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Stelle’s Taga-log

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Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 105 of 117
05 September 2014 at 2:54am | IP Logged 
I had a very good one-hour session with my italki teacher today! We discussed extreme weather conditions - a
challenging topic for me, but the time flew by. She also helped me work through a paragraph that I wrote about
teaching adults.

I finished unit 9 of Teach Yourself Filipino. I'm starting to find the dialogues annoyingly slow. While they introduce
decent expressions and sentence structure, I wish that they'd speed up a bit. Today's lesson was all about getting
diarrhoea pills from the pharmacy - important stuff!

I also read from my book bin for 10 minutes and ran through my anki and memrise decks.


total time for today: 132 minutes
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 106 of 117
05 September 2014 at 2:27pm | IP Logged 
I posted this in my Spanish log, but I thought that it might be useful to post it here as well.

I've been working lately on compiling ideas for doing language exchanges or working with tutors.

Conversation cards
These are for absolute beginners. If you like to speak right from the beginning, it can sometimes be a bit
frustrating. Repetition is necessary, but it can get tedious for both parties. I use conversation cards, both as a
teacher (with my French students) and as a student (with my Tagalog teachers). Each card has a very simple
question to ask, answer and expand upon. I've included copies of the question cards in English, French, Spanish
and Tagalog. I relied heavily on these cards for the first month or six weeks of tutoring in Tagalog.

Language exchange topics
This one is for people who are a bit more advanced, and able to carry on a conversation - even if it's just a simple
conversation. I've listed 32 themes/topics, along with a half-dozen or so related questions. I've used these topics
myself either as a student, a teacher or a language partner. The themes are only shared in English, so you'd have
to translate them yourself (or with the help of your partner). I'm not yet quite at a conversational level high
enough to use all of these topics in Tagalog. But I'm hoping to start using one per week relatively soon.
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 107 of 117
06 September 2014 at 3:20am | IP Logged 
Today, my dog ran full-tilt after a squirrel in the backyard before stopping suddenly with a yelp. We took him to
the vet, and it looks like he has a torn ACL. He's a big boy - 120 pounds - and very stoic, but he's panting and
whining non-stop, holding his back leg out at an odd angle and refusing to put any weight on it.

Doc gave him pain meds, and we'll reevaluate on Monday. If he's even a bit better, then chances are that it's a
partial tear, and can heal on its own. If he still can't put weight on it, then we'll have to go in for sedation and x-
rays, and discuss surgery options. Poor boy dog. :( It's a struggle getting him down the front stairs so that he can
go to the bathroom. It really hurts when an animal that you love is in pain.

I did manage to get through my anki and memrise decks while in the vet waiting room. And I also spent a bit of
time with my Elementary Tagalog workbook - but that was after 2 (large) glasses of wine, and it was too boring
to contemplate continuing after 15 minutes. Ha!

I'm going to pet my dog now and go to bed.

total time for today: 30 minutes
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 108 of 117
06 September 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged 
I spent most of the day on the couch, since the dog can't walk, he's in quite a lot of pain, and he gets stressed if
we're too far away from him. Couch time = language time!

Today I...

...started learning a new song. This week, I'd like to learn to sing Anak by Freddie Aguilar. It's one of the
most successful songs to ever come out of the Philippines, and it has a nice melody. I sang it three times today,
picking out a few new words each time. I have yet to read a full English translation; I'll do that tomorrow.

...ran through my anki and memrise decks. Anki's getting a bit tricky right now because I entered a bunch
of body parts from Teach Yourself and a bunch of prepositions from Elementary Tagalog. There are lots of new
words, many of them difficult to remember. I've also increased my new card limit from 5 to 10, because there's a
backlog of 80+ new cards that I still haven't seen, and I think I'll be moving on to a new lesson within the next
few days - which means another big vocabulary set.

I generally work from L1 -> L2 in my anki decks. But I'm finding that I'm struggling with L2 words that I "know"
when listening or reading. So I'll see the word "earlier" in anki and know at a glance that it's "kanina". But then I'll
read a sentence with the word "kanina" a bit later and - even though I know that I've seen the word before - it
takes me a while to clue in that it means earlier. I think that working from L1>L2 AND L2>L1 in anki would be
beneficial, but then my backlog of new cards would be twice as large.

I think some cloze cards might be beneficial. I just have to think about how I want to do them.

...wrote a short paragraph about my experiences teaching children. I'll work through the paragraph with
my italki tutor on Monday, so that she can help me make it sound more natural.

...read from my book bin for 10 minutes.

...kept working on lesson 10 of Elementary Tagalog. I did a reading comprehension exercise, where I had
to draw a sketch from a description of a room. It was a good review of all of the different prepositions! I also
transcribed a listening comprehension activity - another description of a different room. Tomorrow I'm going to
try my hand at writing a description of my living room.

I also reread the grammar explanation, since I was struggling a bit with prepositions, and then did a few more
grammar exercises from the workbook - much more successfully than yesterday, I might add.

total time for today: 76 minutes

Notes on grammar and sentence structure
:

Prepositions in Tagalog are preceded by “sa” or “nasa”.

On top of: sa ibabaw, nasa ibabaw
Behind: sa likod, nasa likod
Inside: sa loob, nasa loob

Use “nasa” when there is no action word:
Nasa loob ng kabinet ang mga kumot. (The blankets are in the cabinet.)

Use “sa” when there is an action word:
Naglagay ako ng mga kumot sa loob ng kabinet. (I put the blankets in the cabinet.)

Use “sa” with pseudo-verbs (may, wala, gusto, ayaw...):
Wala sa loob ng kabinet ang mga kumot. (The blankets aren't in the cabinet. / There are no blankets in the
cabinet.)
May mga kumot sa loob ng kabinet. (There are blankets in the cabinet.)

Edited by Stelle on 06 September 2014 at 8:47pm

1 person has voted this message useful



joe22999
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 3511 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 109 of 117
08 September 2014 at 11:04am | IP Logged 
Heyyy I know that Teach Yourself Tagalog book, the mum drops into the pharmacy to get
diarhoea (pagtatae?) medicine for poor Roy. Probably cos he ate so much in the chapter
before. I finished it a little while ago, it was useful. It has a slightly funny way of
explaining about the 'ang' and 'ng' form, active, passive distinction, I didn't really
get that until I read more about it online (Wikipedia has a very very good page on
Tagalog grammar)
Keep it up! It sounds like you have the right attitude - I hope you are still having fun
learning. I found a good website with a load of useful stuff on it, will post a link to
it next time

1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 110 of 117
08 September 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged 
joe22999 wrote:
Heyyy I know that Teach Yourself Tagalog book, the mum drops into the pharmacy to get
diarhoea (pagtatae?) medicine for poor Roy. Probably cos he ate so much in the chapter
before. I finished it a little while ago, it was useful. It has a slightly funny way of
explaining about the 'ang' and 'ng' form, active, passive distinction, I didn't really
get that until I read more about it online (Wikipedia has a very very good page on
Tagalog grammar)
Keep it up! It sounds like you have the right attitude - I hope you are still having fun
learning. I found a good website with a load of useful stuff on it, will post a link to
it next time


Hahaha! YES! That woman's voice drives me CRAZY.

I've been getting all of my grammar explanations from Elementary Tagalog (Tara Mag-Tagalog Tayo). I don't find
that the explanations are clear enough in Teach Yourself. I'm just using TY as a secondary resource, mainly for
the dialogues.

Please do share your link!

Have you been learning Tagalog for long?
1 person has voted this message useful



joe22999
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 3511 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 111 of 117
09 September 2014 at 8:35pm | IP Logged 
Hi Stelle
This is the site I mentioned:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/tagalog_mainpage.htm
I have found it quite useful
The intermediate lesson readings have audio too and seem to be authentic texts. Kinda
interesting too, with plenty of good vocab.
Also the songs:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/Tagalog_Default_files/Tag alog%20Songs/tagalog_love_s
ongs2.htm
click on the little loudspeaker icon by the song title to get the audio
You gotta love 'dito ba'
My girlfriend says its what people always sing when they're drunk!
Ive been learning it for about 4 months now, finally got around to it. I'm enjoying it.
There's alot to like about Tagalog
What's that book tara mag-tagalog like? Im going to get another book but not sure which
one to go for
1 person has voted this message useful



Stelle
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
tobefluent.com
Joined 3925 days ago

949 posts - 1686 votes 
Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish
Studies: Tagalog

 
 Message 112 of 117
14 September 2014 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
I finished the six-week challenge in 13th place, with 51 hours and 19 minutes of study. I'm really happy with my
final standing!

...and then I promptly did *nothing* for the next five days.

I've been running through my anki decks every day or two, but that's it. I think I got a bit tired. I want to get back
into Tagalog today, not using any courses, but maybe transcribing a cartoon. In general, though, I'm going to
scale back my Tagalog study. During the 6wc, I was spending about 2 hours most days, and - while I was seeing
progress - I want to have more time to dedicate to Spanish (my "primary" foreign language). So I'm going to scale
back to an hour per day for Tagalog.

Now that the six-week challenge is over, I'm going to aim for weekly rather than daily updates.

joe22999 wrote:
Hi Stelle
This is the site I mentioned:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/tagalog_mainpage.htm
I have found it quite useful
The intermediate lesson readings have audio too and seem to be authentic texts. Kinda
interesting too, with plenty of good vocab.
Also the songs:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Tagalog/Tagalog_Default_files/Tag alog%20Songs/tagalog_love_s
ongs2.htm
click on the little loudspeaker icon by the song title to get the audio
You gotta love 'dito ba'
My girlfriend says its what people always sing when they're drunk!
Ive been learning it for about 4 months now, finally got around to it. I'm enjoying it.
There's alot to like about Tagalog
What's that book tara mag-tagalog like? Im going to get another book but not sure which
one to go for


Thanks for the links! I'll definitely check them out!

I think that Elementary Tagalog (Tara Mag-Tagalog Tayo) is an excellent resource - especially if you have access
to a native speaker for some of the speaking activities. I find the grammar explanations very good.


1 person has voted this message useful



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