Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

[Yuurei]

Well, to no one's surprise, trying to do too many frigging things turns out to be kind of stressful.

Weekly Goals for Week 4 (2018) - All done \o/
Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #1 (If I Didn't Have You)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

French
*Tadoku: Read 300 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume [無職転生 Vol. 4]

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV [Buffy S2 ep. 3-4]

Other stuff I did:
Korean: Studied TTMIK Iyagi #1 & #2 on readlang & listened to them a couple of times.
Chinese: Studied another 6 pages of If I Didn't Have You.
French: Watched Grimm S4 ep. 2-3. Read another 21 pages.
Spanish: Watched Buffy S2 ep. 9.
Italian: 5 hours of LR.

Korean
As mentioned in a earlier post, I started playing around with TTMIK's Iyagi series and readlang. I started out with episode #2, which was difficult, but doable. Then I went back to episode #1, since I wanted to go through the series in order. Episode #1 was a lot more difficult. It's about 40% longer, but took me about 3 times as long to work through and even so there's still parts I'm a bit fuzzy on. :/
Now I'm a bit unsure as to whether I should continue going through the Iyagis or whether I should try to find something else. But given my dislike of textbook-y stuff, I guess I should be prepared to jump into more difficult stuff even if it's probably not the most efficient. Also, it's not like I didn't enjoy studying even the more difficult Iyagi. And it'll probably get a bit easier after working through a few of them, so I suppose I'll continue at least for a bit and see how it goes... </ramble>

French
Tadoku is nearing its end and I still have to read 210 pages until midnight tomorrow. D:
I blame LR. Not just because it took away some time that I could have been spending reading French, but - more importantly - because LRing Harry Potter suddenly made me want to read HP fanfiction again which I went and did and that was a really bad plan.
But hey, 210 pages in 2 days is totally possible so I haven't given up on reaching my goal yet.
On another note, this tadoku has really confirmed my feeling that I need to read a lot more French in general - and ideally listen a lot more too. I'm hoping to be able to keep up the habit of reading French even after tadoku ends.

Italian LR
With everything else going on, I only managed 5 hours this week, but I don't think I'll have any trouble keeping with the timeline, since starting in February there'll be no more tadoku and I'll have a bit more time for LR.
I finished my first pass through the book (L2 listening & L2 reading), which was very enjoyable and I honestly forgot I was listening/reading in a new language at times. Obviously this was due to a combination of my familiarity with the book and the transparency of the language, but it was nonetheless nice. I also picked up some vocab (especially the non-transparent but common words which are always the main cause of difficulty when trying to make sense of an otherwise transparent language) and grammar patterns (like -v- marking a past tense and -r- marking a future tense), though obviously it's all still more or less fuzzy and I doubt I'd be ready to listen to an audiobook of an unknown book or comfortably read one. So far I can only say that I enjoy the process, I guess.
I also started on phase 3: L2 listening and L1 reading, but it's only been half an hour and thus I have nothing much to say about that part yet.

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Weekly Goals for Week 5 (2018)

Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #1 (If I Didn't Have You)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

French
*Tadoku: Read 210 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV

[Yuurei]

Phew, tadoku is over now and I somehow managed to get those 2000 pages in. I really was slacking off a bit in the past ~1.5 weeks, but I'm seriously happy I managed to pull myself together in the end in order to reach my target.
Got third place, which is pretty cool, but first place had more than 3500 pages so clearly I'm not reading enough.

[Yuurei]

Italian Listening-Reading - Second Impressions

I'm now 14.5 hours into the experiment and 5 hours into my second pass through HP1. At the beginning of my second pass - the first one to use L2 listening with L1 reading I had to get used to this new method of reading along, where text and audio suddenly don't completely match up anymore and the first 30 minutes were rather exhausting, but then I managed to find my rhythm and afterwards I would say it was only marginally more exhausting than L2 listening and L2 reading. So far, so good. Unfortunately I've found that making a second pass through a book after just finishing it is dreadfully boring. I do habitually re-read well-loved books after some time has passed, but I don't usually re-read books immediately and, well, there's a good reason for that, I guess. So that's a rather big drawback of the method for me and if I do any LR in the future I think I would opt for going through several books instead of repeating the same one, even if that's a (further) modification of the original method. But then, you're also supposed to enjoy yourself and this really isn't very enjoyable.
For now, I intend to finish my current pass through HP1, but once that's done I'll move on to HP2 (going directly to the L2R1 step).

[Yuurei]

Ugh, I must have been crazy to think of doing this Italian LR experiment on top of everything else. My weekends are just way too full of stuff these days.

I think this week I'll try to do less extra stuff and finish off as much as possible before the weekend so that I can actually just relax and do nothing for a change next weekend... we'll see how that goes.

Weekly Goals for Week 5 (2018) - All done \o/
Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #1 (If I Didn't Have You)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

French
*Tadoku: Read 210 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume [無職転生 Vol. 5]

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV [Buffy S2 ep. 10-11]

Other stuff I did:
Korean: Studied TTMIK Iyagi #3 on readlang. Listened to Iyagi #1-#3 several times. Learned missing grammar from TTMIK level 2&3.
Chinese: Finished studying If I Didn't Have You (7 pages). Started studying CB level 2 reader #2 (After the accident; 2 pages).
French: Watched Grimm S4 ep. 4-5. Read another 50 pages of L'espion anglais.
Japanese: Read 20 pages of 掟上今日子の備忘録.
Italian: 4.5 hours of LR.

Chinese
Not much to say here. I really feel like I am processing astonishingly smoothly through these graded reader. On Saturday I finished the first level 2 reader and it seemed to be at the perfect level to learn some new words every day without ever feeling like the text is difficult. Grammar-wise there doesn't seem to be anything unknown to me at this level either. I'm pretty sure that after 1-2 more level 2 readers I'll be able to move on to level 3 without any trouble.

Korean
In addition to studying the Iyagis, I started going through the TTMIK lesson pdfs to roughly learn the grammar points, because there is an obvious gap between what I know and what is used in the Iyagis. I'm not aiming to master these grammar points - or even necessarily remember them - but rather just to understand them. For those grammar points that I already have encountered in the Iyagis there is an immediate feedback effect and I'll profit from that. For those which I haven't encountered yet, but which will spring up in the near future, I will at least have seen them explained once by the time I encounter them and chances are I'll remember some of them. And for the rest I'm okay with just forgetting them again for now. I am after all still going through my grammar sentences deck, which constitutes a nice way of actually internalizing these grammar points and not forgetting them again. It's just a bit slow and considering that the Iyagis are rather advanced for me, I find it helpful to quickly get a broader overview over a large number of grammar points. So far I picked up any missing grammar points from levels 2 & 3.

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Weekly Goals for Week 6 (2018)

Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #2 (After the accident)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

French
*Read 50 pages

Japanese
*Read 75 pages

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV

[Finolia]

Wow, impressive. I am already overwhelmed by three languages and about 20 pages to read... How do you manage to read this much along with watching several episodes, listening to hours of audio and studying all the other stuff? I feel so lazy and unproductive reading this

[Yuurei]

Wow, impressive. I am already overwhelmed by three languages and about 20 pages to read... How do you manage to read this much along with watching several episodes, listening to hours of audio and studying all the other stuff? I feel so lazy and unproductive reading this

Heh, thanks. ^_^#
I'm happy to be able to tell you that it is pretty much a matter of practice. It was honestly not that long ago that I was also struggling to juggle three languages - and failing more often than not. And that even though I had more free time back then.
It took a lot of trial and error to find out what does and doesn't work for me - and to be honest I'm still continuously fine-tuning the process. The two most important things I've found for myself to make it work are my weekly goals and really making language learning a part of my life. By that I mean, for example, when I'm reading a novel in Japanese or French or Spanish it's not taking away time that I could be spending reading in English, but it really is what I want to be doing at that time. For that I always make sure to find books I really want to read - regardless of language. The same goes for watching TV shows. Of course that only really works starting from a certain level, but then I sincerely doubt I'd be able to juggle 4 or 5 beginner-level languages. XD
As for reading a lot: First of all I've always enjoyed reading, which certainly helps. Besides that, I usually read extensively, which is easier (I find) and faster than reading intesively (although reading intensively ceretainly also has its place). If you haven't already, I can really recommend participating in a tadoku contest to jumpstart your reading - nothing like reading like crazy for a month to increase both your comprehension and your reading speed noticeably, I find.

[Yuurei]

Well, I successfully managed to finish most of my goals (and LR) by Friday night and had a nicely relaxing and lazy weekend. I re-watched the first couple of episodes of Descendants of the Sun (definitely one of my favorite kdramas) and read about half of Aran Jones' Some Sex and a Hill: or How to Learn Welsh in 3 Easy Pints (which only made me want to learn Welsh a tiny little bit - nothing I can't suppress ).

Of course, now I have to somehow manage my remaining 17 hours of LR in 2 weeks. But I just really needed a weekend off.

Weekly Goals for Week 6 (2018) - All done \o/
Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #2 (After the accident)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

French
*Read 50 pages [L'espion anglais]

Japanese
*Read 75 pages [掟上今日子の備忘録]

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV [Buffy S2 ep.12-13]

Other stuff I did:
Korean: Worked a tiny little bit on TTMIK Iyagi #4.
Chinese: Re-read the first 11 pages of Can I dance with you?.
Japanese: Watched ep. 1-5 of デスマーチからはじまる異世界狂想曲.
Italian: 6.5 hours of LR.

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Weekly Goals for Week 7 (2018)

Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #2 (After the accident)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

French
*Read 50 pages

Japanese
*Read 75 pages

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV

[Oscard587]

I know that I'm a bit too late to mention this.

You can found them on the youtube by searching keyword 오디오북,
use our library system (although it's really difficult to register and use)
or here http://home.ebs.co.kr/audiobook/replay/4/list?courseId=BP0PHPK0000000048&stepId=01BP0PHPK0000000048 (do not require registration)

Sadly I failed to locate audiobooks with text or transcript. however, it's understandable that Koreans can access to text version in bookstore or library nearby... also recently, Google Play started their service to provide audiobooks in Korea. so there will be some audiobooks for Koreans in there, too.

maybe someone might be curious about books from Yonsei University, they are well known for their Korean teaching about grammar in here. so it's easily expectable that their coursebooks generally tend to focus on grammar and reading. (definitely, I would like to say this 'Korean style' ) However, I'm not sure which university provides more listening focused books to learners. Hmph...

[Yuurei]

I know that I'm a bit too late to mention this.

You can found them on the youtube by searching keyword 오디오북,
use our library system (although it's really difficult to register and use)
or here http://home.ebs.co.kr/audiobook/replay/4/list?courseId=BP0PHPK0000000048&stepId=01BP0PHPK0000000048 (do not require registration)

Sadly I failed to locate audiobooks with text or transcript. however, it's understandable that Koreans can access to text version in bookstore or library nearby... also recently, Google Play started their service to provide audiobooks in Korea. so there will be some audiobooks for Koreans in there, too.

Thanks a lot for this, that'll surely come in useful in the future! Unfortunately (for now, anyway), from what I've seen (with my admitedly insuffficient language Korean skills) and heard from others, Korean audiobooks rarely or never come in the form of unabridged audiobooks that faithfully follow the books they're based on. Thus they're harder to follow at lower levels and not really suitable for activities like LR. On the other hand, they're probably more fun to listen to for fun later on, so I'll probably give them a try in a couple of years.

[Yuurei]

So, well, last week didn't go so well for me. I really only have myself to blame for this. I know myself pretty well and I knew full well that I was trying to do too much and that I was bound to slip and fall eventually. And at the end of last week I found myself with zero motivation to do French or Italian or even just watch Buffy in Spanish... *sighs* I should have been more reasonable and dialed back the number of things I try to do each week, instead of setting a rather high amount of goals and then trying to do several hours of Italian LR on top of that. This week has been a bit of a mess as well - after failing last week's goals I fell ill on Monday and that made my language learning motivation plummet further, so that I didn't even bother setting any goals for this week and even failed to keep up my daily Korean and Chinese flashcard reviews. But what's done is done. Time to pick up the pieces and start over.

Italian LR
As a direct consequence of my slip up, there's now unfortuantely no chance at all that I'll reach 38 hours of LR by Sunday night. I'm currently at 26 hours and at most I might do the 3.5 hours that remain of Harry Potter e la camera dei segreti if I feel like it this weekend, for a total of 29.5 hours. But whether the total will be 26 hours or 29.5 hours, I definitely intend to take the follow-up Dialang tests on Sunday or Monday, so that I the experiment still has a more or less usable result for me. While the total number of hours is quite a bit lower than I'd hoped, the 38 hours I set myself were in the end rather random anyway and simply based on a combination of the number of hours I thought I could manage and a nice multiple of the first Harry Potter book. Of course, one of the integral ideas of LR is that more is better and that you cannot expect much after putting in too little time, so if the test results turn out to be negative (no noticeable improvements), that's probably not a very reliable result given the extreme shortness of the experiment. On the other hand, a positive result would still be viable for my purposes.
In any case, simply extending the time frame for the experiment is not an option, since I'll be going to Italy next week, which would certainly contaminate the results. So we shall wait and see.

Korean
Well, not everything in the last ~1.5 weeks was bad. In fact, there were two developments regarding my Korean learning that make me extremely happy. First off, on the matter of motivation, I've been getting into Korean web novels recently (in English translation, of course) and discovered a couple of really nice ones in the past two weeks! While this has nothing to do with my actual language learning right now (except to distract me from the same ), it's a really big boost for my motivation for learning Korean, which had been a bit lacking recently. When I started learning Korean last June, it was mostly because I'd been getting really into kdramas and that made want to learn the language. However, fast-forward a few months and by autumn I'd basically stopped watching any kdramas. Although I've been rewatching a couple of episodes from dramas I've already seen recently, I haven't gotten into any new dramas in months - a fact that I'm not too sad about, because kdramas were seriously addictive. XD But of course that meant that I had no real reason to continue learning Korean besides the fact that I like the language (which is unfortunately not a good enough factor to keep learning in the long-term for me). On the other hand, having a bunch of novels I know I want to read in the original Korean, as well as the assurance that there's probably a lot more novels in this vein that I'd really enjoy, but that I've never even heard about because they haven't been translated into English is the best sort of motivation ever for me!

And then, probably fuelled by my re-ignited motivation for Korean, I decided to check out some easy manga series in Korean and to my delight actually found out that one of my favorite manga series - Major - is already quite readable for me at this point.
Major is an amazing sports manga about baseball consisting of 78 volumes that I've previously read in Japanese (a couple of years ago). I've found that sports manga are generally among the easiest manga to read (though there are naturally exceptions, like e.g. Baby Steps), since there's a lot of focus on easy topics, like training and matches, a narrow focus and no complex plot lines to keep track of. Additionally, baseball seems to be really good topic to get started on in Korean for me, since all of the specialist vocabulary (pitcher, catcher, batter, strike etc.) is easily derivable from either the English or the Japanese equivalents, so that already gives me a great advantage. Nonetheless, it would probably be way too frustrating for me to read this manga if I didn't already know it, because parts of the text are just incomprehensibly difficult. But despite that, I can understand large parts of what is being said at 95%+ comprehension. How does that work? Well, the manga spans a rather long timeframe and at the beginning the protagonist is about 5 years old, so the language he uses is correspondingly simple. Add to that that a lot of it is about baseball, where I know the important vocab and suddenly my understanding is really good and these passages are ideal for extensive reading. On the other hand, occasionally there are situations (like when the protagonist's father talks to his club about his injury and his future in the club) where I am completely lost, but since I know what is happening, I can just gloss over these scenes and get back to the parts that I can understand. Overall, that makes Major a lot more comprehensible and easy to follow than, say, the TTMIK Iyagis - not to mention that it's more fun because it's reading Major! So that being said, I decided to start reading through this manga series in lieu of continuing the Iyagis. I'll naturally keep supplementing that with my Korean Grammar sentences. I'll probly come back to the Iyagis at a later point.

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Weekly Goals for Week 7 (2018) - Incomplete (╯°▽°)╯ ┻━┻
Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #2 (After the accident)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

French
*Read 50 pages

Japanese
*Read 75 pages [ねじ巻き精霊戦記 天鏡のアルデラミン #1]

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV

Other stuff I did:
Korean: Read Major Vol. 1, ch. 1.
French: Watched Grimm S4 ep. 6-7.
Italian: 5 hours of LR.