conversation partners is the biggest obstacle. Maybe we can keep each other updated on our Italian this year. Do you have plans to learn a dialect? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5000 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 57 04 January 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
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I'll be following this with interest too, since you seem to be into the same languages as me :).
I've never seen Very Bad Blagues, so I'll be sure to check it out, I'm always looking for stuff that challenges me! Bref's definitely a lot easier for me than it used to be, although occasionally there's a line I just can't pick up. Your sports radio idea is interesting - I like to listen to the radio but I do find most normal news-type broadcasts too slow and easy. As for Italian conversation practice, for me it was very difficult to find at first but in the last few months it's become easier and easier. There's a lot of Italians wanting to practise English and happy to help with Italian in exchange, both in my city and online; yes, most of them are unreliable and often change their mind after or before a meeting or two, but that's just par for the course in language exchanges. I'm certainly having a far easier time finding Italian practice opportunities than French ones. Your timezone might make things harder though - I'm lucky that Italy is only an hour ahead so I can often catch people online during evenings and weekends. I do agree wholeheartedly that finding conversation partners is the biggest obstacle in language learning! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4429 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 8 of 57 04 January 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, I'm not sure what it is about VBB whether it be their accent, audio quality, or the very informal speech, but it's very difficult to pick up at times.
I noticed the same exact pattern. I'm on italki and Italians add me the most and are more likely to strike up conversation. But as you said, they are highly unreliable and after about 3-4 messages they never appear again. The French are the least likely to add me/talk to me. I've had a very high majority of my French conversation practice come from people who live in North Africa. They are very helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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