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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 |  | |
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4147 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes  Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 249 of 331 16 March 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you don't plan to use the language much, of course there is no motive to continue. I know how you feel, because I also plan to stop some languages after a certain level, though not turkish.
I found something that might keep your interest for a while. Here is a book I plan to read (one day...). It has become my goal, more or less. Turkish Literary Reader (Uralic and Altaic Series) It includes prose, poetry, some useful cultural info (in English), as well as vocabulary of course. I'm sure if you... look around... carefully, you are bound to find it. Somewhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 250 of 331 03 April 2014 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Türkçe
I did really well with my Turkish in İstanbul! I was only communicating at an A1 level, but it came fluently, and after a day I was able to adjust my accent & pronunciation enough so that I rarely had to repeat myself. People were really supportive of my attempts to speak - Turkey is great for that - and the boys at our hotel would give me little Turkish quizzes each morning at breakfast. So all the hard work really paid off. However ... when I look at people's Facebook page, or pick up the newspaper, or even at an Assimil chapter, I realize that I still barely understand a thing. I still have a long way to go before I reach any kind of proficiency. One unique thing, for me, is how much of the grammar I was able to use even with my limited vocabulary. In Spanish and French, even though I have a moderate vocabulary, and can recognize most tenses, I tend to fall back on the present tense when speaking. In Turkish I used the -iyor, -d, -ebil, -ir, and -ecak verb forms regularly. Once I learned a form I could use the form, which was a nice surprise! I've toyed with the idea of trying to maintain what I know, but I don't really have the time. It would take a good year or more of hard work to reach a decent level, and I don't really have the time or the brain power. So, reluctantly, it's time to move on. Recap Pimsleur I - I did this first, back in December, then repeated the last fifteen lessons right before my trip. Extremely useful. FSI (Lessons 1-18) and Teach Yourself (Lessons 1-9) - We also extremely useful. I alternated between these two over the course of ten weeks. Assimil (Lessons 1-35) - It got too hard to continue. I would use this if Turkish was my only language, if I had the time to really commit an hour each day to struggle through each chapter, and if I had long term plans to reach proficiency. Babbel - Worked really well to internalize notions of vowel harmony, and keeps a vocabulary review list based upon each section you finish. It was useful to a point, but then the "review" section became too burdensome. Some days I would have 80 words, and it would take my close to an hour to clear it ... and not all the words were useful. I didn't do it for a few days, and my review list grew to 480! Français I finally finished À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. It was a long ten week ordeal. Some of the writing is beautiful. Some of Proust's observations are brilliant. But his style of analyzing every little detail of every little thought that he has is exhausting. Maybe I'll read the third volume in another year ... it probably won't be anytime soon! I'm also making one last final push to finish FSI - I'm half way through the penultimate chapter. I read once on HTLAL that no one ever finishes this course. That's enough motivation for me to try. Italiano I didn't touch Italian during my final Turkish push, and it was surprisingly difficult to come back to. I think I had exaggerated how easy it was in my own mind, and so was frustrated that I still have to work at it. I'm currently working though Assimil (slowly), Living Language (great for vocabulary acquisition) and Pimsleur III (great for speaking skills). More delusions: I am convinced that I will be able to jump right into reading Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino once the Super Challenge starts. ελληνικά I can still "read" the opening of the Iliad, but I think I'm reading like a child does: I've reviewed the lines so much that I can recite them without necessarily remembering what each exact word means. Once I've brought my Italian up to a sustainable reading level (and can stop formally studying it) I'd like to start in again. Español nada _____________________________________________________ Spring Exams April 18-23: Florence April 24-May 4: Nice, Avignon, Lyon. My French better be up to speed by them. Otherwise I'll just cry. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4147 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 251 of 331 03 April 2014 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Bravo kanewai. It seems that turkish is a really long road to walk on. Reading your review was helpful to me because now I see that I have to complete the entire FSI, along with pimsleur and possibly something else too, and then, maybe I'll be on my way!
Quizzes each morning at breakfast? That was great :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 252 of 331 10 April 2014 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spring Fever / One Week to Europe
This was supposed to be my time to jam: all French and Italian, all the time. But I'm just not feeling it. I'll open my Assimil, and my brain will say: no. I don't want to. I want to go to the beach, or bar, or just lay around the house doing nothing. On the weekends I don't even try. My motivation is low right now. Kind of. I track what I do on a spreadsheet, and I'm still making progress - it's just not at the intense level I was at last month for Turkish. I think that three weeks of intensity is enough for me. I enjoy it immensely, but I can't do it often. Türkçe I tried to write a note to a friend on Facebook, and I had to use the dictionary to look up a frikkin' pronoun. Language skills fade so quickly at the beginning level! Français I finished FSI Lesson XXIII, and have one chapter to go! I thought about pushing through it, but it has a recap of everything in the whole course - it looks too valuable to rush it. This is one I want to take my time with. I've been working on bringing my spoken French up to par, so it's been Pimsleur IV, an Anki deck with Assimil lessons in it, and DuoLingo. Though I'm kind of over DuoLingo. I started reading Vendredi, ou les limbes du Pacifique, a retelling of the Robinson Crusoe story by Michel Tournier (1967). It won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française; I think Tournier is one of those famous French authors who are unknown in the States. I'm reading now without a dictionary, which is exciting. And I dig the 1960's era cool of the cover! 
I've also been trying to catch Nicholas le Floch episodes on MHZ. This is tricky; they're only online for a week, and I usually don't finish an episode before it expires. Which is ok; as much as I enjoy the show I usually have no idea who is murdering whom - everyone looks the same in those powdered wigs. 
Italiano I go back and forth between good Italian days and bad Italian days. I downloaded Una ballata del mare salato (Hugo Pratt, 1969?), but it's still just beyond my comprehension. I'll need to work slowly through it with a dictionary. This will be my first Super Challenge book; it looks fun. It was the only Italian b.d. to make Le Monde's list of 99 Books of the Century. 
It's that or Dante. ελληνικά Español Edited by kanewai on 11 April 2014 at 3:36am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raconteur Diglot Newbie Poland bit.ly/1eiSWnc Joined 3681 days ago 34 posts - 47 votes Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 253 of 331 13 April 2014 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I also often suffer from lack of drive to do the necessary language learning, and as you said language skills fade so quickly at the beginning level!!! Together, lack of motivation and quickly fading knowledge is deadly to progress. This is what I have been struggling with for a long time - albeit I'm trying to change my shameful ways with help from my log & this great community! As a fellow sometimes-not-so-motivated learner, how do you deal with these kinds of moments? How do you get through them and keep going? Your language learning accomplishments clearly show that you have found a way! So what's the secret sauce??? :) Rac. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4678 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 254 of 331 16 May 2014 at 12:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Reality Check
Français First the good news - I felt really comfortable with my language skills in Europe. Especially French; I knew I had a lot of passive knowledge, but didn't have much confidence that I would be able to activate it. So it was a nice surprise when I crossed the border and my French just started flowing. The two things that really helped were reactivating my old Anki deck with sentences from Assimil, and doing the last fifteen lessons of Pimsleur IV. I did a little bit of Michel Thomas's Language Builder (the one with no students, but tons of common phrases), and I think I could have spent more time with that. Next time I need to activate French I'll probably try the same approach. I would like to build a better Anki deck with just Assimil's exercises, and perhaps one with all the sentences in FSI 24 - the last and most dense lesson. And the MT course is valuable for learning stock phrases to the point where they feel natural. I visited Nice, Avignon, and Lyon. Interestingly enough, Nice and Avignon are heavily touristed, but I relied on French almost exclusively there. People were supportive of my attempts, and I heard a lot of things along the lines of "oh good you can speak French, that makes things easier." In Lyon, which is not at all on the tourist trail (and was my favorite city) there was surprisingly a lot more English. The guys I met said they had an international set of friends, and though none were native-English speakers they found it easier to use it as their lingua franca. Of course it ebbed and flowed. There were definite times where my brain just shut off. Sometimes in mid-conversation. Moving forward, it's gonna be all about the Super Challenge. My favorite streaming site was shut down, so I'm not sure where I will find the movies and shows. My library, however, is growing faster than I have time to read. Italiano I made a big fifteen week push in Italian before the trip. And I was right where I expected to be: a confident A1 who could use limited skills fluently. I know this isn't a tenable level, based upon past experiences with Turkish and Arabic, so I intend to keep moving forward. It's also that dangerous level where you think you know far more than you actually do. I went into a bookstore and thought: I want to read Machiavelli. I tried the first paragraph. No go. So maybe something modern - Umberto Eco. Again, no. But he mixes in a lot of Latin and his own made up language. How about Italo Calvino? I already read him in English. Should be no problem. Hah. I made it through the first section of Le città invisibili, and it's beautiful, but I don't know that I'm really learning when I am cross-checking every other word against the English. So I scaled down again, and downloaded Harry Potter e l'Ordine della Fenice. And it's still hard, and my kindle dictionary does not handle Italian as well as it handled French. I got a lot of blank responses even on the first page. Obviously I need more work, that just because Italian is easier doesn't mean it's easy. And so I've started making my verb charts, and I'm continuing with Assimil through the summer (Assimil Italian is good, but a bit plain; I miss the stupid jokes of their French course, and the Gothic weirdness of their Spanish). Silly me. I thought I was at the point where I'd just get a free pass in Italian and sort of pick it up without a lot of work. Because: Magic, I guess. @ Raconteur - I actually have super low motivation right now. I'm not concerned, because I know I can take it easy for awhile and hit the books hard when I am motivated. The trick is to not actually stop contact with the language, so easy for me means twenty minutes with Assimil Italian at a coffee shop before work, and reading French lit over lunch or in the evening - and no self-pressure to finish any new courses, or do much beyond the minimum 20" / day. Türkçe ελληνικά Español Edited by kanewai on 16 May 2014 at 12:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5184 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 255 of 331 16 May 2014 at 1:16am | IP Logged | ||
Have you looked into using Learning with Texts on Benny's site? I have been using that with new (harder) books in Spanish - for the first few chapters, and I'm working through a French book with it, too. You need the text in digital form, but most stuff is fairly easy to find. (PM me if you need help finding something. I figure if you have a paper copy, I don't see a problem with finding a digital copy to supplement it.) It's really tedious at first, but that goes away fairly quickly. You have to have a decent grasp on the language and how it works, etc, but it is really helpful if you're past the beginner stage and already know a related language. Edited by Kerrie on 16 May 2014 at 1:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4811 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 256 of 331 16 May 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think this is an Italian forum discussing mystery novels. Perhaps you can find something fun there.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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