Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:37 am

Japanese: Tobira
Spanish: Maintenance
English: Objective Proficiency


Japanese
I realize the tendency of my reading speed and comprehension speed picking up. The main "learning" part during my lunch time is getting shorter and shorter because I did more preparation the night before. This fortunately give me more rest at lunch. My schedule for Japanese learning is like this
Morning transit: Anki - 40 minutes (I am very lenient to myself on the translation cards, but less lenient for the vocab ones)
Lunch time: Scheduled studies
Before sleep: Preparing Anki cards + Bidirectional translation / Preparing the reading
I also spent fair amount of time watching Japanese shows (variety shows), Interviews, anime, youtube.

Spanish
Recently I have been rather busy with work so I progressed slowly with HP. I really want to finish HP asap as it has been dragged on for so long. The book has not created as much suspense as it should as I already know how the story ends (I know Snape isn't the bad guy in the first novel). I still manage to keep the constant contact with Spanish through news and youtube.

English
Since I become more aware about my English, I have noticed some change in my writing style even at work. I hope it's something positive.
4 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:08 pm

Japanese: Tobira
Spanish: Harry Potter
English: Objective Proficiency


Japanese
I am watching SHIROBAKO once again today and just test a bit on my listening by switching off the subtitle. To my surprise, my rate of comprehension go up to around 50%+. This is more or less equivalent to a B1 feeling. This certainly build up more on my confidence.
Now it is half way through tobira and I can grasp more and more sentence structures and underlying meaning.

Unlike Spanish, Japanese news employ more difficult and technical words, and also very formal grammatical items which will only be touched on in possibly late N2 - N1 stage. Shows instead are the better source of entertainment / input. This created a very interesting division between Japanese and Spanish. Japanese takes charge of the entertainment side while Spanish takes charge of the informative side.

Spanish
I watched Nueve Reinas last Sunday. It is a movie which I wanted to watch for long time. It was a very interesting movie BUT the problem is I can't understand basically anything without subtitle and even with subtitle, I have to pause it from time to time so that I can decipher the sentence. It is still difficult to push to the realm of series and shows. However, I feel like having better grasp of the spoken Spanish after that.

I have memorized a lot of useful words when I was preparing B1 and B2 but I have stopped doing all these after the exam. Now when I by chance picked up a notebook I realized that I have forgotten a lot of useful / common expressions due to lack of contact. So....I decided to ankify these words / expressions. I won't be doing as hard core as the japanese deck and it will only take up presumably 10 mins of my life everyday. I think this would be helpful to tackle my mental block when it comes to speaking. I have reviewed around 10 pages of my old vocab list and only pick up ~60 words. Luckily I still remember about 60-70% of the words.

I still eager to go back to tandem but I don’t have time to commit so much on keeping contact with friends. Perhaps I'll do it after N2 exam.
6 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:10 pm

My future languages
There's an old saying in Chinese "望梅止渴" (think about plum to stop the thirst, it means to think about unaccomplished plan to satisfy oneself). Now I'm doing it to stop my craving of learning more languages before a language "mature".

My upcoming language to start at the end of 2021 would be Russian, which I come into contact quite a lot because of work. After that, I have a list of language which I wish to complete:
- more romance language (by laddering): French, Portuguese
- A Germanic language: German
- A South-east asian language: either Thai or Indonesian / Malay (for travel)
my craving has stopped, so it's time to go back to Spanish and Japanese.
2 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:47 am

Japanese: Tobira
Spanish: Harry Potter
English: Objective Proficiency
Dabbing: Cyrillic


I have been defeated by my desire to dab 1 more language (Russian) and started to do some causal learning the coming half year. It starts to feel like fighting an addiction. I now limited to studying 15 mins max on Cyrillic scripts first and later perhaps dab some fundamental stuff in Lingodeer / New Penguin Book. By the time I finished Lingodeer I should be prepared to go full throttle into the Pimsleur + Assimil combo. It's like I'm laying the foundation in Japanese when I'm working hard in Spanish.

Japanese
It's now half way into Tobira and luckily the anki hell is still very manageable. My listening is more or less the same but I can pick up more new words when I'm watching BEASTAR with subtitles and SHIROBAKO without subs. Especially for SHIROBAKO I have the strong feeling like I had few months ago in Spanish that there are dialogues which I no completely nothing but there are quite a lot of dialogues I can comprehend 80-90%. Netflix in my area doesn't always have japanese subs even for japanese shows (that's strange given my impression that Japanese shows like subtitles).

In terms of learner podcast, I still listen to "The Real Japanese Podcast!" from time to time. I can understand 95% of the contents as the language is simplified for learner. However, I like how to host still speak in her close to natural speed and use natural / native language instead of the textbook language dialogue.

Spanish
I recently bumped into a youtube channel called "Jero Freixas" in which a couple discuss about everything in daily language / slang (Argentinian) and it's mildly funny. Their latest videos have subtitles and it is good for learners to comprehend daily language.

Anki hell: I originally planned to do 50 new words a day but Anki algorithm starts to roll me over with 150+ review in one day. I then realized that in Japanese, I only add large quantity of new words every Sunday and Monday (because it's in the vocab list) but only limited amount for the rest of the week. I then slow down a bit and only do 10-20 per days then...I ain't in no rush.
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Wed Feb 03, 2021 4:06 pm

Japanese: next show?
After finishing BEASTAR season 1(I give 5/5) I start looking for the next show to watch and I came across 今際の国のアリス (a Japanese series). I am overwhelmed by the speed and the native speech. I basically can't understand more than 30% without subtitle. Apparently the difficulties goes like this
Series / Native shows >> Anime >>>> Learner's Podcast >> Tobira
I will keep watching it (as I was told it's super interesting) and hope that through this I can improve my listening.
4 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:22 am

Almost get lost in the resource world
I have been looking for the following resources:
- listening exercise for Spanish, in particular Argentinian accent, with script
- listening exercise for Japanese, particularly for usual dialogue and
- some super basic Russian listening exercise (because the Penguin book has no audio, and I'm just using forvo to listen to the pronunciation of single words)
I am almost at the point of considering purchasing a few books and I realized.....there's one resource which I have purchased - LingQ. I almost wasted extra money on things that I already have. Unfortunately I have spend some sleepless night looking for resources.

Lesson to learn: Before moving on, look around to see if you have already had anything useful in hand. It may save you money, and time on looking for resources
4 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP, [RU?] log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:35 am

Japanese: Tobira
Spanish: Harry Potter
English: Objective Proficiency
Russian: NPRC + Forvo


Struggle on resources
It takes a bit of time to sort out the resources and hammer out the Russian learning routine. As I'm going to take it slow (and I bet I'll eat my word), I was first struggling between NPRC, Pimsleur or other resources. In the end, I'm going to stick to NPRC and just slowly slowly slowly (I'm gonna repeat this to myself after and after until I decided to go full speed) and after finishing NPRC I'll go full speed on Assimil with bidirectional translation method. Audio-wise I relied on Forvo and I create less than 10 EN to RU cards with audio to perfect my pronunciation and listening (once again, I'll eat my words). This should be enough for the first half of 2021 before I take the JLPT.

I have already realized the difficulty by just spending sometime with this new language (I'm still dealing with first 2 chapters). The spelling, pronunciation and even the easiest word (like здравствуйте, до свидания) takes forever to stick to my brain and I may forget it after like 2 days. There is no "pivot" or just little cognate like Spanish and Japanese and I just need to memorize them by heart. Not sure if going straight into NPRC is a good idea or I should use other resources like Pimsleur first?

Tandem!
I finally started tandem and chatted with some Japanese and South American. Compare to 1 year before, I can finally give meaningful response in Japanese and honestly I am pretty surprise that all things just fell into place. Spanish-wise, I still stick to the more grammatically safe expressions and I am still fighting my way to proficiency and spontaneity. I still need time to assemble the sentence in my mind before I can write / say it out...so that's pretty depressing.

I also started to use LingQ which might probably end in a few weeks as I'm just too busy to do everything. Perhaps after Tobira I will start doing conversation class on italki.
3 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP, [RU?] log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:10 pm

Japanese: Tobira
Spanish: Maintenance
English: Objective Proficiency
Russian: NPRC


Japanese
Everything is going smoothly. There are still 5.5 chapters to go before I finish Tobira. Thanks to the scheduling the Anki review hell doesn't escalate some much for now. I am still thinking how am I going to approach NKZM books as they will be much drier than Tobira. My plan is to stop spending so much time on textbook and spend more time on reading novels and manga. I think by adding newly encountered words into Anki is a good approach because l have a rough idea of the context (where it comes from and how it is used).

Spanish
Finally done with Harry Potter! I switched from looking up every word (first few chapter) to look up every word on Kindle and just speed run the last 4 chapters of the book. I am pretty glad that I can start doing extended reading of native material. The amount of unknown words start to be less disruptive to my reading and usually I just look up a few words to understand most of the context.

I have picked up so much reading speed through this exercise that would be helpful in reading subtitles. I also added the words I encountered and regarded as worth memorizing into Anki. Sometime when I feel like doing Spanish I will add more words, but usually I maintain at a rate of 15-20 and some of them are words I knew but have forgotten. I do L1 -> L2 cards

Russian
I am still at Chpt 2 of NPRC so I have not started anything substantive yet.
I have ordered Assimil today but I'm not going to use it until I have finished NPRC or at least 2/3 of it. It actually bought just to use the discount on delivery fee and it seems to be that Assimil has stopped producing the Assimil Russian with Ease (perhaps another upgrade?). It is out of stock in Assimil's online shop and it has limited stock in Amazon.
I have chosen to progress very very slowly because it really takes forever to memorize a word or expression, even the most common one. I can definitely forsee that it's going to be a much longer journey than Japanese and Spanish. It implies that I will face with more struggle of Wanderlust.

Next update: 1-year review of my language learning journey.
4 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP, [RU?] log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Feb 11, 2021 2:47 am

DELE: Apto!
Before the next update, I just receive the result of DELE B2 and I have passed it!!!

I performed that best in oral (100 thanks to my verbling teacher) (Funny enough I still stutter when I'm doing my italki class). The rest are as expected, I did well in reading. Rather poorly for writing and listening. However, to my surprise I still managed to pass both, especially listening which I thought was a disaster.
10 x

kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
x 1228

Re: JP, EN, ESP, [RU?] log: I thought life would be easier but no....

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:11 pm

1 Year Recap: Spanish
Receiving my DELE results mark (at least to me) a satisfactory end in the first phase of my Spanish learning. I have reached further than I expected. Initially I only planned to obtain B1 by November and to me getting from 0 to B1 is already something worthy but I got greedy and I pushed myself to B2. My previous log has recorded some of my struggle on whether I should go for B1 or B2. Next phase would be C1 but I just want to revise all the vocabs on B1 and B2 first before moving on to C1. I set these as the benchmark of whether I'll be prepared
- start to understand native speech in news and youtube without sub at a rate of 95%
- can watch native TV series without sub
- can read a book without the help of a dictionary
- can converse freely without the help of a dictionary but with some rephrasing perhaps

I started studying Spanish just because I wanted to do something in my spare time. I bumped into a video by ikenna talking about how achievable it is to learn a language to B1 or so (he called that "conversational fluent") in half year, breaking my false believe that I can't learn a new language unless I go to class. The rest are history (as recorded in my previous log)

I started with the traditional lingodeer and then combine it with Pimsleur, giving me a very solid A1 foundation. I use Assimil together with bidirectional translation method and Anki pushing me to a low B1 level. What next is just endless listening + reading transcript, extracting sentences from reading and doing bidirectional translation, and memorising a bunch of vocabularies and expression. The things I've learnt are:-
(i) persistent is key
(ii) language learning is tough, but the outcome is sweet
(iii) bidirectional translation is my go-to method
(iv) Stick to one to two resources
(v) jump straight into native contents as soon as possible
(vi) Be greedy, aim to extract as much from a material as possible

I received a lot of help from looking up other's log and discussion on the internet. Just look at what podcast, book, resources they're using. Lesson learned:
(i) draft a study plan
(ii) do a lot of research before kicking off. Research on the best resources, the methodology on the corresponding resources, time expected on
(iii) polyglot channels / log /discussion are helpful in adjusting your mentality and clear off some misconception on language learning
All these help me solidify my own methodology.

After Assimil, I jump straight into reading native materials and using LingQ to listen to podcast with transcript. In the meantime, I started online lesson for practicing conversations. My italki and Verbling tutors are very helpful in providing an environment which forces me to speak on topics I'm not familiar with, but mostly my internal motivation is the main drive that push me forward. My approach in my rapid improvement in speakings are:
(i) get prepared, prepare 2 - 3 speeches before the lesson and look up the words
(ii) try to insert the new words you've learnt in the lesson
(iii) there's no perfect tutor, but one that forces you to step out of comfort zone should be good enough for me
(iv) Texting is a good prelude to speaking. I used Tandem a lot in helping myself formulate sentence and dialogue

In terms of time management, my best friend is an excel timetable. My approach is to work backwards. I look at the book and divide the book into manageable chunks. As the exam is a fixed destination, I need to fill my timetable with those chunks I can prevent myself from getting too lazy or just pushing myself too hard in any particular day. Lesson to learn on time management:
(i) use a timetable and divide all tasks into chunks
(ii) plan ahead, so that you will know what to face in the future
(iii) be flexible, if I can't do something due to illness or simply lack of time, just shift the blocks and reallocate the workload
(iv) off load some learning if it turns out to be too demanding

Cost: This is the saddest part. I have spent quite a lot on resources as it's the first language learning experience. I have spent money on something turn out to be useless for me (Glossika, lingodeer plus). I have calculated the "utilisation rate" (cost of materials which I have used / cost of materials) is about 40%. I've learnt to:-
(i) don't buy a resource unless it's absolutely necessary
(ii) there's no need to buy something that can be substituted with a google search
(iii) just think twice before spending any money
My "utilisation rate" for Japanese is about 75% and that's a good news for me.

(To be cont.)
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