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Kanewai 2015: Team Caesar | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | Catalan | Ancient Greek | Turkish | Polyglot | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 331 29 December 2011 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll take a look! Right now I have more Italian material than I can use - I had already
ordered Michel Thomas when a friend sent me here Pimsleur Italian I-III. It makes me want to find more time this year to focus on the Italian. I'm tweaking my goals for 2012. Catalan isn't really realistic at this point - I don't think I can start two Romantic languages from scratch! French / Italian / Spanish is enough of a handful! And since I've been working on Arabic all along, I'll go ahead and log that here too. Edited by kanewai on 29 December 2011 at 8:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 10 of 331 29 December 2011 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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2011 Wrap-Up
French Pimsleur I: 4 weeks Pimsleur II: 5 weeks FSI Volume 1: 12 Chapters, 14 weeks total. French in Action: 5 chapters in August. Didn't finish series. Assimil French with Ease: 113 Lessons, 15 weeks. 8 Active and 58 Passive lessons to go. There was a lot of overlap; I would guess I spent 24 weeks with French as my focus between May and December, with a break in the fall, spending between 30" to 90" per day. I liked this order, starting with Pimsleur and then moving to an FSI/Assimil combination. For all that, I still don't think I've made the jump from A1/A2 to B1! I don't think I speak well at all, and want to step back in 2012 and focus on some of the more speaking-oriented programs: Pimsleur III, maybe Michel Thomas Advanced. And I fully intend to finish French with Ease, and to start Using French. Spanish Pimsleur I & II: 10 weeks Yucatán & Chiapas: March. 2 weeks immersion! Assimil Spanish with Ease: 70 lessons out of 109. 9 weeks. FSI Basic: 5 chapters, 3 weeks. Jalisco and Nayarit: November. 10 days. I understand far less Spanish than French, but speak it better. Even the short periods of immersion help immensely. My Spanish in 2011 was focused around two vacations, so I did about ten weeks at the beginning of the year, and then ten weeks in the fall. For the record: people in the Yucatán speak a nice, slow dialect of Spanish; it's wonderful for the beginner! I used similar programs as with French. Pimsleur was almost identical. FSI involved more book drills than the French course, and I lost interest very quickly. Assimil Spanish was more advanced; the dialogues were longer, and new grammar was introduced quickly. I liked it a lot, maybe even more than the French Assimil, but it took much longer to work through. For 2012 I want to jump up to the B-1 level. I have Pimsleur Spanish III lined up, will finish Spanish with Ease, and might try Perfectionnement Espagnol, even though it is French-based. Arabic Pimsleur I (Eastern): 6 weeks. I retained nothing. FSI Written, Volume 1: 10 out of 32 lessons, 6 weeks. I hit a wall and quit. Assimil L'arabe: 28 lessons out of 77. 6 weeks so far. I have started and quit studying Arabic half a dozen times already. There are too many dialects, the courses suck, and my progress is so dang slow. I've spent 18 weeks this year so far, and each lesson is still a struggle. Which isn't to say it's bad - I'm ok with the struggle, and it's a beautiful language. I'm just looking forward to the point where I can just pick up and read a text, rather than have to sound everything out letter by letter and word by word. Of course, working with French texts does slow me down a bit. And looking forward to 2012, all my potential Arabic courses are French-based. I'm getting two for the price of one here. I had made a Google calendar to keep track of what I studied & when; it's really nice to be able to look back at the end of the year and see how it went! Edited by kanewai on 29 December 2011 at 10:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 4905 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 11 of 331 30 December 2011 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
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That's a really neat idea, keeping track of what you spent your time on all year! All I have is my log to tell me that. Although, I accomplished so little in 2011 that I'm not sure I'd want to see it all laid out like that. :) May 2012 be a better year!
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 12 of 331 03 January 2012 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Week 1: French Intensive
I took advantage of the holiday weekend to do some intensive studying. For the past five days it's been French whenever and however I can. I made a big jump, but it was exhausting and intense and felt a bit psychotic at times. I don't know how some of you all study four or five hours a day. I lose focus and start to drift off. This was good for a week, and I'll do three more intensives in the coming months (one per holiday weekend), but this coming week I'm moving back to "slow and steady." I've also added a bit of weight from all the sitting around studying, given that I usually study with either a glass of wine, a beer, or a pint of ice cream to feed my brain. Professor Arguelles never mentioned that big hips were one of the prices of polyglottary. French Pimsleur III: Lessons 1-7 Michel Thomas Advanced: 2 cds (out of 4) Assimil: Lessons 105-113. I finally finished the passive wave! and one flic: The String (Le Fil), 2009: Malik is a gay architect who moves from Paris back to Tunis to live with his mom ... and falls hard for Bilal, the gardener. It's a beautiful movie, even with the clichés. It's also a bit steamy, so make sure you're comfortable with that if you rent it. I did a self-evaluation that I saw on Black Dahlia's log, and got a 60% in French, or Beginner level. That's fair, but I had hoped for more! I couldn't do all Assimil, all the time, so I pulled out my Pimsleur tapes and started Part III. And remembered everything that I like and hate about the Pimsleur method. On one hand, you do make progress in each lesson. It's slow, but it is solid forward motion. And even though I knew everything that was covered through FSI and Assimil, I still found it useful, and sometimes tricky, to have to call it up on demand. BUT. Lesson 7 introduced "le livre," "la table," and "les notes." As in: Les notes sont sous le livre. This is supposed to be the advanced course, and it's aggravating that the little new vocabulary they introduce is wasted on words like "les notes." I also tried Michel Pimsleur for the first time, and was pleasantly surprised. I thought I would be irritated by the students - I always was on preview - but now I'm more a believer. There was a moment when I thought: how the heck did Michel Thomas know I didn't pronounce the "d" fully in "prendre?" And then I realized that the male student was making the exact same errors I make. Meanwhile, I finished Assimil's passive wave! I don't think I've finished many text books before. I still have a few weeks left of the active wave. I loved the course, but am glad to be moving on. The last ten dialogues were an extended story about a couple's move to Paris. It was somewhat dull. I'm ready for literature, or better writing, and am hoping that Using French has some of this. If it ever arrives. Arabic Assimil L'arabe: Lessons 29-31 Still keeping to about twenty minutes a day here, doing Arabic on my lunch hour. Slow and steady. I did go ahead and do some un-Assimil-like things such as making verb charts. And I've completely given up on using the recordings, and now treat this as a written course. Looking ahead, the course is starting to enter new territory for me. This week they start to get into the nine forms that are derived from verbs. I think this is where the poetry of the language will really start to come into focus. Sneak Peak: Italian Michel Thomas Foundation Lessons 1-7 I've collected so much Italian material, and have been chomping at the bit to get started! I was going to wait two more weeks, but I decided to ease into it, and get a taste for the language before I make it my main focus. It was a bit more challenging than I thought it would be, and I will definitely need to listen to this a second time before moving on. But here is one difference between MT and Pimsleur already: I hated it when I had to repeat lessons on Pimsleur. I don't think I'll mind it so much with MT. I couldn't pull off three languages at a time back in September. I'm gonna try it again, and but keep each language separate by method, time, and technique. I'm thinking: Lunch: Reading L1 Gym: 30" of cardio with Pimsleur or MT, L2. And I need the cardio, so I will be at the gym a lot. cf. Argulles, hips (above). Home: 30" of L3 with Assimil or FSI This week I'll work on my Arabic reading at lunch, I'll use MT Italian at the gym, and continue with Assimil French in the evening. In a few weeks I'll rotate. This should work, yeah? Edited by kanewai on 03 January 2012 at 9:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5185 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 331 03 January 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged | ||
I don't remember him mentioning beer and ice cream, either! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 14 of 331 06 January 2012 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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French - Preview of Using French
(Le Français en pratique, Assimil Advanced Series) Using French finally arrived last night. I won't start it until this weekend, but since reviews were hard to find on it here are some first impressions: - There are 70 lessons, and 4 cds. Using French is smaller than French with Ease, but denser. Both have the same author, Anthony Bulger. It follows the same format of a dialogue with 15-20 lines followed by exercises, with a Revision Lesson every seven chapters. - There is no mention of a passive and active wave. I think that an active wave would be very difficult, as the book contains much more casual and literary speech. - From the intro: Using French is designed for those who have finished French with Ease, or who have a "good intermediate knowledge" of the major tenses (present, future, passé composé, and conditional), a basic grounding in the present subjunctive, a vocabulary of about 500 words, and a grasp of the formation and position of adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. - The book focuses on idioms and details, "questions of register", and introduces the literary tenses. - I was hoping for more literature this round, but only found an excerpt from Les Misérables and a brief bio of Honoré de Balzac. - The digital labels on the chapters have improved. e.g., rather than importing as 'Lesson 30' and 'Lesson 31,' the chapters import as 'Leçon 30 - Les débuts de la Révolution' and 'Leçon 31: hors de Paris, il n'y a point de salut.' This will make it much easier to find and replay select lessons in the future. Overall, it looks like a high quality follow-up. I'm looking forward to starting it. Edited by kanewai on 06 January 2012 at 2:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4997 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 331 06 January 2012 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
Interesting you say that, as I found that there was a bit too much literary language (be it actual excerpts from literature or just lessons in a literary style) and not enough everyday conversational language. I suppose they have to try to cater to everyone so they put in a bit of everything, and the reader can then pursue the areas that interest them further. Overall I found it to be a good course, although not quite as useful as With Ease, since With Ease covers so much important everyday stuff (think of the 80-20 principle, the 20% of language that you use 80% of the time) and Using is more specialised, and I my thoughts on the Active wave were the same as yours. I'm currently working through it for a second time, mostly for shadowing practice (some nice fast speech in there!) but also to revise the material I've forgotten since the first time round. Anyway, enjoy! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4679 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 16 of 331 08 January 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Italian Week One
Michel Thomas, CD 1 (Lessons 1-11) Pimsleur 1-4 Studystre.am I am loving Italian. I don't think I've ever enjoyed the beginning stages of language learning as much. Now. This could be an illusion. This is my first new language in over seven years, so there's the excitement of something new. It's my first time with Michel Thomas. It's my third Romance language, so I'm progressing faster than I ever have with any language. Or I could just love Italian. There's some nice synergy with my French, too. For instance, in French I mix up trôp and assez, but it is easy to remember that tropo is too much in Italian. So, now I have trôp down too! I am only easing into the language right now, doing Michel Thomas while at the gym, and will kick it into a higher gear in a few weeks. But I am already fantasizing about trips to Italy each spring to give me motivation to keep studying. I like the MT method for the most part. I like his emphasis on verbs, and language structure, a lot. I like the little hints he gives. And I like that it's a steady but rapid pace, without a lot of vocabulary in the early stages. I am a firm believer in learning structure, then vocabulary. And I like that the lessons are in short chunks of three to seven minutes. I'm not a total convert, though. I have to repeat a lot. I think I spent four hours on the first one-hour cd. I still might need to repeat it again later. I rarely had to repeat a Pimsleur tape - it was usually slow and steady progress. And about a quarter of the time Mr. Thomas trips me up by interrupting a stuttering student with stuttering interjections of his own, and it totally throws me off. I've been doing the occasional Pimsleur, since I do have it. It's not my priority. It does help, although they insist on using uneccessary pronouns (e.g. saying "io voglio" instead of just "voglio." This does not help at all, and I don't know the logic behind it. The Pimsleur Italian also has a ten minute reading section at the end of the lessons, so the oral part in only twenty minutes. I'm not bothering with that now. And I do need to wonder why they don't have reading sections for Japanese or Arabic, where it would have helped immensely? But overall, I'm amazed at how much I've gotten in only a week. Edited by kanewai on 08 January 2012 at 3:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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