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Bakunin TAC 2013 Asian 鶴 / Żubr | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 73 of 94 27 May 2013 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Ha ha, welcome to the club! I've just finished Tomek na czarnym lądzie :) A word of warning, though, the attitudes towards black people as well as animals are terrible. Black people are portrayed as very simple-minded, superstitious underlings. And animals, those guys shoot at everything that moves. But if you abstract from that, the stories are good fun and have a fast pace. I hope you enjoy them more than the fantasy book you've written about recently. No, my books haven't arrived yet. I'm beginning to get nervous! I hope they arrive tomorrow, it's now ten days since they left polstore. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 74 of 94 27 May 2013 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for another update.
Listening: 184 (+4.6) Reading: 266 (+7.2) Speaking: 49 (+2.2) Writing: 30 (+2.0) Other: 91 (+4.0) Total: 620 Listening: The usual stuff: podcasts and radio talk shows. Reading: I finished the book on travels in Lanna. Would love to go back and explore a few of those places I didn't manage to see last time… Now I'm finally going to read the book about the giant sting ray, the one I struggled with a few weeks ago. After having read the first two chapters intensively, I hope to be better prepared this time. Speaking: I had two tutoring sessions via italki. What คุณเอ๋ usually does is send me a number of short newspaper or magazine articles a few days before we meet. I read those articles intensively, looking up (in a Thai-Thai online dictionary) words I don't know or am unsure about (I use the Foreign Language Text Reader software for that). The next day, I read the articles again and write a few key phrases I want to use on a piece of paper. Then I write a summary in my own words - without looking at the article - and send it to คุณเอ๋. In the session, after some small talk or whatever comes up, we talk about the articles one by one. I start out by summarizing the article. Then, we just chat about the topic, or look at specific words, or talk about related issues. Usually คุณเอ๋ asks me a number of questions, clarifications, my opinion etc. At the end, we quickly look at my written summaries and คุณเอ๋ makes a few corrections or suggestions for more natural wordings. I find this structure very useful (credit goes to emk who wrote about a similar approach in his log). It allows me to repeat key phrases a number of times (piece of paper, written summary, spoken summary, while chatting about the topic, and then again when we look at my writing), but it also allows both of us to venture off somewhere else or bring in new aspects or topics. I also like the fact that she chooses the articles, exposing me to different topics than I would have chosen; it's a bit like a reality test (instead of my own little world). This week we discussed the recent riots in Stockholm, unhappy movie goers in Thailand, the case of a sexual offender in the Greater Bangkok are, a caving accident in China, the oldest man ever who's made it up Mt Everest, and a famous Thai monk who's currently in hospital. Writing: Chatting on whatsapp and writing summaries in preparation for my tutoring sessions (see above). Other: I finished the subject literature and started history. Now that I'm using Anki again, I'm entering a few words per day, so far mostly words I have trouble spelling correctly (Thai spelling is a bit of a mess), or more advanced words or phrases I encounter, know already passively and want to activate (like 'evolution' or 'to interrogate'). Most of my cards look like front: picture/definition, back: word, or front: definition and cloze example, back: word or phrase, all in Thai, of course. Since I need to write when doing reviews, I can't do them on the go, but that's alright. I will still rely on reading and listening for most of my vocabulary acquisition, but I hope to find a place for Anki in my quest for more eloquence. Polish: I finished my third book in Polish, who would have thought that! I enjoyed Tomek's adventures in Africa; the behaviors and attitudes to animals and other cultures are very outdated, but apart from that the stories have a fast pace and are entertaining. As usual, I listened to a number of podcasts during the past few days. The latest report o stanie świata was interesting in that I almost understood everything of the first 15 minute segment on the changing image of Germany in the world, and almost nothing of the last 15 minute segment which was an interview with an economics professor. If I don't understand much, I just follow individual words (of which I still recognize many), but it's obviously less interesting. There's a lot of room for improvement, but I'm excited to see that I can keep up with native conversations on at least selected topics. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 75 of 94 01 June 2013 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for another update.
Listening: 190 (+5.9) Reading: 273 (+6.7) Speaking: 51 (+2.1) Writing: 30 (+0.4) Other: 96 (+4.9) Total: 640 Listening: Nothing special. Reading: I finished the giant sting ray book. It was it bit slow in the middle but picked up speed at the end. Even after I had prepared myself by reading the first two chapters intensively I met a lot of unknown words. I picked up a few (mostly nouns or words related to fishing), but many of the new words describing emotions, facial expressions etc. are still unclear. The next book will be a detective story (for adults) situated in Bangkok. Speaking: Phone calls with friends. Writing: Chatting on whatsapp. Other: Typing: working on the subject history. I was surprised to read a sober and critical account of societal changes and the degradation of the environment in contemporary Thailand. The chapter on examples of important people in Thai history introduces lots of new words related to various ranks and court positions in the past; useful but also rather tedious. The only good thing is that the more exposure I get to those kinds of words the easier it gets to make sense of it all. Anki: I'm currently adding about 10 words per day, reviews take 8-10 minutes. About half of my cards are spellings, but I've started to add more cards for words I tend to forget (either picture - Thai word, or Thai definition - Thai word). It's all active, no passive clicking through, and I need to sit down at my desk to review. Polish: The first batch of my new books has arrived, and I'm eagerly awaiting the second one. Both were sent out the same day; I don't know why the second one is taking that much longer (three days already). I suspect customs. Anyway, what has arrived are three encyclopedias for children (or young teenagers). One is crap, but the other two are good. I was contemplating to actually work with them, but so far I've only read (many!) individual articles for pleasure, and I think that's just fine. It's amazing how comprehensible most articles are; a few key terms and the pictures are often sufficient for me to make sense of the whole article - because I also know most of those facts and ideas. Nothing beats comprehensible input. I love learning without actually working :) Edited by Bakunin on 01 June 2013 at 5:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 76 of 94 30 June 2013 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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This update covers the last 25 days or so which I spent in Thailand. I decided to log hours in the usual way with the exception of speaking hours which are estimated.
Listening: 208 (+17.6) Reading: 325 (+52.6) Speaking: 108 (+57.2) Writing: 35 (+4.7) Other: 104 (+8.0) Total: 780 Listening: Podcasts, some TV. Reading: June is Tadoku month, and I managed to meet my goal of 1000+ pages (I'm currently at 1307). I read a total of 8 books, but some where quite short (less than 100 pages). Speaking: Since I stayed with friends, I had ample opportunity to speak. I also took one hour at a language school and had a few longer conversations with professionals (teachers, doctors). Writing: Some chatting on whatsapp. Other: I've continued to work with Anki, and I also added new words during my holidays. Most cards require me to spell, so even a few cards take some time. But I can already see that I'm getting better at spelling. Polish: Polish got drowned out by Thai during my holidays in Thailand. I had planned to read at least one book for Tadoku during June but didn't manage to. In the meantime, some easier books have arrived, so I hope to catch up on reading Polish in July. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5900 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 77 of 94 30 June 2013 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well done on surpassing your reading goal, I don't read that much in English, let alone Polish!
I'll get started on a Szklarski book once I've finished Kroniki Kresu. Then I'll look for something more contemporary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 78 of 94 08 August 2013 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm still here, still doing Thai and Polish and other stuff. But it's summer, and my priorities at the moment are biking, hiking and traveling. I'm doing less hours per day but still manage 2-3 on average. Most of that is my usual workday routing consisting of podcasts on my way to and from work, an hour or so in the morning working on Thai schoolbooks, and a bit of reading. If I have more time, I listen and read more.
I couldn't get myself to update my log every twenty hours anymore, and I'm not even in the mood to update stats for Thai now. I might update those numbers when I reach 900 hours (soon). So here's an informal update for Polish: since taking up Polish again in the middle of this year, I spent a bit more than 100 hours, evenly split between reading and listening. My comprehension has improved quite a bit. I can read easy books (for young readers) without missing too many details, and I can understand podcasts if I'm interested in the topic and focus 100%. I'm not interested in production or any active skills at the moment, so my engagement with Polish is totally stress- and frustration-free :) Regarding reading, I finished 5 books with a total of about 1000 pages, and I'm well into my 6th. Reading is fun and very helpful. I'm amazed how much faster I can read Polish than Thai, even though my comprehension in Thai is close to 100% and nowhere near that in Polish. It's amazing what difference the foreign script can make in terms of reading speed. I'm going biking for ten days in Slovakia and Poland's bieszczady region later this month, and I'm really looking forward to exploring the region as well as some good Polish food. I'm just back from crossing Bohemia by bike; while I could make sense of an astonishing amount of written stuff on signs and other written material, I couldn't understand much of what people were talking about and they didn't understand my Polish attempts either. German always worked much better, but that's no surprise since Bohemia is surrounded to the north, west and south by German-speaking countries. I've heard that Slovak is closer to Polish than Czech but I'm probably on the safe side to assume that I won't be able to use my broken Polish in Slovakia. Ah, I bought encyclopedias with the idea to "work" on my vocabulary in a more systematic fashion. They're beautiful books... but I can't see myself getting into anything resembling a study routine in the near future. Reading for pleasure and listening to podcasts is much more fun and still pretty effective. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4925 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 79 of 94 01 September 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, man, an update is overdue. August was holiday month and I haven't had much time for my usual routine, but this should change now with autumn approaching.
I spent the last week or so in Slovakia and South-Eastern Poland on my mountain-bike. Great, wild and lonely landscapes, and hearty Central Eastern food; I had a really great time. Slovak is much closer to Polish than Czech, and I managed to get by surprisingly well in Slovakia. In Poland, I could handle most matters in Polish. I was a bit surprised that most people were not interested in why I could speak some broken Polish, but it was great that nobody felt the need to switch to some other language. Knowledge of traditional Polish cuisine came in handy as well and we had many feasts after long days on our bikes. Ah, and I threw out my Szklarski book and replaced it with a few smaller books of the "Three Detectives" series. Szklarski was too tough to be enjoyable after a full day of exercise :) In Slovakia, I splashed out on a traditional Thai massage and got half an hour of speaking practice in as well. It's great to just be able to chat with someone in their mother tongue without much effort. It's moments like these when I realize how far I've come with my Thai. Listening: 261 Reading: 352 Speaking: 118 Writing: 39 Other: 130 Total: 900 My main activities in Thai are podcasts, phone conversations with friends, some chatting (much less than in the first half of the year) and typing slash intensive reading of school books. I'm still in grade 2, currently working away at Arts and History. History is terribly boring, but I need the vocabulary. Arts is fun and entertaining, and I'm learning a lot about Thai culture, e.g., traditional instruments from the four regions, or the meaning of Thai dance gestures. Edited by Bakunin on 01 September 2013 at 4:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5900 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 80 of 94 01 September 2013 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Witaj w domu, Baku!
It's a great idea to combine language learning with food and massages - a lot more enjoyable! Yes, I'm close to quitting Szklarsi as well. I like reading short news items, on-line reports and magazine articles which are interesting and easy to digest. 1000 hours on the horizon, excellent effort. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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