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Polish: another attempt

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Volte
Tetraglot
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Switzerland
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Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 81 of 154
04 March 2008 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
Day 24:
Just over half an hour of L-R. I did the first chapter of "The Master and Margarita", for the third time in this attempt. It was noticeably easier than the previous times, and also much easier than "The nightingale" was yesterday, even on the last repetition. I'm trying to analyze less and get into the story more, and also to focus on words I've come to consider common but which I still don't understand when I come across them in new contexts. I think I learned a couple such words tonight, but overall it's too early to evaluate this particular twist in the approach.

I also listened to a fair amount of music, prior to today's study session. My comprehension was quite similar to yesterday.

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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 82 of 154
05 March 2008 at 4:46pm | IP Logged 
Day 25: several hours of music, with greater comprehension than a couple of days ago. No L-R.

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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 83 of 154
06 March 2008 at 5:30pm | IP Logged 
Day 26: 55 minutes of L-R (with a twist), several hours of music.

I decided to try listening to artificially speeded up audio. I have chapter 3 divided into 4 (unequal) parts, and so I did them at normal speed, 20% faster, 30% faster, and 40% faster as my studies tonight progressed. Overall, I'm extremely happy with this: I think I was absorbing more, and that my comprehension -increased- from the change, as did the attention I was paying. I'd been suffering from boredom, and this largely alleviated that complaint. A minor bonus was that it took 55 minutes, rather than 70, to go through chapter 3.

I originally considered increasing the speed by 100%, but it was too fast, as was 50%. At this point, the latter would probably be doable. I intend to continue experimenting with gradually making the audio faster.

I had a number of reasons for trying this, but as it's quite late and I'm exhausted, I won't go into them tonight.

Grammar continues to become clearer. There continues to be less and less unfamiliar vocabulary - there's still some, but it's close to negligible. More and more of the vocabulary is filtering into the range where I can actively recognize it in new contexts.

My music comprehension continued to increase.


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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 84 of 154
08 March 2008 at 4:23am | IP Logged 
Day 27: 22 minutes of LR
I did chapter 4 at 150% speed (which means it take 2/3rds of the time).

Benefits:
- I find it far easier to concentrate and not be bored.
- I spend less time looking at the Polish - but still probably too much.
- Given that visual and auditory memory last an extremely short time, this allows me to have more in them at once.
- It feels like I can really comprehend a phrase at a time this way, which is... nice.
- It's still not enough to keep me from over-analyzing rather than just going for meaning, but it's a step towards that.

Downsides: there is some distortion introduced into the audio. I'd rather go faster at this point, but the faster it gets, the worse the distortion.

Does anyone happen to know a tool better than audacity's "change tempo" feature for speeding up audio under Linux?


Edited by Volte on 08 March 2008 at 5:33pm

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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 85 of 154
08 March 2008 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
Day 28: About 3 hours of L-R (very approximate).

I did chapters 5-13, inclusive, of "The Master and Margarita", at various speeds. 150% feels rather slow at this point. 200% is quite nice. 250% introduces too much distortion, and short unstressed details tend to disappear.

This is enormously better, for me, than going through the audio at normal speed. I stay much more focused, get a better feel for phrases (and even for prosody), and generally enjoy it much more. Normal speed was good at the beginning, but I find it a bit difficult the second time through a novel, and downright painful the third.   

I've been meaning to post on why I decided to try speeding up the audio. Actually, I started drafting it 3 days ago. I'll polish it up a bit more and put it in my 'thoughts about L-R thread' when it's in a decent state.

I had my first mental conversation consisting of everyday small talk in Polish ("hi, how are you, good, and you?" type of things - definitely not how I usually think, but I wanted to see if I could carry on a conversation at that level). It was fairly effortless.

I also managed some natural listening, still using http://www.rdc.pl/rdc.m3u. The first announcement was entirely transparent, as were chunks of the first song. My comprehension of other songs varied, from fragmentary to almost nonexistent. My comprehension of other announcements also varied; I couldn't catch the gist of all of them. One strange pattern that I've observed with 100% repeatability is that I can natural listen best right after listening-reading - and as I listen to unknown material for longer, my understanding drops precipitously. I'm yet to come up with a -good- theory as to why.

Also, chapter 13 is the chapter which contains the two large chunks (3 paragraphs and a bit over a page, respectively) which I don't have English text for. I understood almost everything in the first chunk, and got the gist of a significant part of the second.

I'm picking up more 'distinctly Polish' (that is, non-cognate with languages I know; many are probably 'distinctly Slavic' to those better-versed) words. Ones with meanings such as 'everything', 'such as', 'yesterday' and so forth are becoming much more familiar. I wouldn't feel comfortable using 'to co' yet, but it's gradually becoming less foreign.

I'm now listening to audio using mplayer -af scaletempo -speed 2 whateverfile.wav . This seems to introduce less distortion than audacity, although I could be wrong. It also doesn't require editing the files, saving them, and generally futzing around. The disadvantage is that I lose the ability to track L-R time as easily; I can't just select the appropriate files and see what amount of time they add up to. If anyone particularly cares, I can still calculate it, but if not, I'll keep it rather more fuzzy.


I also had a private query wondering what to do after one has done a significant amount of L-R. My answer, at this point, is "I wish I had a better idea...". I gathered up atama-ga-ii's comments in the main L-R thread, but I haven't distilled them in any way yet, and suspect that I lack the practical experience to do so. I'll be fumbling around in this direction in the not-so-distant future.

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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 86 of 154
09 March 2008 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
Day 29: 6 hours L-R.

I finished my third pass through "The Master and Margarita", doing chapters 14-34, all at 200% speed. I feel like I largely (though not entirely) understand the system of verbs, including aspect, the imperative, etc, at this point. I'd say that I'd be able to actively use cases correctly to a limited degree if I were working actively, but I'm still avoiding that.

I'm increasingly able to natural listen, especially to speech. A snippet on the radio about a biographer of Lenin was fairly clear. Songs still give me some trouble, and some parts entirely lose me still.

I intend to do more Listening-Reading before trying to move on to active work. I have not yet decided what stories to do it with.

A minor note: 2 hours of L-R were after midnight, finishing at about 2:15am, so technically on day 30, but contrary to my custom, I'm lumping them into day 29 for this log.

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kealist
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United States
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 Message 87 of 154
10 March 2008 at 5:14pm | IP Logged 
Thank you for sharing your experiences, Volte.   I was curious if you have an hour count so far with approximately how much time you've done L-Ring. (Yes, I realize that I could go through all your posts and count the hours, but I'm lazy and I figured that you would have it counted)   I would like to compare my results with L-Ring with Mandarin with your results of Polish.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6225 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 88 of 154
10 March 2008 at 6:10pm | IP Logged 
kealist wrote:
Thank you for sharing your experiences, Volte.   I was curious if you have an hour count so far with approximately how much time you've done L-Ring. (Yes, I realize that I could go through all your posts and count the hours, but I'm lazy and I figured that you would have it counted)   I would like to compare my results with L-Ring with Mandarin with your results of Polish.


I'm at approximately 50 hours. I'm rather confident that the number is between 45 and 55.



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