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TAC 2015-Advanced Study Group Team Thread

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
33 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5  Next >>
sctroyenne
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5150 days ago

739 posts - 1312 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Irish

 
 Message 1 of 33
01 January 2015 at 8:39pm | IP Logged 
Welcome to the Advanced Study Group, making its debut in the TAC 2015!

This is the group for those who have already reached a high level in one or more language but for some reason are not "done" making progress. Even though we are studying a diverse range of languages, the challenges we face are similar and so we can do a lot to help each other.

At the advanced level it's easy to stop making progress: the effort required to level up is exponentially greater than at the beginning and intermediate levels, we can already get by pretty well so the motivation to study is lower, there are significantly fewer resources and guidance geared towards us, and making progress relies almost entirely on our skills as autodidacts to figure out what gaps we have in our knowledge and how to fix them.

In addition we face the normal problems of adult and self-learners of balancing our studies with the demands of everyday life and many of us have branched off into studying other languages as well.

In this team, we will help each other set goals, come up with study plans, and collaborate on activities and challenges. This is so that by the end of 2015 we can proudly point to tangible progress we've made in our advanced language(s).

Watch this first post for updates with links to member logs and resources (I'll pull links from the other TAC thread unless you want to designate a separate log). In the meantime, please introduce yourselves and let us know how you plan on annihilating your advanced language(s) this year!

Also, if anyone would like a name other than Advanced Study Group, feel free to post suggestions!

Members:

Expugnator - French (can understand Portuguese, Spanish and Italian), German (can understand Norwegian)

sctroyenne - French (can understand Spanish)

anamsc - Spanish (can understand German, French, and Catalan)

Serpent - Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, possibly Polish; can follow logs in Slavic&Romance languages

garyb - French, Italian; can mostly understand Spanish.

Cavesa- French (can understand well: English, Spanish, her native Czech, Slovak)

IBEP- Spanish, Kannada (can more or less understand Italian, Portuguese)

catullus_roar - German, Spanish, French literature (can understand well native English, mother tongue Mandarin, L2 French)

Via Diva - English

suzukaze - English, plus Spanish and French (passive skills only, though). Can also understand German, a little Swedish and Portuguese. Mother tongue Italian.

Edited by sctroyenne on 01 January 2015 at 8:40pm

3 persons have voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4925 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 33
01 January 2015 at 10:19pm | IP Logged 
How about Team Varnish?! (As the analogy with polish isn't possible due to linguistical ambiguities). Seriously, it's hard to think of a name that doesn't sound like boosting, I'm ok with Team Advanced.

I'm really looking forward to a productive year for this team!

I am Brazilian, 30 y.o. and a civil servant. I've been studying languages a lot for the past 3 years, but my main difficulty is comitting myself to writing or speaking my languages. After English, my best foreign language is French, somewhere in the B2-C1 continuum. I want to be able to write more fluidly and with less mistakes and I also want to keep my listening skills sharp. I used to have more opportunities to speak French but now I will grab any I find.

German is my other advanced language. It is not so advanced yet, but the activities I want to do with German are of the type of the ones being suggested here. So, I believe I am better here than at the German team.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Via Diva
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3993 days ago

1109 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek

 
 Message 3 of 33
02 January 2015 at 3:56pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
So, I believe I am better here than at the German team.

can I politely disagree? :)
_____________
I am a student, studying chemical engineering and thus very interested in advancing my English (and German, once I get there). I need to polish my grammar and pronunciation, get rid of nasty little mistakes, learn to listen almost from zero (I am maybe not that
bad, but whatever) and improve my writing (I have already signed up to MOOC suggested here in General discussion room).
I want to direct this all to science area, centring on technical, chemical and ecological stuff (latter due to my insane dream of building first ever complex waste recycling plant in Russia).
I am also interested in literature and cinema/series/music vicious triangle.
2 persons have voted this message useful



IBEP
Bilingual Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3390 days ago

19 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, French

 
 Message 4 of 33
03 January 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
Hey y'all! Glad to be part of this team. Regarding my goals:

Spanish: I'd like to sit (and pass!) for the C2 exam this year, so to that end I am doing a full Super Challenge in this
languages.

Kannada: Get literate! And read some books.
1 person has voted this message useful



garyb
Triglot
Senior Member
ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4966 days ago

1468 posts - 2413 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, French
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 5 of 33
03 January 2015 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
Hey everyone, I'm Gary from Scotland, I've been studying languages on my own for around five years now.

My log, which explains my goals and ideas in more detail.

My main goal is to improve my speaking in both French and Italian: conversational ability/fluency, pronunciation and accent, consistency, confidence. I find this to be the hardest part by far of language learning, so I'm keen to share and discuss ideas. In both, I can currently speak both somewhat fluently on a good day (French more so but Italian is catching up), but not consistently; I don't get as many opportunities to converse with native speakers as I'd like, and so when I do get them I don't always feel confident speaking the language.

I also have secondary goals of improving my comprehension of very colloquial speech and of polishing up my Italian grammar.
1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4925 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 6 of 33
03 January 2015 at 8:47pm | IP Logged 
As we're discussing ways for activating your languages, I noticed that it helps a lot to try and write dialogues in TL and making them as authentic/colloquial as possible (if your goal is mastering the colloquial register, which can be considerably different from the formal one, i.e. in French). In case of giving a lecture on TL, I believe writing can serve both purposes.

Last year I started a dialogue writing challenge and the little I did brought up significant improvements. I still regret not doing enough writing or talking last year and I hope I won't repeat this mistake again in 2015.
3 persons have voted this message useful



IBEP
Bilingual Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3390 days ago

19 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*, Kannada*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin, French

 
 Message 7 of 33
03 January 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged 
Forgot to link to my log earlier, here it is: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T
ID=39738
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6356 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 8 of 33
04 January 2015 at 12:41am | IP Logged 
Since it's an advanced nitpicky group, let me point out that "ie" means "that is" (id est). If you give just some examples, but there are more, use "e.g." (exempli gratia). And when you've already established that it's not the only representative, there's no need to use etc at the end.

Nothing personal, I just see this kind of mistakes a lot even on HTLAL.


5 persons have voted this message useful



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