liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 10 30 December 2013 at 2:36pm | IP Logged |
TAC 2014
A hearty welcome to my log for TAC 2014! I'm delighted to be part of three teams this
year:
Team Triomphe
Team Spaß
Team Celts
This will be my second year participating in the Total Annihilation Challenge, this
time with the introduction of my new love: German. Here's an overview of the languages
I plan to study for 2014 and my goals in each:
German
I'm currently on lesson 93 of Assimil German with ease. The course has proved
excellent, very enjoyable dialogues and a nice presentation of grammar. I will finish
of the passive wave in a couple of days, and will chug away at the active wave over the
next 1-2 months. I expect to use Anki to record interesting sentences and such, and I
will probably carry out a second active wave a few months down the line. In terms of
resources, I have a Linguaphone course sitting on my shelf that I'm itching to
crack open. Hopefully it will be more grammar specific and begin to 'fill in the
blanks' where Assimil left doubts. The exact approach I will take with the course I
don't know yet, though I wouldn't mind experimenting with the "full circle method" as
advocated by Luca. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm reluctant to set
goals in terms of the CEFR. I'm a beginner at the moment, I hope to be somewhat of an
intermediate by the end of next year :)
French
I feel that I'm finally on the right track with French after too long pussyfooting
about. Reading novels has seen my passive vocabulary increase (currently on Harry
Potter et la Chambre des Secrets and will move onto Le Prisonnier d'Azkaban
shortly. Having focused too much on input relative to output last year, this year I
will try to properly "activate" all of absorbed until know. This will be through skype
sessions and writing on lang-8. Currently a solid intermediate with passive abilities
that surpass productive abilities. My goal is to get my speaking and writing up to
speed!
Irish
Nothing urgent here, just continue to improve. I should be starting an Irish-medium job
shortly so that will ensure daily practice in a professional sense as opposed to
conversations at home.
Scottish Gaelic
Keep alive until I need to activate my production skills again (I'm going to try to
make it to the Hebrides this year).
Edited by liammcg on 30 December 2013 at 10:50pm
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liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 2 of 10 30 December 2013 at 2:36pm | IP Logged |
Acmhainní
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JIK Diglot Groupie Bahrain Joined 4100 days ago 58 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Estonian, English* Studies: Spanish, German
| Message 3 of 10 31 December 2013 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
Best of luck with German! I'll be working on it as well :)
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BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4687 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian
| Message 4 of 10 03 January 2014 at 5:13am | IP Logged |
Two years ago, I went from zero German to a conversational B2 in a one year personal challenge. If I can do it, anyone can do it!
Alles Gute!
Edited by BaronBill on 03 January 2014 at 5:14am
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Sabrina VG Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5209 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Dutch, Flemish*, English, German, French Studies: Swedish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 10 03 January 2014 at 2:39pm | IP Logged |
Good luck with your studies, as a fellow Team Celts member I will be keeping an eye on your progress in Scottish Gaelic! :-) The Hebrides sound wonderful, I hope you'll be able to go there this year!
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liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 6 of 10 03 January 2014 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
@ JIK und BaronBill, thanks for the encouragement! I look forward to working with you
both and the rest of Team Spaß. Feel free to drop by anytime, I'll do the same!
@Sabrina, diolch yn fawr! Yes the Hebrides are beautiful, as are the green valleys of
Wales!
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liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4602 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 8 of 10 07 January 2014 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
Okay, my first update of 2014 will be rather short as I've been quite busy with other
stuff. I got the teaching job I mentioned in the opening post, which I'm over the moon
about! As a result I'll be quite busy at certain periods over the next six months while
planning schemes of work (every newly qualified teacher goes through a period of
probation to make sure they're up to the job, and this involves a lot of paperwork).
I'm currently churning out a lot of plans so language study is at a minimum. I'm not in
the least upset by this however, I'm delighted to be teaching and look forwad to the
challenge!
Since my last post I've:
Completed La Chambre des Secrets and am currently on the third chapter of Le
Prisonnier d'Azkaban, Assimil passive 96 in German (slow and steady eh?), listened
to some Scottish Gaelic after a few weeks break and found my comprehension hasn't
deteriorated, and driven myself mad with paperwork in Irish. Right, time for a cupán
tae.
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