Brun Ugle goes to the Gathering (ES, EO, DE)

[Brun Ugle]

Update for week 40-41

OK. So, I got a cold, got halfway over it and then got a new cold. Or maybe the first cold got its second wind. Anyway, I’m really dumb when I’m sick, so I didn’t get much studying done. I tried to do a bit of FSI, but it was horrible. Normally, I have a fairly good control of the Spanish verbs, but I could hardly even keep the regular present tense forms straight. I felt like my whole brain had been replaced by snot. My Spanish and Esperanto, both of which are probably in the B1 range on a good day, dropped to about A1. Even my Norwegian and English were probably at about B2. I could hardly make sense of the news when I tried to watch it. It felt like listening to a foreign language.

Still, in my better moments, I managed to do the occasional round of Duolingo or Memrise and I did get a few things done in my more lucid moments. But mostly I just fooled around. I also read bit.

Spanish
The only easily quantifiable things I did were in Spanish.
FSI programmatic: 28-29
Language Transfer: 70-79 (review)
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 41-55
Dos gatos y el misterio del Mercado de la Cebada: 10-14 de agosto

I only have two chapters left in the cat book. I read quite a bit these past few days as it was the only thing my brain was good for language-wise -- that and Memrise. Anyway, I wouldn’t call it great literature, but I’m still enjoying it. I’m learning a lot about the history of Madrid and some of the art as I read, as those are important to the story. I usually google the artworks mentioned so that I can look for clues in them. It’s all very educational, but still a weird book.

[Brun Ugle]

I just finished the cat book. It turned out to be a bit of a murder mystery after all, and even weirder than I thought. And the ending! I did not see that coming! I’m glad it’s still daytime now.

[Brun Ugle]

Uff! I almost didn’t write a log entry for this week. It’s been a tough, exhausting week and I didn’t get a whole lot done. But, then I got an e-mail saying a couple of people added me on Memrise, and that inspired me to turn off “The Big Bang Theory” and get back to work. So thank you, DaEgga and VM_NM.

Update for week 42
Spanish
FSI programmatic: 30
FSI Basic: 7
Language Transfer: 80-82 (review)
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 56-60
La Fea Más Bella: 1-2
Dos gatos y el misterio del Mercado de la Cebada: FINISHED

I’ve had to slow down considerably with FSI programmatic as there are so many exercises for each lesson now. I’ve also started watching La Fea Más Bella again. I’d watched the first few episodes before, but I thought I’d just start from the beginning again. I tried watching a bit when I had a cold, but I only understood about 10%, however once I felt better, my comprehension jumped to about 70%, at least for the episodes I’ve seen before. My brain is useless when I’m sick.

Esperanto
Gerda Malaperis: 1-8
Teach Yourself: 1-2

I’d also read a bit of Gerda Malaperis before, but I wanted to start from the beginning and listen as I read, which you can do if you read it on lernu.net. Afterwards, I’m going to try watching the movie. It looks pretty corny, but it should be fun.

Teach Yourself is easy so far since I’ve already done Duolingo, but I think it’s great to get a bit of reinforcement from other courses.

German
Assimil passive wave: 1-5

Assimil seemed like it couldn’t possibly be effective, but after five lessons, I’m starting to believe maybe it really can work. I’m also doing a bit of Memrise on the side, but I haven’t been doing any other real courses. I might eventually, but I don’t want to spread myself too thin right now.

In addition, I’ve been doing a teensy bit of Turkish on Memrise. I’ve decided not to make any real attempt to learn Turkish right now as I have more than enough to do as it is, but I thought I’d have a look at it before my trip there.

[Brun Ugle]

Acabo de hablar en español con un amigo de intercambio que vive en España. No habíamos hablado desde hace tres meses. Creo que mi nivel de hablar ha bajado mucho. ¡Tarzan habla más elegante que yo! ¿Es que no hablaba por tanto tiempo? O ¿es que estudio demasiados idiomas ahora? No sé. Pero tengo que mejorar me.

[Brun Ugle]

Update for week 43

Spanish
FSI programmatic: 31
FSI Basic: 8
Language Transfer: 83-85
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 61-63
La Fea Más Bella: 3

I also read a good bit in “A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish” to help me clear up a few things about the exercises in “Gramática de uso del Español.” And I had a nice chat with Ricardo, my language exchange partner in Spain. I feel my level of speaking has decreased. I don’t know if it’s language overload (ie that I’ve learned more Spanish and it hasn’t all settled in my brain yet) or if it’s because I’m learning several languages at once, or if it’s just that I haven’t spoken in a long time.

Esperanto
Gerda Malaperis: 9-13

German
Assimil passive wave: 6-11

One thing I don’t like about Assimil is that the layout is so bad. I thought it would have the dialogue with translation on the facing page, then notes, then exercises. But it usually has a few lines of the dialogue, with translation on the facing page, then some notes about those lines, then the next few lines of the dialogue on the next page, more notes, then another few lines of the dialogue on the next page, etc. So a dialogue that is only 8-9 lines long, might be split into three sections and you have to flip the pages back and forth as you follow along. It’s really annoying to have to flip the pages like that while trying to follow the recording.

[Brun Ugle]

I just signed up for the 6WC for German even though it's not my main language and even though I'll be away in early December. So, no hopes of "winning," but that's probably for the best. I got a little obsessed last time.

So, anyone joining me? It looks like only 15 people have signed up so far.

[Brun Ugle]

Update for week 44

I didn’t get much done this week due to having workmen here. I thought it would only take them a couple of hours to fix the stuff, but it actually took a couple of days. Anyway, after five years of living in this apartment, I now have heat and the ventilation to the kitchen and bathroom works. They even fixed my door. Now I keep falling out into the hallway every time I open it because I’m still not used to it opening so easily. The next step is to get the landlord to fix the internet. It shouldn’t even be that hard to do, but after all these years, he still hasn’t managed it.

Spanish
FSI Basic: 9
Language Transfer: 86-90 (finished)
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 64-66
La Fea Más Bella: 4-8

German
Assimil passive wave: 12-17

The only Esperanto I did was Duolingo reviews and Memrise. I also used Memrise for Spanish and German.

I also decided to join the 6WC for German, mostly because it can be a nice way of tracking stuff sometimes. I don’t intend to get too crazy about high scores. Also, it’s probably going to be a 4 week challenge for me since I will be away for part of December and I was planning on taking a break then.

German pronunciation is starting to feel a lot more comfortable in my mouth. I’m also enjoying the vocabulary boost I get from Norwegian. I have a feeling I’m going to find out soon that some aspects of the grammar might be a little annoying, but Assimil seems to be taking grammar pretty lightly so far. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I kind of like having a nice overview of the grammar when I study, but maybe it’s good to try new things too.

For some reason, watching “La Fea Más Bella” was so easy this week. I followed fairly well before, but suddenly it became downright easy at times. I love the feeling of those sudden leaps in ability. It often feels like I go for months with no progress at all, so I need to enjoy the feeling of progress when it comes. And next time I feel like I’m getting nowhere, I need to look back at this and remember that I’m probably just building up steam for a giant leap.

[Brun Ugle]

I'm really enjoying the 6WC this time around. First of all, I'm not letting myself get carried away. I purposely signed up with a language that I knew wasn't going to be my main focus (although the challenge has made me focus on it more than I would have otherwise). This meant I knew I couldn't "win." So, I'm not trying to. Instead, I'm enjoying learning about my own study style and how I use my time. It's a lot more convenient for me this time because I now have an iPad and can update on Twitter pretty much as I go. Mostly, I tweet everything as soon as I've done it, and always use tags, which means I have pretty good graphs showing what I study and when. The only exception to running tweets is when I'm at work or something and study during my walk there and back and also during lunch. All those updates wait til I get home, but they are still on the correct day, and the graphs aren't more exact than to the day anyway. Last time, I only had the computer and quickly got annoyed with Twitter and only updated every few days after a while, so I didn't have good graphs.

I see from the graphs that Esperanto is getting squeezed out, so I need to be careful it doesn't get squeezed out entirely. My goals for the rest of the challenge, or until I go on vacation in December, are to do at least an hour each day of Esperanto, and hopefully at least an hour and a half a day each of German and Spanish.

It's fun seeing how well everyone is doing and seeing the mix of languages and methods everyone has. I'm glad I decided to sign up this time.

[Brun Ugle]

Update for week 45

The first week of the 6WC has gone pretty well. I’m even in 4th place both on target-language and overall, which is a bit of a surprise. I don’t think I’ve studied particularly hard. It’s more like a normal week when not too much goes wrong, which on second thought, might be pretty rare.

Looking at my statistics, the majority of my time is split pretty evenly between Assimil (German), FSI (German and Spanish), and Memrise (German, Spanish and Esperanto). I was a little surprised by how much time I spend on Memrise. I like Memrise, but sometimes I wonder if it’s a little inefficient. The process of learning new words is very slow. I wish there were a way to simply add words, or plant them or whatever they call it, with one click. In all the languages I’m currently studying, there are words that I learn quite easily because of their similarities to words in another language or other words in the same language, but I still feel the need to review them even though I don’t need to see them four times in the initial session to learn them.

Spanish
FSI Basic: 10-11
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 67-71
La Fea Más Bella: 9-13
Harry Potter: 15

I’m falling a little behind on FSI Programmatic. That’s because there are so many exercises in the workbook. FSI Basic lessons are mainly audio and don’t have any written exercise, so they take a lot less time. Also, since they can be done without the text, I often do them while walking. I do a lot of walking, both because I don’t drive so I have to walk everywhere and also for exercise. I always do new lessons with the text at hand, but I also have all the audio on my phone so I can review while I walk. That doesn’t work very well with Programmatic because sometimes you need to see the text to do the drills.

German
Assimil passive wave: 18-24
FSI Programmed Introduction: 1-5

I’ve decided to add a little FSI to my studies because I like FSI and I find it very useful. Also, I find I do much better using several sources rather than just one. I’m also doing a few minutes per day with BliuBliu, which I love. It doesn’t teach you any grammar, it just feeds you texts and videos based on the words it thinks you probably already know. So, +1 input. It doesn’t seem like it could possibly be useful, but it’s great! I found when I used it for Spanish and Esperanto, my understanding of the languages increased rapidly with very little effort. I’m counting on it to do the same for my German. So far, so good.

I’m still working through the passive wave on Assimil at a rate of one new lesson per day. I also have the audio on my phone so I can listen as I walk. I usually listen to old lessons and shadow them as I walk. Sometimes, I also listen to new lessons (ones I haven’t actually done yet). I usually put it on repeat then and listen to the new lesson several times trying to figure out what they’re saying. Usually I understand most of it after a few listens if it’s the next lesson after the last one I’ve done. If I listen to the lesson after that, I still usually get a lot of it. But usually I don’t understand so much if I listen to something that is to be done four or five days in the future.

Esperanto
Teach Yourself: 3-4
Gerda Malaperis: 13-22

The 6WC has been good for my Esperanto because I’d been ignoring it a bit in the past. Seeing the graphs on the 6WC site and trying to keep them in balance is very useful. So, I’ve been working now about an hour a day on Esperanto and two hours a day on the other two languages. I’m getting toward the end of Gerda Malaperis now, so I’ll probably have to start something new this week, but I haven’t decided yet what.

[Brun Ugle]

Update for week 46

I was sick for a while this week, so I ended up doing more of the easier types of studying, like reading and watching TV, and less of the sort of things that require a brain, like grammar exercises. I think I got sick because I was just so exhausted. I’m autistic, so any kind of change exhausts me. Even just changing a tablecloth is a shock and wears me out. Meanwhile, I have a boyfriend who is very impulsive (I’m sure he has ADHD), and he’ll just suddenly decide to knock down a wall or redo the bathroom or something and makes rather major changes on a whim. There’s been a lot of that lately, but now there aren’t any more walls to knock down, at least not without his apartment falling down, so maybe it will be better.

I also don’t get much studying done on weekends when I visit him. He doesn’t have any interest in languages. He doesn’t mind me studying, but he doesn’t really understand it and he tends to interrupt me a lot. He’s Irish, so he talks a lot and never says anything in two words that he could say in two hundred. I know it’s a bit of a stereotype, but in his case at least, it’s true. An illustration of Irish vs American:
Question: “Do you have a pen?”
Irish answer: “I do. I do. Yes, I do, Jan. I do have a pen. I do. I have a pen.”
American answer: “Mm.”



Spanish
FSI Programmatic: 32
FSI Basic: 12
Gramática de uso del Español (A1-A2): 72-73
La Fea Más Bella: 14-19
Harry Potter 1: 16-17 (finished)

I felt this week that my Spanish was finally actually getting somewhere. I could understand quite a bit of my telenovela, and Harry Potter was actually pretty easy to read. I get a little frustrated sometimes when I’m using FSI or studying grammar because I’m always pushing myself a little. Since I’m always doing something new, it’s almost always equally hard, so I don’t notice that I’ve advanced. But when I decided to finish Harry Potter and practically breezed through it, I realized that I must be moving forward a little.

Esperanto
Teach Yourself: 5
Gerda Malaperis: 23-25 (finished)
La junaj detektivoj: 1-8 (finished)

After I finished reading “Gerda malaperis,” I decided to read ”La junaj detektivoj.” It’s a mystery story for children and is pretty short and fairly easy to read. I could have read through without looking anything up, but I did look up a few words in Lernu’s dictionary out of curiosity about their roots or to get a more exact meaning. The story was fun, a bit like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew books from my childhood. I’m not so sure about the ending though. What kind of lesson is that for children?! Anyway, I would recommend the story to anyone at a lower intermediate level who is looking for something relatively easy to read.

German
Assimil passive wave: 25-31
FSI Programmed Introduction: 6-10

I’m still chugging along with Assimil and I suppose it will all make sense in the end, but right now I’m feeling like German is surprisingly lacking in logic. I guess that’s just the limited grammar notes though. I suspect that Assimil is a little tough in the short term, at least for people like me that like to see how everything works, but in the long term, it’s probably good. There was a thread on this forum recently discussing the benefits of getting a feel for the language and figuring things out rather than having the rules laid out for you. In any case, I’m not giving up.