blackcoffee wrote:Hi Peter
Hey blackcoffee,
I decided to reply to your queries anyway, despite your investigative journalism uncovering some revelations...
btw, you know you're a language nerd when you read the above in your head "Hi Peter" and associate it with a conversation you have listened to several times in one of your Norwegian courses
blackcoffee wrote:I'm curious about how, given your approach and list of beginner courses, you decide what order to tackle them in and generally how you plan to sequence them.
My routine is constantly evolving and adapting. I was using
Learn Norwegian,
The Mystery of Nils,
Hugo Norwegian in Three Months and
Beginner's Norwegian in 1 hour block rotations (study 1 hour of one course move to the next). I decided on this order because I found Hugo and learn Norwegian particularly heavy while the other two a little lighter and so it seemed like a good order, but hey I might change it up again soon, who knows.
Norwegian on the Web I've been scattering here and there while at work and in downtime but have only really just started with that one. I had decided to drop Assimil, despite it being my mainstay a month ago as I figured I had too many courses at once. Then I decided I was managing okay, so
Assimli Le norvégien is back in the routine now, rotating with the others, but I'm so far not into new material with Assimil, I'm revising the first few lessons.
Given I also bring a course book or two to work most days as I'm finding it hard to complete 3 hours desk study every day at home and do find downtime sometimes at work, I've decided I'm just going to rotate all six courses (including NoW and Assimil) - the 'original four' with the other two just mentioned.
I think six is overkill, but it's doable when studying so much. Still, I will cut the number down as I start completing the courses. Well, that's what I say now.
blackcoffee wrote:Audio courses probably fit into different slots in your day,
Indeed, and hoping to purchase
Pimsleur Norwegian Level 2 soon, as I have been through level 1 now perhaps 4 times roughly, but it's been good pronunciation and recall practice. Also using the
Teach Yourself audio courses in the same time slots (commutes, other times when audio only courses work - shower, chores etc).
blackcoffee wrote:but for the dedicated study time that you have, what will you begin with and how will you know when it's time to start the next course?
I will introduce the next course as I finish one (all the way through). However, as mentioned above, I probably won't do this until I've cut down the number of courses I'm using simultaneously a little bit.
blackcoffee wrote:It doesn't sound efficient or appealing to me to finish one completely before starting another, but I also think it would be hard to work on too many at the same time. Maybe start with one and get either halfway through or a month in before starting the next? What features call out to you, "start with me!"?
I wanted to start with multiple courses because they all brought something different to the mix and I found that were I to study 2 or three hours in one go, doing only one course usually was a bit long of a stretch. With the 6 courses currently in use, I basically use 3 of them one day and three the next. It can actually be motivating to use 6 courses when targeting 3 hours desk study per day, given if I miss any of that study time, time between sessions with any given course becomes a little too long. One day off a course every 2nd day isn't so bad, in fact maybe it's good for recall.
blackcoffee wrote:Edited to add: I just read the December posts in your Norwegian Plandemic thread and see that you have largely answered these questions! I look forward to seeing how your plans evolve.
Cheers. For the record the course I'm enjoying the least at the moment is
Hugo.
Beginner's Norwegian is not that interesting for me either, but it's still okay. Hugo is also okay-ish, I mean I'm still learning from these courses. I find the copying out of the phonetics for the
Learn Norwegian course is really useful and the
Mystery of Nils is a bit 'prettier' and more pleasant. NoW seems to be well designed and as with Assimil, I'm finding myself doing a lot of translating - for Now from EN to NO as there are translations of the dialogues and for Assimil from NO to FR first and then from FR back to NO. NoW is also good for shadowing (as is Assimil) as it has a slower conversation speed setting.
On another note, I'm spending a lot of time getting the pronunciation correct. Like with French, I will not utter words (if I can avoid it) without knowing exactly how to pronounce them including stress and tone. I feel Norwegian is now much more familiar to me and not the alien language it was when I had just started out. Pronunciation seems relatively straight forward, but not predictable enough yet to assume pronunciation in terms of tone and stress of unknown words.
In my books I've taken to writing in in grey-lead pencil unknown words (even if it's just the pronunciation that's unfamiliar) at the top of pages, so I often review by flicking back through my books (instead of flash cards - I don't like them much at all at this stage) and looking at the tops of the pages to reinforce new vocabulary (as well as reviewing word lists, conversations and so on).