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Language Log of the Solocricket | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 1 of 30 30 January 2015 at 2:29am | IP Logged |
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Hey everyone!
I've decided I need to keep track of my languages a bit better, and also that I do far too much lurking and not enough posting on this forum.... Currently, I'm studying/maintaining at various levels French, Spanish, Icelandic, Polish, and Japanese. Last year, I made a lot of progress with Spanish-- my reading and aural comprehension are pretty good-- and I did a good amount of casual Japanese reading while other languages languished. Here are some goals and active methods I'm using at the moment: French: My level is around C1 with my passive skills markedly better than the active. Hopefully a bit of writing and talking to myself will remedy that to some extent. I've been reading a lot more classic literature lately, and that is certainly taking the French to a new level. Back in October, I read Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac, and right now I'm in the midst of Germinale by Emile Zola. I listen to Gameblog.fr podcasts and a few Youtube channels in French, but otherwise I haven't been doing a whole lot of listening. I lost some interest in French after I attained a certain level, but I'm hoping to keep at it so that I don't lose it. Spanish: I'm not sure where my level is on this one-- I understand a lot of radio and television, newspapers, and children's novels. I haven't done much output aside from short writing assignments. Late last year, I was working through a few Harry Potter books-- La cámara secreta and El prisoniero de Azkaban. I've been working through El cáliz de fuego, but the book so heavy that it's deterring me.... I've been listening to Mexican radio in the mornings, and I had been listening to Spanish national radio in my office until the IT department blocked all streaming media websites :( I need to do more with my Spanish since I live in the US and this is the most useful of my languages while I'm here. Icelandic: The main project of 2015! I'm going to Iceland at the end of July/beginning of August for ten days, so my goal to learn as much Icelandic as is physically and mentally possible. It's proving to be a bit of challenge so far (lack of materials-- there really is a dearth) but that won't stop me. I've been listening to hours of Icelandic radio and podcasts virtually every day this month (had to switch to podcasts at work due to the aforementioned IT problem). I've been working through both Hippocrene Beginner's Icelandic and Teach Yourself Icelandic (the 1960s edition). Both books are lacking in content-- there just isn't a lot there. While I used Anki sentences to learn French and Spanish, I thought I would try Icelandic through more textbook methods considering the lack of materials, but yesterday I decided I'll just go with Anki again. I don't know if seven months is long enough for the SRS to really work its magic, but we'll see! I'm mining sentences from both textbooks, I have another textbook in the mail, and I managed to scrounge up one Icelandic crime novel from US Amazon: Sér grefur gröf by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. Aaaaand Japanese: This one's a weird one for me. My level is not so good, but I've started Heisig's Remembering the Kanji so many times (and finished it once!) that my handle on kanji is sorta okay, and I can make out a lot of the text in manga. I've had a love affair with Japanese since I was twelve, so I feel I owe it to myself (or Japanese? Anthropomorphisation of languages is always healthy) to learn it to some level. I literally have piles of Japanese manga and novels, and access to more, so I feel like this one would be really rewarding. But I suppose all that starting and stopping has kind of soured Japanese for me. This year, I hope to read manga more consistently--but still casually-- so that some minute progress is made. Polish: I'm going to a Polish church! I have a Teach Yourself Polish book, a couple of novels, and motivation from Polish ancestry. Unfortunately, Polish is taking a bit of back seat to Icelandic. I'll keep going to Polish church, though. (Italian, which is totally not on the official list: I have an Italian novel and Italian podcasts, and it's quite fun to understand some from the French-Spanish Discount. But it's not serious, I swear.) So that's that! What a ramble. I hope to update with changed/new methods and sources. If anyone has thoughts, I'd love to hear them! EDIT: forgot to add Polish earlier... Edited by solocricket on 30 January 2015 at 2:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dedalus66 Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 3401 days ago 16 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Greek | Message 2 of 30 31 January 2015 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
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Do you have much motivation to learn Polish, or is your interest purely because you're of a
Polish background and are going to a Polish church? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 3 of 30 31 January 2015 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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A few months ago, around September-November, I was pretty motivated and worked through
some Teach Yourself Polish and did some Anki. The motivation, I guess, is that there is a very lively Polish immigrant community here-- something I never expected, since I´m currently living in a pretty rural place. I´ve always found the language and culture very, very fascinating. It would be nice to interact with some people here, but I´m not planning to do much active studying in the coming months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 4 of 30 01 February 2015 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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Log Update
ICELANDIC I've decided to do the 6 week challenge with Icelandic, but just as a personal challenge (i.e., no Twitter). I'd like to reach A2 by March 14. I've been sentence mining the last week or so with Anki, and I'm already up to ~250 cards. So, for the 6WC I plan on entering the vast majority of sentences from the Hippocrene textbook and Teach Yourself, and some from a new textbook I'm getting soon (no idea how many sample sentences that one has). My goal is ~30 sentences a day. After only being at Icelandic for a month, things are starting to feel familiar. Once I've got more basic knowledge, then I'll take a more serious crack at the grammar. FRENCH I've been listening to the podcast Monumental, and I'm still reading Germinale. I lost the plot there for a bit, but I caught back on and it's getting interesting. My goal every day is to read 2% of the book (on Kindle). I'm only at 24% read, so this book will take awhile. SPANISH Yesterday and today I've been watching/listening to documentaries on Youtube while making my Icelandic Anki cards. My standby radio station (Radio W from Mexico City) has been playing a lot of elevator-esque music, and thus has been demoted. I need to find a better book to read, because Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire just isn't interesting enough. Might try Esperanca Renace (Esperanza Rising in the original English), a children's book that might be more fun. JAPANESE I've been reading こどものおもちゃ (Kodomo no Omocha), a manga I've read dozens of times in English, since I was a kid. Since I practically have each speech bubble memorized, it makes for good comprehensible input. It's a 10 book series, and I've been slowlyyy working my way through them off and on since August 2013, when I visited a Book-Off in San Diego. I'm on Volume 6, after ditching Volume 5 halfway through. I'd like to finish these and start a series series by the end of April. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 5 of 30 04 February 2015 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
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Update:
ICELANDIC (6WC) Going strong! As I've said, I'm not using Twitter for the 6 week challenge, so I'll log my information here, just for fun. February 1: I logged 15 minutes for Anki reps, 40 minutes adding sentences, 20 minutes watching a kid's show (Latabær-- Lazytown), and around two hours worth of radio (I listened longer, but I'm truncating the time since a lot was passive). Total: 195 minutes of study. February 2: Same major categories of activities, decided to increase the number of cards I add per day to ~50. Replaced video-watching with copying out text for ~10 minutes. Total: 220 minutes. February 3: Anki plus mostly-passive audio. Total: 210 minutes. FRENCH FR: Récemmement, j'ai écouté plusieurs podcasts en français. Particuliérement, j'aime bien Monumental et Gameblog. Monumental est plus formel et plus éducatif (les locuteurs parlent des sites historiques comme Istanbul ou Hollywood (le Hollywood nostalgique d'antan bien-sûr... Je sais bien que cette ville n'est pas si majestueuse que les villes anciennes.)). De plus, j'ai regardé plusieurs vidéos sur Youtube, ceux qui concernent des livres et la littérature. J'ai vraiment besoin de livres--- Germinale est un peu trop difficile juste maintenant (et un peu trop lassant pour mon niveau) donc je ne sais pas qu'est-ce que je lirai. (Donnez-moi des corrections svp !) EN: Recently, I've been listening to some podcasts in French. I particularly like Monumental and Gameblog. Monumental is more formal and more educational (the hosts talk about historic sites like Istanbul and Hollywood (Old Hollywood, and I know very well that Hollywood is certainly not as grand as ancient cities). Additionally, I've been watching Youtube videos talking about literature and suggesting new books to read. I really need some new books-- Germinale has proven too difficult for right now, and a bit too boring for my level. I don't know what I'll read next. SPANISH ES: Todos los días escucho el radio méxicano y leo El País (en línea). ¡Necesito hacer más! (No puedo cambiar las idiomas con mucha facilidad... Miraba fijamente al monitor por unos minutos antes de escribir en español) Listening to radio and reading the El País each day--- need to do more! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 6 of 30 07 February 2015 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
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Update:
ICELANDIC -6WC I'm trying to find ways to increase the amount I do with Icelandic, especially with the 6 week challenge. I like Anki a lot (especially with sentences) but because it doesn't take up too too much time, there's plenty of room for more active studying. A couple days ago I did a couple lessons on Icelandic Online and I might add it as a daily or almost-daily thing. I like that it reinforces a lot that I'm learning from Hippocrene while adding vocabulary that's a bit outside Hippocrene's "daily life" range of situations. However, I'm not too crazy about Icelandic Online's presentation. There's plenty of lessons on there, going up to B1/B2 (apparently), but the lessons consistently introduce a lot of new vocabulary without defining the words, and they can't easily be figured out from context. I bounce back and forth between the lesson and an online dictionary, so it gets tiresome. On the bright side, my crime novel came in the mail! Now I can spend my time parsing Sér grefur gröf. Feb. 4: 45 min. Anki review 50 min. adding cards 10 min. copying text 60 min. passive audio (reduced) 60 min. Icelandic online Total: 225 min. Feb 5: 60 min. Anki review 45 min. adding cards 180 min. passive audio (reduced= 5 min. reading Sér grefur gröf Total: 290 min. Feb. 6: 60 min. Anki review 60 min. passive audio (reduced) Total: 120 min. Edited by solocricket on 07 February 2015 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4327 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 7 of 30 07 February 2015 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
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Icelandic online has a glossary included. You just need to find it ;)
In case you get frustrated by your Icelandic novel, you could give "Ástin fiskanna" a try. Short novel (100 pages or so), relatively easy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| solocricket Tetraglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3482 days ago 68 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Icelandic, Korean, Polish | Message 8 of 30 07 February 2015 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
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Oh jeez I just found the glossary on the lesson page (I knew it had a dictionary, but
that just opened to a new window). Thanks! I´ll definitely check out Ástin fiskanna. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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