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

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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 Jan 31, 2022 11:04 am

Sonjaconjota wrote:
Caromarlyse wrote:French: I'm still struggling a bit to find enjoyable podcasts

Do you know these?
https://podcasts.audiomeans.fr/chroniques-criminelles-6ba7547671cf
https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/crimes-histoires-vraies/id1490133385
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/balados/8389/criminelles/545495/monica-la-mitraille-vol-poursuite-accident
I'm suggesting them because I have seen that you like crime stories, although I guess real crime is kind of another genre.
Personally, I especially enjoy the first one, Chroniques criminelles.


Thanks for these, I'll check them out!

It's a bit weird that I've gone so much down the crime genre, because it's really not a passion in English, but I find German Krimis are not all that gritty so it's just a story with a psychological/detective element, whilst for French I'm just still looking around for a handful of podcasts that I don't feel I have to force myself to listen to.
2 x

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 » Tue Feb 01, 2022 9:23 am

I listened to one episode yesterday from Chroniques criminelles and enjoyed it, so thank you!

***
JANUARY OVERVIEW
French: 19.62 hours
German: 28.02 hours
Portuguese: 32.72 hours
Russian: 64.22 hours

Fitness: 11,714.6 steps average daily; 3 workouts each week; almost daily stretching

Time wise, this panned out more or less as I'd planned it. German got a bit more attention than planned, but that was because the book I chose was so long. I finished two books (one French, one German), I started watching Brazilian TV, I got into Russian classes again - all in all, very successful!

PLANS FOR FEBRUARY
French: read Changer l'eau des fleurs by Valérie Perrin (started last night - it seems good!); podcasts à volonté
German: read Togesreigen by Andreas Gruber; podcasts à volonté
Portuguese: classes + homework; TV at least four times a week
Russian: classes + homework; podcast work once a week; finish reading История России (already started, and it is definitely doable, though I don't absorb the substantive information that well); working through chapter on health from Russian: From intermediate to advanced periodically; vocab revision at least occasionally!

Fitness: same: 10,000 steps/day; 3 workouts a week (with one as rest every fifth week); stretching daily
7 x

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 Feb 07, 2022 10:12 am

French: I've read about a quarter of my book. I'm undecided about it - it's a bit meandering, with not a huge amount happening and I'm only partly being drawn in by the story. I think this is my problem, rather than the book's. I'll keep going. I also listened to a handful of podcasts.

German: Just podcasts and some videos. I learnt the word Gemahlin (consort), which I think makes it easy to guess the topic under discussion in that particular video! The same video gave me the collocation "einen Nutzen stiften", which was entirely understandable but I'd never have had it in mind to use.

Portuguese: The usual! I haven't done any TV watching, and I've decided a subscription here needs to be sacrificed in light of increasing living costs etc etc given I can find stuff for free. I was using BBC Brasil, but I got put off by an article that had been badly translated from English. So DW Brasil here I come!

Russian: I have kept to my goal to read more. With texts from a coursebook I've been doing all the work without looking anything up, and then going through in more detail. In doing so I've realised I can cope with harder texts, even if I don't understand every individual word - I can do the exercises successfully before turning to a dictionary. With "reading for fun" texts, I've noticed that I can read a lot more fluidly now than even six weeks ago. I think listening to podcasts and working intensively with the transcripts has really helped me here. Before I was just hamstrung by thinking I couldn't pronounce anything so I kept stumbling. Now I'm getting a bit more of a flow to it. I've also noticed that, here too, my first reaction is to think I don't understand anything, but I'm then realising that, although some words are unclear, I can follow fairly adequately.

The same verb has come up in three different sources this week, and multiple times in two of them. So, à la Sesame Street, I'm going to say that this post is brought to you by превращаться/превратиться в (to turn into):

1
Со временем сёла превращались в частную собственность.
Он перенёс столицу во Владимир и хотел превратить его в центр всех русских земель.
Бояре постепенно превращались в землевладельцев

2
А что касается чувства общности с другими учениками, то оно из положительного фактора превращается в отрицательный, как только ребёнок выходит из школы: на улице дети из других школ по форме могут определить, в какую школу он ходит, и начать задираться.
Вы всё равно будете покупать ему и обычную одежду, а значит, школьная форма превращается в источник дополнительных расходов.

3
Историю Макса, а вернее, историю как Макс превратился в Russian With Max.

I've also done the usual work with podcasts and lesson prep, but the class itself is still to come.
8 x

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 Feb 14, 2022 9:13 am

After being somewhat dismissive of it, I've become slightly addicted to Wordle this week. I can't play it in Russian because words that are definitely words are not accepted and I don't know why, but I'm doing it each day in all of my other languages ("unofficially", i.e. without counting the time as study time). Weirdly, my stats are the best in Portuguese, even though I definitely do not have the same width of vocabulary there as in French, German, or English. Perhaps that's the secret.

French: I'm about 70% through my novel now. It got a bit sad... But it's a good book. I am appreciating the Francis Cabrel references - a singer who was recommended to me by a French student in Germany many years ago and the lyrics of whose greatest hits I know off by heart.

German: Just podcasts.

Portuguese: Just the usual really. I did do some focused grammar study too. Unusually for me and language learning, with Portuguese I've had a real focus on communication, which I think is making me more fluid than usual at an earlier stage but feeling a little unsteady in some areas of grammar. Not that I've not covered it, just that it's not been the centrepiece. Brazilian Portuguese is also tricky in the divide between spoken/written/literary, in the sense that spoken forms are a lot more acceptable in writing than equivalents would be in, say, French, so I never know which to use and I get a lot less exposure to the most "correct" forms.

Russian: Again, the usual! Podcast + transcript work, some reading, a class (which is hard work but still going well).

Fitness: I keep forgetting to mention this. I'm keeping up with the 10k+ steps a day and my workouts proper, but the stretching has gone out of the window...
9 x

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 Feb 21, 2022 8:28 am

French: I finished Changer l’eau des fleurs. It’s difficult to say much without giving away spoilers. Essentially it is the story of a woman who is responsible for the upkeep of a cemetery, with flashbacks to her past and stories of people buried in the cemetery and their families interwoven into it. There is a mystery element in the sense that she has unresolved questions about matters from her past. This summary definitely does not do it justice, though! I think it would be a good book-club book: there is a lot of analysis that could be done; characters (and your relationship to them) develop throughout the book, and various life choices are presented. It’s almost 500 pages long, so not a quick read, but I thought it well written, and it would be good if you wanted to brush up on your cemetery and gardening vocabulary ;-) I think I’ll pick a book from the same author as my next French read, in March.

German: Mainly podcasts whilst I finished my French book. I’ve just started my next Krimi: the next in the same series by Andreas Gruber (which is even longer - 576 pages - which might be a bit of a stretch to get through by the end of the month!). I’ve already learnt a new word that in German expresses something that in English we need a sentence for: Geisterfahrer (a driver who is driving the wrong way down a road or carriageway).

Portuguese: The focus on grammar continued. I’ve quite enjoyed going back to geeking out on this again. Other than that, classes as usual and supplementary listening and reading.

Russian: My first class of the week went so well that I got brave and decided to try out a second teacher. I’d like to get back to two classes a week, but the first teacher doesn’t want to offer more than one a week. The class with the new teacher went pretty well - well enough to try another, at least. Past experience has taught me that it’s not wise to invest in a package or get overly excited straightaway! I think the two classes might complement each other well, though: one is a lot of discussion based off either written texts or groups of new verbs/vocabulary read/studied before class, whilst the second looks like it’s going to be based on a (native-level) audio text plus transcript studied before class, followed by some more traditional exercises done orally in class as well as a bit of discussion. The teachers are also based in opposite ends of Russia, and are at different life stages, and so far I’ve found it really interesting to hear little titbits of their respective lives. In any case, I was pleased with how the trial went. I’ve had some horrible experiences in the past. I think I’ve got better in knowing what I need to get across: especially when it’s a language in which you’re not a beginner, you almost have to sell yourself and get the teacher to buy into you. I think I am also better at choosing someone who’s likely to work for me. This is still a bit of a long, drawn-out process because there’s no option of searching for teachers according to their specialism, so you end up having to view someone’s profile only to dismiss it because they only teach beginners. But the time invested seems to have paid off on this occasion. I also think that I must have improved in the past few months, as the reaction I’m getting to my Russian is better than in my last round of trial classes.

My work this week was therefore very skewed towards class work and preparation, but I still got my work in with the Russian with Max podcasts.

Fitness: I lost my 10,000 steps a day streak, but for good reason: we had a red weather warning here on Friday (risk to life, stay at home) so I thought it would be foolhardy to venture outside just to meet an arbitrary goal. I think I’ll still be above 10k steps daily average for the month, though. I saw on Saturday that there were a lot of trees and fences down (including one of ours, irritatingly), as well as roof tiles, a gravestone and a trampoline, so it was probably the right choice. I also did my usual workouts. I had a sports massage booked for Friday evening that I’d hoped to get to as the winds had died down by then, but that got cancelled at the last minute because of a power outage. I did do some stretching myself to try to compensate, but I'm still feeling very stiff.
8 x

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 » Tue Mar 01, 2022 9:03 am

Work had already got very difficult and very stressful, making my language learning suffer, and then geopolitics happened, which didn’t help. I don’t have words anyway, even without the ban on discussing politics, so we’ll just focus on language learning, despite it feeling all a bit insignificant at the moment.

Monthly totals
French: 14.45 hours
German: 22.45 hours
Portuguese: 23.68 hours
Russian: 56.42 hours

The amount of work I put in fell off a cliff towards the end of the month. I did still do a lot of Russian, which, after all, is my focus, so that’s good. I kept up with German with no problem because there’s so much stuff I want to do with it. I wasn’t so diligent with the other two. Never mind.

I kept to my goal of reading a book in French, but I didn’t finish a book in German - I’m not even 15% of the way through. I’ll roll that over to March. I listened to podcasts in both languages but not that many. With Portuguese I kept up with classes and homework but totally failed on the listening practice. For Russian, I did classes, worked with the Russian with Max podcasts diligently, revised some vocab (shock horror), and did quite a bit of reading and textbook work, just not what I’d planned! I suppose my biggest language win was consuming a lot of Russian-language content without any props (subtitles, etc) and realising I could understand pretty well. Not 100%, by any means, but enough to absorb the message semi-completely (and not feel as though I was wasting my time just listening to noise). I am also two chapters into an abridged (seven chapter) and simplified version of Crime and Punishment. My reading fluency has noticeably improved too, even if I seem incapable of following a plan...

So, plans for March? I feel tired so I want to take things easier. French and German I’ll just say I’ll read/listen to what I want to, and not worry about quantity. This will probably mean French gets forgotten about because German is my “happy place” language, but I think I need this. I’ve got a few classes left for Portuguese and then I need to decide what to do. I’m not sure I can justify further expense here right now. There is definitely a lot more I could be doing on my own. I need to weigh up the benefits (including mental) of classes versus the cost. TBD. For Russian I’ve still got classes and I’ve got plenty of materials to be working through. I’ll say that my priority for the coming week or so will be to continue with Crime and Punishment - I am reading it and marking verbs that I’ve recently studied (I’ve been given groups of verbs with the same root) so as to get more examples of how subtleties of meaning are expressed. I also want to highlight all the gerunds and participles etc so I can go back to that area of grammar and see if it sinks in more now that I’ve had more exposure. I also have an audio version of the book, so I’ll need to listen and read eventually too.

Oh, and before I forget, my fitness round-up. I got in an average of 11,407.4 steps a day in February, which was slightly down on last month, but still over 10k daily. I didn’t do much stretching, however. Too many goals and all that… I did do all my planned workouts, and saw massive progress here, which was nice. This included doing single-arm strict presses with 16kg for 6 reps on each side, which came from nowhere seemingly. I also managed to finish not last when I did a mock competition thing with the group I train with - it was something that played to my strengths (plodding and not giving up ;-)). There's probably a wider lesson in there somewhere...
10 x

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 » Tue Mar 08, 2022 9:08 am

I'm late with an update as I couldn't get into the site and things haven't been going too productively so I don't have much to say. I can't seem to get myself to read at the moment, so for French and German I've just listened to a few podcasts. I have been reminded of Le Dessous des Cartes in another post, so am intending to watch some of those this week.

Portuguese is not going that well in that I just seem to have lost motivation. My teacher also has limited availability at the moment so I've not got many sessions in the diary for the next few weeks. I haven't yet got into anything I find particularly compelling, though I was excited yesterday to see an announcement from Raffa Torres about some new songs being released imminently.

I've done more Russian - I suppose the benefit of having one priority means that when everything else is falling apart, I can still just tell myself to do that central core of work. I've read some more of Crime and Punishment and gone back and listened to the start of what I've read. I also highlighted participles and gerunds from the first chapter and then identified which they were (active/passive present/past participles; imperfective/perfective gerunds). I then went to the appropriate chapter in Let's Improve our Russian and started doing some exercises from there. I do like grammar exercises - I find them very soothing ;-). I *think* it might actually be sticking a bit better now - this is, after all, a topic I've gone over multiple times already. I think one of the problems is that my conjugation of verbs is not entirely solid... So then it's tricky to remember what the stem is. I've (re)learnt печь (они пекут hence пекующий) this week. This is a problem when speaking too. I knew достигать/достигнуть - достичь, I knew it took the genitive, I knew I needed a perfective future, but on the fly I completely forgot the conjugation. I think I'll benefit from having some kind of grammar exercises on the go all the time to keep getting the practice with this. I've focused more recently on improving listening and expanding vocab, which has been helpful, but I have noticed some spelling mistakes creeping in because I'm spelling the word how it sounds (mixing up о and а in particular) and I clearly do need to try to get quicker at converting the infinitive into the correct conjugated form.
6 x

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 Mar 14, 2022 8:45 am

French: I watched some programmes on Arte, including Le Dessous des Cartes and 28 minutes. We’ve also started watching La Promesse, which is on BBC iPlayer. It therefore has English subtitles, but at least it’s giving me a good bit of French exposure.

German: Just podcasts. I’ve still not been able to read :-(

Portuguese: Really just classes and homework. This week I had to refer to Gramática Ativa 2 for something. I’d put this down last year when I realised I was getting ahead of myself. I remember finding it quite a stretch (especially when compared against the first volume). It doesn’t feel like that anymore, so I have obviously got better, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

Russian: This has again been my focus - I’ve spent a lot less time on languages overall, but it’s not been my Russian that’s taken the hit.

I studied a poem, which was an interesting change. In doing so I learnt about poetic forms of words. For example молочный -> млечный (as used in млечный путь), ворота -> врата, борозда -> бразда. I think the rhythm of poetry might help my accent too - I definitely found it a lot easier to read a poem out loud than I often find normal prose.

The word наследство has come up on multiple occasions this week, such that I am now pretty solid with it. This fortuitous repetition is the only way I’ve ever found to memorise vocabulary effectively, and it is why I like going through lots of different material.

I’ve continued practising summarising orally what I’d read. I think this is requiring a little less preparation beforehand than it was a couple of months ago, though it still feels like a monumental effort to string coherent sentences together… I’ve learnt терпеть не могу (I can't stand), which I think will be quite useful!

I’ve continued to work through the chapter on participles in Let’s Improve our Russian. I think that finally I’ve absorbed it properly. This must be about the fifth or sixth time I’ve studied this topic! It’s a tough one to introduce early on because it requires comfort with the conjugation of verbs, imperfective and perfective forms, verb government, declination of nouns, pronouns and adjectives… I think I must be at a place now where all of this context is more familiar such that participles are now within my zone of proximal development ;-) In any case, I feel solid on the formation of the four different types of participle (with the exception of past passive participles where I still falter, because there are so many exceptions to the rule that there is not really a rule to my mind…). I am also happy with when to choose each type, and when they can’t be used. I’ve still got a bit further to go in the chapter, so I’m not quite there yet, but I’m definitely feeling as though I’ve achieved some good progress here. In the exercises I came across some French borrowings, which don’t retain the same meaning but should be easier to remember by dint of the association: бандероль (small parcel (ru), banner (fr)) and тираж (circulation (of a publication) (ru), pulling, drawing, etc (fr)). I also saw шахтёр (miner), which comes from шахта (mine), which is from the German Schacht. Шахтёры бастуют, так как они недовольны получаемой зарплатой. Этим людям не хватает на жизнь получаемой зарплаты. There's a lot in these sentences. I like the puzzle element to Russian grammar.

Fitness: I have been completely failing the stretching and 10k steps a day goals. I have kept up with all my workouts, though, and am continuing to progress well there. If I aim for 11k steps a day for the rest of the month I'll have caught back up - I need to give myself this as an option or I can feel myself throwing in the towel completely. I was feeling good on the increased low-level activity, and it needs to make a return.
7 x

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 » Wed Mar 16, 2022 8:02 am

I think I've got a plan for my Portuguese, which I've been feeling a bit indifferent about recently.

Inspired by Cavesa's new log, I played around with the study time calculator. Calibrating things to match up how much time I've spent so far and where I am, it predicts I could reach B2 by the end of the year if I committed an hour a day. Although all of this is obviously a large amount of guesswork, it did serve to give me a little boost of motivation. Experiencing a sense of progress is important for me. Taking that motivational boost, I went back to a page I'd bookmarked and from there found a link to this page (https://coerll.utexas.edu/brazilpod/), which has all manner of different courses themselves linked from it. The ClicaBrasil course seems to be perfect for me to work through for the rest of this year. There are seven units and within each videos (with bilingual transcripts), texts to read, grammar points, and downloadable exercise sheets (with answers). I've read that the videos are used in B2 classes in Brazilian language schools. Having had a quick flick through, it does seem to be the right kind of level for me. So the plan is to spend an hour a day working my way through this course. I work well with structure, so I'm quite excited by all of this.
5 x

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)
x 1611

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

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:42 am

The week was a bit rubbish for various reasons, but moving on...

French and German - didn't get much time...

Portuguese: I finished the first unit of the ClicaBrasil course. I think the videos gave some very good samples of natural speech, and it was good to have full transcripts to work through these in detail. The grammar covered was pretty basic, but not too bad as revision. Alongside this course I'm also starting to work through Português em foco B2, a European Portuguese textbook. I've already listened to a fair bit of European Portuguese, and wanted to get familiar reading more. I also felt I'd benefit from the kind of vocab building and reading comprehension exercises that are contained in such books. I'm going to continue with classes, so I'm not too worried about doing oral or free writing exercises, but wanted something additional to work through methodically on my own. I've worked through the first chapter, and so far it's fairly straightforward - a few new words but I'm managing fine with the audio and the grammar has just been revision.

Russian: It wasn't my finest week for speaking, but we press on. I finished the chapter from Let's Improve our Russian on participles. They've come up elsewhere quite a bit too this week. I continue to be happy with how far I've come on this topic. I've also done some intensive reading/vocab building work, listened to a podcast and a video (native-level, with no subtitles, which I could follow but would have liked to have had better understanding), and started studying a new poem/song.

Fitness: Forgot to add this, so editing to add that I'm back on track with the 10k a day steps. No stretching, though :(. Workouts are continuing to go well: I succeeded in a challenge that basically involved me getting over my fear of getting too out of breath to continue (I discovered I can let my heart rate go up and just carry on; my brain was trying to protect me too much), my work on core strengthening and getting a full proper push up continues, and I managed 14kg for a couple of reps on each side of a Turkish get up (languages and fitness in perfect harmony :-)).
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