Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Ongoing language-learning challenges, and team challenge logs (but not individual logs)
Rotasu
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Languages: English (N),
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1354
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Rotasu » Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:22 am

Biggest Accomplishment:
  • Learned I was saying my nickname wrong after 4 years :?
  • Started a new language

Let's hope February is better xD
My focus is going to be on getting out of Japanesepod101 Newbie section and getting to 500 words in Core2k.
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Woodsei
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Woodsei » Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:17 am

Hey all, sorry for the silence. The thread is not dead, hopefully. I think I'll get in touch with EMK regarding editing the resource and member posts that Aiya started. I haven't heard from her yet.

I'm listing this month's challenge:

Talk about a fond memory you have of a person, an event, or a thing. It can be as short or as long as you like.

Weekly goals: you could just say met, or unmet, or where you are at the moment. If you want me to ditch this one, let me know, as we a already do that on our logs. But's it's nice to see everyone checking in regularly!

I'm currently watching a bunch of dramas and anime, reviewing RTK, increasing shadowing, and have started on output. It really needs work. My goals for this week remain the same, and I've stopped putting numerical goals, and more just working on all four skills (reading, listening, writing, and speaking) for the week consistently.

Let me know what you've all been up to.
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Jimjam
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Jimjam » Fri Feb 12, 2016 12:49 pm

So how is everyone's studying going? It's been a little quiet around here lately.
I haven't done as much as I would have liked but I'm still slowly progressing.
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Rotasu
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Rotasu » Fri Feb 12, 2016 2:08 pm

Finally free from the stress of my speech class, I'm ready to spend the whole day completing my goals list :D

Anki messing up on my phone so I lost my streak but it's ok. My goal for Anki already lower than what I actually do xD
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Yuhakko
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Languages: French (N), English (Fluent), Spanish (Business Level), Japanese (N1), Korean (Intermediatish), Mandarin (HSK3+?)
Dabbled in : Norwegian, Ainu, Tagalog, Indonesian, and a few others
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Yuhakko » Sat Feb 13, 2016 9:33 am

Still here! Struggling a bit but I'm still doing at least something every day :)

I'll try to do this month's challenge in Korean and Mandarin around the week starting on the 21st!

Oh, and thanks for welcoming me ;)
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LunaMoonsilver
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17648
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby LunaMoonsilver » Sat Feb 13, 2016 12:52 pm

Also still here! I'm getting back into my routine again (kinda... the cold is making me want to sleep a lot) so I'm trying to do a little bit of something every day, though not always hitting my targets.

I managed to decipher my first non-course Japanese sentence this week, so that was pretty cool. Want to step up my game for Mandarin though.

It's good to see so many people are still about! :D And you're all doing so well!
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OwlPanda
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Languages: English (N), Vietnamese (B1), Korean (A1).
Language Log: http://www.forum.language-learners.org/ ... =15&t=2170
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby OwlPanda » Tue Feb 16, 2016 2:01 am

Hi, everyone!

This team needs some Vietnamese representation, so I'm going to do my best, okay?

I'm a little unclear on this, but it seems I'll need to make my own log in another thread.


In any case, here's a recap of the first month and a half of 2016.

I'm studying Vietnamese (primary target langauge) and Korean (secondary target language). I'm studying Vietnamese because it's what my wife speaks, and I had some Korean ages ago in college, but I never really got the hang of learning languages back then, so my tiny vocabulary killed my progress. Now that I know about about using SRS, I'm doing better now than I did back then.


So, a summary of my results so far.

Vietnamese

I have a lot of weaknesses, because Vietnamese is tough for an English speaker. One of the big challenges is a bit analogous to the Mandarin-Cantonese problem in the U.S. but moreso, i.e., almost everyone in the U.S. speaks Southern dialect (analogous to Cantonese), but most teaching materials are in Northen dialect (analogous to Mandarin). Thus, the version I need to learn is a bit harder.

Nevertheless, I started taking Memrise seriously last year, and my vocabulary grew from basically just the contents of one of those "first 100 words of X language" books to something a bit larger. It's not quite large enough to read children's literature unassisted, though, so I have to keep going. I've been fighting through a second Memrise course in Vietnamese vocabulary, and so far it has had relatively little overlap with my first course. There have been a few duplicates, but most of it has been new stuff. The lessons were well-spaced for a while, so I was able to do about 20 words every couple of days, but the latest lesson was a big pile of adjectives. Over 90 of them. And the next lesson contains almost 200 verbs (I haven't started it yet). The adjectives lesson has some familiar material to it, though, so it wasn't so bad. I'm starting to pick up a few of the roots of the words, and that's making things easier.

My listening practice still comes from YouTube, where I listen to "Learn Vietnamese with Annie." I'd like to start the FSI course, but I've been focusing elsewhere so far.

Speaking practice comes when I take weekly walks. I'm getting better at pronunciation, but I'm going to end up with a funky accent, because my wife doesn't exactly speak a standard variety. It's a little strange to listen to some of the learners on YouTube. One guy I found was pretty great at speaking (limited vocabulary, I could tell), but his accent was terrible. I think it was obvious that he picked up a lot of phrases from songs, which is not a bad thing. I need to get better at that.

Reading is progressing. With some support from web browser translation extension, I can slog through the first Harry Potter. Slow progress.


Korean

I hadn't done anything for this language in a while, and it's definitely secondary now, because I don't feel any pressure to learn it quickly.

What's I've done so far this year is to add a bunch of words to my vocabulary through Memrise. Fair enough. Everyone does that, right?

The other thing, though, is that I'm finally teaching myself some Hanja. That's going pretty well, too. I'm not bothering learning how to write them, but I'm figuring out how to read them, with the idea being that I'll pick up new vocabulary (in Korean and in Vietnamese!) if I know the Chinese roots. I'm up to 45 Hanja right now, and I'm due to add at least 15 more this week. My strategy has been to go with a lesson until I can get a perfect score on the (mobile version of) Memrise's speed review game without any difficulty, consistently. If I can do it without thinking, then I have a pretty good immediate grasp of the characters. If I have to stop and think, then I don't know that character well enough yet, and it'll slow me down when I read it.

Thought of another way, well, I never have to stop and think to myself to pronounce anything written in Hangul, so I don't think it's too much to ask to get to where I can recognize Hanja instantly, even if that slows down my progress.

Perhaps more importantly, studying Hanja has reignited my desire to study the language. Vietnamese has been utterly dominant for the last few years, especially since I made so much progress in 2015. As much as I love Korean, the motivation to study it has to come from within, since there aren't as many outside reasons to learn it. Finally getting good at Hanja (even recognizing one of the Chinese characters at the New Year's celebration I went to) has been amazingly helpful for this.

It also helps that I finally figured out how to do it. I've tried Hanja before. Hanja books never really worked for me, because I'd read about a character and then get stuck on it. The Memrise course I'm doing covers more Hanja than the average Korean adult knows (some well-educated people know a lot more, of course), so when I finally get through it, I'll have a pretty good handle on what Chinese characters I'll be likely to encounter while reading Korean stuff. Since there's an official Hanja test people can take, it seems to me that the course I'm on covers the Hanja on that, in order. I think. I haven't really confirmed it, but so far it's matched up with every other Hanja list I've found.


So, that's how things are going to far. I've added a few hundred Vietnamese words this year, about a hundred Korean words, and 45 Hanja, and I'm working on my Vietnamese reading and listening skills.

Here's to a great year! Good luck, everyone else!


Edit (log link): http://www.forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2170
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: 5112 / 10000 Current Vietnamese Course (5112 / 10000)
Glossika reps: 15264
Current reading: Dịch Vụ Giao Hàng Của Phù Thủy Kiki

Rotasu
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Posts: 247
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Languages: English (N),
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1354
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Rotasu » Mon Feb 29, 2016 2:40 pm

Rotasu wrote:
Let's hope February is better xD
My focus is going to be on getting out of Japanesepod101 Newbie section and getting to 500 words in Core2k.


Well I did one of these things. I really hate studying volcabulary but its a necessary evil x.x I really want to push myself to build a foundation and stop thinking too far in the future. My flow was destroy this month so I really want to do better this month. Keeping it simple for the month of March xD

For March:
  • Don't change my study method for 2 week straight
  • Check out Memrise, writing vocabulary down
  • Finish something

Anyone else have goals for March?
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OwlPanda
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Languages: English (N), Vietnamese (B1), Korean (A1).
Language Log: http://www.forum.language-learners.org/ ... =15&t=2170
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby OwlPanda » Tue Mar 08, 2016 10:26 pm

Rotasu wrote:
Rotasu wrote:
Anyone else have goals for March?


For March, I hope to finish reading Harry Potter Và Hòn Đá Phù Thủy, average 20 words per day in my Vietnamese course, and get to 150 Hanja and 250 Korean vocabulary words. That's reasonable, right?

In addition, I want to do at least some listening practice every day, with my primary goal being to get through as much of "365 Vietnamese" as I can. With three weeks left in the month, I should be able to go through all of the lessons currently available, since there aren't that many of them.



You know what? I should think about goals for the year, not just the month. That way, I can make sure I'm on pace to get something big accomplished. Getting to 150 Hanja doesn't feel like much of an accomplishment, since that's one new section per week.
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: 5112 / 10000 Current Vietnamese Course (5112 / 10000)
Glossika reps: 15264
Current reading: Dịch Vụ Giao Hàng Của Phù Thủy Kiki

Jimjam
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1789
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Re: Team East Asian Languages TAC 2016

Postby Jimjam » Sun Apr 03, 2016 1:26 am

I've finally updated my log after far too long. How is everyone else going with their studies? It seems life has gotten in the way of a number of us, judging from how quiet it is around here but I hope to see it liven up around here again!
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