Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian/Welsh)

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Jun 20, 2022 8:23 pm

german2k01 wrote:Since you are pretty advanced in the German language. I think you are the right person to whom I should address my query with regards to tackling verbs in German. How did you approach learning German verbs and their different conjugated forms? Did you add sentences in Anki? Did you highlight verbs while reading?
What is the best way to tackle them so that you can use them spontaneously in a conversation?


Less than one year ago, someone else asked:
How to approach learning verb conjugations?

Then there is FSI.
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Caromarlyse
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Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:43 am

I didn't have a very good week with Russian. My work at the beginning of the week involved trying to make sense of a terrible English translation (from Danish), and I think that sapped all my brain power for a couple of days. Then I don't really know what I can blame it on. I was definitely thinking of throwing in the towel. Sometimes I question what I've managed to achieve in the past two years, and don't really understand how all those hours of work can result in nothing. I've been trying to force myself to remember how much more I understand when listening/reading, even if output is still a mess.

I can't really be bothered to write a full update, but some bullet points (I can't call them highlights!):

    * German - just podcasts and an episode of ZDF Magazin Royale (they're on a summer break now :( so just an old one).
    * Portuguese - I wasn't getting into my last book but I have got into the Portuguese translation of The Almighty Dollar, which I saw in a bookshop in English, wanted to read, and Portuguese seemed to be the only language into which it's been translated.
    * Russian - lots of podcasts; I also started watching Знахарь, a medical drama. I don't understand it very well, but the visuals help. Still doing grammar exercises on my own, as well as classes and prep for classes (for all the good it's doing me!).
    * Fitness - a lot less than usual (which probably accounts for a lot of the mood tbh), as I hurt my hip. I did see a physio and thankfully it seems to be on the mend.
6 x

Caromarlyse
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Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Fri Jul 01, 2022 6:50 am

JUNE REVIEW

Monthly totals
French: 1.3 hours :shock:
German: 17.68 hours
Portuguese: 5.45 hours
Russian: 88.62 hours :o

It's been a month of two (unequal) halves, with the first 12 days on holiday and the rest back at work and catching up on the backlog that had built up whilst I was on holiday. Holiday was great for language learning, even with it obviously only being something to be done before and after outings. I deliberately didn't do any study, but just read and watched/listened to things in all of my languages, and enjoyed doing so. Getting back has been trickier - work is such a time suck :lol: I've done very little French or Portuguese since, really just a little reading in Portuguese. Reading generally hasn't gone that well - I've been doing social things in the evenings so haven't had the time. The focus on Russian has also sapped a lot of energy.

On my personal Super Challenge, I'm well ahead on the listening part for all languages apart from French. I just haven't yet got enough compelling go-to's in that language. I keep trying various options but nothing really works. In contrast, with German I always seem to find loads of stuff. I need to do better with reading, in all languages apart from German. I don't even think I need a challenge for German - it just seems to keep pulling me in!

So, Russian. I decided when I got back from holiday to try out some new teachers. The history one seems to be working quite well. It's definitely challenging having to follow essentially a lecture in Russian. The reading for it has been interesting - a lot of the stuff about Kievan Rus' is taken from a children's book, and the word order is very different from that presented in simple Russian texts for foreigners. I assume it's a more natural word order, but one that, for whatever reason, is not introduced to foreign learners until later in the learning process. It's also been interesting from a content point of view - I've been comparing with what is written on the same period in English texts, and there is a very different emphasis (and different inclusions/omissions). It's definitely challenging following the lectures - I let a lot wash over me and then re-read the slides afterwards, but I have to keep up so I have a chance of answering the questions that keep getting thrown in. It's also difficult answering the questions because I generally know what I want/need to say, but it's quite complicated to formulate the response. I'm definitely learning a lot of new words, but the big benefit here is that they tend to get repeated a lot.

The other new class I haven't yet made my mind up on - the last class got cancelled fairly last minute so we'll see. My usual classes have continued as before. I definitely have peaks and troughs. These tend to correlate with how familiar the topic is to me - I dealt with the topic of sport again this week for the second time (with a different teacher), and could definitely tell how the repetition was making it easier for me. The word выносливость (stamina), which had caused me problems with teacher no 1, now just slips off the tongue. I also experimented with sharing my (typewritten) preparation for a class with the teacher, and that worked quite well, as she could make a couple of corrections and then we still managed to do a lot of talking, expanding on what I'd written. I think I've sorted my handwriting issues too, because stuff I wrote by hand went unremarked (apart from two really stupid mistakes I made not using the genitive when I knew I needed the genitive and the form was really simple :oops:).

I've done my usual listening of Russian with Max and Russian Twist podcasts. I've also started watching a series. It's hard and my motivation is correspondingly low, but I do think I should try to press on. My listening has definitely improved, but still needs improvement, and I think pushing the difficulty should help. I'm not going to ditch the learners' material yet though - it's good for learning new words and giving me stuff I can use when speaking. I haven't been reading Atomic Habits in Russian as I said I would, but I have been reading a lot of other stuff so I can't be too annoyed with myself. I've started looking at quite a lot of things in Russian on social media, which has been nice in showing me that it is accessible to me now (and I have stolen some expressions to use myself), but I don't want to spend too much time on this as this activity can quickly become depressing and draining, whatever the language!

Fitness: average daily steps for the month: 11,470.4. This figure came down loads in the past couple of weeks when I had to rest my hip. Less movement doesn't make me feel good mentally, so I need to start ramping it back up. I also need to keep up with my rehab and yoga so I don't break when doing so!

PLANS FOR JULY
To be formulated over the weekend. I feel I'm running to stand still at the moment and need to get a plan to get everything back together. But first I need to get through Friday!
7 x

Caromarlyse
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Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Jul 31, 2022 6:48 pm

So I took a bit of a break due to excessive heat, a health scare (not mine, but it impacted me), a heavy workload, and loads of personal admin stuff I'd been putting off and finally had to deal with. Languages - mainly Russian - still got done, though.

JULY REVIEW

Monthly totals
French: 16.08 hours
German: 6.48 hours
Portuguese: 5.83 hours
Russian: 82.50 hours

French: I read Les Victorieuses by Laetitia Colombani and listened to quite a few podcasts. I was attempting to get on track with the listening portion of my personal super challenge, and have almost caught up: I'm 13.41% of the way through, when I should be at 15%. I'm only at 9.9% for reading, but have started another book by the same author and, given I read quite quickly in French, it shouldn't be a problem to make up the lost ground by the end of August.

German: Not much - it feels as though Germany is on one long summer break and nothing is being produced! I'm well ahead on the super challenge here, though, so I'll probably continue not focusing on this language for the coming month.

Portuguese: I just watched some episodes of 3%. I really need to start doing more again, as I'm feeling as though I'm forgetting the language. I am on track for the listening portion of the super challenge though; I just need to keep that up again in August and start reading again.

Russian: Again, I've done lots! Random thoughts:

    - My history classes have continued. I'm getting more sophisticated input by adding in some reading around the subject in English. I'm going to end up knowing more about Russian history than British history (though given the state of my knowledge here, that's not going to be too hard). The classes are generally really challenging, but I get notes to read through afterwards, and I've been going through them with a dictionary.

    - I think maybe this difficult content (and another class I have in which I struggle a lot to follow) is helping with my listening skills - I put a couple of podcasts on today, and even though the speech was fast, it was still ok to follow. I didn't understand them perfectly at all, but the problem felt as though it was lack of vocab, not problems with the skill of listening. I might be deceiving myself, though, who knows. I have been continuing with my usual diet of podcasts this month, too.

    - A couple of classes with new teachers that I'm still experimenting with are interesting. They are pitched at the beginning of the B1 level - this is an ongoing issue: for whatever reason and whatever I say about what I've covered already, most teachers want to start me off there. Both of these are now realising that my reading/listening/writing/grammar skills are above the material at this level. Now, going over simpler material again is not too much of an issue for me with Russian, because there is inevitably some vocab I don't know, or some things I still mangle when under pressure. I also don't think it's possible to repeat things in Russian too many times. I don't find the classes boring, because I am still more than capable of messing up this level of material when speaking (which is clearly the problem when the assessment is an oral one), and both teachers are good at making things more difficult on the hoof if necessary. I do question, however, when/if I will ever get over this kind of threshold and be deemed - as a matter of course - capable of dealing with material at the B2 level and beyond. It is a little disheartening too, to be honest, to think that objectively it looks as though I have made no progress for almost two years now, as well as frustrating, because rationally I know that I have progressed loads since then. Things are moving a little with these two teachers now they're starting to get to know me more - one has expressly said she needs to make things harder, and the other ... well, actually, I probably still have more work to do in persuading her, but the tasks are such that I can extend them beyond the material, and I think she's nonetheless a good teacher.

    - With another teacher I am working with such harder material (for this one I did a grammar test to assess my level, so I got to start higher), and I credit this for improving my reading skills. Reading does feel as though it's become easier. I've also read a couple of graded readers this month: Дама с собачкой (The lady with the little dog - Chekhov) and Пиковая дама (Queen of Spades - Pushkin). I'm going to push on with other books from the same series (by the publisher Zlatoust), as I quite enjoy them, and appreciate the lists of vocab to pay attention to and the exercises at the end of each chapter. I hate this kind of thing with other languages, but Russian is hard and therefore I make an exception! I've also read a bit more poetry with one teacher, and then was able to come across very learned with another teacher, when I could say I had just read a poem by an author she randomly mentioned ;-)

    - I've done a little grammar with teachers, and some on my own. I finished the first verbs of motion course on the tips4russian.com site - I found the stuff on transitive verbs of motion excellent; it really helped to solidify these verbs and their conjugations in my head. I have been working through again the verbs of motion chapter in Let's Improve our Russian, which I've been trying to go through completely in order. But apparently being too hot and stressed does not make me want to study grammar, so I've had a bit of a break from that over the last few days.

    - Generally I've been enjoying experimenting with different teachers and classes - it's not going to be a forever thing, but as a summer focus it's nice to connect with lots of different people. I'm still having regular bouts of despair at how hard the language is, but I think these are becoming a little less regular, and I'm finding more enjoyment.

Fitness: average daily steps for the month: 11,641. Workouts have gone terribly and I may have had a bit of a sulk about it. I have also been bad with my rehab exercises, and need to get back to that. I have the next week off work, with only limited plans, so can get my life back together then.
9 x

Caromarlyse
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Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
(All levels estimates and given as a guide only)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Aug 07, 2022 4:45 pm

The week ran away with me, I'm not sure how. Anyway, some languages stuff still got done.

French: I finished reading Chanson douce by Leila Slimani. I didn't really like it... It was fine as a means to practise my French, but the story left me a little cold. I mean, I know I read quite pulp-y German fiction, but for me there was no depth to this novel. The reviews I've seen seem to go both ways, so I'm clearly just in the group of people for whom this book just didn't work. I also listened to one Easy French podcast - these are quite new and I'm giving them a go after having enjoyed the German ones for a while now, but, again, I'm not really enjoying them. I don't particularly need learners' stuff for French or German, but I like the German presenters and their vibe. It's possibly just a question of me being a little older than the target demographic of the French podcast team... :shock:

German: Just some podcasts and videos, nothing desperately exciting.

Portuguese: Nothing!

Russian: Loads again, including:
    - a grammar lesson on the genitive and the constructions чтобы and как бы не, which I'd thought I hadn't understood but got all right. I still need to review again, though. It would be quite nice to be able to use these spontaneously. The conversation in that class (using the verbs that take the genitive) flowed quite nicely too.
    - a lesson that is less challenging, but is giving me the opportunity to write something each week and get it corrected (and so I can choose to challenge myself). I only made two mistakes in my text, which were things I shouldn't have got wrong, but weren't all that stupid - I can learn from them. These lessons are good in that they move through the material slowly, so it does sink in, but I'm bored now so am definitely up for moving on next week.
    - more Russian history, which is super challenging. I am learning a lot, though. And getting used to trying to understand speech that doesn't make much allowance for my level! Also, why is it that I get an explanation (unbidden; in Russian) of words whose meaning I know, and then loads of incomprehensible stuff follows at great speed?!
    - more Chekhov. I read a short bio of his life (my understanding was helped by the fact that I'd found and listened to a BBC radio programme about him beforehand), as well as the short story Из дневника одной девицы. I'm growing quite fond of Chekhov.
    - some podcasts. I also watched a short documentary film, В поисках счастья, about the town of Birobidzhan, which I heard about for the first time this week. It had embedded English subtitles, but sometimes they dropped out, and I was still able to follow without any issue. Not the best film for language learning, as there were quite a lot of atmospheric landscape shots, but the subject matter was interesting.
    - more frustration that I'm not particularly good yet but also better than bad! I'm not sure whether in the past I've just got through this annoying stage in language learning by spending an extended period of time in a country where the language is spoken and then magically been able to deal with the language at a more advanced level on my return. Now I just constantly feel I'm both not good enough and not bad enough!
11 x

Caromarlyse
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Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:42 pm

It's been too hot to feel as though I've studied that well this week, but it's not been a write-off either, so I can't complain.

French: I finished Les Impatientes by Djaïli Amadou Amal, which is a good and important book, but pretty heavy stuff. I listened to a couple of podcasts, too.

German: Just one podcast, by Easy German. They were interviewing Jesse Alexander, an Anglo Canadian historian now based in Vienna. He's been a guest on the podcast before, and I really like his voice. He was talking about the Ukraine situation from his personal and professional perspective.

Portuguese: I read a few pages of my book, in an attempt to get back into it, but reading has been one of the things that has suffered this week. It was a similar story with listening/watching: I started a podcast and abandoned it after a few minutes, and just watched one further episode of 3%.

Russian: I started off the week thinking that I'd made a massive breakthrough, dropped back to thinking I knew nothing, and finished having clawed back some of the "lost" ground ;)

    - Some talking about natural disasters, which ended up being a very topical topic choice on my part...
    - Some revision (for the millionth time!) of all the studying verbs that Russian has.
    - Writing of a couple of texts, one of which has been marked and only had one mistake in it :D
    - Speaking practice requiring coming up with answers to interview questions, using information taken from a text I'd previously read.
    - Reading Ионыч (Chekhov; graded reader). Started reading another graded reader, this time by Boris Akunin. This is actually the first in a four-part series.
    - Some history study, which was a bit of a disaster. I need to decide if I give up (easy way out) or find a solution.
    - Speaking practice in a group, which I was invited to try. Not sure yet really what my thoughts here are.
    - A couple of old Russian with Max podcasts - there was no new one this week.
    - I didn't count my time, but I also read some Instagram posts on various news items, and was pleased at how I could read them without any problem at all.


Fitness: My step goal has fallen off this month because of the heat. I have done workouts, though, and I think I'm back on a upwards trend, which is nice. Hardly any yoga/stretching though - another thing I ought to do again.
8 x

Caromarlyse
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Posts: 387
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Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:26 am

Another lacklustre week, this time thanks to a headache and annoyances at work. I started searching for other jobs, and found one that listed Russian as a desirable "with Google Translate if necessary". How to value a language skill.

French: I'm trying to get back on track with my personal Super Challenge by the end of the month so have been listening a lot. I've started listening to the news on TV5 Monde. I appreciate the different perspective. I also discovered their series of videos going to various francophone countries, and watched a couple about Cameroon. It also dawned on me that I could watch Arte in French (YouTube was only ever giving me suggestions in German), so I switched the language on one video that looked interesting about whether we are getting less intelligent (the irony here is not lost on me). I also listened to a couple of Le téléphone sonne podcasts, one on Afghanistan one year on (interesting) and one on cryptocurrencies (not all that enlightening).

German: Just some stuff from Easy German and MrWissen2Go.

Portuguese: I watched some more episodes of 3% - just the final episode to go now!

Russian: Still the focus.

    - I've only been so-so at speaking this week :cry:
    - But I wrote a text that didn't contain any mistakes :D And one of my fairly new teachers decreed that I need to write texts for homework, rather than doing exercises, because I need to be pushed more, so I guess that is a positive appraisal. I wrote said text first thing this morning, and am quite pleased with it.
    - And I did ok at a couple of tests in the B2 Тесты, тесты, тесты book I downloaded. I decided it might provide a focus for my grammar study to see what I *should* know but get wrong. I've noticed that my mistakes are narrowing to a few areas where I constantly get stuff wrong, so think that a bit of concerted focus here should make an exponentially large difference. I did one test on verbs of motion and got 75%, which wasn't great. A couple of the mistakes were stupid, some were because I didn't know the idiomatic usages, some were with prefixes that aren't introduced until a bit later on so I have had less practice. I'm going to go back to my verbs of motion courses and make some notes here. The second test was on participles and I got 95%. It was a lot less demanding test, but it was nice to see that I'm quite solid with what they expect here, even if I am unsure if I'll ever be able to form passive past participles properly myself.
    - I tried reading more of the Akunin book, but it's in a different format from the other graded readers I've been through, and I like it less. It's the same publisher, but whereas the others had really useful vocabulary building work and multiple choice questions at the end of each chapter (with answers), which essentially ended up giving you a summary of the chapter in Russian, this one just has questions for discussion, which are pretty useless for self-study. I'll try to go back to it, but I'm not really feeling it. I had a look at a Russian book for proper grown-ups ( ;) ), but it seemed a bit hard, so I've ended up going for Читаем русскую классику, which is a bumper-sized anthology of various classics adapted for (approx.) the B1 level. I'm a few chapters into the first book, First Love by Turgenev. It seems good so far, though I need to print out the pages to read it as the only way I could get it on my kindle was in pdf format, which gives me a far-too-small font, and I don't like the publisher's own app.
    - I took a history break. I'll resume in September.
    - I listened to/watched a Russian with Max podcast and video. I also discovered in my old podcast app a podcast called Russian Connection. I don't recall having listened to any of these before, and don't recall why not either, but I've now listened to three of them, and would recommend.
    - I found a series on ivi about Richard Sorge, which I somehow talked myself into watching as "homework". There are 12 episodes! I am not a TV person! I have only watched 15 minutes so far - I get frustrated with lack of understanding so easily. I have learnt the word разведчик (intelligence agent) though - it came up in the grown-up book I was browsing, as well as here in relation to Sorge.


Fitness: I need to walk over 13k/day for the rest of this month to catch back up with my step goal... To be seen whether I can convince myself to do two walks a day. I used to do that, but it was pre-pandemic, and routines have changed. My workouts have still been going well - I've actually pretty much grown beyond the weights I have available at home, but it's a bit prohibitive to buy more, so I'll just have to adapt what I do with them. What I really need to do is more stretching/yoga - not doing this really exacerbates my issue with headaches. It's also been suggested that meditation might be a good idea, but this is one thing that I really can't seem to force myself to do.
9 x

DaveAgain
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:57 am

Caromarlyse wrote:What I really need to do is more stretching/yoga - not doing this really exacerbates my issue with headaches. It's also been suggested that meditation might be a good idea, but this is one thing that I really can't seem to force myself to do.
I followed a French YouTube meditation playlist for a while. Some of the videos combined some stretching exercises with meditation. e.g.Mouvement en pleine conscience, and Mindful Yoga.

In one video I think she mentioned some YouTube Yoga channels, but I can't remember their names.
3 x

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Aug 22, 2022 11:55 am

My remedy is a combination of water, rest, physical exercises and then this:


(Ignore the magical qi talk if you want, but the exercise made me aware of muscles that needed some attention.)
3 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

Caromarlyse
Green Belt
Posts: 387
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:31 pm
Languages: English (N), French (C1-ish), German (B2/C1-ish), Russian (B1-ish), Portuguese (B1-ish), Welsh (complete beginner), Spanish (in hibernation)
(All levels estimates and given as a guide only)
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:39 pm

Open to the qi talk if it does the trick! And so far it's only been a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who has been of any help. Unfortunately I've let it get bad again, and then it's hard to undo the damage. Just breathing along with that video helped though. Perhaps I will get myself to do some meditation if it's in French...
3 x


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