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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 23 05 October 2015 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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Again, with residency schedule, I didn't have any structured language learning plans, I've just been enjoying movies,
some short stories, and youtube videos. I've listened to a lot of Spanish radio stations since moving to Texas, and I restarted listening to cafe Brasil. No big goals for October, but my schedule should be a bit lighter starting in November, and I plan on setting some language goals for November-December to make some strides. SEPTEMBER HOURS: Russian: 5 hours, 20 minutes Spanish: 4 hours, 0 minutes Japanese: 3 hours, 40 minutes Chinese: 3 hours, 30 minutes French: 3 hours, 30 minutes Portuguese: 2 hours, 40 minutes German: 2 hours, 25 minutes Polish: 2 hours, 10 minutes Greek: 20 minutes Italian: 10 minutes Running 2015 total: Spanish: 86 hours, 55 minutes Japanese: 81 hours, 45 minutes Chinese: 66 hours, 40 minutes Russian: 32 hours, 25 minutes German: 25 hours, 10 minutes French: 16 hours, 25 minutes Italian: 16 hours, 0 minutes Portuguese: 15 hours, 30 minutes Greek: 3 hours, 55 minutes Polish: 3 hour, 15 minutes Dutch: 30 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 23 01 November 2015 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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Ever since starting residency I haven't had a clear goal in language learning, just doing whatever I feel like for fun. I
am a bit disappointed in this style, since I know it is not a way to make big improvement in any language. I've been lost, with a bit of Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Greek, Dutch, and not a lot of time on any of these. This strategy is fine for "language maintenance" if I already speak a language (IE my German, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, French), but NOT ok for new languages that I'm weaker in. Starting next month through the end of the year, I am going to cut back on the number of languages I'm studying, in order to better progress. That means putting Greek, Polish, and Dutch on hold, and consciously committing to more time on Chinese and Japanese (with a goal of 10 hours in each language per month). As far as my stronger languages go, I would like to spend more time reading in Russian. While I can speak and read Russian very well, I still often have trouble with literary language, and need a dictionary to help me with 19th century authors (which slows down the flow of reading, and makes it no longer about reading for enjoying the story, and more an exercise). The only way to improve is to practice, and I plan on reading more short stories by Chekhov (who I recommend to anyone trying to learn to read Russian classics, as his writing is shorter, and a bit easier than Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin IMO). We'll see how things go, and how well I manage to stick to this plan. I believe learning Japanese and Mandarin at the same time is a bad idea, as both are challenging languages, and learning both simultaneously takes away from the amount of progress I'd make if I learned one at a time, but I have no immediate travel plans or need to learn one over the other, so I can't pick which to focus on at this point! Until I find a reason to focus on one, I'll continue with both. October hours: Spanish: 6 hours, 5 minutes Japanese: 5 hours, 0 minutes Chinese: 3 hours, 0 minutes Polish: 2 hours, 25 minutes German: 2 hours, 0 minutes Russian: 1 hour, 30 minutes Portuguese: 1 hour, 30 minutes Italian: 35 minutes Dutch: 35 minutes French: 35 minutes Greek: 5 minutes Running 2015 totals Spanish: 93 hours, 0 minutes Japanese: 86 hours, 45 minutes Chinese: 69 hours, 40 minutes Russian: 33 hours, 55 minutes German: 27 hours, 10 minutes French: 17 hours, 0 minutes Italian: 16 hours, 35 minutes Portuguese: 17 hours, 0 minutes Polish: 5 hour, 40 minutes Greek: 4 hours, 0 minutes Dutch: 1 hour, 5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 23 02 December 2015 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
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This past month I had to do some serious prioritizing. My Chinese has stagnated for the past several months, I want
to read more, watch more movies/television programs, and speak more in the languages I already learned. I knew that I was having an issue with hitting a wall last month, so I thought I would cut out Dutch, Greek, and Polish distractions... and I think I made the wrong decision. These languages I would not study for large amounts of time, and did not take up a large mental effort, whereas Japanese has. I'm sad to quit Japanese, I feel like I made some progress, but I'm afraid at the rate I'm going, it will be at least a decade before I'm fluent in Japanese and Chinese. By cutting out Japanese, I'll be able to free up more language time to devote to Chinese. This doesn't mean I'll never learn Japanese... but unless I get a new wave of enthusiasm, I don't anticipate adding any more "Japanese" hours to my study log for years to come, which will make me overall a better/more efficient language learner. After quitting Japanese halfway through the month, I watched several movies in different languages, read a short book in French, and watched more интерны and reading a few short stories by Chekov. November hours studied: Chinese: 8 hours, 45 minutes Russian: 6 hours, 35 minutes French: 6 hours, 0 minutes Spanish: 4 hours, 40 minutes Japanese: 4 hours, 20 minutes Italian: 1 hour, 35 minutes German: 1 hours, 20 minutes Portuguese: 1 hour, 20 minutes Running 2015 totals Spanish: 97 hours, 40 minutes Japanese: 91 hours, 5 minutes Chinese: 78 hours, 25 minutes Russian: 40 hours, 30 minutes German: 28 hours, 30 minutes French: 23 hours, 0 minutes Portuguese: 18 hours, 20 minutes Italian: 18 hours, 10 minutes Polish: 5 hour, 40 minutes Greek: 4 hours, 0 minutes Dutch: 1 hour, 5 minutes Edited by djc463 on 02 December 2015 at 4:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 23 02 January 2016 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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December language log:
Chinese: 10 hours, 0 minutes Russian: 6 hours, 35 minutes Spanish: 5 hours, 45 minutes German: 2 hours, 5 minutes Portuguese: 1 hour, 45 minutes Italian: 40 minutes French: 25 minutes 2015 totals: Spanish: 103 hours, 25 minutes Japanese: 91 hours, 5 minutes Chinese: 88 hours, 25 minutes Russian: 47 hours, 5 minutes German: 30 hours, 35 minutes French: 23 hours, 25 minutes Portuguese: 21 hours, 5 minutes Italian: 18 hours, 50 minutes Polish: 5 hour, 40 minutes Greek: 4 hours, 0 minutes Dutch: 1 hour, 5 minutes Total hours: 434 hours, 40 minutes Previously, I had studied 566 hours, 10 minutes in one year, but now that I am in residency I have less time for hobbies. I anticipate being busy in 2016 as well in medical training, but I still hope to have some spare time for other things I love (reading, language learning), but I don't expect 2016 to be a year for huge language learning progress. Nonetheless, in my next post, I'll write about my goals for the year to come! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 23 02 January 2016 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
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The biggest news and accomplishment for 2016 will be that I'm getting married in October! Now that that's out of
the way, I can move onto talking about lesser things. In 2016, I want to spend more time reading novels in my spare time. I have always loved stories and literature, and I would like to be able to spend more time reading for fun. In 2015, I only completed 8 books (6 in a language other than English), and my goal is to read more than 10 novels, with 1/2 of them being in. This is still a small anticipated number, largely because I read a lot of medical articles and books in my spare time to study as well. I found a new fantasy book trilogy that I really like by Patrick Rothfuss called the Kingkiller Chronicles (first book called the Name of the Wind, I've read the first 150 pages). In June of this year, my best friend is getting married in Santorini Greece, so I'm taking my intern 2 week vacation to Europe! I'll spend 7 days in Greece, and 3 days in Paris, which is going to be amazing. It also sounds like a great opportunity to start learning Greek, right? WRONG! I bought TeachYourself Complete Greek, and I really dislike the course. More importantly, I did not feel a strong connection with the language. I am already spread too thin, and unfortunately do not have the time to learn another difficult language (Greek is FSI category 4/5) and do it any justice. I prefer instead to focus primarily on Chinese. In 2015 I had attempted to learn both Japanese and Chinese at the same time, which resulted in many months with too slow progress in both languages. In November I had to make the hard decision to stop learning Japanese, in order to focus and meet my goal of 10 hours a month in Mandarin Chinese. In December it worked, and I studied 10 hours, and could feel the cumulative progress over the course of the month, from more regular Chinese learning time. However, I know that I suffer from language wanderlust, especially with no plans to travel to China for an immersion experience any time soon. So probably sometime this year, I'll seriously devote some time to Dutch (FSI level 1 language, similar to English and German). And I'll use German materials and dual readers German-Dutch for my primary sources, that way I'll practice German and learn Dutch simultaneously. I also enjoy listening to easy German and Deutche Welt's youtube channels. Russian: I really enjoy Soviet and Russian movies, which are easily and freely available on the internet, plus I have lots of reading in Russian that I'd like to do. I love Russian and plan on continuing escaping to my Russian world whenever I'm feeling overly stressed. For my other languages, I'll continue using Spanish almost daily in Texas (and when not using, still will listen to Mexican radio). I plan on reading a few French books and watching some movies before going to Paris (and then 3 days in Paris which will be a lot of fun). Portuguese I have continued to practice with a lot of youtube, and occasional café brasil podcasts. The only language that is suffering that I've learned is Italian. I will continue to watch on occasional Italian movies and youtube videos to not lose complete touch with the language. I know I'll return to Italy (such a beautiful country) someday, and want to maintain a good foundation in this language. Those are my rough plans for the new year as far as languages are concerned. What are your plans? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| djc463 Heptaglot Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5591 days ago 51 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 23 02 March 2016 at 5:41pm | IP Logged |
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Since this website seems to be dying as far as activity goes, I plan on continuing my logbook on my own blog for any
who are interested in my monthly updates! https://fluentin10.wordpress.com/ Edited by djc463 on 02 March 2016 at 5:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 4925 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 23 of 23 02 March 2016 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
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You can continue your log in the new forum:
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewforum.php?f=15 1 person has voted this message useful |
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