Yuurei wrote:My own thoughts on some of the questions:2) I'd be very much in favor of a weekly virtual meeting - I think it'd help a lot with staying on track - not to mention be a lot of fun!
We wouldn't have to keep to Finnish exclusively to start out with - not only would that be very difficult and frustrating, but it also doesn't really suit my learning process. On the technical side I'd prefer Skype, but if y'all insist on Google I could probably manage. Finding a time that works for everyone might prove difficult though. XD [Should we set up a doodle to figure out the time?]
3) I don't think we ever really talked about a goal, since this all just came about as a crazy idea by
some forum members. I'm not sure getting through as much as possible of the Assimil course is a goal I subscribe to (sorry, Brun Ugle >_<). After all, the goal is to learn Finnish - using Assimil was just an extra idea, because we wanted to have some method in common, iirc. The problem with making that the goal is that it'd basically make using any other Finnish learning resources counter-productive - not to mention that it'd completly exclude smallwhite. That said, it's not like I have a good alternative ready. =x
4) I approve of Brun Ugle being the cruise director.
5) We should indeed (nearly) all be using Assimil (finally ordered mine yesterday!), though I, for one, will most likely also be using other resources as well.
6) I haven't really heard of any good Finnish TV shows (Native speakers? Anyone?)... the only thing I've heard of is
Nymfit. Not sure whether it's any good, but at least it's easy to get in Germany?
For radio, I stumbled on
Radio Suomipop! They only play Finnish-language music (just pop music though - as the name suggests) and sometimes they speak Finnish or there's Finnish ads.
8) I don't really see myself creating any resources (I'm more on the lazy side of things XD), though if that changed I'd of course be happy to share. It'd probably be helpful to have a drive set up, though.
2) I'm fine with Skype too, I've never used anything else, but I can give Google Hangouts or whatever a try if that's what people are interested in. Time zones might be a problem, but if we can't find one perfect time, maybe we can have a rotating schedule or something. That way everyone could come at least sometimes. Warning: I did a free Esperanto class on Skype with Judith Meyer once. She put a lot of work into it, and lots of people signed up and yet many times, I was the only one who showed up on Skype and the only one who did the homework. So, I don't know how well this whole meeting thing would work out. I know the Russian TAC team used to do meetings though and I think it worked well for them. At the first meetings, when they were still too shy to actually speak Russian, they would go through dialogues from a course. Since most of us are using the same course, that could work well as a warm up for us too.
3) I agree, it's not really a good goal. Perhaps we should have an actual helpful goal to work towards. We could have a list of things we would like to be able to do, perhaps based loosely on CEFR A2 level, or something. We could have a list of basic situations we'd like to be able to get by in, or a list of things we should know how to talk about on a basic level. Anybody have any particular goals they think we should reach for by May? And are we going to try to test them in some way? I suppose we could always do the old standby "15 minutes with a native speaker" or something. I'm not a very good goal maker myself. I usually just set myself a goal of getting through some courses, some workbooks, etc. and hope for the best.
5) There are some other resources listed in the second post. If anyone finds a resource they really love, let us know, so we can try it. I will be using FSI, Supisuomea and the Complete Finnish audio course that Cavesa found.