What next? (learning Spanish, maintaining German, random dabbling...)

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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Sat Aug 29, 2020 1:12 pm

Despite the last two weeks being the most boring holiday I've had in a long time, it's actually been really useful to press the reset button and reflect on the gap between what I am currently getting out of life and what I might like to get out of life. Since the radical lifestyle changes linked to COVID started in March, my main life goals have been about staying sane and coping the best I can, with a key part of the strategy being hope for a quick return to normal. Nearly six months in, I think it's time to refocus. Rather than asking "how can I cope until things get back to normal?" I'm starting to ask "how can I live my best life right now?"

I've signed up to a distance learning course that is going to be altogether more serious and more time consuming than the language and craft classes I've taken over the last few years. Being a distance learning course (rather than adapted from a course that's normally delivered face to face) means that any further changes to pandemic restrictions should have a very limited impact on delivery and my expectations for the course. If it all goes to plan, it is going to provide me with skills and confidence in an area that should directly help with certain aspects of my job and also help rectify some perceived failings on my part going all the way back to high school. It's not necessarily going to be fun, but I'm aiming for interesting, useful, and fulfilling.

Being fully distance learning, it means that I'm going to have to be quite disciplined to ensure I find the time each week to keep up with the course. This means that I'll have less time for things like social media, internet news sites, and language learning forums. Altogether, I don't think this is going to be a bad thing. I'd like to still update my log from time to time and drop in on some of my favourite logs here, but if it comes down to a choice between keeping up to date on LLORG and keeping going with Spanish and German, I'm going to prioritise Spanish and German :D

Fortunately the course doesn't start until after the 6WC, so I can keep going as planned with this. But I've shifted my focus away from logging as many hours as possible. My success criteria for the challenge now is very much to finish the A1 coursebook.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:46 pm

Back to work this week with a bump and a bout of mild insomnia, meaning that although I kept up my Anki reps, today has been the first day since Monday I've done anything Spanish that doesn't involve Anki. This is going to make it quite difficult to finish off the A1 part of the course by the end of the 6WC next Friday. It's important to remember that the 6WC doesn't actually matter (and although I'd normally append something along the lines of "what matters is learning Spanish", right now with a head addled by sleeplessness, it feels like the only thing that matters is getting a decent night's sleep).

The other night I got through several German podcasts while totally failing to sleep and it brought on something akin to Proust's madeleine moment as I found myself transported to the sights, sounds and smells of Berlin Alexanderplatz S Bahn station. Although, out of all the places in Germany I have been to, and all the experiences I've had, quite why this moment of vivid nostalgia focused itself on a transport interchange is a mystery to me.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Mon Sep 07, 2020 10:07 pm

I have received some, but not all, the materials for my distance learning course now so I've made a start with studying what I can, as I'm quite keen to get a feel for how demanding it's going to be in terms of both time and effort, even though I don't yet have the full picture. My impression so far is that it will probably require more time per week than my average weekly score for the 6WC, which is going to be...interesting. In terms of effort, well, all my years of studying languages at my desk for fun means I am actually pretty good at sitting down with a textbook and a notepad and getting something useful from it now. An additional bonus of the course compared to language learning is that it shouldn't require me to take specific steps to memorise things, which is a big relief since I am getting pretty fed up with Anki now.

I don't know what this means for Spanish yet. My enthusiasm is ebbing for it again and I now have the excuse I need to walk away if I want to. But I find the thought of deliberately quitting quite depressing too. The best approach may be to get to the end of A1 (and I am so close to that now) and then shift gears back down from studying to dabbling until I get settled into a new routine around the course, and then to see what happens.

I'm also a little annoyed with myself that in turning my attention so much to Spanish over the last few weeks my German has noticeably worsened. It's nothing that I can't recover with a bit more regular use and practice. I need to remember how I've seen friends of mine seemingly going from B2 to C1+ overnight simply as a consequence of the warming up required if you don't keep an advanced language active the whole time. But if I want my German to be on point most of the time, I need to use it more or less every day.

Getting a language from a beginner level to a level where you can actually use it is a constant battle of remembering vs forgetting.

Keeping a language sharp at an advanced level is a constant battle of remembering vs forgetting.

I know loads of beginners are bothered by this, I think this is why so many people give up or decide that they lack talent or whatever. But what about people at the advanced levels? Is this the real reason behind the common advice to aim for B2? To get to a level where you can actually use the language, but with no pretence to having mastered it, and therefore you're just not bothered when your memory fails and some of the details are still a bit hazy?
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:24 pm

I learned a new tense today, el indefinido. That's exciting!

I can see that the indefinido of ser looks suspiciously like the passé simple of être:

fui / je fus
fuiste / tu fus
fue / il fut
fuimos / nous fûmes
fuisteis / vous fûtes
fueron / ils furent

I am also starting to see that getting tense usage correct in Spanish is going to be one of the big grammatical headaches of the language. Passé composé vs imparfait looks like a walk in the park in comparison.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:04 pm

And that's chapter 11 of Nos Vemos completed, the final full chapter for A1. All that's left is to complete chapter 12, a much shorter revision chapter, and then I'm done with A1.

This last chapter seemed to go a lot more smoothly than the previous ones and I managed to comfortably get through it in 5 days. There also didn't seem to be too much of a vocabulary dump this time, since a lot of the vocab covered had already been introduced in part in earlier chapters. Of course, it's going to take time for the indefinido to start to sink in properly.

This has almost fit in well with the timing for my new course, for which I got access to the full materials today and am itching to get properly started. Seriously, my dilemma for tonight is whether or not to watch a 90 minute video for my course, or to spend 90 minutes (or so) finishing Nos Vemos A1...
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Fri Sep 11, 2020 10:23 pm

Woohoo, I did it! I've finished chapter 12 in Nos vemos, meaning I've "finished" A1, just over an hour before the end of the 6WC.

The final review section in the workbook took the format of a CEFR assessment, so was slightly longer than the other review sections and covered all four skills (for speaking I just had to sit here talking to myself, obviously). I made a couple of stupid mistakes on the grammar and structures question, but nothing too serious. Full marks for listening and reading. As for the writing and speaking, who knows, but if I had to sit an A1 exam tomorrow, I'd be reasonably confident.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:17 pm

Now I'm just a few days into my course and it's already proving to be more of a challenge than I anticipated, both in terms of the time required to get through the course materials, and the brain power needed. I'm way outside my comfort zone and feeling a bit overwhelmed, probably not helped by my general state of anxiety and sleeplessness at the moment, but that's just the way things are. At least I'm commited now, with financial as well as emotional investment, so I just need to get on with it. In the long run it will make me stronger, even if in the short term it feels rather difficult.

It does mean that, as I rather expected, I'm not going to have the capacity to really work on a beginner language for a little while (although, quite frankly, learning a romance or germanic language would be way less demanding for me than what I'm currently signed up for), which means I get to test my theory on whether it is, in fact, possible to park an A1 language and pick it up again at a later date without having to start again from scratch. My theory is, of course, that it is possible, but it depends on how well you learned your A1 in the first place. A few weeks running through the first few lessons in Assimil or Duolingo or whatever are not going to cut it. Whereas I've got just short of 6 months working through and completing a CEFR based A1 textbook with a bit of supplemental A1 material on the side, and I've been overlearning a lot of the material with Anki. Right now I'm only A1, but it's a strong A1.

In terms of thinking about what I need to retain in order to not end up back at A0, I think it may be useful to think about A1 in this case not in terms of the "can do" statements on skills, but rather in terms of a syllabus of what you need to know. So I've got a few basic features of the grammar down, including basic pronouns, connectors, articles, and verb paradigms for two present tenses and two past tenses. I think I'll need to keep reviewing the verbs, particularly the indefinido, for a few weeks to come, but a lot of this stuff is now settling into my long term memory and I'm sure will be ready for me to pick back up at an appropriate time in the future. There are some other grammar features which are less sticky, like some details of correct article use, prepositions and the different uses of ser/estar, but these are all features that will be picked up again and again as you progress through A2 and beyond, so right now I'm not so concerned.

The other side of things is vocabulary. Right now I've probably got a vocabulary of between 1000-1500 words (it's easier to estimate when you're at the bottom end of the scale) but this is supported by heavy use of Anki. As with the verbs, I'm going to carry on reviewing my cards for a few weeks, particularly to help the new vocabulary from the last couple of chapters of my textbook to sink in as best it can, but eventually I'll probably drop this and leave it up to my long term memory to hold on to what it can. If I'm able to recall just 50% of the vocabulary I've studied when I next pick up Spanish, I'll already be well enough equipped to skip straight to A2.

In the mean time I'll be spending most of my language time with German, since I'll be staying within my comfort zone and using German (reading, listening, chatting to friends) rather than actively trying to improve my German, so I can save my brain power for my course and my job instead.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Sep 16, 2020 6:50 am

gsbod wrote:
It does mean that, as I rather expected, I'm not going to have the capacity to really work on a beginner language for a little while (although, quite frankly, learning a romance or germanic language would be way less demanding for me than what I'm currently signed up for), which means I get to test my theory on whether it is, in fact, possible to park an A1 language and pick it up again at a later date without having to start again from scratch. My theory is, of course, that it is possible, but it depends on how well you learned your A1 in the first place. A few weeks running through the first few lessons in Assimil or Duolingo or whatever are not going to cut it. Whereas I've got just short of 6 months working through and completing a CEFR based A1 textbook with a bit of supplemental A1 material on the side, and I've been overlearning a lot of the material with Anki. Right now I'm only A1, but it's a strong A1.

In terms of thinking about what I need to retain in order to not end up back at A0, I think it may be useful to think about A1 in this case not in terms of the "can do" statements on skills, but rather in terms of a syllabus of what you need to know. So I've got a few basic features of the grammar down, including basic pronouns, connectors, articles, and verb paradigms for two present tenses and two past tenses. I think I'll need to keep reviewing the verbs, particularly the indefinido, for a few weeks to come, but a lot of this stuff is now settling into my long term memory and I'm sure will be ready for me to pick back up at an appropriate time in the future. There are some other grammar features which are less sticky, like some details of correct article use, prepositions and the different uses of ser/estar, but these are all features that will be picked up again and again as you progress through A2 and beyond, so right now I'm not so concerned.

The other side of things is vocabulary. Right now I've probably got a vocabulary of between 1000-1500 words (it's easier to estimate when you're at the bottom end of the scale) but this is supported by heavy use of Anki. As with the verbs, I'm going to carry on reviewing my cards for a few weeks, particularly to help the new vocabulary from the last couple of chapters of my textbook to sink in as best it can, but eventually I'll probably drop this and leave it up to my long term memory to hold on to what it can. If I'm able to recall just 50% of the vocabulary I've studied when I next pick up Spanish, I'll already be well enough equipped to skip straight to A2.
Mr Dearman mentioned a book on memory the other day, Your Memory: how it works and how to improve it. In chapter 2 a relearning discount is mentioned, when relearning something you have already learnt before. That's without doing any maintenance, which of course you intend to do.
Relearning may be illustrated by the common experience of a person who studies a foreign language that he learned may years ago. He may not be able to recall any of it. He may regonize very little. But when he starts studying it, he may find that it comes back to him rather easily.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Fri Sep 25, 2020 7:29 pm

So far my new course feels pretty relentless. I am really enjoying it, but it's challenging my brain in all kinds of new and unexpected ways. Given all the recent additional local COVID restrictions that have been implemented in my area, it is a welcome distraction, which was one of my aims for signing up in the first place.

I was thinking to myself the other day, after a particularly tiring and frustrating study session, that learning Japanese had been easier than what I'm doing now. But now I'm not so sure. I'd forgotten how tiring it was in the first few months of learning Japanese, after I had, in one sense, mastered the kana and a few basic kanji, but reading texts, even with furigana and only few unknown words, was intensely tiring, due to the mental effort of using what I'd already learned to convert the characters on the page into words I already knew. But with practice, practice and more practice, it stopped being tiring and started to feel like a normal activity. I think this is a useful lesson for mastering any skill.

I'm still plugging away daily at my Spanish Anki decks, although I'm kind of looking forward to reaching a point where I can happily retire them.
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gsbod
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Re: Tatort und Español (DE|ES|FR)

Postby gsbod » Sun Dec 27, 2020 10:25 pm

It's been a bit of a year, hasn't it?

If you'd told me at the start of the year that I'd end up spending most of the year stuck at home with limited opportunities for leisure activities involving being in the company of other humans, I'd have thought "great, I'll make the most of the opportunity to stay at home and learn Akkadian" or something along those lines. Of course, real life doesn't play out as you imagine...

On the plus side, I have been very fortunate in terms of my personal situation this year. I've been able to work from home throughout, and my job is secure (for now). My husband has been in a similar position to me. I have a comfortable home in a great city, which is just as well since I've not ventured further than about 3 miles from my home in the last 9 months. If I was going to live through a lockdown anywhere in the world, it really might as well be here. But it has still been pretty stressful, which has sapped at my motivation and my ability to concentrate.

So what did I do? I stuck at my B1 French course despite the disruption of the unexpected move to online learning, for which nobody was prepared. In the circumstances my tutor did a brilliant job and I finished the course with an unexpectedly high grade and some glowing feedback from my tutor, neither of which fit with my own perceptions of my French ability, but I'll take it. Since then my French has gone back to a dormant state, but I'm not too worried, I know I can dust it off as and when I need it.

I completed my first 6WC challenge in several years, this time with Spanish. I completed a proper A1 level textbook and feel I have developed something of a foundation which I could take further if I wanted to. However, with the possibility of travel ruled out for 2020 and possibly for 2021 as well, I found the emphasis on tourist Spanish throughout the textbook to be rather depressing and was quite happy to park Spanish at the end of the 6WC. Again, I am sure I can pick it up later as and when I need it - I did a thorough enough job that I should be able to step straight into an A2 textbook.

German is now just a comfortable, normal part of my life. My comprehension is pretty solid although my production ebbs and flows, often seemingly randomly. My meet up group has moved online and kept going that way throughout the various lockdowns, which has been brilliant. I keep up my listening mainly with podcasts through Deutschlandfunk, but also a bit of TV here and there. I haven't been reading very much. For a while I struggled reading anything in any language, I think because for a while fiction offered me neither escapism nor the means to understand what was going on in what was a very bizarre situation, so I see it as something of a success now that I am at least reading books again in English.

And then I threw myself a real curve ball by enrolling on an undergraduate maths course via distance learning, which has been keeping me busy since September. As lockdown restrictions have been reimposed and then tightened here throughout autumn and into winter, on the whole it has been good thing that I've had something that is cerebral but not cultural that I must concentrate on for a few hours a week, since it leaves less spare time to worry about the state of the world. However, the overall time requirement is actually much greater than I'd really anticipated (ideally something around 1/2 to 2/3 of the time required would have been better) which has led to some stress around time management and squeezed out any time for language learning. Still, it's one of those things that I'd never have found the time to do had it not been for the unique circumstances of this year, and I'm hoping in the long run it will help me sharpen up some skills which will be useful both in my career and in life.

Looking ahead to 2021, I really don't know what I'll be doing in terms of languages. Yes, I'll continue maintaining German without feeling like I'm making an effort to maintain it. I doubt I'll be picking up any other languages for tourism or culture. I may pick up something for the sheer intellectual pleasure of it once I've finished with my maths course, we'll see. (It's interesting to reflect that in recent years as I've had more opportunities to travel, tourism and culture are my strongest motivators for language learning - and yet when I started learning languages as an adult, my initial motivation to learn Japanese was mostly for the intellectual challenge).

If it looks like I'll end up having to stay local for most of 2021 as well, maybe it's finally time I started learning Welsh.
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