Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Brun Ugle
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:43 am

Elenia wrote:
Cavesa wrote:Should you start Swahili sooner, I will stand by, admire you, and cheer for you. :-)
If only you saw the hoard of medicine textbooks haunting me. In larger packs, they are getting aggressive. And let's not forget that my language year 2017 is devoted to Spanish and German and they are now enough, at least till the autumn :-D


Well, as you know, autumn is when the new LLOrg school year starts ;) although if all goes to plan I'll be busy starting actual school then, so maybe we should adjust a little...


I kind of feel like the LLOrg school year should start right after the Gathering. We could pick up an Assimil course while there and we'd have a whole year to study our new language before meeting up again.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:49 pm

Hope I can start the school year with a new language. It depends on how it goes with Russian, which would supposedly free the slot of an entirely new language. Oh I have Spanish to learn seriously, starting with textbooks and such. I'm starting to run short of time.


Yesterday when walking home I noticed that I need my late-commute audiobook listening. At first I thought I'd be tired after studying all day long, but then I realized my mind is still sharp enough for another 20-min round of listening to an audiobook. Not only that, I need it. I am anxious about coming home early so I can see my girls, and so I need something to distract me and make the walk seems short.

An issue is the constant problem I have with bluetooth speakers. I had bought what I thought was a good one, a headset, but it stopped working properly - I can only hear a low, grave sound instead of the usual volume. My smartphone won't recognize wired speakers anymore, as the audio output is damaged, and so I keep buying one set of bluetooth speakers after another. They are expensive and they get damaged after only a few weeks. It's not that I'm a massive user either - it's 12 minutes at the gym, 22 minutes in the morning, 25 min at noon and occasionally 22 minutes back home. So I wonder if I'm not better off buying an mp3 player or a new phone instead.

Finished my 2nd audiobook in English, the first non-fiction one. It's called The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr. A good read. It's great to be able to reduce my pile of to-read books that otherwise wouldn't become part of my daily language-learning routine, because they are published in languages I'm not studying actively. If only there were more audiobooks for those books I want to read. I'm constantly doing compromises: I may not find the exact title I want but I find a similar one, or one by the same author. So that's how i'm going to start a book by Steve Kaufmann which has been translated in French and read as an audiobook. That's also how I found the French audio version of a Brazilian book that I read only 1-2 pages from every other week. I would like to find audiobooks for some books I'm reading on creativity, but no luck. So, my next audiobook for the lunchtime will be Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure. I hope it's inspiring enough for me to finally start working on some projects.

Note to my German-learning self: I need two non-prioritary books, one I can read extensively and another one I can listen to extensively. I say non-prioritary because most of my lined-up German books are ones I am very interested into and which I don't want to risk just understanding the gist from.

I'm on lesson 11 at Living Language Greek and it's about computers. I wonder if the Greek terms are all used or if people just stick to the English names.

Another improvement: a friend helped download the NRK videos and now I no longer have to use the phone for them. I can also keep the reminder where I had stopped the previous days, as with other videos.

I'm enjoying my studies of Greek. I think there's a good sygergy going through the 3 resources I use daily and I start to make sense of the language. It will soon pass Estonian at this rhythm. It's great when you like the language and you can use your favorite resources for learning it.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby lthispresey » Fri Jan 20, 2017 2:04 am

Oi Expugnator, desculpa invadir seu log, queria continuar mantendo contato contigo mas o site acabou. Kahena me expulsou antes que pudesse pegar seu email (ou outra forma de contato) . Se puder, me manda um pm ;)
Last edited by lthispresey on Sun Jan 22, 2017 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Jan 20, 2017 4:43 pm

lthispresey wrote:Oi Expugnator, desculpa invadir seu log, queria continuar mantendo contato contigo [...] Se puder, me manda um pm ;)


Tranquilo, amigo. te mandei.

====================
I couldn't solve the issue with the speakers, so I decided to buy an mp3 player. It costs the price of the speakers and I hope it lasts longer.

Finished another audiobook in Norwegian, from the Elling series. Now I'm going to listen to the last one I already have. They are four, and I don't have "Elsk meg i morgen" as audiobook, just as the movie, and maybe I should watch the movie instead and don't bother with another audiobook. What's most important to say is that after the second book I felt a huge progress. I could understand almost everything from the final 5 sound files.

I really don't know what audiobook to start Spanish with. I'm stuck with Isabel Allende's books. I'd like something urban, contemporary, either Argentinian, Chilean or Spanish. It can be science fiction or fantasy as well. In short, what I usually read in my other languages, with the focus on acquiring contemporary vocabulary. Just no translation. It doesn't make sense to listen to non-native audio in Spanish, a language nearly transparent relatively to my native own.

Started the audiobook Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, by Tim Harford. I really love economy for laymen. Language-wise, I find his audiobook much harder to understand than the previous one. It probably has to do with the accent of the reader. It sounds British and the previous one was probably American.

I can't stand the passages from Kakfa on the shore that feature Nakata. So I decided to read today's four pages extensively before heading to the translation. It wasn't bad at all, though I still need the translation for actually figuring out what happened.

Sometimes at the gym I pick a heavier weight because someone else is using the exact one I tend to lift for a given exercise. Then I notice I can lift it nearly comfortably and I had been wasting energy on a too light one. How does this apply to language learning? Well, it occurs that the automatically-generated subtitles for Kuxnya aren't helping much, but on the other hand my listening comprehension is skyrocketing. I can already say I can get the gist of what is being said, even though my reading in Russian isn't transparent yet. Wow, miracle happening!

Today I finished my studies earlier as we're travelling to the countryside. I skipped Living Language Greek because it takes me nearly an hour, so I could do more of the shorter tasks, such as Language Transfer and Grammaire Progressive Niveau perfectionnement. By the way, This book is 1 level above all other resources I've seen, including the niveau avancé one. it addresses one issue at a time, in a clear and comprehensive way. You don't have the feeling that you're being presented all the grammar over and over again just with more detail. On the contrary: you really deal with useful advanced stuff. It's like they are guessing which doubts I have in French as I start having them.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:38 pm

The weekend was productive in terms of languages. I travelled into the countryside with no internet connection, so I could explore some books and audiobooks from my to-read pile. As usual, I read only a couple of page from each, but I managed to give Isabel Allende's novel a try on the audiobook. I found it hard to follow the story. Maybe it's the accent that combined with the unusual vocabulary makes the story difficult to follow as an audiobook. I'm looking for other audiobooks in Spanish. When I said "no translations", I should have excluded non-fiction. It's ok if a non-fiction book is a translation, as there are so many I want to read and finding them in other TLs is always helpful, as I often do with French and German.

I was looking at my old iPad device to remind myself of my to-read books, but the ones I want to read the most are noted down on my phone. So, as I had time to browse my phone without an internet connection, I could find again several interesting books which I'll first try to find audiobooks for and if there are no audiobooks available I'll go for a translation text into German, French or Italian.

I was planning on reading a lot in German, but the downloaded Google dictionary on Android refused to work. Apparently, the German one had been updated and I didn't have the earliest version, but that's a rather silly reason for it not to work at all. It was frustrating because I have several books lined up in German and I need to get rhrthm and to fill in some gaps so I can finally read extensively. I did try a simpler one, aimed at tweens, I think, and I could read a dozen of pages and follow the story comfortably, but always with the feeling that I could have been learning more if I managed to look up the most important words from those I'm missing.

Audiobooks remain my new passion. I started listening to Kaufmann's book in French. It's pretty easy to follow non-fiction in French, so my focus is entirely on the content itself. I'm trying to gather an inventary of 'self-help language-learning' books so I can finally read the ones I've gathered.

One book I managed to finish (it's quite rare for me to finish a book out of those assigned to my daily routine) was "Provas Internacionais de Idiomas", by the Brazilian polyglot and translator Otto Mendonça. It was both encouraging and frustrating. Everytime I read about the CEFR I notice how far I am from a full-range B2 in any of my foreign languages. But then I realize that being able to do what the description says 100% of the time logically accounts for a grade of 100%, and if you can do what is assigned there most of the times then you are good enough for passing. People who actually pass don't speak the target language enough, they just demonstrated they can be competent often enough at the skills required for that specific level to be granted the grade of proficient in it. Yet I don't know how to go about certificates. I should check with Alliance Française first, whenever I'm free. Now I'm working on the Coursera course after my language schedule, so time is a greater issue. When I'm done I'll probably have 1/1 1/2 hours a day which I could use by extending my lunchtime.

While searching for more audiobooks, apart from the Spanish ones, I found a gem: one of the Roald Dahl's books in Estonian!


Today I started Brødre i blodet, and I'm happy about my progress in Norwegian so far. I just need more speaking practice to consolidate my basic fluency. I'm finding even the comedy show I watch easier to follow, even when it's just listening on the background.

At Estonian, I had another episode with high comprehension and several dialogue lines I didn't have to look words up from. I'm motivated enough to keeping reading subtitles at the second part of my routine.

With Russian, I'm not sure I'm working intensively enough on my 2nd round with Assimil Perfectionnement and I'm not sure this alone will help. Probably output is the key here as well.

Narnia remains interesting. My comprehension has improved and I can sometimes understand some scenes just through listening, no reading or translation.

Georgian reading was a breeze today, as it consisted mostly of dialogues. It's at such cases that I can actually force myself to decypher the remaining descriptive or narrative passages. When it's all narration or description, it's quite tiresome to do this intensive reading and I end up just reading extensively. Nevertheless, even then I'm noticing significant progress.

Once again I was early at my tasks. Estonian reading and the Greek lessons were particularly productive. Even at Norwegian I'm getting used to accents, and I'm learning many words by watching the videos intensively. Right after finishing, I went for 4 rounds of Estonian at Clozemaster while the Coursera course was being loaded. I then wrote my second assignment over there. A short story in English. I think I'm really improving at this one as well. At writing in general and at writing fiction in English. I had to switch sessions because the course started in the middle of the Christmas Season, and so I was left behind. Now I've comfortably caught up.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Jan 24, 2017 8:06 pm

I should allow myself to acknowledge my progress in Mandarin. It's certainly slow, but it's consistent throughout the media I've been using. I'm almost done with Slow Chinese (it's constantly updated, but only weekly, and I'll have to find another resource for my daily usage), and lately it's been easy to follow it. I still haven't taken the test of listening-only, but what I'm happy about is the fact vocabulary is repeated consistently and I'm starting to learn it. Syntax has also seen a boost. How do I know it? when I check some sentences at Clozemaster. They seem doable now.

Pendant ma pause déjeuner, je suis allé au shopping pour acheter des genouillères (ouais ! un cognat du portugais) pour une de mes filles bébés qui a commencé à marcher à quatre pattes. Comme j'y ai dépensé plus de temps que d'habitude, j'ai pu écouter sept fichiers audio du livre "Adapt", de Tim Harford. J'ai trouvé les premiers passages un peu nuls, mais vers les derniers fichiers cela a pris de l'intérêt à nouveau.

I keep forgetting which round of Coursera I'm in at a moment. My goal is 4 rounds for each language. So, I solved it by using my fingers to count. After each round, I'd stretch a new finger till I had four of them.

Not much to discuss but it doesn't mean I didn't do everything as planned. I even had time to read a bit of the forum. I will try to slowly resume my writing in short paragraphs in my stronger languages.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:57 pm

I'm savoring Kaufmann's audiobook in French. I usually abhorr biographies and I probably wouldn't be reading it, but listen to the story is so catching. I can relate to much of what I hear.

My Yabla material is ready. I'll probably start on Friday. Depending on the length of the videos, I'm going to do some experiments like just listening first, or pausing and looking some words up, or paraphrasing. I'm going to start from scratch (hello, PM!) but I'll move on if I notice anything is too easy.

Today was finally a good day for Mandarin. I'm forcing myself to read more quickly as I listen, and so I'm starting to aprehend the full meaning of a sense when listening, before even glancing on individual characters - or even bedore trying to split words in my mind, for that matter. I'm listening on the sentence level and I can get the meaning based on the key words even when I can't understand all the grammatical words. This is certainly good for listening but not so much for output later, but I believe with time I'll be able to go for detail as well. With Mandarin, that has no declension, it's like I'm ignoring those characters that play grammatical functions the way I'd ignore some case endings in German.

Things also went well with Estonian. I wonder if it isn't Clozemaster to be given the credit for? I have a 2-day streak which means I'm being forced to produce some sort of output, even if it means just filling in one word.

Browsing through threads from the past weeks, most of which are still unread, I run into discussions about numbers of hours, and how FSI estimates only include classroom hours. Judging by how much I study from each language a year, I should think I'm not that bad. I do less than 1 hour for each language each day, and around 200-220 study days a year. That would make at most 200 hours a year per language. That means I've spent a total of 1000 hours on a language such as Georgian. I'm far from reaching a L3, even a B2, and I don't know how many hours are expected to be done outside of classroom in order to set the total number of hours, but since I work mostly with native materials, I think a lot of what I do is what should be reserved for out-of-classroom activities. I should probably investigate this to figure out whether I'm doing that bad.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Systematiker » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:56 pm

Expugnator wrote:
Browsing through threads from the past weeks, most of which are still unread, I run into discussions about numbers of hours, and how FSI estimates only include classroom hours. Judging by how much I study from each language a year, I should think I'm not that bad. I do less than 1 hour for each language each day, and around 200-220 study days a year. That would make at most 200 hours a year per language. That means I've spent a total of 1000 hours on a language such as Georgian. I'm far from reaching a L3, even a B2, and I don't know how many hours are expected to be done outside of classroom in order to set the total number of hours, but since I work mostly with native materials, I think a lot of what I do is what should be reserved for out-of-classroom activities. I should probably investigate this to figure out whether I'm doing that bad.


I calculated it through, once, based on what I know, so here goes:

The students, as far as I know, were expected to do 3-5 hours outside the classroom daily across a 5-day week, for the full period. So a Cat I language gets an additional 360-600 hours added to the 600 of classroom work. Georgian, being a Cat IV (and assuming the distance for you is identical), gets an additional 660-1100 hours. So in comparing yourself, if you're "more than halfway" to a ILR 3, you're doing better than FSI anticipates (what's halfway? I don't know. But probably if you're B1 or better, you're doing better than the average bear for the time as calculated), since you're at 1000 of either 1760 or 2200.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Jan 26, 2017 7:55 pm

Systematiker wrote:
I calculated it through, once, based on what I know, so here goes:

The students, as far as I know, were expected to do 3-5 hours outside the classroom daily across a 5-day week, for the full period. So a Cat I language gets an additional 360-600 hours added to the 600 of classroom work. Georgian, being a Cat IV (and assuming the distance for you is identical), gets an additional 660-1100 hours. So in comparing yourself, if you're "more than halfway" to a ILR 3, you're doing better than FSI anticipates (what's halfway? I don't know. But probably if you're B1 or better, you're doing better than the average bear for the time as calculated), since you're at 1000 of either 1760 or 2200.


Great, thanks. I knew the information on hours expected was there somehow. If it's safe to just double the classroom estimates for reaching the total, then I'm not that bad even in Mandarin (5 years and a half) or Norwegian (4 years and a half).

I don't learn vocabulary linearly, like, first all the A1 words, then all A2, B1, B2 and so on. I don't cram vocabulary. After going through textbooks for basic vocabulary and grammar, I start slowly adding more and more native materials, but I don't force processing this linear reading word by word, line by line. Most of the times I just read the L2 text intensively while reading L1 translation for better comprehension of the story. This strategy alone has been my failure during SC times, but when combined with intensive reading, which I'm doing for all my languages but German now, it's a boost and synergy does happen. So, while I consider myself a shaky B2 in Norwegian, that doesn't mean I have very low exposure to C1-level vocabulary. On the contrary: I have seen this vocabulary ever since my A2ish level, and I keep actually retaining the more important and more frequent words. As I consolidate this B1-B2 level, my brain has space/working memory for paying attention to not so essential words, and I start to go for details. This happens rather organically. With transparent languages it happens very quickly actually. I don't know for real, but I believe people who do SRS or vocabulary cramming or wordlists learn in a more linear way. I leave some gaps behind, especially useful tourist vocabulary, but I work on these if a real opportunity to use the language is on sight.



====================================
It's becoming easier and easier to understand spoken Norwegian, even from the comedy series, even on the background. I should probably start listening to audiobooks in German, too, but I have a long waiting line of audiobooks in other languages.

Finished the film L'Arnacoeur. Not a bad one. Now there's more Astérix to come.

Best day of watching Kuxnya ever. Subtitles are becoming obsolete.

Accomplished Language Book: Spoken World Greek

Image

I haven't been posting reviews on completed language books lately. I haven't been using them that much after all, mostly for Greek only (which reminds me I forgot to post about Assimil le nouveau grec and the other Greek textbooks in a review format). This Spoken World Greek is part of those books that had been lying on my list, making me wondering if I'd ever come down to studying them. I'm happy the time finally comes. Spoken World Greek by Living Language is a really comprehensive and informative language book. The format of the lessons is fairly complete. I still find it a bit too much for a start into the language - it's better to use it from an A1-level on.

I didn't even have something else planned for Greek. I've had a good deal of textbooks. It's been almost one year now that I've been studying Greek and I'm looking forward to doing native materials more often. I have two other fixed 'slots's for Greek - Greekpod101 and Language Tranfer, and they both are still guided instruction. I feel like ditching all textbooks altogether and just adding native materials while keeping what I'm already doing, but I acknowledge that grammar is still a weak spot. I like A texbook of Modern Greek, by Tofallis, it's an old-school textbook which seems more comprehensive than Routledge's Greek Essential Grammar. Then I had a look at Méthode de Grec Moderne, from INALCO. It's cool that there is a volume 2, it's encouraging, but then that one is a reader, and I have enough of bilingual or interlinear readers and I'm not even sure I'd need them since I have good audiobooks. I need grammar and a method that would force me to produce. Truth be told, part of the trouble I'm having is caused by the fact Greek came out much easier than I had expected. Vocabulary doesn't feel that hard, and the synergy I got from working on 3 or more beginner resources simultaneously is a lesson I'm taking forever into my language-learning journey.

The monolingual textbooks all seem great, but I'm better off leaving them for when I can read Greek and get the gist from, the way I did with Norwegian. They're much more 'communicative' and with much less text than their Norwegian counterparts, though. I found a great series called "Texts for young people in simple Greek" but audio isn't there and I'd have to look up words manually too, instead of just pasting them on GT.

Well, it's decided. Let's add some French approach into it again. I'll go for Méthode de Grec Moderne volume I, by L'Asiathèque. It's only my second book from the maison and I'd like to become used with their format, given they produce so many jewels for languages from South and Southeastern Asia. As for leaving a new slot opened for a new language, I shouldn't worry about that: I won't replace the old Language Transfer with the new course right away.

I'm sticking to my Clozemaster-streak. I should have in mind that once the activities get back to their normal rhythm I probably won't have time for Clozemaster during the normal schedule. I'll have to I find some hidden moments for it while back home or just leave it for when I'm totally free. I think my desktop time is better spent on a few more intensive reading or listening activities, anyway. Clozemaster 4 rounds for 6 languages takes me over 20 minutes, while 5 minutes are enough for each intensive activity such as 1 podcast episode.

With the remaining time today, I couldn't help but try listening-reading an audiobook again in Modern Greek. Still Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol: I'm not properly reading it as I still can't follow Greek properly, in a productive way. This time it was considerably better, though. If I had more time, I'd probably endulge myself some series in another language.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Systematiker » Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:23 pm

A bit of off-the-cuff math and a safe assumption, and yeah, you're doing really well in Norwegian.

Safe assumptions: Cat I is based in distance from English, and the Romance-Germanic languages on there probably make a triangle with English, so we can't say the numbers going from one cat I to another are identical (i.e. It should take longer for you in Norwegian, not the same). Safe assumption two, the mere fact of synergy and not only having one L2 doesn't skew it too bad, because many of the students at FSI came with other L2s (even now, because getting in the FS is points based and testable ability in another language is worth points; additionally, it's why they do fewer courses in popular languages, there's already always someone available to go to Rome or Madrid who doesn't need to be laid to learn).

So 4.5 years of 200h per year is only 900, below the dead bottom number (960) and ignoring the increased distance from your native language (plus the slow build rather than all-at-once cumulative effect). A B2 right now, even a shaky one, is ahead of the curve (because it's probably better to use the numbers for German for your case; even if not, you're on track or ahead given that at your study rate, you've got another year and a half to get to C1).

So yeah, it's a question of how much ahead of the curve you are, but you're certainly ahead.
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