French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

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zenmonkey
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby zenmonkey » Mon May 15, 2017 7:07 pm

tastyonions wrote:Trying to transcribe five minutes of a real (not learner-oriented) podcast in German and actually mostly succeeding! Okay, it takes me like twenty minutes to transcribe a minute of speech, including dictionary searches, but there's no way I could have done this just a few months ago. I have a session with a teacher Wednesday and will ask him to help me fill in the holes and correct anything I misheard.


That's a great exercise right there!
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BOLIO
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby BOLIO » Tue May 16, 2017 1:00 am

Tasty, I just wanted to drop by and mention that your French log on the old site really helped me several years ago. Then your Spanish, Italian and now German adventures have been very motivating.

You have traveled from a monolingual (fellow Texan if I remember correctly) to a legitimate polyglot. Amazing journey on your part and to have it all chronicled is really amazing. Keep up the great work.
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Tue May 16, 2017 2:00 pm

Danke schön, zenmonkey und Bolio!

---

I recently bought the "Hören & sprechen" books for levels A2 through B2 from Hueber:
https://shop.hueber.de/de/dt-ueben-hoer ... f-pak.html
https://shop.hueber.de/de/dt-ueben-hoer ... f-pak.html
https://shop.hueber.de/de/e-dt-ueben-ho ... f-pak.html

They're relatively inexpensive and you get a good amount of well-recorded dialogues with accompanying text. The A2 turned out to be too easy for me, but I might still use it from time to time to refresh basics.
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Thu May 18, 2017 11:21 am

I'm really doubling down on the German listening. I never neglected it entirely, of course, but I feel like I was relying on reading along with transcripts too much. Now that I have some fresh learner materials plus more courage to take on native radio, I'm really going to try and immerse myself in pure listening for an hour or two each day.

I've noticed a few "stages" that my learning tends to go through. In the beginning I tend to lean heavily on text, though never neglecting listening completely. Then I go through a phase where I free myself of the crutch of texts and focus on decoding the spoken language. Then I go back to adding more reading to the mix to expand my vocabulary and knowledge of the nuances of more complex and elaborate usage. These three stages were never tied to a philosophy I have or part of a deliberate method, they were just what I naturally felt like doing at the time.

German is definitely entering the second stage.
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Thu May 25, 2017 3:40 pm

A little tool for anyone who might be interested:

https://speakfrench.neocities.org/test.html

Click on "Choose file" and select any text file in the following format:

word1: definition1
word2: definition2
word3: definition3

Once you've loaded the file, the words will appear in the same order as in the file but their definitions will be hidden. If you want to see a word's definition, click and hold your mouse over it. The "invert" button reveals all the definitions while hiding all the words. The "scramble" button randomizes the order of the list.

I often create text files in this format while reading articles or listening to the radio, so I made this tool as a way to casually "quiz" myself after making such a file.
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Wed Jun 21, 2017 2:20 pm

Ich kann kein Deutsch. :?
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Thu Jun 22, 2017 2:44 pm

Article intéressant : http://www.slate.fr/story/147351/etats- ... que-viande

Mais:
D'autres chercheurs essaient de savoir s'il s'agit des mêmes tiques partout dans le pays où si chaque région a une variété de tiques précise et qui aurait réussi à évoluer pour modifier elles aussi le système humanitaire de l'Homme.

Les rédacteurs de slate.fr dormaient, apparemment. :lol:
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:33 pm

One year and one month in and German still looks like an immense, craggy mountain whose summit will always be out of reach.

Yet I persist.
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby gsbod » Fri Jun 30, 2017 5:57 pm

tastyonions wrote:One year and one month in and German still looks like an immense, craggy mountain whose summit will always be out of reach.

Yet I persist.


I'm only about halfway up but the view from here is amazing!
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tastyonions
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Re: French, Spanish, Italian, German: 2017

Postby tastyonions » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:04 pm

I'm a few lessons into Hueber's "Hören und Sprechen B2." I don't have any illusions about actually being at a B2 level yet, but I can understand pretty much everything in these lessons with enough relistening and probably about five dictionary searches per minute of audio. Listening has always been the most important skill to me and also my favorite one to train, so I try to comprehend the whole lesson and define all the unknown words before ever reading the accompanying text. It is tough but I am managing!
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