Back to the roots and water them with coffee

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Cavesa
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Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
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Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:34 pm

Having coffee in my logs' names is a sort of a tradition for me. :-)

Why am I starting a new log: a lot of things have gone wrong with my language learning and my beginning career in the last few months. I don't want to dwell on the failures, on the painful compromises (extremely briefly: I am staying in France for now, but taking a medical specialty that has absolutely nothing to do with my real goals and interests, and I won't even live in a big enough city in the next few years, probably just in dumb small towns) and broken dreams. And I don't want to push myself even harder into learning any language for profit, it simply doesn't work. My brain resists and begins to hate German again because of this. The pressure "learn German to get a better career" approach was disgusting to my brain 20 years ago, and it is again. As a kid, I heard it from everybody around me. Now, I am doing this myself.

So, progressing in my languages, having fun, and eventually getting some new and shiny certificates (because that is a wonderful goal, an opportunity to leave the comfort zone, and give myself an ego boost that I could really do with), that is my goal. Leaving aside Spanish and Italian for German, that was a huge mistake. Those two are making me happier and I really need to unrust them. German will take the ride with them, if it works.

And should time allow, I am really falling in love with Hebrew. I heard Gal Gadot speak it on youtube and fell in love, I've heard about the nice popular culture in it, I know the israeli are among the best in some fields I am interested in. I am a bit tempted with Arabic, it would be great for my patients, and I am a huge fan of Maiwenn's log (and Hebrew suffers from such a lack of resources, compared to the enormous world of Arabic). But somehow, Hebrew speaks more to my heart for now.

The next two posts will be my progress bar garden, and (more importantly) the super challenge log.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:35 pm

THE PROGRESS BAR GARDEN
(number) means a part had been started before this log
/ a short note

GERMAN: the quest to finally reach B1
GermanSpeechling: 31 / 73 (28)
SpeaklyGERMAN: 305 / 4000
SpeaklyGERMANdialogues: 32 / 56

SPANISH: Review of all that is rusty, progress towards C1
SpanishSpeechling: 13 / 93
SpeaklySPANISH: 901 / 4000

FRENCH: Review in general, never hurts
FrenchSpeechling: 0 / 21 /only the advanced ones
FrenchKwiziqB1: 100 / 100 (76)% /useful review of the grammar, a few bits of kwiziq are new, which is great
FrenchKwiziqB2: 100 / 100 (40)
FrenchKwiziqC1: 100 / 100 (61)

ITALIAN:an attempt to cover the gap between solid passive and bad active skills
ItalianSpeechling: 10 / 93
SpeaklyITALIAN: 430 / 4000
Last edited by Cavesa on Thu May 13, 2021 7:32 pm, edited 16 times in total.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:36 pm

The Super Challenge Log 2020-2021:

SpanishReading5000pages: 0 / 5000

SpanishWatching9000minutes: 1775 / 9000
Elona Holmes 115 min
Wynona Earp 26 episodes, 40 min:1040min
Quén mató a Sara? 350 min
Los favoritos de Midas 6x45min

FrenchFunWatching9000minutes: 9000 / 9000
Warehouse13: 64 episodes, about 55min each: 3530 minutes
Bureau des légendes 50 ep, 52min: 2600 min
La Flamme 9 ep,26min: 234min
Taboo 8ep, 55min:440min
Baron Noir: ep 1-3, 45min: 135min
Engrenages: season 1-4: 40ep x 50min: 2000min
Engrenages saison 5

ItalianReading5000pages: 0 / 5000

ItalianWatching9000minutes: 1630 / 9000
Shadow and Bone 8x50min
Lucifer 9 episodes x 40 min
Altered Carbon Season 1 and 2 550+320min


EnglishAndCzechFunReading5000pages: 0 / 5000
GermanReading5000minutes: 0 / 5000
GermanWatching9000minutes: 0 / 9000
FrenchFunReading5000pages: 0 / 5000
Last edited by Cavesa on Thu May 13, 2021 7:33 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sat Oct 03, 2020 11:15 pm

I really have a streak of bad luck. Every time I get excited about something, it gets ruined. Like Speechling a few minutes ago.

Don't switch languages on Speechling, it erases the progress. I had a bit of fun practicing my other languages on Speechling, went back to German, by changing the settings normally. I had recorded 1210 German words and phrases. But it was all gone. All the earned badges. What was worse, when I selected the Intermediate 1 level that I remember I was in, I was put back on its beginning. Even if I remembered at which sentence I was before this, I would have to click through all the sentences up until the actual one.

So, you can either learn just one language (there is no warning about this. you pay one price for them all together), or you can progress only by doing whole levels at once. Which is easy, when the level is short and you get the three badges for 130 sentences. But there are levels with 500! So, you can either do it at once, and then just rerecord the wrong ones (your past recordings and feedback fortunately don't get erased), or you can take an external note "finished first 200" at the end of your session and tap 200 times next times, to get to continue.

Really. Even my boyfriend is making fun of my bad luck (with good intentions, trying to make me laugh about that). But everything I touch, try, or want lately gets ruined.

So, be careful and don't fall to the same trap. Speechling is great in general, but I have found a huge problem.
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Xenops
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Xenops » Sun Oct 04, 2020 3:37 am

Cavesa wrote:I really have a streak of bad luck. Every time I get excited about something, it gets ruined. Like Speechling a few minutes ago.

Don't switch languages on Speechling, it erases the progress. I had a bit of fun practicing my other languages on Speechling, went back to German, by changing the settings normally. I had recorded 1210 German words and phrases. But it was all gone. All the earned badges. What was worse, when I selected the Intermediate 1 level that I remember I was in, I was put back on its beginning. Even if I remembered at which sentence I was before this, I would have to click through all the sentences up until the actual one.

So, you can either learn just one language (there is no warning about this. you pay one price for them all together), or you can progress only by doing whole levels at once. Which is easy, when the level is short and you get the three badges for 130 sentences. But there are levels with 500! So, you can either do it at once, and then just rerecord the wrong ones (your past recordings and feedback fortunately don't get erased), or you can take an external note "finished first 200" at the end of your session and tap 200 times next times, to get to continue.

Really. Even my boyfriend is making fun of my bad luck (with good intentions, trying to make me laugh about that). But everything I touch, try, or want lately gets ruined.

So, be careful and don't fall to the same trap. Speechling is great in general, but I have found a huge problem.


Wow, that is a glaring problem. Have you contacted support and complained? They need to know it's a problem.

I guess I am also confused about how that site works: I thought a free account would allow you to have your sentences checked, but it makes more sense of that was part of the paid program.

I am sorry you are stuck in your disliked specialty. Since you're in small-town France, may I guess the specialty is either family medicine, pediatrics or OB/GYN? At least...You're in France. That's quite an accomplishment. :) Give yourself some credit.

Hebrew does look so cool! And yes, a definite lack of resources. Zenmonkey recommended the Routledge Modern Hebrew book (https://www.amazon.ca/Routledge-Introductory-Course-Modern-Hebrew/dp/0415484170/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=routledge+modern+hebrew&qid=1601782491&sr=8-3, and it's okay you like to translate things from the get-go. I'm personally not into textbooks with directions in the target language from page 1.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:45 am

Xenops wrote:Wow, that is a glaring problem. Have you contacted support and complained? They need to know it's a problem.

I guess I am also confused about how that site works: I thought a free account would allow you to have your sentences checked, but it makes more sense of that was part of the paid program.

I am sorry you are stuck in your disliked specialty. Since you're in small-town France, may I guess the specialty is either family medicine, pediatrics or OB/GYN? At least...You're in France. That's quite an accomplishment. :) Give yourself some credit.

Hebrew does look so cool! And yes, a definite lack of resources. Zenmonkey recommended the Routledge Modern Hebrew book (https://www.amazon.ca/Routledge-Introductory-Course-Modern-Hebrew/dp/0415484170/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=routledge+modern+hebrew&qid=1601782491&sr=8-3, and it's okay you like to translate things from the get-go. I'm personally not into textbooks with directions in the target language from page 1.


Yes, and support has answered! Fortunately, the data is not lost!!!

However, I got this problem, because I accidentally changed the base language in the options, and each target+base combination counts as a separate course. So, I simply didn't remember that I was learning German from the American English base.

It is no tragedy. But it is still annoying, it is still a small problem, or at least something that the users should be warned about in the options for two reasons:

1.To not end up in panic like me (This can happen even to people learning from technically one base language, as the British and American English and European/LA Spanish are separate on Speechling), and

2. To not make any plans of for example learning German from both English and French, unless you want to do everything twice. Which in case of Speechling wouldn't bring much value, in my opinion.


......
Yes, I'll be stuck in one of those specialties (all of these have nothing to do with my interests) in a few weeks and again in a useless small town with no culture at all. Now I've fortunately deleted a looong rant, explaining why that is a disaster :-D


SOOOO looking at the bright side: I can focus on the Super Challenge. And also on other languages, without feeling as if I was wasting an opportunity in the country.
...............

Yes, I am definitely considering that textbook!
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tarvos
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby tarvos » Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:58 pm

Having lived in the countryside, I have to say - there is a culture there too, just a different one and one I'm not sure I can appreciate. It's definitely good for some people, and it is also good to get away from the noise and pollution of the cities. I'm sure you can make something out of the situation if you try to :)
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Mon Oct 05, 2020 5:53 pm

tarvos wrote:Having lived in the countryside, I have to say - there is a culture there too, just a different one and one I'm not sure I can appreciate. It's definitely good for some people, and it is also good to get away from the noise and pollution of the cities. I'm sure you can make something out of the situation if you try to :)


Well, it is not for everybody. I am glad that some other people are happy in the countryside, it is just not for me. And now I can honestly tell anybody that I've tried :-D

Yes, I will making something of it. I think I've just had the final kick in the butt that I needed. The last week or two were a bit too much, so I am approaching my career project differently now and heading for a different option.

But that doesn't change I need to focus much more on having fun and enjoying my life. It even leads to better practical results in the end.
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Cavesa
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby Cavesa » Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:22 pm

I had a horrible shift yesterday, still trying to wake up my brain today :-D I am looking forward to leaving, but there is still a lot of paperwork between me and my next job (which I need to find). I am now learning to write a motivation letter and cv. A funny note: I've been praised and complimented on my work several times lately. My boss thinks I am finally starting to like it, and that it's a shame I am leaving this specialty. :-D No, it's only that I can finally see the light at the end of this damn tunnel and this hope affects my performace a lot :-D

A few tiny bits of language news: I got complimented on the improvement of my French :-D The nurse from the work medicine told me I was already good a year ago, but I am now better. She compares me to a doctor from there, who has been an immigrant here for fifty years, yet seems to struggle much more (and his native language is Romanian, so he should actually have much less of a problem than me).

I really miss active learning of some of my languages, but I am getting back there.

I am very slowly moving through Speechling. A curious theory: I seem to have a better pronunciation in Italian than in any other of my languages. I get a smaller % of the sent recordings back for improvements. One might say it's because of the Italian being somewhat easier. My theory: there has been no teacher to mess it up for me. The only one affecting it was my singing teacher, who was much more rigorous than any language teacher I've ever met. This really makes my decision to not use language teachers even stronger, no matter how much I'd appreciate some external motivation and regularity in my learning. It looks as if a tutoring session once a week could put me on track, but I am simply too worried an incompetent moron (that I won't recognise soon enough) will just damage my progress, as usual. Finding high quality service in this field is no easy task.

I've also wasted my Speakly subscription. I have barely used it and now it ends :-( I think a few things have been going wrong and I'll fix them next time (once I finish some other subscription, I cannot afford to waste money this way. I hope I've learnt my lesson). Next time, I'll doom my progress and start from the beginning. It is hard to seamlessly just continue after a few months. I'll put stuff to Anki, to complement the Speakly's mechanism (the minidialogues are awesome, but not SRSed. The main SRS part is not asking about everything I want it to. etc), and I'll do much more grammar work aside of that. A fun bit of news: Czech is now one of the base languages, but only for a few languages.

I am hesitating between buying the next level of Nuovo Espresso as a paper book or a digital one. The digital one is so much more comfortable, as far as audio goes (no need to search, it is all there at the right places), and it is also more practical for someone likely to move a few more times. But the paper stays in my hands for how long I want. So, is a 1 year subscription likely to motivate me more to just finish the course, or is it gonna end up wasted like Speakly?
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tangleweeds
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Re: Back to the roots and water them with coffee

Postby tangleweeds » Sun Oct 18, 2020 9:11 pm

So much I can relate to here, from wanting to be someplace urban to subscriptions you can barely afford slipping through your fingers before you know it (not to mention coffee addiction!). Also the e+audio-book vs paper dilemma! Agh!

I continue to think good thoughts on your behalf for finding a job you like in a place you want to be.
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