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Emme’s Small Steps - Team Sleipnir TAC’15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 137 of 360 17 April 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's because you're not getting the whole story :P And to think I feel like I am going
slow at this point in time... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4954 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 138 of 360 17 April 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | ||
I take a low stress approach with Anki. I don't delete or save words for latter, I simply look at them for a while and wait till they get repeated in a few days, I don't worry if I have actually retained them or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5135 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 139 of 360 22 April 2013 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Last week I didn’t study much. To be honest, I spent too much time on this forum instead of with my books, and it shows.
Now I’m a little behind schedule if I still intend to reach my goal for April which was to finish my first textbook for Swedish. I’ll have to work steadily in these last 9 days of the month to make it: it’s not an impossible achievement, but it will require a lot more of consistency and a lot less of time-wasting. The only positive thing in this lackluster week is that I managed to increase the number of radio dramas and films for the mini-Super Challenge. Let’s hope that this week I’ll be more productive, and to that effect I’d better log out as soon as I’ve posted this update. Mini-Super Challenge update. 27/100 WDR Hörspiel: Der Notfall erfordert alles von Eugen Egner, ©WDR 2003, 55' 28/100 Trau' niemals deinem Chef (89’) 29/100 Die Pastorin (89’) 30/100 Familie Sonntag auf Abwegen (89’) Minutes studied in the week of April 15-21 (and in 2013): Russian: 210 (3065) Swedish: 35 (1135) Japanese: 140 (420) German: 30 (345) French: 30 (195) Chinese: 0 (20) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4797 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 140 of 360 22 April 2013 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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You're awesome, I wish I was as hard working and you (but my attempts tend to fail).
When I meet a new word in an important deck, it depends on what the word is. When it is something that looks useful, I find a few exemples (just googling is often enough) and learn it. If not, than I don't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5135 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 141 of 360 26 April 2013 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good news! I’m back on schedule for finishing my Swedish textbook by the end of April. I haven’t actually done anything special in the past few days, I just put in the time. Let’s hope I’ll be able to maintain this nice rhythm next week as well.
I haven’t heard of any 6wc yet, but if there is one in May, I will probably try it again. In February I was really making good progress until something that had nothing to do with language learning got in the way. But the idea of a 6wc was actually proving successful, by making me work harder and in a more consistent way than usual. That’s why I wouldn’t mind giving it another try. I’m still deciding whether to have Russian or Swedish as my focus language. It all comes down to whether I can organize a few things (IRL) that would influence the kind of materials I have at my disposal for the challenge. I’ll keep you posted in the coming days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5135 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 142 of 360 30 April 2013 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great!
My first goal for 2013 has been achieved: at long last, yesterday I completed “Nya Mål 1”. I know it may not seem much of a goal, given that the book is at a rather basic level (it was designed for Sfi kurs B i.e. “Swedish for immigrants” up to what would be a CEFR A1/A2 level), but for me it’s important that I’ve finally managed to stick to just one book and work it through to the end. As I’ve written in other posts, I’m a book hoarder and over the years I’ve bought a lot of books that have ended up gathering dust on my shelves. I’m regularly charmed by new textbooks, their layouts, their colours, so that I can’t resist the temptation to buy most textbooks I come across. What’s stupid is not so much that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of money but that more often than not those very lovely books get started but never finished. I generally stop at about page 50, when a new book takes my fancy. This happens with almost all my languages, but the sheer difficulty of finding materials for Swedish here in Italy has made my “mania” for Swedish textbooks almost ridiculous. (Remember that my interest in all thing Swedish began in my teenage years, when there was no internet and finding a textbook in a library or in a bookshop was a matter of serendipity). When I decided to take part in this year's TAC, my main purpose was to stop going round in circles and finally make some progress. I’m of the opinion that using several manuals is not a bad thing per se, on the contrary, but the problems start when there is no real forward momentum in one’s studies. Now that I’ve shown to myself that I can finish a textbook I intend to plough through my other beginners’ manuals. Well, to tell the truth, my next step is to go through “Mål 1”, which is a newer edition of “Nya Mål 1”, that I’ve managed to borrow from a friend. It seems that going through different editions of the same manuals is an approach other people on the forum share: Expugnator, for instance, has chosen to work through different editions of Assimil rather than using the most traditional first wave/second wave approach. I suspect, though, that there will be fewer changes between editions of “Mål” than there are between different generations of Assimil: mainly an updated text with more emphasis on the vocabulary of new media for instance, but I’m not sure. We’ll see. But in order not to get bogged down again in the early stages of the book, I’ve promised myself (and my friend) that I’ll go through the book extremely quickly, as if it were nothing more than a review of what I’ve done in the past few months. My deadline is the end of June, when my friend and I are catching up with each other again (she lives in another town and we meet a few times a year). That’s the official version. In reality I intend to use the 6wc to speed through “Mål 1” and be done with it in just a month and a half. I wasn’t sure whether to participate in the 6wc with Swedish or with Russian, but when I realized that I would have just finished “Nya Mål 1” by the end of April and that I would meet my friend in one of the long weekends that characterize late April and early May here in Italy, I thought that I might get my hands on a new Swedish textbook (I know, I know, bad habits are hard to break ;-) But at least this time I didn’t have to buy it!) and make use of the 6wc to go through it. So here’s my plan for May’s 6wc: - go through “Mål 1”; - do a lot of grammar exercises; - watch some Swedish tv, which I’ve neglected in the past month; - read a children’s novel in Swedish; - keep doing my daily dose of Russian; - try to keep up with my mini-Super Challenge in German; - optional: if I still have time and energy, do something for French, German or Japanese. Let’s see how much of this plan I’ll be able to stick to. Minutes studied in the week of April 22-28 (and in 2013): Russian: 300 (3365) Swedish: 670 (1805) Japanese: 140 (560) German: 0 (345) French: 0 (195) Chinese: 0 (20) Mini-Super Challenge update. Films / Radio dramas: 31/100 Fluss des Lebens - Verloren am Amazonas (89’) 32/100 Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei Episode 18x15 Tödliche Wahl (47') 33/100 WDR Hörspiel: Lovegames von Markus Orths, ©WDR 2013, 55' 34/100 Vorzimmer zur Hölle III - Plötzlich Boss (89’) Edited by Emme on 30 April 2013 at 8:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4954 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 143 of 360 30 April 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I feel famous for being mentioned =D
Anyway, congrats on finishing your Swedish textbook! It's important as a background and also as a motivating factor. Besides, sometimes the most important in a textbook that makes it unique is in its second half, the first half having similar content/words among the various textbooks for the same level. That's why I almost always feel overwhelmed by vocabulary with Assimil, like I do now with Russian Without Toil. I may consider using Assimil almost as Linguaphone, as a pre-intermediate textbook before tackling native materials. Which means I should use Living Language for the languages that have it, as it has less lessons than Assimil. If you can already read Swedish, it's ok to stick to native resources, but maybe you could find a more advanced textbook such as the monolingual ones (På Vei, Stein på Stein) that exist for Norwegian. I'm so excited about being able to read Norwegian novels, but then I'm too obsessed about finishing a textbook and never coming back to it again, and I'm not as quick as tarvos =D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5135 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 144 of 360 06 May 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh, don’t worry! I’ve already bought some of those too! ;-) Actually there’s logic in my madness, though I’m sure every crazy person will maintain that! I know that the kind of slow progression with a lot of repetition that is bound to result from my using a few beginner’s manuals may sound redundant, but I believe that I truly need it. Many would probably be discouraged by such a plan, but it doesn’t bother me at all, especially since this kind of studying doesn’t prevent me from actually using native materials like TV-series or news articles or even novels. I believe that I need to work my way through my lower level textbooks because I don’t want to find myself in the same position with Swedish that I am with German, where my higher level vocabulary (and grammar) is much stronger than the lower one. This has caused a certain alienation towards German that I find difficult to overcome. I’ve already written about this problem in this post. There’s a lot of talking about the importance of high-frequency words, but I’ve come to realize with German that there are also hundreds of “highly-available” words (I’m using linguist Tullio De Mauro’s terminology here: generally speaking, they are low-frequency words in any kind of linguistic corpus but are very present to the mind of any speaker) and they seem to play an important psychological role in language acquisition for people like me (I don’t suppose other people may feel the same, but I’m tailoring my learning to my needs, and I have no intention to proselytize other learners). The “highly-available” vocabulary I talk about is usually learnt while still at a rather low level, but it feels kind of necessary: that may be the reason why I felt I needed to drop Assimil Russian (Il nuovo russo senza sforzo) for the time being when it wasn’t presenting me with the kind of words I need/want to learn in the first few months of studying Russian. You can’t imagine how wonderful it felt soon after giving up on Assimil and moving on to Learn Russian to meet words like “pen”, “door”, and “chair” in the first couple of lessons on that website. Can you live without the word “chair”? Of course you can: actually I don’t think I use it very often in Italian, but I need to know it to navigate the world around me and to feel really at home in a language even when the occasions to utter that word are few and far between. Hence my plan for Swedish. And it’s also a good way to justify the kind of money I’ve spent on textbooks over the years. Were I to skip levels, I would feel kind of guilty. Moreover I still make silly mistakes (like adjectival agreement) that drive me crazy: I know the rule perfectly well, but when it comes to using it I still get it wrong far too often. That to me is a sign that I need to repeat and exercise more, and a practical way to do it is by going through a textbook and its workbook, even if that means overall progress may seem slower. Actually I find exercises rather relaxing when studying a language, I’m weird like that. Minutes studied in the week of April 29-May 5 (and in 2013): Russian: 290 (3655) Swedish: 695 (2500) Japanese: 140 (700) German: 35 (380) French: 0 (195) Chinese: 0 (20) Mini-Super Challenge update. Films / Radio dramas: 35/100 WDR Hörspiel: Bitterer Ernst von Siggi Huch, ©WDR 2009, 54' 36/100 WDR Hörspiel: Die Infektion von Robert Weber, ©WDR 2012, 54' 37/100 WDR Hörspiel: Der Glückliche von Roswitha Quadflieg, ©WDR 2012, 54' 38/100 Nägel mit Köppen (90’) Edited by Emme on 06 May 2013 at 8:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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