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Serbian: B1 in 7 months | ||
Tags: Heritage Language | Serbian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3330 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes  Studies: Serbian | Message 1 of 40 01 June 2015 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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So I quick run down of what I'll be doing from my last log:
# Continue having at least 1 lesson a week with my tutor # Continue doing my Glossika course # Continue to review and add words to Anki # Update this log at least once a week # **NEW** Write at least 100 words everyday at Lang-8 # **NEW** Watch at least 1 Serbian movie a week (Subtitles in English allowed) I will note down which movies I watch, and I'll occasionally post my stories, but you'll be able to find them and their corrections on Lang-8 here. I will also post what movies I have watched, and I might actually create a Google Spreadsheet with a nice graph of time spent and what I've watched and wrote if I gather the motivation to do so at some point, at which point I'll edit this OP. Right now it's a massive uphill battle for me, right now all that's on my mind is keeping afloat (conversational ability) let alone getting to shore ("fluency"). I think that building up my vocabulary is probably where it's at now as I have a good enough grammatical understanding to express ideas - just not the vocabulary to express them. This is where my stories come into play. I will write a story a day, post it to Lang-8 and review the corrections. Essentially what I'll be looking for to begin with is an overview of the situation - what are the general errors that I am making? Which vocabulary do I tend to make the same mistakes with? Things like that. I don't expect to have the vocabulary to express everything I want to say, so I will be relying on Google Translate, Wiktionary and then Lang-8 to ensure I get the right vocabulary with what I want to express. Along with this, I of course have some native speakers I talk with, not including my tutor with whom I will get the chance to polish these things. See you in my next post! (probably some time later today, and then not again till next week) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 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 2 of 40 01 June 2015 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck!
Rather than movies, may I recommend the series "Budva na pjenu od mora"? I found out about it because of my favourite Montenegrin footballer, I quite liked it myself and Clare's already got to season 3 and liked it even more :) It's all available legally on youtube btw. Our experiences have been different. Clare has done a lot of reading and mostly needed to get used to the spoken language, and afaiu she would understand almost everything in writing. I generally do massive listening before massive reading, and I still have many gaps in the basics but I understand a lot (and I loved going back to the beginning after finishing season 1, though I still had maybe 80% comprehension). The context/visual clues help a lot. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles but I'll do my best to clarify when needed. (and Clare's done her best to explain to me as well:)) And the first season is quite predictable anyway. The main benefit of a series is that you get used to the people's way of speaking. Movies are much more difficult at this level. you asked a question about tags. which ones do you want to add to this post? any senior member can tag it for you :) Edited by Serpent on 01 June 2015 at 11:05pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4377 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 3 of 40 01 June 2015 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would definitely second what Serpent has said about a TV series being easier to understand than movies. I have
tried a few Serbian and Croatian films during the course of the Super Challenge and really struggled with them, because just when I've got far enough into it to recognise the characters' voices and understand some of what they were saying, the film would be over. As Serpent has said, with a TV series you get used to how people speak and the sorts of things they are likely to say, and so the more episodes you watch of the same series, the more you understand :) I am totally addicted to 'Budva' but I appreciate that it might not be for everyone, particularly if you want to imitate the pronunciation you hear, as some of the characters have regional accents and pronounce certain words in ways that would sound weird outside of Montenegro. I haven't watched any Serbian series but I do recommend Deutsche Welle srpski which has a weekly European news programme in Serbian. I find it quite easy to understand because the presenters speak quite slowly and clearly, like newsreaders :) If you find a good source of subtitles, please let me know! I had some success finding Serbian or Croatian subtitles for English films, but not with finding any subtitles (either in Serbian or in English!) for Serbian films. Srećno :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nikolic993 Diglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 3574 days ago 106 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: Italian, Mandarin, Romanian, Persian | Message 4 of 40 01 June 2015 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck with your new goals!
Here are a couple of recommendations: TV shows: 1.Vratiće se rode 2.Porodično blago 3.Stižu dolari 4.Ljubav, navika i panika You can find these here, here and here. Movies: 1.Kad porastem biću kengur 2.Montevideo 3.Nebeska udica 4.Lepa sela lepo gore 5.Munje 6.Mi nismo anđeli 7.Lajanje na zvezde 8.Tri palme za dve bitange i ribicu 9.Mrtav 'ladan 10.Čitulja za Eskobara You can find most of these movies on YouTube. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3330 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 5 of 40 02 June 2015 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you kindly for your offer :) I noticed there was a heritage language tag which I think is definitely applicable. I'm wanting my (hopeful) success here be an inspiration to other heritage language learners as I know there's many of us for a variety of languages. To everyone, thank you kindly for your learning suggestions and movie/tv series recommendations. I am still in the very early stages so there's not much I understand, perhaps a word or two per sentence with the odd occasion where I understand an entire sentence or at least enough words to know what's going on. As such I think subtitles are sorta important for me as I don't really have that much discipline to force myself to watch something I am basically understanding nothing of :P I will keep an eye out for subtitles for these series, but I have found some for movies. I've gotten hold of a few. The first one I am starting to watch is called The Parade. It looks interesting so we'll see how much I get out of it. Also, last night I found Dragon Ball Z in BCS, or should I say Zmajeva Kugla Z? :P This has been fun, and the last 2 episodes I've watched have been great as I'm understanding a lot more dialog than other things I've tried to watch. I suppose this is due to familiarity with the content, and its generally simpler dialog. Anyways, thanks again everyone! I'll be sure to keep you posted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3330 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 6 of 40 03 June 2015 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||
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## basica's musing hour..
I have been reading emk's log "French: Wandering towards C1" for the last couple days and though he is at a far much higher level at French than I am at Serbian, I noticed I see some parallels between our experiences. For example, when I am speaking with a native speaker I too seem to be having the issue of speed vs accuracy. If I am reciting a word or a sentence I have quite good pronunciation and if I write something I can generally produce okay-ish grammar but when I am attempting to have a conversation, both go down the train and I really notice it in my accent. It's really jarring hearing your terrible accent. Another thing I've noticed is the process of grammatical structures going from being theoretical knowledge to being something hardwired in the brain. An example of this is biti and the clitic se. It started with me knowing somewhat intuitively that se needs to be used *somewhere* in this sentence with this verb to knowing ok it's secondish to then somewhat producing it automatically. The same goes with biti, especially in the past tense which is actually remarkably improved for me. For example it's fairly automatic now for me to say "kad sam.." ## noticed improvements I know it's easy to not notice improvements because they usually happen so gradually so I will try to document these here so I don't forget. # Past tense construction dramatically improved, I know the formula for the most part now, and I'm familiar with the irregular constructions for most of the common verbs. What needs improvement? Conjugating gender and person. # Far more aware of clitic placement and other grammatical patterns (i.e. gde ti je majka vs gde su ti deca). This is becoming far more ingrained thankfully. # Though I have been able to do so for a while, I can hold a basic conversation. I think even the beginnings of a A1 level are awesome the first time you get to that point. It's hard to describe how cool it is to be able to construct sentences "on-the- fly" and be able to ask and respond to questions without the reliance on memorization of some phrase that's essentially meaningless to you. ## other info I've continued watching Zmajeva Kugla Z and I'm still enjoying it :) I got some homework to do for my tutor which I'll need to kick myself around till I do it tonight after work, and I also need to do my Glossika stuff earlier in the night, I've been leaving it to do in the evening, and by that point my motivation to concentrate and do it right is near 0. With my writing every day goal, only 2 days in but so far so good :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3330 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 7 of 40 07 June 2015 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Šta ima novo kod mene? Ma ništa, samo sam pisao svakog dana na Lang-8 sajtu i vežbam srpski jezik sa
nastavnicom i takođe mojim kursom. I've been writing Serbian over on Lang-8 for about a week now and I've already noticed that my writing speed has improved. My first entry probably took me about 10-15 mins to write while my latest was only a matter of mins. The words are flowing into my mind far more quickly and I'm spending far less time trying to figure out how to conjugate or decline words. Quite amazed at how rapidly that has occurred. Still a lot of room for improvement, but yeah totally amazed that only a hundred words a day for a few days can already start to make a difference. Aside from this I have watched a few episodes of DBZ in Serbian so I'll count that as 1 movie and I had a lesson with my tutor last night as well which went well. I wrote a story and we went through the corrections which was fun. My next story I have to pretend to be a cat and write about what I see around me and all that. It sounds fun and I can't wait to crack into it :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3330 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian | Message 8 of 40 14 June 2015 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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So, I came across a checklist which was initially posted by EMK (but another user kindly pointed it to me). It's
there to sorta help you find out where you sit on the CEFR scale. It's nice to have a checklist like this as it seems like it's easier to judge yourself against one. In any case, after reviewing it and giving a self assessment, I am quite comfortably in the A2 range. My weak areas in the checklist are ones that I don't really have an opportunity to practice (street addresses, computer terminology and the like) but I have a language partner with whom I'll be using to practice these sorts of scenarios with. It was a bit of a relief to see that I wasn't overestimating my skills - I think this is partly due to the gap between A2 and B1 being a far bit bigger than A1 and A2 which made me think there was a lot more to the A2 level. So, with that said I can see how getting to a B1 level in a language in 3 months is double. If I was more serious about adding vocabulary and studying the language I think I could have reached a B1 level in this amount of time. I am not that disciplined though, but now more so than ever do I think a B1 level is reachable by end of the year. I think with a disciplined effort of adding more vocabulary - along with my regular lessons and and writing on lang-8, this should be relatively straightforward. That said, I think that ultimately I am not going to be with a B1 level. I think I am going to need at least a B2 level for me to comfortably be able to move onto another language. I think not being able to comfortably understand TV shows or movies is unacceptable for me (not expecting to understand every word, but I want to be able to follow along for the most part). I don't really have the opportunity to bring this language to a C2 level, but since it's my "native" language I feel like I need to be at least high functioning in it as much as I possible can without daily interaction and thus B2 will now be my ultimate goal as I think it's achievable and maintainable in my current environment. In any case B1 is still my focus for now, but I've just raised my ultimate standard. Anyways, I've been keeping up my routine for the most part but I'm finding it hard to develop a routine to regularly read/watch things. I just have a low tolerance for not being able to understand things I guess. This probably wouldn't have been as much of a problem had I learned a Romance language like French or Spanish - but we'll see how that ultimately turns out. With the daily writing and the other habits I've had, they're all still going smoothly thankfully. I think as I develop more vocabulary from my writing that I do on lang-8, the easier it will be for me to try to read books and watch things. I think once my anki deck gets to 2000 words this might change. Will wait and see (it's only around 500 at the moment, not including words that I just know and words in memrise et cetera). As an aside, I'm sorta feeling wanderlust for a bunch of languages, but the biggest draw at the moment is Mandarin. Even in my small town there is a lot of opportunity to use it (as well as Cantonese). I often order Chinese food and there's the occasional issue communicating so I'd love to be able to pull out some Chinese in these situations and get some practice plus clarify any misunderstandings :) Anyways, that's enough of my rambling :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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