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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 1 of 70 22 December 2006 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Spanish:
I decided to promote my ability to speak Spanish from "Intermediate" to "Basic Fluency", based on reassessment rather than any new milestones. As my current focus is to get a few other languages from raw beginner to intermediate level, in 2007 I just plan to maintain my Spanish by reading a few novels. 2. French, Italian, German: It has been my long-held prejudice that these three languages, plus Spanish, are "mandatory", and 2006 has finally seen some action on that front. My experience with Spanish suggested that for languages with enough cognates, once one has a grasp of some fundamental grammatical structures and turns of speech, one can "coast" for a while in one's learning by just reading simplified readers and later novels, occasionally supplemented with a trip to a grammar book. I therefore decided not to follow the model of taking a couple of years at a time for each of these languages in sequence, but instead study each one just enough to be able to start on simplified readers, and grow them in parallel from that point on. I had gotten my French to that rudimentary state prior to 2006, have done that with Italian in 2006, and have started on German a few weeks ago. German has been a most pleasant surprise - it is the first time that a language is stirring a linguist in me, as opposed to just a language learner. German grammar is just fascinating. 3. Hindi: It was really supposed to take place before German, but I got sidetracked. Once the fundamentals of German are in place at the level described above, I plan to get back to Hindi. I have "Teach Yourself Hindi" and Assimil's "Le Hindi sans Peine", plus Usha Jain's introductory grammar book, so I expect the prevailing notion that there aren't enough Hindi materials not be an issue, at least not right away. 4. Children's language study: My older daughter decided to take French and not Spanish in 6th grade, and I did not object. However, I decided I should try to supplement whatever they are doing at school with some home study. I bought the first 26 episodes of "French in Action" on DVD, and after much cajoling I am hopeful that we are on track to start watching them regularly together. My younger daughter is in first grade, and when I was studying Italian, she was asking for Italian, but upon hearing increasing talk of German, demanded German. I bought a very simple workbook and one-CD program Learn in Your Car for Kids German from Penton, and she seems to have taken to it. It remains to be seen if she can be made to go through it more systematically to actually learn a few things. Finally, within the spirit of the holiday season idleness, I did an interesting exercise of making a spreadsheet with all the language materials bought in 2006 that I am still aware of as having been bought in 2006. The results have turned out to be most interesting. :) Well, that's about it for 2006 - I wish everybody here a great 2007. Edited by frenkeld on 01 April 2010 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 70 23 December 2006 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Congratulations on your progress and stirring the linguistic beast within.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 3 of 70 23 December 2006 at 5:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Good luck in your studies!!! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 4 of 70 23 December 2006 at 7:04am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, luke. I will try to keep the beast on a starvation diet, lest it supplant language learning altogether.
After nothing but Romance languages, anything new would be fascinating :), but it's also interesting to see a language that is related to English, but which has not abandoned its ancient grammatical roots to the same degree. By the way, are you taking German at school? I would find it pretty hard to like a language I had to be graded on. Edited by frenkeld on 23 December 2006 at 11:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 70 23 December 2006 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's impressive that you can find the time for so many lanuages. I've taken up Mandarin whilst still working on my French, trying to go to advanced fluency, and I've noticed a big slide in the attention the French has gotten. From four hours a day or so, to just a bit of reading and a TV episode of some sort, along with some vocab learning. I can't imagine what it would be like to do that many at the same time. My hat goes off to you.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 70 23 December 2006 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, looks like I wasn't very clear. The whole point is that my approach is tailored to someone who does not have much time. Of course, there is no free lunch, so one has to be clear on what is being sacrificed.
First of all, for French, German, and Italian, I plan to focus just on the passive skills at first. You will agree that this is a major cutback in goals, but also a major time saver. Secondly, even among the passive skills I plan to focus on reading as the main learning tool. This does not mean avoiding hearing speech, of course, but it does mean that reading will take priority over listening to the radio. Finally, these three languages have many English cognates, so one can start reading in them productively quite early on, and there are enough reading materials available for all of them, both the simplified and the authentic ones. Your example with Mandarin and French is somewhat extreme in that Mandarin is notoriously difficult for Westerners. However, it does bring up an important point that Hindi is not close to English and will require more concentration than, for example, going from Spanish to Italian. I am aware of that and will not start on Hindi until I have both made enough progress in German and settled into regular reading habits with the Romance languages, even if that takes up most of 2007. I hope the above is enough for you to leave your hat on. :) Edited by frenkeld on 25 December 2006 at 12:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| adoggie Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6533 days ago 160 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese* Studies: German, Russian, French | Message 7 of 70 09 January 2007 at 1:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Frenkeld, I noticed that although your native language seems to be Russian, your English remains excellent! I am currently learning German in school, and wish you the best of luck in your studies as well (and those of your family!).
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 8 of 70 17 January 2007 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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German:
After playing around with different materials, I think I have narrowed the choices enough to actually start doing some learning. What I've done with German so far: 1. Mid-November - 8 Dec 2006: Read the first 14 lessons of Assimil German and listened to some of them. Read the first two chapters, dealing with article, adjective, and noun declensions, of "German for Beginners" by Charles Duff. Also consulted Dover's little "Essential German Grammar" for noun declensions, since Duff's discussion of this topic seemed a bit overcomplicated and perhaps even slightly muddled, at least from the beginner's standpoint. 2. 9 Dec 2006 - 17 Dec 2006: While on a business trip, listened twice to Michel Thomas' Beginner German and half of his Advanced German. 3. 18 Dec 2006 - 11 Jan 2007: Read through, for general familiarization, Barron's "Master the Basics: German". It can be charecterized as beginner/intermeidate reference grammar. Somehow, I did not find the book quite as good as Barron's "Master the Basics: Italian" - the presentation didn't feel quite as well thought out and organized, and the sentence structure wasn't covered as much as I had expected. I still liked a number of sections in the book, so hopefully there was some benefit to reading it. My main motivation for reading through a grammar book at such an early stage was actually the fact that I am using an old textbook, and I want to be able to spot dated grammatical advice where current usage may differ from the old ways. 4. 11 Jan 2007 - 16 Jan 2007: Reread, with more care, Duff's first two chapters. I think I am reasonably comfortable now identifying the cases in reading matter, which is good - intuitive assimilation of grammar notwithstanding, I felt that not being able to identify cases with some degree of ease would be just too confusing. Knowing Russian also helped some, in a general sort of way. From my own quick observations, it appears that Russian instrumental case sometimes maps onto German dative, and some of the prepositions taking the genitive in German seem to do the same in Russian, but I haven't pursued this subject to any depth - it's hardly worth it at this stage, and the connection, if any, is likely to be only partial anyway. Future plans: The plan is to continue with Duff's "German for Beginners" as the main textbook until it either teaches me a decent amount of German or I become disenchanted with it, in which case I would switch to a study course with Rosenberg's German: How to Speak and Write It and/or German Made Simple. I can only reliably count on about half an hour a day of German study, so I decided against Assimil - to get anywhere with this type of schedule I can only use one core audiocourse or textbook, and I was afraid that several months of Assimil without much else would wreck my motivation for German, which would be a pity. I will undoubtedly find good use for Assimil in the future, since I am using an old textbook to learn the structure of the language and will want exposure to reliably modern speech patterns at some point. Kids: Not satisfied with their level of enthusiasm, I restructured their weekly allowances by reducing them, with the proviso that they can be earned back, and even somewhat beyond the former amount, with enough weekly language learning sessions. I can't say this is entirely consistent with my ideas on the role of money in pedagogy, so I can only hope that this at least bears some linguistic fruit. French: My older daughter and I have now watched the first 8 and a half lessons of French in Action. First we just watched each episode once. As lessons became more challenging, we switched to watching an episode, reading the transcript, then watching the episode again. I am a bit worried that she might become discouraged as the level picks up, so I've ordered the workbook and the audio CD's for part I as a backup, to give her the choice of seeing the material of each lesson presented from different angles if it proves necessary. German: I went through the first 9 lessons of Penton's brief introductory course Learn in Your Car for Kids German with my younger daughter. Things were going well, but one lesson got dragged out, which seems to have affected her motivation quite a bit, so I've been trying to dilute this course with other materials (Kidspeak 6-in-1 and a 1965 book "Fun with German" by Lee Cooper) to avoid "losing" her. Edited by frenkeld on 21 January 2007 at 12:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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