Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

[Yuurei]

@jeff_lindqvist: I see, thanks a lot for the answer (and those extra links!). The audio speed is an interesting issue, that I'm sure I'll also soon come across, since I read fairly quickly as well. I've been reading through Volte's Polish LR experiment log and she decided to speed up the audio significantly after a while, which seems like an interesting idea - I've been doing quite a bit of speeding up with my Chinese listening recently, so it's certainly anything but a foreign concept for me. And it would mean getting more content in the same time. Hmm..
I think I'll stick to the original plan for now (and at the moment the speed seems fine), but if I come to the point where the audio speed frustrates me, that would certainly be an option.

Wait. Are the Finnish cookies and the Spanish cookies the same cookies? ‘Cause that hardly seems worth it. Also, what language do you have to learn to get prune-filled Berliners? (Asking for a friend.)

Of course they're not the same. They're completely different. (Damn me and my tendency to promise people cookies )
As for Berliners, I'm afraid I can't help you your friend there. =P

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Weekly Goals for Week 3 (2018) - All done \o/
Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #1 (If I Didn't Have You)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]
*Study Substudy deck (at least 5 days) [7 days]

French
*Tadoku: Read 300 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume [無職転生 Vol. 3]

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV [Buffy S1 ep. 12, S2 ep. 1]

Other stuff I did:
French: Watched Grimm S4 ep. 1. Read another 85 pages. Wrote a job application.
Chinese: Listened to Wrong, wrong, wrong at normal speed [44 min]. Listened to my 13 Rainbow Bridge level S readers at 1.5x speed [70 min]. Read 12 pages of Can I dance with you? (CB level 1, #3)
Spanish: Watched Buffy S2 ep. 2.
Italian: 5 hours of LR.

Between seriously learning Chinese, French Tadoku and my new Italian LR experiment, the week certainly turned out pretty busy. Added to that I suddenly got the idea to write a job application in French, which I have to admit was a humbling (and stressful) experience that taught me that I really need to work on written French somehow if I want to apply to French language jobs. XD But despite all the business, it was actually a really great and enjoyable week.

In other news, I've decided to put the Korean Substudy study on ice for the foreseeable future. For one, my current focus is more on Chinese and French, with Japanese being next in order of priorities, so that I don't have a lot of time to spare for Korean. And for another, I've been unable to find the right TV show for substudying I think, but I also don't really have the time and motivation to look for it. If anyone should know a not-too-difficult TV show with accurate Korean and English subs - I'm all ears!
The main problem, though, is probably that my motivation for Korean is only so-so at the moment and the fact that I haven't found the right way to study it either doesn't help. So for now I'm only keeping my grammar sentences so that I keep doing at least a bit Korean and don't forget it all.

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Weekly Goals for Week 4 (2018)

Chinese
*Study 12 pages of CB level 2 reader #1 (If I Didn't Have You)
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze

Korean
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

French
*Tadoku: Read 300 pages

Japanese
*Read 1 manga volume

Spanish
*80 minutes of AV

[DaveBee]

Another thing I noticed right from the start is that after each session (which I try to keep at at least 1.5 hours) my head is completely buzzing with random Italian words or phrases. On Friday night I LRed right before going to bed and when I woke up there was still random Italian in my head. In know that other LRers (at least Volte and hedgehog.chess) have experienced the same effect, so that seems to be normal. But I like it. Unfortunately, it more or less disappears when I switch gears to work on a different language. It makes me think that it really might be advantageous to try LR in its more traditional form of doing a lot of it in just a couple of days - without getting out of target language mode, so to speak.

Something like this has been called a 'din in the head', linked to long sessions of L2 input.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 22&p=68810

[Brun Ugle]

The thing with LR is that you have to learn a different reading technique. I think for most of us, it’s easier to read and listen in the same language, but you still might need to slow your reading down to match, but when listening and reading in different languages, it is even more important not to read “too hard.”

If you are listening and reading in the same language, you let the voice control your eyes, moving over the page at the same rate as the words are spoken. Don’t try to read, just relax and let your eyes touch the words as you hear them. After a while you will get into the rhythm of it.

If you are listening and reading in different languages, don’t actually read the words, but let your eyes take in entire sentences at a time and visualize the scene as you focus on the spoken word. This is why knowing the book inside and out is so important. Reading is more like refreshing your memory of the scene than actually concentrating on the words on the page.

I think this is also part of the reason you should do it for hours at a time. It takes a little while to get into that sort of meditative state that allows the words and meanings to flow together.

And yes, afterwards, I find my head full of the language and I’ll even think random thoughts or parts of thoughts in the language, even if I don’t know it well. Glossika has a similar effect, I find.

[jeff_lindqvist]

@jeff_lindqvist: I see, thanks a lot for the answer (and those extra links!). The audio speed is an interesting issue, that I'm sure I'll also soon come across, since I read fairly quickly as well. I've been reading through Volte's Polish LR experiment log and she decided to speed up the audio significantly after a while, which seems like an interesting idea - I've been doing quite a bit of speeding up with my Chinese listening recently, so it's certainly anything but a foreign concept for me. And it would mean getting more content in the same time. Hmm..
I think I'll stick to the original plan for now (and at the moment the speed seems fine), but if I come to the point where the audio speed frustrates me, that would certainly be an option.

I have listened to faster audio, but only on the computer (through the media player). The audiobooks have all been on CDs and I've listened to them on a good old CD player (still my preferred music device). (electronic) Audiobooks from the library can be played through an app with a number of speed options. But speeding up an audiobook isn't the best solution either. It makes the audio sound unnatural, and if I read at the same time, I'm still pages ahead (unless I read every sentence five-six times along the audio). I like to read. I like to listen. I like to do several things at the same time. But LR is a unearthly combination of activities. I can't "scan" a spoken sentence the way I scan it in writing.

[Spoonary]

You know, I might be tempted to join you all in summer, with HP in German maybe... I'm going to need dairy-free cookies though, as I have a milk intolerance

Ooh, excellent, we've already got quite the crowd. Summer is looking exciting.
Dairy-free cookies? No problem! My mother recently found this amazing vegan chocolate and the rest of the recipe is dairy-free anyway. I'm not sure whether you were maybe planning on coming to the gathering? Then I'd definitely make sure to bring the dairy-free variety.

Ooh, sounds lovely, thanks I don't think I will be coming to the gathering this year, no. Maybe next year, when I hope those cookies will still be on offer?

[Christi]

awww, too bad you have decided to put Korean on hold. But good that you will keep maintaining it a bit.
But it might be better to focus on other languages first. Good luck with them!

[Yuurei]

Another thing I noticed right from the start is that after each session (which I try to keep at at least 1.5 hours) my head is completely buzzing with random Italian words or phrases. On Friday night I LRed right before going to bed and when I woke up there was still random Italian in my head. In know that other LRers (at least Volte and hedgehog.chess) have experienced the same effect, so that seems to be normal. But I like it. Unfortunately, it more or less disappears when I switch gears to work on a different language. It makes me think that it really might be advantageous to try LR in its more traditional form of doing a lot of it in just a couple of days - without getting out of target language mode, so to speak.

Something like this has been called a 'din in the head', linked to long sessions of L2 input.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 22&p=68810

Yep, that's the thing. Obviously I've experienced that with my languages before, but this was the first time I experienced this phenomenon with a language I don't know at all and only just started learning that very day.

The thing with LR is that you have to learn a different reading technique. I think for most of us, it’s easier to read and listen in the same language, but you still might need to slow your reading down to match, but when listening and reading in different languages, it is even more important not to read “too hard.”
[...]

Also true. Well, I suppose I'l see soon enough.

But speeding up an audiobook isn't the best solution either. It makes the audio sound unnatural

Well, it depends on what you do. There's ways to speed up just the tempo without raising the pitch and as long as you don't speed it up to much there's basically no perceptable distortion. I've done that before with early Assimil recordings, which have a tendency to be frustratingly slow and also recently with some of my Chinese readers and found it very helpful. But if you don't find it helpful that can't be helped I suppose.

Ooh, sounds lovely, thanks I don't think I will be coming to the gathering this year, no. Maybe next year, when I hope those cookies will still be on offer?

They might be.

awww, too bad you have decided to put Korean on hold. But good that you will keep maintaining it a bit.
But it might be better to focus on other languages first. Good luck with them!

Welp, I didn't actually mean to say that I'm putting Korean as a whole on hold, although looking over what I wrote again that is what it sounds like - I guess that's what I get for writing something without first getting my thoughts straight.
Let's try this again: I'm going to put my study with Substudy on hold for now - until I find some better material or get a bit better at Korean at least. However, I do intend to continue Korean - I just don't know yet exactly how. While I try to come up with an idea, I'll still continue at least my daily grammar sentences though, so that I don't lose what little knowledge of Korean I have.
I'm simply having trouble coming up with an enjoyable, more or less effective method for learning Korean that doesn't take up too much time or energy. (I know, I know, I'm asking for a lot here ) But, I mean, take Chinese. I found a great, enjoyable method that works very well for me - working through graded readers with audio. Unfortunately, I can't copy that method for Korean, because there are basically no graded readers or - as far as I have found - other easy yet interesting texts/audio in large quantity.
Also, I would have been totally up for trying out LR with Korean, but turns out that Koreans don't do audiobooks at all, so that's out as well. But yeah, I'm not quite ready to give up yet.

[Snow]

Have you checked the Yonsei Korean Reading series? There are 6 books, and in each book, there are short articles/stories. Not as interesting as Chinese graded readers, but that's the closest thing I've seen for Korean.

[AndyMeg]

I'm simply having trouble coming up with an enjoyable, more or less effective method for learning Korean that doesn't take up too much time or energy. (I know, I know, I'm asking for a lot here ) But, I mean, take Chinese. I found a great, enjoyable method that works very well for me - working through graded readers with audio. Unfortunately, I can't copy that method for Korean, because there are basically no graded readers or - as far as I have found - other easy yet interesting texts/audio in large quantity.
Also, I would have been totally up for trying out LR with Korean, but turns out that Koreans don't do audiobooks at all, so that's out as well. But yeah, I'm not quite ready to give up yet.

I've encountered the same difficulties in finding the right material for learning korean. I'm currently experimenting a lot to find enjoyable activities that don't take too much time or energy (but I don't know yet how effective they are or they'll be) so you could take a look at my korean language learning log in case it gives you some ideas . So far, I seem to enjoy a lot working with dual texts.

Also, as you know spanish, you could try going through an easy series of dual-text textbooks like "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" or this series for english speakers: "재외동포를위한 한국어 (영어권)". You can get both for free at the 누리-세종학당 website. At first I tried to tackle one of them in a pretty intensive way (looking for each and every word or grammar I didn't know in any part of the book, even in the instructions of the activities and the cultural texts) but I decided to stop doing that for now because even if working like this was enjoyable to me and I learned a lot from it, it required too much mental energy that I actually need for other not-language-learning-related higher priority activities in my life. So now I'm just doing the lessons, analizing and comparing the dual texts, but I don't go out of my way to look for unkown vocabulary or grammar that is not strictly related to what each lesson is trying to teach.

I've also started to experiment with Viki's Learn Mode by watching a k-drama with dual subs while using the integrated pop-up dictionary and the replaying buttom for each line. You could also give that a try if you wish .

[rdearman]

I've also started to experiment with Viki's Learn Mode by watching a k-drama with dual subs while using the integrated pop-up dictionary and the replaying buttom for each line. You could also give that a try if you wish .

OMG thanks for that. You should mention it somewhere in the resources section. I'm not learning Korean, but it would help with Mandarin. Wicked cool!