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A Cinephile’s Multi-Lingual Attempt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4047 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 25 of 29 05 August 2013 at 4:24pm | IP Logged |
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In the middle of a long complicated move, so I haven't been studying as much as normal. I also don't really like having neglected my film studies as much as I have, so the original plan of "study languages intensely, then study film in those languages" is a bit out the window. Since my schedule is a little crazy now, I've not really had any steady routine, but I've kept up my studies of Cantonese, French, and Russian even if the methods are a bit random. Indonesian, I've been a bit on and off with, and mostly I've just been reviewing what I know in Indonesian and not really pushing it that far forward. I think I'm going to drop Mandarin for the time being, despite having a lot of transparency with Cantonese, I found it really difficult to retain the knowledge. I think I was just using bad methods for acquiring the language, and I was repeating the Pimsleur course so much that I just burned myself out on the language. I definitely plan on returning to it, but I think I need to leave it alone for a while.
A few notes on changes on how I use resources... Pimsleur - So for a while now I've been using Pimsleur without pauses so the lessons ran around 15 minutes each instead of 30. Initially this was extremely effective and intense, but after a while I think my brain tired of it and I would find my mind would wander and I would just mindlessly shadow the material. For my Russian studies this wasn't too much of a problem as I was getting some active practice doing Michel Thomas simultaneously, but I was definitely getting more of a passive understanding of Russian than an active one from Pimsleur. With Mandarin, I had the first ever experience where I would find myself memorizing phrases and still not understanding them (except in cases when they were very similar to Cantonese). I must've re-booted the Pimsleur program like 3 times, and I would have whole sentences memorized, but had no idea how the words that made up those sentences functioned. I tried briefly going back to the 30 minute normal Pimsleur lessons, but I had the same problem as before, my mind wandered during the silences. Right now I'm using shorter pauses, and each lesson runs about 20 minutes, and so far this seems the right mix. I stay focused for pretty much the entire lesson and get lots of active practice. Though I think with Pimsleur some occasional variation in routine might be necessary to prevent my brain from getting too comfortable with the lessons. The 20 minute lessons with mandarin were actually much more effective, but I had just done the material so many times I had trouble keeping up my motivation. I think returning to Mandarin in a few months will be better. At the moment I'm re-doing Pimsleur Russian with more of a focus on active. Assimil - I like the Assimil program, but for some reason I seem somewhat resistant to routinizing it. I tried doing long Assimil shadow walks, where I shadowed the entire French and Russian Assimil courses in one session each, and it was really enjoyable though I got very lost towards the end of each course. I think I'm going to try to stick more to native materials when available, and kind of use Assimil sporadically but intensely from time to time. I'll probably have more to say on this in the future. Now some brief rundowns of the languages, since my routine is a bit irregular I'm going to skip my normal formatting methods and just go over my progress in each language. Cantonese - I'm about done with Vol 2 (out of 9) of Cantonese DLI, but it's been quite a struggle to absorb the new material. I've been getting a lot more mileage out of FSI, so I've been focusing on that for now. I know I wanted to finish the DLI course this time around, but I think it makes more sense to focus on the courses where I feel the progress. Even though I haven't really completed any extensive Cantonese courses yet, I do feel after hopping around between them like they are getting easier and easier. I think probably some strong FSI study, then maybe back to Sidney Lau for a bit, and then maybe I'll be ready to start DLI again. French - I've been kind of going back and forth between reviewing Pimsleur French, and doing long Assimil sessions sporadically. I'm going to try and focus more on L-R though it requires a larger time commitment. I also think the French FSI course is really fun, but damn the lessons are long. With pauses removed each lesson takes like 50 minutes. Not sure how much I use FSI, but if I ever felt like I needed to buckle down and study French really intensely, FSI French would be the course to use. Russian - Russians in a bit of a weird place, my passive understanding has been progressing a lot, but my ability to speak is still pretty primitive. Re-doing the Pimsleur course, I'm surprised by some of the stuff I've forgotten, but also I'm picking up and retaining things a lot quicker during this second pass. I think doing it again with the pauses will really help cement what I've learned so far. Indonesian - Haven't been doing a ton of Indonesian study, but when I reviewed Pimsleur Indonesian course, I was surprised how much I had retained. At the moment I've been using Linguaphone Indonesian rather than struggling with the French Pimsleur course. Edited by YnEoS on 05 August 2013 at 4:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4047 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 26 of 29 03 September 2013 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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Was busy moving, so I didn't get to practice as much this past week, but the month overall was pretty good. I'll wait to post more when I get back into my routine a bit.
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| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4047 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 27 of 29 13 November 2013 at 2:51am | IP Logged |
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Haven't updated in a while because I don't really have a stable routine, so I don't really log my progress, but I practice almost ever day. I'm not applying to graduate school anytime soon, so I've dropped mandarin completely for the time being.
Right now I'm focusing heavily on French, using a wide variety of resources. Trying to push myself to the intermediate level, which I don't think is too too far off. My listening comprehension is definitely way ahead of my other skills, so recently I've been adding in more reading and speaking to try and catch up. Writing is not a terribly big concern for me. With Cantonese, I've stopped most of my normal study routine, to focus almost fully on memorizing the Chinese characters, which I think will be very beneficial in trying to advance to an intermediate level. Aside from that I keep up my Russian with light practice, and have recently picked up Pimsleur Hungarian. The main reason for Hungarian, is because it's different from the other languages I'm using and has lots of great English language Assimil course and FSI which I've found to be the most helpful courses with my French studies. I hope to incorporate Indonesian and Hindi back into my routine, when my french is strong enough to use Assimil. But recently I've had less wanderlust and more of an urge to push forward with fewer languages, though it's still fun to dabble from time to time. Been using Assimil in some different ways. One thing I found incredibly helpful with french is doing long blind shadowing sessions. These have basically replaced the time I used to spend doing lots of different Pimsleur programs, and I think this makes Assimil a lot more interesting for me, and makes it much easier to at least blind shadow every day to keep it fresh, even if I don't always study it with the booklet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4047 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 28 of 29 30 November 2013 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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Alright, I'm starting to get back into a strict routine again, so I'm going to start posting my progress again, I might not post every week, but perhaps ever other week or every month or so.
I sort of consider this a phase 2 of my learning, previous I was experimenting with a lot of different languages and trying out lots of different techniques. Right now I feel pretty excited about all the languages I'm studying, and feel like the methods I'm using now are working a lot better for me. I definitely made a lot of mistakes this past year with my learning methods, but hey I had a lot of fun, and now I feel much more prepared for language study. Before I jump into my individual language progress, I'm going to write a bit about some thoughts on my old learning methods and some new ones I'm employing. Shadowing - In my initial phase of language study, I was really excited by the results I got from shadowing and quickly it became my main method for learning languages. I liked the idea of completely internalizing languages and not have to sit down and write things out. But as I got further I noticed my skills were developing unevenly and that I wasn't picking up every detail of the language but just learning how to get the "gist" of what was being said. Still going to be an important tool in my study, but now I definitely intend to incorporate some other methods as well Scriptorium - This is something new I'm trying, so I don't know how well it helps me learn yet, but I found doing scriptorium over lessons I've shadowed to death and finding lots of new details and deeper understanding of these passages. Plus writing in other languages turns out to be a lot more fun than I realized. Expecting to make this a staple of my routine. Anki - I've burned out on Anki more times than I can count, too many decks, too many new cards at once. My new rule now is 1 Anki deck per language, and I'm keeping the amount of new cards pretty low in most cases so as to make sure that I don't burn out anymore. So far its been pretty sustainable and helpful. French ------------ Completed: Pimsleur Plus, Advanced Michel Thomas & Foundations, FSI Basic Course I LR: Three Musketeers (1 pass) Current Tools: Assimil French Without Toil Lesson 70, French In Action Lesson 28, Duolingo Thoughts: French has been by far my most successful language of study. I was shadowing massive amounts of Assimil blind and with the book, and then used the first half of the FSI course to help cement a lot of details in. I also finished doing one pass of LR on The Three Musketeers! Still I realized I wasn't absorbing ever grammar point, so I started back from the middle of Assimil again and now I'm using scriptorium to make sure I study all the little details. I also find Duolingo a useful too to practice spelling and review vocab. And I'm doing French in Action (video and audio lessons only) as kind of a fun extra study to help review and hopefully develop listening skills so I can start watching French films without English subtitles soon. Perhaps with more focused study methods I would've been farther in French than I am now. But still I feel like I've learned way more French in under a year than any of my high school German classes ever taught me in the same amount of time, and the whole process has been fun and painless. French is now my primary focus and I'm dedicating the most time to it until I hit an intermediate level. Cantonese ------------ Completed: Pimsleur I, FSI Basic Course I, Sidney Lau Vol 1 Current Tools: Anki Thoughts: I tried massive intensive shadowing with Cantonese, but with much less successful results than french. Right now I'm focusing really intensely on learning characters through my Anki deck. I've already learned the 350 most common characters, and now I'm working on the 500 Level 1 words on Cantodict. I've got lots of other great decks lined up too. Once I reach an Intermediate level with French I plan on committing my full attention to Cantonese, and plan on doing scriptorium over a bunch of different courses to really cement my knowledge. Russian ------------ Completed: Pimsleur III, Michel Thomas Foundations Current Tools: Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian Lesson 7, Anki Thoughts: I got pretty far with my Russian studies using shadowing, but wasn't able to be consistent with my studies so my skills are a bit rusty. My comprehension and ability to get the "gist" of things is pretty strong, but I notice that my knowledge of the inner working of the language has not fared very well. Right now I'm slowly rebuilding my skills by doing scriptorium on the Madrigal introduction course to help familiarize myself with the Cyrillic alphabet. I plan on reviewing Pimsleur, and then I'll start up Assimil again and do scriptorium with that as well. Hungarian ------------ Completed: Pimsleur I Current Tools: Assimil Lesson 7, Anki Thought: Wow, Hungarian is by far the most difficult language (as an absolute beginner) I've attempted so far. But its also incredibly rewarding when a certain grammar concept "clicks" into place. Working through Pimsleur I was a verrrry slow process, but I feel like I've learned a lot of good concepts. Assimil is also much more challenging than what I've done before, but doing scriptorium really helps me focus on the specifics of the grammar. Once I get further along I hope to start using the Hungarian FSI course to help cement certain grammar concepts. German ------------ Completed: 5 years of public school German Current Tools: Anki Thoughts: Still haven't really picked up German full time, I played around with the Assimil course and was surprised with how much I could still understand. Right now I'm doing an Anki deck of New French with Ease that has the German translations, just to kind of slowly re-activate my German skills before I jump back into studying. I'll probably wait til my French is at a good level before I start studying again full time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4047 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 29 of 29 08 December 2013 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
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Guess I'll return to updating every week to keep me motivated. Going to keep these short.
French ------------ Completed: Pimsleur Plus, Advanced Michel Thomas & Foundations, FSI Basic Course I LR: Three Musketeers (1 pass) Current Tools: Assimil French Without Toil Lesson 77, French In Action Lesson 30, Anki, Duolingo Thoughts: Still going great. Cantonese ------------ Completed: Pimsleur I, FSI Basic Course I, Sidney Lau Vol 1 Current Tools: Anki, Reading and Writing Chinese (100 Chars, 1st Pass) Thoughts: Getting deeper into studying words with multiple characters with Anki, and its a lot of fun. Its definitely reinforcing my knowledge of individual characters too, and some that I used to get mixed up are becoming clearer. I'm also going through Reading and Writing Chinese, which basically is 1000 characters with explanations of how to write them and their components. I'm not trying to memorize characters from it, just going through and writing out 25 characters a day. I figure this will help get me used to how the radicals work in a slow gradual way. I'll probably do multiple passes through the book as needed. Russian ------------ Completed: Pimsleur III, Michel Thomas Foundations Current Tools: Assimil 2011 Lesson 14, Assimil sans peine '73 Lesson 2, Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian Lesson 14, Anki, Reviewing Pimsleur II Lesson 3 Thoughts: Decided to switch over to the new Assimil Russian course as my main study tool, and using scriptorium with it. Also using the old French based course and the Madrigal book, but I'm only reading them for additional reinforcement for now. Also started up with Pimsleur to reinforce my knowledge and its kind of a crazy experience. I don't remember learning a good number of words, but often when prompted I can recall them immediately. Hungarian ------------ Completed: Pimsleur I Current Tools: Assimil Lesson 14, Anki Thought: Still my trickiest language, but I'm definitely seeing progress bit by bit. I'm hoping as I get more familiar with it, there will be more and more "aha!" moments and it will start snowballing. German ------------ Completed: 5 years of public school German Current Tools: Anki Thoughts: Doing the German-French Anki deck is alot of fun, especially since they're both my strongest languages and also both have quite a few transparent words in common that aren't transparent with each other. Definitely a great way to re-activate my German and hopefully some good practice for learning other language through French. Edited by YnEoS on 08 December 2013 at 4:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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