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1000 hour silent phase - Khmer | ||
Tags: Khmer | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4926 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 25 of 30 19 June 2015 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
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I'm still far away from transitioning to speaking, but recently I've been thinking about the constraints and limitations of my current approach - and what to do about it when the time comes. The descriptive language I'm getting a lot of exposure to makes up only a small part of actual conversations. It's great to get me used to the pronunciation, prosody etc. of Khmer, and I'm learning many, many words, but it's lacking in other areas.
Here's an unstructured and preliminary list of 'types of language' not or not sufficiently covered in my current activities; I'm planning to use it later - either shortly before transitioning to, or in the early stages of speaking - to fill those gaps. I, you, he etc. - I'm getting a lot of he-language, and some I-language (I see, I think etc.), but I'm generally missing out on how to address myself and others appropriately. If Khmer is similar to Thai, then the use of pronouns is complex and requires quite some time to get used to. Plan of action: none - will hopefully sort itself out as I progress. Questions - I'm getting the odd question here and there, but way too little to pick it up. Being able to ask questions is critical, so I definitively need to do something about it. Plan of action: get my tutors to record 'question sessions' for individual pictures or even whole stories; do some focused 'question sessions' with a tutor once I'm speaking. Survival phrases ("Can you repeat this?", "I don't understand.", etc.) - critical, but this is probably only a handful of phrases. Note to self: check GPA manual for list of such phrases. Plan of action: if nothing better comes to mind, get a tutor to translate these phrases for me. General interaction (greetings, saying sorry, agreement/disagreement etc.), commands, requests, suggestions, expressing personal preferences etc. - some of that should be covered by Lexicarry which I'm planning to use later. Other ideas: role play and reverse role play, input flooding (to the extent a certain template can be identified), commissioning special recordings on isolated topics. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4926 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 26 of 30 03 July 2015 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
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These last few days, the weather in Switzerland and Germany was beautiful - warm, clear skies and zero chance of rain. I’ve decided to take advantage of these stable conditions and go biking for a week, from Switzerland through Württemberg and Franconia to Thuringia in the East. Switzerland and Germany have an extensive network of long-distance bike paths mostly through forests and farmland, and I really enjoy experiencing the various landscapes and cultures by bike. Food, architecture and dialects, they all change from region to region, and everywhere there are beautiful small cities or castles to discover. I especially love to indulge in local food on bike trips - when going biking all day, I can eat unlimited amounts!
For my Khmer project, this meant a complete break for seven days. I always manage to fit an hour or so of Thai into my day, wherever I am, using the language to stay up to date and keep in touch with friends, but sitting down and attentively listen to Khmer recordings is simply impossible (and ridiculous) after a day of doing sports. I’ve read in various places that taking a break can be beneficial. It allegedly allows the brain to consolidate acquired knowledge and recharge, and apparently people often report that they can just continue where they left off or even have better comprehension. To be honest, I didn’t even think about Khmer. Maybe a few minutes here and there about the people I’m working with, but most of the time I was busy taking in the views and thinking about the places I was biking through, and other things. Now that I’m back, I could indeed just pick up where I’d left off. I’ve got heaps of new recordings in my inbox, waiting to be listened to, and I’m now slowly ploughing through the backlog. So far, I haven’t noticed much at all. My comprehension seems to be more or less what it was a week ago, if anything at all then slightly rusty. Maybe a seven day break is not enough. There's no conclusion here - I've enjoyed my break, and now I'm enjoying doing Khmer again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4926 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 27 of 30 10 July 2015 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
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The learning plan I’m not following
Juggling several languages at once is always a challenge. Since I’ve started Khmer, I had to cut back on Thai - and it makes me feel uneasy. I love Thai and I want to keep progressing even though my main focus now is Khmer. So I’ve come up with a learning plan, something like a guidance for my day-to-day learning activities. The plan is simple: there’s a base component and optional activities. I always do the base component first in whatever order is convenient, and then add optional activities depending on how much additional time I have. Base component Thai: 30 minutes - listening 15 minutes - Anki (mostly legacy and well-hated, but I keep adding stuff; it's all monolingual anyway and counts as reading) 15 minutes (on average) - chatting and calls Base component Khmer: 2 hours of listening Optional activities: come in sessions à 30 minutes. I start with Khmer and then switch languages every 30 minutes. For Khmer, I just listen some more, and for Thai, I have a range of activities like: - writing lang-8 entries - working through a book (I’ve got several books related to language and linguistics open) - researching etymology or usage of interesting words or expressions I’ve come across (I keep a list of such words and phrases); some of that makes it into a blog post on my blog Thai Snippets - reading papers (I’ve started reading research papers on minority and language policy, this is related to my Khmer project) - reviewing recordings from previous tutoring sessions - working on proverbs (rare these days, but planning to resume this activity) - transcribing an interview - listening to the radio - writing emails - reading on the web - working through a school book (rare these days... I'm still in grade 3 :)) - etc. I also have at least one tutoring session per week, and there’s always a novel on my bedside table (but I don’t manage to read every day). I came up with this plan to ensure that after 2.5 hours of Khmer I add in some Thai in addition to my base load of one hour because in the past few months I would just plough ahead with Khmer when I had more time and this felt unsatisfactory. I need to learn to be happy with 2.5 hours of Khmer input per day! Ah, and I’ve started structuring my 30 minute Thai sessions as follows: doing the activity for 20-25 minutes, and then using the remaining 5-10 minutes to take a few notes (if appropriate) using Evernote. I’m not sure what I will do with these notes later, but that’s the concept right now. Maybe I don’t have to do anything with these notes… the process of taking them is supposed to be already beneficial. The only thing is, I don’t really follow this plan. Firstly, I sometimes continue to do Khmer to ‘catch up’ after a busy work week or a busy day. And secondly, I’m not very good at note taking. I need to learn to accept that the notes just get taken and then slowly disappear out of sight. But I’m trying. Today was a good day in that respect, and I’ve enjoyed that I got a lot of Khmer input but also had time to spice it up with one or two Thai sessions. Edited by Bakunin on 11 July 2015 at 12:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4962 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 28 of 30 10 July 2015 at 10:04pm | IP Logged |
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Sounds good, Bakunin. I do it everyday. I have a basic plan for all my languages that include textbook study (when necessary) and dealing with native materials for each of them, taking shifts. Then I have what I call a 'post-schedule' list, one I wouldn't feel bad if I didn't manage to do in a given day. I have about 9 hours to study and the main schedule fits into seven hours and so in the remaining two hours I can try dealing with specific issues, including output. I don't get to do output everyday but at least I try different types of listening (for example, if I watched native video in L2 with subtitles in L1, then I go for video without subtitles); I work on my dabbling languages (currently Uzbek and, somehow, Italian and I try to write a short paragraph in the language I feel on the mood to (has worked fine so far as I try not to just write in the languages I'm better at).
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| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4926 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 29 of 30 11 July 2015 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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@Expugnator: thanks for the methodological support :) … and - wow! You spend 9 hours per day on language learning?! This speaks to an incredible passionate and disciplined character! I need to work through your log to read more about Uzbek; I visited the country a few years ago and have fond memories of it. Beautiful Muslim architecture, a country steeped in (silk road) history, friendly people and good food. I love the amazing fresh figs in the region, there are so many varieties, and they’re all delicious… and of course the lamb sticks and a few other dishes like plov. I’m not an expert on Turkic languages, but I’ve traveled a few countries in the region and always had the impression that solid knowledge of any of the languages from Uyghur to Turkish opens up the whole region. Maybe this isn’t true, but even if not I’m sure Uzbek can be a very rewarding language to study. Thanks again for stopping by! Edited by Bakunin on 11 July 2015 at 12:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4962 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 30 of 30 13 July 2015 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
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Bakunin, as a matter of fact, Uzbek is currently just a dabbling language as part of the Turkic Challenge we're taking part into. Turkish is high on my hitlist and I may get to it within a year, but then Uzbek comes close because I find both the language and the country interesting. Who could imagine architecture would be such a strong motivating factor for one to learn a language? It was part of my motivation for Georgian and just by reading about the Uzbek cities makes me more tempted into learning the language later. Just from the little I've dabbled in Turkish, Turkmen and Uzbek, I can already notice how Turkic languages are grammatically similar and all interesting as a whole.
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