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Finnish Firm Foot TAC 2013 *jäŋe/*ledús

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VanamoVenlo
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Australia
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42 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Finnish

 
 Message 9 of 41
18 February 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged 
I'm rewriting my deleted post here.

Study hours:

In January I logged 53.5 study hours for Finnish. It was much less than I hoped that I'd be able to achieve, but I am still pleased with it. My aim for February will still only be 50 hours and at this rate I will only reach 600 hours by the end of the year (400 hours short of my 1000 hour goal).

Finnish culture exposure:

One of my big goals this year is to expose myself to Finnish culture more. I want to increase my personal library of Finnish music, film and literature so that I can always find something that I want to use no matter what mood I'm in. This has been really difficult so far as I don't want to buy hard copies of items only digital copies. Digital copies are either not available in my region or are completely restricted to those living in Finland (or for the price of the digital copy, I could buy the hardcopy and have it shipped.

I have gotten my hand on hard copies of Finnish film, but often the subtitles in Finnish are in standard Finnish when the speaker is using spoken Finnish or they are just a complete rewrite of what the speaker is saying. Therefore I'm using film more for relaxing, non-study entertainment, or cultural immersion until my listening improves.

FSI:

The thing that I am enjoying about FSI Finnish over Finnish for Foreigners, is that it doesn't hide other grammatical features of the language from you until you are learning them. FSI therefore is much closer to my ideal course than Finnish For Foreigners in this sole regard (although FSI Finnish is definitely very, very far away from my ideal course). Still, I'd say that Finnish for Foreigners is much more logical and systematic in the way that it presents the grammar and particularly the cases. On the other hand, Both suffer terribly from too few examples. FSI in particular gives between 1-3 examples on average. I feel that 5-10 examples would enhance the explanations.

My current main course:

Currently FSI. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do after FSI has been completed. I've been working steadily though FSI Finnish, but I've decided to switch things up a little bit to keep my attention from wondering. I've been working through all the structural notes to give me a nice little overview of all the grammar. I'm currently reviewing chapter 10/14. After completing them I'll return back and resume working through the dialogues and the workbook. I get to keep on with the same course, but things don't feel so routine.

My current side course:

Kuulostaa hyvältä (Currently completely paused)
Linguaphone (Currently completely paused. May not resume)
Harjoitus tekee mestarin 1 (Currently paused-ish.)
Ymmärrä suomea! (Currently in use on and off)

Plans for after finishing FSI:

I'm tempted to try Assimil Finnish as my next main text even though my French is quite poor. I feel that I really need more examples of Finnish grammar and verb structures that I've learned in usage, rather than explanations and one example sentence. However Assimil means more dialogues and the idea of that isn't very appealing after the FSI dialogues. I'm sure the Assimil dialogues are more interesting.

Reading-Listening:

What I really want to try is the Reading-Listening method. Even with original Finnish novels it seems that very little written in Finnish (either from original Finnish works or from translations) gets made into audiobooks.

Back to Anki?:

I think that my vocabulary is my weakest part of Finnish at this point in my learning. I'm thinking of using it to learn single words. I have a little previous experience using Finnish whole sentences in Anki, which I didn't particularly enjoy, and so this could be an interesting comparison. I may, however, just use my word list and study from that. At some point down the line, however, a word list for thousands upon thousands of words is probably not going to be that practical for me.

Edited by VanamoVenlo on 18 July 2013 at 10:42am

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Serpent
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 Message 10 of 41
19 February 2013 at 1:34am | IP Logged 
50 hours is great! don't be stressed about the numbers; what matters more is HOW you spent your hours.

http://äänikirja.com/ seems like a good source for audiobooks. they collect the free legal ones and also the best deals for paid audiobook downloads (without physically buying 3557394 CD's)

in anki, i'd say try sentences again before introducing single words. sentences are hard when there are more unknown words than known, and at your level it seems like a small amount of studying can make a huge difference. i hope you'll find out it has :)

(if you use firefox, get Lazarus to avoid losing your posts. if you use something else i hope you can find a similar tool too)
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VanamoVenlo
Diglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 4131 days ago

42 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Finnish

 
 Message 11 of 41
20 February 2013 at 1:15am | IP Logged 
I'm will try to to not be too stressed about the numbers! I think it's just something for me to latch onto as it's the easiest thing I can measure while I'm working on the how. :)

That's a great link for some audiobooks in Finnish! :D

I agree I need to go back to sentences, and do plan to, but probably not just yet. I still feel a little burned out from my last period of SRSing. I'm probably just flirting with the idea of single words at the moment, but single words or sentences I think Anki is going to remain on the backbench for a while longer.

(AND YES LAZARUS JUST WHAT I NEED!)
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VanamoVenlo
Diglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 4131 days ago

42 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Finnish

 
 Message 12 of 41
23 February 2013 at 4:19am | IP Logged 
FSI progress update

Recently, I momentarily paused working though FSI as it's meant to be used, to jump ahead and just go through all the structural notes without paying any attention to the vocab, dialogues or workbook. This turned out to be the most important thing I've done in my Finnish studying in a long time. I realised that my grammar knowledge is pretty ok. I'd even sort of figured out a large number of the grammar points just from seeing them used, so it was really nice to finally see them written down and explained. I read through grammar points that explained things I'd seen in active use and been wondering about for ages. I shouldn't be making myself wait to get that "aah, so that's what that means." validation by continuing to slowly work linearly through a textbook. I did that with Finnish for Foreigners and it was great, but I don't think I need to keep doing that.

The way forward from here after FSI experiment

I'm starting to think that the way forward is to use native materials as my main text rather than as a side text. Kuulostaa hyvältä, Harjoitus tekee mestarin, Finnish for foreigners 2 exercises, FSI workbook etc should be my main side materials, but otherwise I'm starting to acknowledge/consider that maybe the answer is not more textbooks, or any textbooks. I'll do drills and exercises, but I don't want to deal with textbooks the way I've been using them previously.

Future

My next update better be about how I've been working through some books.

Edited by VanamoVenlo on 18 July 2013 at 12:13pm

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Serpent
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 Message 13 of 41
23 February 2013 at 11:49am | IP Logged 
Yeah, FSI should be the first thing to throw out of the window if you're not having fun.
What kinds of music do you like? I'd be happy to recommend you some :)
My favourite Finnish movie (not that I've seen many) is Jäätynyt enkeli. Both for the story and the soundtrack.

Also hehe that's the opposite for me. I love Finnish so much that it was pure delight finding out how you say simple things like "the grass is green"... i tried to learn Portuguese the same way, with grammars and exercises and whatnot... and i just couldn't. I love it, but not THAT much. Around the same time I fell in love with football (soccer) and I started watching it online in Portuguese. Nowadays I use plenty of native materials, whether it's football, books or cartoons.

Also, Finnish and Japanese aren't all that different. I mean linguistically they're more similar to each other than to European languages afaiu. So one of the problems is likely that the author tries to hold your hand while explaining things you already know/things that make sense to you. This is a HUGE problem for me nowadays and an important reason to use native materials.
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VanamoVenlo
Diglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 4131 days ago

42 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Finnish

 
 Message 14 of 41
25 February 2013 at 12:51pm | IP Logged 
At this stage of understanding I seem to like pop music with a bit of energy to it and esp female singers. I've got some tiktak, pmmp, Erin, Laura Närhi, Happoradio, Jesse Kaikuranta, Kaija Koo, Antti Tuisku, Elonkerjuu. I'd love some recs if you have any. I've seen and enjoyed the first of that Vares film and never realised there were sequels!

Very interesting about your experience between Finnish and Portuguese. Textbooks feel more like serious study, but I need to acccess much more real language such as finding things to fall in love with, like you did with Portuguese and soccer, even if they seem at first unconventional.

Spot on about textbooks, it's obvious to me now they've got to go. I do still love drills, so I might use a bit more of those on the side in the place of explanatory textbooks and hopefully get the same benefits.

Did you use much native material in your A stages of your Finnish?

Edited by VanamoVenlo on 18 July 2013 at 11:53am

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Serpent
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6386 days ago

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 Message 15 of 41
25 February 2013 at 2:14pm | IP Logged 
aw pop... you already know pretty much everything I'd recommend :) especially as I don't like most female vocals :S there's Jonna Tervomaa, Maija Vilkkumaa and HB at least, and folk rock'y Värttinä. with (mostly) male vocals, how about light rock or punk like Uniklubi, Apulanta, Klamydia, Herra Ylppö ja ihmiset, CMX, Don Huonot, Popeda, Leevi and the Leavings, Neljä ruusua, Tehosekoitin, Zen Cafe, Timo Rautiainen, Yö, Viikate (well the last three are not so energetic). and I can't help mentioning my favourite band Charon, although it doesn't seem to fit the list very well. and they sing in English, lol.

as for native materials, I mostly used what I was just dying to understand. Music and my favourite bands' tourdiaries/Q&A/guestbooks (if they actually reply I mean).
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VanamoVenlo
Diglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 4131 days ago

42 posts - 58 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Finnish

 
 Message 16 of 41
02 March 2013 at 2:53am | IP Logged 
@ Serpent

No, those look like they'll be great as I love rock, punk and some metal, but so far in Finnish I have found more pop that I enjoy than anything else. I already have some Herra Ylppö and Viikate so now I have a lot of potential new music to check out. :)

Quick update:

Study hours clocked in February: 61 hours
March hours goal is to match or increase on February.
Current focus: reading and listening and reading-listening.


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