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Finnish Firm Foot TAC 2013 *jäŋe/*ledús | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| VanamoVenlo Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 4131 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Finnish | Message 17 of 41 02 May 2013 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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I'd been so frustrated recently by my perceived lack of progress. I'd studied hard and learnt a lot, more than I'd learnt in Finnish ever before and more intensively, but I didn't seem to be improving even slightly. In hindsight I was probably at a plateau. I learnt a great deal in a very short time and my brain most likely merely needed some time to let it all sink in. Or it needed more exposure to real Finnish to finish connecting all the dots. Whatever it was, I am now once again moving forward and progressing. Even better is that it's like my level jumped up a notch and everything has suddenly become that much easier. The best part is that I can now see B1 and even B2! It's going to take a lot of work, but I can actually see it and I can see myself getting there! Two months ago I couldn't even see a straight line towards A2.
Reading - I wanted my next update to be about reading and I have been. I've done more than 329 pages of reading in the past two months. On top of this I've been reading some Aku Ankka comics. I've also been spending a lot of time reading Finnish forums. I've always done this, but now I've added a bookmark to my browser toolbar so I click the little icon every morning and it takes me straight to the forum and I find at least one forum post each day to read. Chances are that I find 5 posts to read each day and often more. :) I've also increased the time I've spent listening to music and I'm trying to watch more movies when I can. FSI - FSI is no longer my main text, but I have completed a couple more chapters of it! I don't think that FSI was made to be raced through and finished in 4 months and I've been mistaken to attempt to do so. I think that'd be fine if I was at a more advanced level, but at my level it's definitely helped that I've stopped the program and spent some time splashing around and letting things sink in. The thing that I've started to realise as I get more and more into genuine Finnish materials is that I really have learnt a lot from FSI. Even some of the obscure vocabulary from their vocabulary lists that I was convinced I'd never remember and don't recall paying any attention to, has turned up in my passive vocabulary! Harjoitus tekee mestarin 1 - I have put a huge dent into HTM1. This pretty much became my main text for a while. The best decision I made with this book was not to work through it from front to back. I did the noun drills first in the order that I felt like doing them. Once I'd finished the noun drills I then did the conjugation tables. Then I worked through the verb drills, working through the forms that I found easiest first. When I got up to HTM1 verb drills that I had not yet covered in the FSI dialogue and workbook drills, I waited until I did that FSI text and workbook chapter and then, a day or two later, I went and did the same verb drills in HTM1. Current focus - Reading-Listening and verb forms. I have so many verb forms floating around inside my head that I can actually feel that it's time to carefully drill them all starting from the present tense so that I know without a doubt exactly what each verb should look like at any given time. Study hours - I wasn't able to meet my study hours goal for March. I'm currently aiming to maintain at least 50 hours per month and it is still my aim to reach 1000 hours by the end of the year. I'm not on track for that at the moment, but I'm not giving up on my goal. Hours per month: Jan 53.5 Feb 61 Mar 50 Apr 56.5 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| VanamoVenlo Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 4131 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Finnish | Message 18 of 41 09 May 2013 at 4:33am | IP Logged |
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My enjoyment of doing things in Finnish has started going through the roof. It's like everything is that much more pleasurable. I'm finding my interest in books, films and music in Finnish starting to increase and slowly widen. I finally feel like I know where I am. I've been here before and I know where to go. I don't ever remember having such a struggle to get to a nice place as a beginner before. Of course compared to then I'm much more self-aware as a "language learner" nowadays, constantly overthinking and overcalculating. I used to be less thinking, more doing. Actually, I used to be no thinking and all doing.
Something that I'm starting to really get is that if I want to be using and accessing Finnish materials as much as possible and creating an immersion environment then I need to have as much immersion material as possible. It's not enough to have merely a few books, comics, songs, albums or films in Finnish lying around. I need to have dozens and dozens and dozens and it needs to constantly grow because the chance that I'll be in the mood for that particular book/song/etc right now on this day is next to zero. It's like that expression -57 channels and there's nothing on-. For example there are some Finnish films that I purchased almost a year ago and it's only been recently that I've finally been in the mood to watch them even though when I bought them I was dying to see them. When it comes to beginning an immersion environment it's not enough to hide away hundreds of English/other language albums/books/websites/etc and to replace all that non-Finnish stuff with 3 books, 4 albums and 1 website in Finnish. If I take away 20 non-Finnish albums worth of music, then I need to replace them with 30 Finnish albums worth of music. Most of my music interests in English and Japanese are very eclectic, but my interests in Finnish are very, very narrow. Narrow interests are great, but they're hard to sustain for an immersion environment over a longer period of time. I therefore need to start expanding my narrow Finnish interests and exploring opening up other interests in Finnish in order to make it easier to create and sustain more of an immersion-like environment in Finnish. I'm finding this easier to do as my Finnish slowly improves. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| VanamoVenlo Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 4131 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Finnish | Message 19 of 41 14 May 2013 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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Today I was again inspired to pick back up on some Reading-Listening. It can be slow going with one English page often taking 3 minutes to be read by the audio. It was quite hard and tiresome at first, but in the right mood I really enjoy it. I moved from paragraphs up to one page and am currently RLing two pages at a time. I'm trying to balance forward progression in the story while limiting the amount of rereading. I've only just moved up to two pages from one page, which I never planned to do, but I like that it gives me a bit more story to work with and forces me to pay more attention when reading in Finnish.
I'm still trying to expand things that I am doing in Finnish. I want to switch a few more things that I read in English into Finnish, as well as expand on things I already do in Finnish. So far I have done that by including more of the news in my day. I used to read headlines and skim articles and I'm back to doing that again a little more regularly. I've also rediscovered selkouutiset. I'm going to try to read the news at least a couple of times a week. I'm approximately 60% of the way through Harjoitus tekee mestarin 1. I wish this book was bigger and had even more exercises. This book has really pushed my vocabulary and structures in a way that nothing else has. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| VanamoVenlo Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 4131 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Finnish | Message 20 of 41 02 June 2013 at 3:58am | IP Logged |
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A minor setback as I've been dealing with significant eye strain and have had to stop all reading and use of computer/phone screens except for 1 hour per day and that hour is taken up with activities that aren't language learning. I've switched to 100% audio until things are better. I'm listening to audio books, podcasts, courses, news, etc. It's definitely not easy. On the bright side more listening can't be a bad thing.
Before this all started I had been focusing on expanding my vocabulary and focusing on reading books. I was also spending a lot of time adding words to Anki. Mostly single words, but I do also have a few sentence decks that aren't in use right now. It's felt like the right time to return to srs. Back in January when I was still on the srsing sidelines I put 12 sentences from HTM1 into a new deck after which I never opened Anki again. Recently I went through them for the first time and they were all comprehensible and I could see that I had been progressing even when sometimes it hadn't seemed like it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 21 of 41 02 June 2013 at 5:30am | IP Logged |
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Get better soon! I was struggling with eye problems on and off for about a year, seen a doc just a month ago or so. Audio is a great solution!
I find that doing my listening in a dark room is good not just for my eyes but for my concentration. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| VanamoVenlo Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 4131 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Finnish | Message 22 of 41 03 June 2013 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
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Thanks again, Serpent. Oh, it's so frustrating isn't it! I hope things are being sorted out for you.
I have been taking the opposite approach of heading outside into the sunlight to do my listening while walking/exercising/shopping, but your suggestion is very logical so I'm going to try that as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Boomerang3378 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4490 days ago 34 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Urdu Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 23 of 41 11 June 2013 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Vanamo. It's great to see your dedication and hard work involved in learning Finnish. I would like to ask you for some advice. I have also started learning Finnish. And I have been to many threads which have lists of all the Finnish study material. But I need to know if there are any Finnish movies, Broadcasts, etc which have English subtitles and Finnish subtitles.
@Serpent: Since you have reached a very high level in Finnish (C1)... could you recommend some material for me which will enable me to understand spoken Finnish. I know I need a lot of exposure to Finnish content. I am using many books and audios myself which are FSI, Assimil, Linguaphone, Finnish School, Kuulosta Hyvaltaa, Supisuomea, Suomen mestari and many others. But I will only reach up to A1 or A 1 1/2 max. What do I need to do to progress upto atleast B2. Are there any advanced books for spoken Finnish. My main goal is to understand when the Finns speak Finnish. Please recommend some content. Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Boomerang3378 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4490 days ago 34 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Urdu Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 24 of 41 11 June 2013 at 6:59pm | IP Logged |
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Vanamo, you also said that you were using Linguaphone to learn Finnish. Is this the same Linguaphone Finnish course which has the first lesson "Salon Perhe"? If so, may I ask why you don't use the course anymore or why you stopped using it? Is it dry or boring? Or does it not just teach you well enough?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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