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The drunk snail’s journey (TAC14)

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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 129 of 161
01 December 2014 at 1:14pm | IP Logged 
ASCR count update:
111,7 French "books" out of 200, only 88,3 to go, that means 8830 pages.
161 French movies out of 200, that is 39 full movies, 78 longer tv series episodes or
156 short ones.
109,4 English books out of 200. That is 90,6 to go, or 9060 pages.

My SC plans:
1.count my Spanish movies, which is the only thing I have starting. Remembering how to
use the bot and where are the results stored, that might help.
2.Finish the French ASCR before the DALF!!!
2.Continue with the Spanish movies,Start with some Spanish books.
4.Finally start with Some German books and tv series.
5.Eventually finish the English books.



1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 130 of 161
10 December 2014 at 8:22pm | IP Logged 
So long without an update. Well, the good thing is that I've been spending much more
time on German than on my log ;-)

GERMAN:

The 6wc is going fine. I am slightly catching up the worse beginning, currently over
13 hours. It doesn't look like much but still. It is better than usual for me,
especially as I am as well focusing on another language (French) and all of my
estimates (every time I cannot count the time spent on German exactly) are rather
underestimates than overestimates. I think my real time could even be an hour higher
but not much more than that, I guess.

What am I doing:
Assimil. The Spanish one (in paper) is awesome. I am now in the middle of unit 48 of
the passive weave. I'll get to the active one tommorrow, yay!
Klipp und Klar: I have completed 23 lessons out of the 99 there.

So far, I had seen most of the things I've been learning before. But there is far too
much space for improvements.

As I don't have audio for the Spanish based Assimil, I am glateful for the
pronunciation basics I learnt in past and I am quite often using forvo as a reference.
It is an awesome tool and German is the most popular language there. Over 400 000
words have been recored in German so far.

French:
Not much time but I should make up for it. Without me putting in as much as possible
and writing a lot at home to have it corrected, the lessons with tutor are just half
as useful as they could be. I need to rectify the situation.

ASCR:
books: still reading but I don't have time for it because of German ;-) Perhaps I
should finish at least one or two out of the three books that I'm going through.
movies: 10 episodes of Hero Corp, which is +2,5 movies. I really like the series and
I'm looking forward to watching the rest.

Spanish:
It looks like I've been neglecting it entirely but that is not true. I am reading it
nearly every day in the Assimil as the base language. It is some practice and I've
learnt a few new words. And the texts sound quite natural even in Spanish, so it is a
graded reader as well. I know I am ready for real books, I just need more time.

Yeah, and I've written a letter to Baby Jesus and there were some books among my
wishes as well :-) It is a nice tradition and I was surprised my parents asked me to
write a letter as well, even though I am not a little girl anymore :-D

I've been recently considering my hitlist as the wanderlust bug bites me again.
Fortunately, my plate is so full there is no place left for this shiny but venomous
insect. But next year, I will surely add something to the list, hopefully the long
awaited (and several times tried) Swedish. Or perhaps something slavic until my German
is safely away from the possible interference zone.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 131 of 161
13 December 2014 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
I had a two day long pause from German. I'm ill, with antibiotics and was too tired to
concentrate. So, I'm gonna catch up today.

But I have finished a book I've been trying to finish for far too long, and started
another.

ASCR French books +8 A.Dumas:Les Trois Musquetaires
I totally loved it, why have I not read it till now? Awesome, fun, funny, exciting,
thrilling, much better than all the movie adaptations, not too sweet yet not without
happyend and catharsis, just great! And easier than many modern books, in my opinion, so
if you are still not a too advanced French reader, this might still be a good book for
you.
2 persons have 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 132 of 161
13 December 2014 at 7:05pm | IP Logged 
Oh, I hope you'll get better soon!
And congrats on finishing the three musketeers! (btw do you know that there's a russian adaptation too?)
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 133 of 161
13 December 2014 at 9:13pm | IP Logged 
Thanks, Serpent :-)
It is an awesome book but I have too little time for long ones nowadays. I used to
love the books accordingly to their length (I hate saying goodbye to my favourite
heroes) but nowadays, there is a huge drawback to books over 4 or 5OO pages.

Since my last post, I did some German grammar from Klipp und Klar and found out I
really need to reorder the chapters. First, I started from number 1 and hoped to get
to 99. But around 18, I was still at declinations but I needed some tenses to keep up
better with Assimil. So I reordered things by the level written in the contents. First
A1 and A1/A2 lessons, than A2, A2/B1 and finally B1. But that doesn't work either
because some A1/A2 lessons require obviously knowledge from the more advanced chapters
(I've just struggled with a prepositions chapter which required not only the relevant
dectlinations but as well one past and one future tense that I've just seen so far but
surely cannot use). So, I need to spend no more than 10 minutes now (I don't wanna
lose study time to study planning, I am no Rimmer), look at the contents, and reorder
my studies based on my previous experience with languages and the limited experience
with German. Basically, the first to finish will be things I'm seeing in Assimil these
days or that I partially know.

So, next plan is: finish all the noun declination chapters, all those about articles,
about present time, modal verbs and perfect.

And I complemented my dinner with 2 episodes of Hero Corp, which makes +0,5 French
movie and it was fun. And with Quebec French!

The TAC sign ups are going and therefore I need to think about a few issues for the
next year: (fortunatelly, I've still got two weeks to make those plans)

1.Which languages am I going to actively study:
-surely French, I want that DALF in February. I've been planning it since my arrival
to htlal or even before that blessed day
-surely German, it is going fine and I really want to finally move it to the native
input zone and do that SC I signed up for
-surely Spanish, I need to get better at active skills or rather build the full base
for them, that means to learn lots of grammar etc. And to finish the SC
-probably one more. I've totally failed at Swedish this year and I hope to get to it
next year but it might be irresponsible for me to sign up to the awesome scandinavian
team again under such conditions. And there are other hot candidates for the next
actively and intensively studied languages that I am more likely to need. Basically,
the choice will be between Swedish, Italian, Russian and Polish.

2.Which teams should I join?
-of course one for each of the main three TLs
-perhaps for the planned fourth TL of the year? I don't want to disappoint a team
again, I wasn't much of an asset for Asgard in 2014. Most likely, my 4 language won't
make me go into a team
-very likely the intermediate and advanced teams if those are founded

3.Name for my 2015 log.
Some crazy (and some stupid) ideas: The shiny jewels; All the strange, strange
creatures; Pathological language lover, the Bookworm's adventures, Across Europe and
back; Wine vs. Beer; Input maniac;...
3 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 134 of 161
14 December 2014 at 3:41pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa's genius way to deal with the pile of books she is currently reading (just four
until yesterday): add some more! So right now, I am in the middle of three books in
French (a short polar, a shorter TOlkien, Le Fantome de l'Opera) and two in English.
(a Pratchett, LoTR)

Other than that: I hoped to solve my enormous numbers of German grammar mistakes by
looking things up in another grammar book, a czech one, as it does apply a totally
different approach. Oh. It is good, it is systematic, there seems to be quite
everything needed. It is quite descriptiv but nothing I couldn't handle (at least when
I read the problematic pieces twice or thrice). But! The cases are ordered
differently. Following the info on the German wikipedia, it is ok to sort them
Nominative Genitiv Akkuzativ Dativ (and it is similar to Czech or Latin this way) but
all my other sources use Nominative Akuzativ Dativ Genitiv order, probably chosen for
didactic reasons. And I am now confused whenever there is 1.pád, 2.pád etc instead of
the name of the case in the explanations. :-(

So, I just decided to jump into native input and see what it does to me. I've watched
first episode of a tv series in German! First episode of True Blood, in German with
German subtitles. How did it go:
-without having known it previously, I would have huge trouble following the plot at
least two thirds of the episode.
-but I was still catching quite a lot and could more or less follow quite a huge part
of the dialogue
-I'm not sure I like the German voices :-D
-the subtitles don't match the audio at all :-(
-dvd gives me better video quality and no need to worry about the free space on my
hdd.
-but I hate the unskippable pieces, the prices of having it delivered etc and I am
unlikely to buy dvds with series I haven't already tried online. I love to support the
creators with a reasonable price but considering the (lack of) space in my appartment
and (lack of) funds, I cannot just buy everything that catches my attention for a
second. I wish we had access to Netflix
-I really enjoyed these 55 minutes or so. And it is very motivating for me to learn
more vocabulary now as I am recognizing things I saw in anki yesterday :-)
-I obviously have the real basics of grammar covered when it comes to passive
understanding, the trouble is the vocabulary. But not being confused by the grammar
too much, that is good news. But there is lot to do in this area as well.

Now, where were the instructions for the super challenge bot? I need to register first
half a movie in German. for the record here:
SC German movies +0,5, True Blood: 1 episode.
1 person has voted this message useful



patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4322 days ago

1546 posts - 3200 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 135 of 161
14 December 2014 at 5:08pm | IP Logged 
I liked True Blood in German. I remember liking the voices, to the point now that I don't know Eric with an English accent. Too bad about the subtitles, but if you know the story it might be easier to simply switch them off.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 136 of 161
15 December 2014 at 1:18am | IP Logged 
Ouch, I thought the 6wc included the 15th of December as well. Doesn't matter much.

here are my results:

37th place in TL with 16h19min
not bad, even though I hoped to cross the 20 hours line. The beginning of the 6wc
wasn't ideal for languages but I think I recovered quite well.
-6 hours of so of Assimil (the Spanish based paper one). I have finished lesson 49 of
the passive wave. Lots of old things, some new, I missed the audio, I am looking
forward to continuing in a more relaxed way (I'll try to go 1active+1passive per day)
-6 hours of grammar, mostly from Klipp und Klar. Extremely useful even though there is
long way to go for me. It is hard to get further from the romance languages.
-less than 1 hour of anki but I am going to continue with it. It is not that fun but
it works
-approximately 1 hour of Themen Aktuell. I like the course but I think progressing
with Assimil and grammar should take priority, and catching up on anki with all the
vocb from previous lessons will allow me to finish the course finally
-nearly 1 hour of tv series, which I mentioned yesterday. I take it as a nice closure
to the 6wc.

Spanish: not a single minute recorded, despite a few minutes spent with reading online
and some more time with the Spanish based Assimil

French:
my total time spent on 6wc: 42h48min, 33th place or so
quite a lot of time spent on speaking, due to my meetings with the tutor, a bit on
writing, I should work on that skill much more, lots on reading and tv series, as that
is an easy way to hoard minutes.

My goals till the end of the year:
-put in the log two things I promised after my summer experience so that I can start
the tac15 log without any debt ;-)
-study my university subjects more dilligently, exams are coming in January
-continue with Assimil German
-read and watch in French
-but more importantly, write much more in French

SC and ASCR count update:

current SC (the one with the bot) shows my challenges as:
Spanish: 20 movies, 0 books
German 1 movie, 0 books

ASCR (alias my stubborn yet slow determination to reach the 200/200 by the old rules):
English still the same since last update
French: books 119,4/200 and movies 164/200

patrickwilken: thanks for the idea. I might try it even though I find the subtitles
sometimes helpful as well. So, I'll need to see whether they are more helpful or
distracting for the time being. I don't think I am ready to just jump into a tv series
with no help :-D



1 person has voted this message useful



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