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LakeSea’s (In)decisive Log | ||
Tags: Sign Language | Portuguese | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes  Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 23 16 January 2013 at 9:19am | IP Logged |
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After thinking about a hundred times over if I'm insane enough to commit to the challenge, I decided a little extra motivation never hurt anybody.
(I wonder if too much motivation has, though...) So... TAC 2013, here we go! At the end of last year I read Kato Lomb's "Polyglot" and decided to take a leaf or two off her method, so I'm aiming for the sky with these two languages. In any case, regardless of the language, I'm making reading and listening prioritary tasks in the vocabulary and comprehension front. I also intend to use flashcards every second my attention is not required elsewhere. Regarding oral production: shadowing (to get pronunciation as close to correct as possible) before slow-paced conversation (maybe via Skype) Regarding written production: aiming to post at least once a week on lang-8. MAYOR GOALS + Russian to B1 (all four skills) Given that I started not a month ago and have absolutely no familiarity with the language, it may be difficult to go all the way, but I suspect it's not impossible if I get serious and set down a schedule for it. Honestly, what I want to put the most work into is perfecting pronunciation, as it was the bait, hook and sinker that got me studying Russian. >> Resources (at this point, sort of on the poor side): - Ruso para Hispanohablantes 1 (textbook) Up to Урок 1, so not very far in yet. I studied Japanese off a textbook with a similar communicative approach. Is it personal-study-enabled? Only time will tell... - Taste of Russian (podcast) Although it seems to have been discontinued in 2011, it provides a nice input of clearly spoken Russian, with the added benefit of available transcripts. + Italian to B1 (all four skills) On this one I already have sort of a background--my mother's been studying it for many years (so she's delighted I finally took the plunge). Besides the odd set phrase, I have next to zero knowledge in grammar here. On the plus side, I have the advantage of already knowing quite a few from the immense ammount of falsi amici there are between Italian and Spanish. I've declared it my "lingua di riposo" because I've noticed it doesn't present me with quite as much challenge as Russian does, so I think I'll devote my weekends to it. >> Resources - Rete! (textbook) and a veritable army of reference books. I have yet to take a look at Rete because so far I've been studying by listening to the news on RAI radio and trying to elucidate as much as possible without a dictionary from the news on El Corriere de la Sera's online version. Minor goal This year, I either conquer JLPT N1 or die trying. >:| (insert warcry here) I've determined that what got me at my last try was not lack of vocabulary (although it certainly didn't feel sufficient), but my reading speed. Having acquired a number of titles in Japanese, I'm making it a point to read as much as possible and it has done wonders for my vocabulary, but not much for the speed problem. I think I need to develop better skimming and scanning skills. No idea of the "how", though... Edited by Lakeseayesno on 23 March 2014 at 12:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4146 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 23 16 January 2013 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome and good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5183 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 23 16 January 2013 at 10:31pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome aboard, LSYN. I'm excited to watch your progress this year. I'm studying Russian, Spanish and Italian, so we have a lot in common. :)
Good luck with your goals this year! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 23 16 January 2013 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
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Schedule setting
Thinking back on when I started learning Japanese, one of the most important things about the routine was, well, the routine itself. I need to create separate time slots for each language and give them their own priority so they become part of my daily comings and goings. As of late I've been allowing myself only to study Japanese when time permits because it is no longer necessary to keep going at it so intensely, but I definitely cannot allow myself to do this with languages I've just started on, so I did some math on the hours I can put to each task. I've allocated ten hours a week for Russian (two hours a day, five days a week) and six for Italian (three hours a day, two days a week). This counts only "desk work", not reading and listening to the radio, flipping through flashcards and other activities that can be squeezed in between work and daily life. As I'll start with this schedule today I cannot yet tell if these hours will require further adjustment, but I've studied harder before, and recognize when I need to take a break. Hopefully this sort of intensity at first will help me get over the A1 hill and get things rolling on their own inertia later on. I also thought that if I study the same language daily, variety will be required between repetitions, so I'll try my best to 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 23 16 January 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, renaissancemedi.
Kerrie, wow! Indeed we do. :D (Although I suspect we might have a slight level difference, hehe...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 23 21 January 2013 at 7:46am | IP Logged |
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Dio mio, che settimana...
RUSSIAN Я очень усталая. I was able to stick to the hours I allocated this week for russian, and as reward for my efforts, began to understand how to form adverbs out of adjectives and about gender concordance between nouns and adjectives (an incredible amount of lightbulbs went off in my head when I realized that). Also got a head start on noun cases, but I'm going to have to go over that a few more times before I get clearly what case applies where. Vocabulary: getting there. I got an e-dictionary with included voice spelling. Since it's a good dictionary that actually marks the accented syllable, I've made a habit of to trying to read the word myself before having it spell it out for me, so it's allowed me to detect some patterns and gradually tone down on the mistakes. Still not so hot on prepositions, but hey, one step at a time. I think, though, it may be a good idea to make a few flashcards of the most essential ones. Also, I changed my browser's language to Russian. While it's sort of fresh to see (it's been in Japanese for three years) it's also been a while since I felt this disoriented... ITALIAN Having a conversation partner at home, I'm becoming able to make slightly more elaborate thoughts into phrases. The big hit this week was learning that opinions and thoughts must be paired with the congiuntivo di essere. As an example: Io penso che la lengua Italiana sia molto complicata. Also, I knew this from before, but just now am I really realizing how fundamentally different the vocab is from Spanish, so I'm being extra careful and minding just about every word so as to not fall into falsi amici. This morning I was listening to an Italian radio station and they mentioned an interesting news piece. I decided to try and post my thoughts on it, as simple as possible but not overly so, at Lang-8. (My ID number is 540756, but I made it so only Lang-8 members can read and correct. If you're on Lang-8, let me know!) Edited by Lakeseayesno on 21 January 2013 at 7:48am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 23 28 January 2013 at 6:56am | IP Logged |
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Don't mind me, just sweeping spiderwebs off my log...
Due to work, this week was disastrous in terms of scheduling. I got some studying done with Russian, but was barely able to dent Italian... Regarding Russian, I'm still putting two and two together regarding prepositions and conjunctions. Regarding verbal tenses, I've decided I'll never get the conjugations memorized unless I put them to practical use; to this end (and also to help me in the memorization of new vocab) I've decided to start a written record. I remember the act of physically writing down new words was pretty useful in helping me 'absorb' them when I was studying Japanese, so I might as well try it out here as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4122 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 23 30 January 2013 at 7:35am | IP Logged |
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A question regarding cyrillic handwriting, aimed in particular to native speakers of Russian.
Is writing in cursive cyrillic an absolute in Russian written culture, or is it a matter of personal choice, and some people write in block letters while others do so in cursive? I ask because all the physical material I'm using for learning Russian involves it, so I can read it by now, but it never crossed my mind to write my notes down in cursive (it's all in block letters). As a side note, it's not that I dislike cursive (I actually admire people who can write elegantly in it), but I was never good at writing in it. To boot, a few years ago I had an accident that messed up my writing hand's grip, so my already poor cursive now looks more like hieroglyphs. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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