Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

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zgriptsuroica
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Posts: 100
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 9:52 pm
Languages: English (N), French (Advanced, especially reading), Spanish (Advanced), Brazilian Portuguese (Advanced), Japanese (beginner), Icelandic (just starting)
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:37 am

I've been okay at getting into Icelandic Online at least a couple nights a week, and perhaps more importantly, I've been reading "Spæjarahundurinn" most days. Sitting down and seeing how I can actually get through the pages and start to enjoy the story has been a much needed dose of perspective. I'd been starting to feel as though I were just wasting my time spinning up my wheels with Icelandic Online since my declension and verb conjugation skills seem to be near static from a couple of months ago. I'm only getting a bit better with some of the words on ClozeMaster at this point where I can guess the case ending with decent confidence for a few. I suppose it's how things are "supposed" to work, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating when I want all the progress now, not gradually over the next few years.

In other good news, I'm very nearly finished with Icelandic Online 3! I have just one bálkur left to go after I do the final review section for bálkur 4, which I should get to tomorrow. I think it might not be completely unreasonable to aim for finishing the whole course by the end of March, so I think that's about what I'll shoot for. After that, I'm planning on tackling "Íslenska fyrir alla" at a bit of a slower pace in conjunction with spending more time reading or otherwise consuming media, unless it all proves completely overwhelming, in which case I might give it a bit more emphasis on the textbook.

I've set my 2022 non-English reading goals, now it's just a matter of actually sticking it out and doing the reading. I think the Portuguese and Japanese ones might be a bit ambitious, especially with some of the stuff I want to read in Portuguese, but I feel like it's not impossible and I would be pretty happy to actually hit it, or come close.
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zgriptsuroica
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Languages: English (N), French (Advanced, especially reading), Spanish (Advanced), Brazilian Portuguese (Advanced), Japanese (beginner), Icelandic (just starting)
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Mon Jan 10, 2022 9:25 am

Another week of being ill and trying not to fall too far behind. I felt I made a decent comeback by the end of the week and I'm on track to finish Icelandic Online 3 within the next day or two. I also actually spotted some errors, grammatical errors even, in the Icelandic Online lesson this week and was able to have a native confirm I was in fact reading things correctly and the site had a few goofs. Bug report submitted! I came across a service called Uppkast in the Icelandic discourse by chance and might hold on to it for use in the future. It seems to be a local streaming service, could prove fun to use when I get to that point. I'm chugging away at the SRS, feeling as though it's sinking in and nothing is working by turns.

If Icelandic was a bit of a disappointment for me this week, I feel pretty good about my French efforts. I picked up the first book for this year's Albertine Book Club and have been quite hooked with Le bal des folles over the last couple of days. I've got another 100 pages to go, so I'm probably going to finish sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.

I'm anticipating some challenges to my language routine in the near future. Need to lose some weight, so I'll need to make time for those goals. I'm also anticipating starting a new job within the month. I'm tentatively hopeful that it should actually be fewer hours, but one never knows for real until the job is begun. Unfortunately, the schedule for the new job will prevent me from being able to attend the Zoom meetings for the Albertine book club, unless I really want to wake up quite early for them.
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zgriptsuroica
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Languages: English (N), French (Advanced, especially reading), Spanish (Advanced), Brazilian Portuguese (Advanced), Japanese (beginner), Icelandic (just starting)
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:23 am

I managed to get Covid a second time and work has been something of a dumpster fire the last week. Despite those setbacks, I managed to finish Icelandic Online 3 last week, and started digging in to the fourth and final course tonight! I also kept chipping away at Anki and Clozemaster, and have officially passed the 50% mark in Spæjarahundurinn, so I'm pretty happy with myself, all things considered. Hoo, that first dialogue for IOL4 was a doozy, though. I'm feeling like I'm making solid progress, and even started listening to the short hourly news segment from RÚV when I remember to once a day. I usually just catch the hour and name of the announcer and a few stray words, but I suppose it's a start for listening to speech at normal speed.

I've been reading En un lugar llamado tierra lately, too. It's starting to get better, though I thought the beginning was a bit cheesy and put it down for a bit. I have the whole trilogy as a single ebook, so I'm probably going to try and finish the first one and go read something in Portuguese before coming back to the second story.

I've finished a few rounds of interviews for a new job and I'm hoping to hear back from them this week, so hopefully my work situation will improve in the near future and I'll be able to commit time more regularly to my hobbies. I've been pretty well exhausted the last few days, so I can say I've done much more than maintain.
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Thu Jan 27, 2022 10:05 am

Haven´t done much formal study the last week or so, just one unit of Icelandic Online. I'm mostly focusing on reading Spæjarahundurinn at this point and wrapping it up. I've got less than 50 pages to go, and it's kind of fun even if it is silly. Other than than, I've just been knocking out my Anki and Clozemaster reps. I haven't been particularly diligent in adding words to Anki from what I read outside of lessons, so I'm closing in on not having new cards to review. I might let it run down for a bit and consolidate what I've already covered before I move on to adding much more.

Un lugar llamado tierra is getting to be more fun now that I'm up to the trial itself and it seems to have gotten its legs underneath it. On the other hand, Onde andará Dulce Veiga? has been good fun from the start and hasn't let up so far. I suspect I'll focus on finishing those two up once I'm done with my first Icelandic book. I'm also just about due to start La position du tireur couché for next month's book club. Looks like I'm already behind on my Spanish and Portuguese reading goals, if only by a bit, and quite a bit more on my manga reading goals. Fair to say neither of them are in a totally unrecoverable position, though, and I should be able to make progress on them once I don't have active courses for Icelandic taking up quite so much of my time.

On the other hand, I've gone up too much in weight lately, so I'm going to have to redirect some of my time towards diet and exercise for a while. I need to drop about 40lbs to get to a healthy weight, so it's not exactly going to be an affair of a month or two. Also been having some computer issues impeding my watching TV/Movies, as some files are randomly freezing up Kodi and my whole system. Dmesg and system logs suggest an issue with my graphics cards, but that's as far as I've narrowed it down.
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Sun Jan 30, 2022 9:59 am

This past week has been a pretty solid one for me. Still maintaining my Anki and Clozemaster streaks, and I finished up the third lesson of IOL4 earlier tonight. Most exciting of all, though, I finished off Spæjarahundurinn while I got a snow day from work today! It was a massive slog at first, but by the end of it I found myself understanding things well enough that I was actually enjoying it. My next step is to figure out my next book to read in Icelandic. I currently have physically:

  • Hús Harmleikja - Guðrun Guðlaugsdóttir
  • Blóðberg - Þóra Karítas Árnadóttir
  • Tími Nornarinnar - Árni Þórarinsson
  • Bróðir - Halldór Armand
  • Sjálfstætt Fólk Halldór Laxness

Halldór Laxness is right out for the moment. I'd like to read Tími Nornarinnar, but I'm a bit worried about getting discouraged and falling off, given its length. In its favor, I already watched and enjoyed the TV show, so I have some idea of the plot. Blóðberg is appealing since its so short, but it's set in 1600s Iceland, so offers the possibility of archaic vocabulary and forms. Hús Harmleikja seems like a decent middle-ground in that I can follow the gist of the summary on the back cover and it clocks in at a mere 255 pages. I'm not entirely sure why I bought Bróðir aside from it having a pretty cover and I was already paying shipping from Forlagið as it was. The two crime novels offer the advantage of being part of series, so I could probably launch into other stuff at a similar level after them without too much bother. Of course, the final option hanging in the air is to pick up something else, perhaps some sort of YA ebook from Forlagið, possibly even several (If I'm paying that currency conversion charge, I may as well, right?) I'm thinking I'll try to read about 30 minutes a night and start incorporating unknown words into my Anki deck now that I'm winding down on IOL lessons to grab words from. Perhaps I'll head out later this week and get a dedicated notebook for the purpose on my days off.

I've also been pleasantly surprised twice this week to actually understand the better part of a story listening to Útvarpsfréttir on RÚV. I'm also trying to work more Icelandic music into the mix, but I'm in the early stages there.

I'll probably start in on La position du tireur couché as my commute/break at work book tomorrow, as the meeting is 9 days away. Once I make it through that, I think Onde andará Dulce Veiga will take its place. Perhaps I'll try and start my nightly reading of my next book in Icelandic on the first, and start fresh with a new month there.
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Thu Feb 10, 2022 6:44 am

I put in my notice at work last week and only have another 5 days left. I've got a few promising leads on jobs in the works, but I'll have to add the job search to my daily schedule. Should still leave me with plenty more time for language work. With the job search in mind, I did get the certification bug again and I'm looking at taking the DELE. I'll have to get a passport because of their weird ID requirements where they only accept an ID that includes your nationality on it. Because of this, I doubt I'll make it in time for the March 17th cutoff for the exam at the NYC Instituto Cervantes in May, but perhaps the June session will be a possibility. It might not exactly help this time around, but I think it would be something nice to set me apart from all the folks here that put "Fluent in Spanish" on their resumes just because they passed high school Spanish, especially since I'm entirely self-taught. I'm fortunate now that I've got five years worth of working with people who can give me a reference to back my claims up, but I would still like to have something independent, just in case. I think there's also just a part of me that wants to lay to rest my own self-doubting about my abilities, as well as offering me a decent reference to gauge my other languages against.

With that said, the big question is "Which level do I go for?" I was leaning towards C1, but I'm currently thinking of shooting high for C2, either in May if my passport gets super expedited, or in November when they offer it again. I took the Instituto Cervantes' prueba de nivel, with the following results:

Instituto Cervantes wrote:Curso C1.3 - C1.4 de AVE Global
Según esta prueba, su nivel de español se sitúa entre los cursos C1.3 - C1.4 de AVE Global.

Estos son los cursos y temas que más se adecúan a sus conocimientos de español.


Given the nature of the assessment, it obviously doesn't account for listening, speaking or writing abilities, but I don't feel like I'm too far off the mark there relative to my abilities to read and understand spoken Spanish. I'm kind of tempted to just go hard as hell on Spanish media and participate more in Spanish speaking forums and such to practice my writing and shoot as high as I can. Lack of work will let me sink 3-4 hours a day into Spanish for the near future, so I think it might not be as crazy a goal as it once seemed.

On the Icelandic front, I'm just been kind of holding station, though I plan to finish another Icelandic Online lesson tonight. I think this is another area where I'll be able to make some solid progress in the coming weeks, as I can really sit down, knock out the rest of the course and set about reading in earnest rather than just cycling through Anki hoping to not lose too much ground.

French went well with the Albertine Book Club meeting on La position du tireur couché yesterday, and I managed to make a few points that I think sounded half decent. It's still amazing to me my capacity to lose my train of thought half-way through explaining an idea in front of a dozen people after fifteen years mucking about with the language. Next month's book is Balzac's Illusions perdues, which is going to be quite the challenge to finish in such a short time, but I'm looking forward to it.

French is another one where I would really like to improve and eventually get my certificate. I failed the C1 DALF by 12.5 points some 15 years ago, so I think now I might be better positioned to pass it, though I must confess my production skills have withered quite a bit. Perhaps a post-DELE goal to work towards?
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BeaP
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby BeaP » Thu Feb 10, 2022 8:32 am

zgriptsuroica wrote:Which level do I go for?

I've chosen to try the C2, and I think it might actually be easier. While C1 is both formal and informal, C2 is all formal, and it has fewer types of tasks. There's less material to learn, or at least fewer types of material to learn, which makes the preparation easier. I've also done the sample exams on the DELE site, and found C2 easier (I don't remember my exact result in points, but there wasn't a big difference, and especially not in favour of C1.)
If you have serious interest in the DELE, I really recommend this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTSEDlR00L8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqx79vXG9cE
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Thu Feb 10, 2022 10:46 am

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely check them out. I'm leaning towards C2 just because, if nothing else, those exams are expensive and I have a feeling if I did take the C1, there would be a part of me sooner or later that would start asking, "Well, can you really say your Spanish is that good? You should probably do the C2 now, you already came this far, may as well." If I'm probably going to want to do it eventually anyway, may as well just work towards it from the start, right?
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Sun Feb 20, 2022 11:15 am

So the last week hasn't been quite as productive as I wanted, but I think I may have simply not been super realistic in my goals. With the big news first, I won't be able to take the DELE C2 exam until at least November! Unfortunately, when I went to see where I could apply for a passport I learned that first time applicants have to make an appointment, and the earliest appointment I could get was 12PM on March 7th. With the registration deadline for the May exam being March 17th, there's no way I would get it in time. On the one hand, it's a bit disappointing, but I can take my time and really put in some solid work revising and writing to be as prepared as can be come November so I can ace it on the first go. I found a few Spanish-language book clubs on the Meetup app that hold their meetings online, so I'll see how they go. I would say joining a club worked pretty well to get me to read more in French, so hopefully I can repeat the success with Spanish.

At present, I'm about a third of the way into La fiesta del chivo and having a pretty good time with it. Lots of words that I'm having fun with seeing, yet not nearly as difficult as I was fearing it might be. I was also pretty happy to see that there's now 3 book stores that are making literature in Spanish a focus of their offerings, which is encouraging. Hopefully I'll have a write up ready to go in another week or two and be onto more books.

I also completed Onde andará Dulce Veiga last week, which was a fun first Portuguese book of the year. Since I'm going hard on Spanish and Icelandic, I may read something a bit easier for my next Portuguese book, but I'd like to keep the momentum going. Caio Fernando Abreu had quite a way with telling that story, though it got a bit weird towards the end when I think the narrator got drugged. It was really cool as a story that has LGBT+ issues as a central theme that could really just stand on its own as a genre tale that happens to include them. It seemed pretty ahead of its time there for 1990. It does look like it's since been pigeonholed as an LGBT+ Mystery on Amazon, which is a shame. I don't mean to dump on the books in that category, but I think it stands on its own as a super-stylish mystery novel and could probably reach a broader audience with its message that might not be inclined to browse the LGBT+ tags on Amazon or pick something off a similar table in their local bookshop.

The French book club is going hard this month with Illusions perdues, clocking in at 960 pages! We'll see if I manage to finish it off in time for the discussion on March 22nd. I've been reading quite a bit lately, so I don't think it's entirely unreasonable. If I do manage to finish it, I'll have to decide whether or not I want to watch the film version.

And finally, looping back to Icelandic! I've made some headway in Icelandic Online 4 and the end is in sight. Bálkur 2, þráður 2 was a bit of a beast of a lesson that kind of put the dampers on my enthusiasm, but I'm glad I pushed through it. Only 5 more lessons to go, with any luck, I may even finish this week. I've gotten back to reading Hús Harmleikja, currently aiming to just clear one page a day. If I get into it, I can do more, but if I feel like calling it quits there, a page is good enough for me. Once I wrap up Icelandic Online, I'm a bit torn if I want to jump straight into Íslenska Fyrir Alla and work on production, or work on my passive vocabulary a bit first and just keep reading. I'm still a bit bummed that Soffia's log is done, as she's not been active in quite some time. I found a lot of cool resources in that thread, especially books that are allegedly easier to read, so I'm hoping I'll be able to keep pillaging it periodically.

One possibility to come out of Soffia's log that I hadn't thought about until now is (providing I get a job reasonably soon to finance it), I could realistically consider going to one of the Háskólasetur Vestfjarða intensive courses. If I could get myself up to A2/early B1 level by fall 2023, I could do an intensive B1 course for around $3,000 all in, provided I don't go to wild with food and drink there. It would be quite fun to actually be able to use the language and walk around the place. I think more realistically, I'd need to be careful about not going overboard with new books than food and drink, to be honest. If I'm getting the old vegabréf so I can register for the DELE anyways, what better way to get the most bang for my buck than to leave the country with it. Dangerous thoughts here.
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zgriptsuroica
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Re: Zgriptsuroica tries not to get distracted by the new shiny

Postby zgriptsuroica » Tue Mar 08, 2022 10:45 am

I've been around, though not quite as active as I would have liked. I finished reading La fiesta del chivo last week and wrote out a longhand essay on it to try and get myself on form for the writing components of the DELE. It's probably not my best essay, but the main thing was sitting down with the constraint of writing and not letting myself double-check anything or look up the perfect word for what I wanted to say. With a couple of breaks to stop and make some tea or something, I still hit 6 pages in about two hours, so it wasn't too bad. I've got someone that's going to look it over for me for style and flow to give me some feedback as well. I'm going to try and keep that going as I can, aiming for some sort of essay every week or so. Aside from that, I've not been doing too much with Spanish. I'm doing the crossword on the El País website most days, which is fun for vocab, but occasionally frustrating for random clues that are about Spanish pop culture stuff. I think yesterday's prime example was "Iniciales del streamer más influyente de España 2021." Aside from being outside of my interests entirely, when I finally caved and googled it, it turns out they didn't even have the right streamer, the answer being the #2 streamer. The final big news on this front, I went to the post office to apply for my passport today so in 5-18 weeks when it shows up, I'll be able to apply for the C2 DELE in November.

I've been putting off Icelandic Online and reading most of the time, so my Icelandic progress has stalled out a bit and mostly involved just holding steady on maintenance mode doing Anki and Clozemaster. I did actually write something out yesterday in the Discord that didn't prompt a string of corrections, so progress I suppose. To rework it, "Ég fer í atvinnuviðtal í dag, og líka for ég á pósthúsið til að sækja um vegabréf í gær." Not sure about combining the two sentences like that, but I think it works, so Halldór Laxness, watch out, I'm coming for you. :p

I'm going to try and finish out those final four lessons of Icelandic Online and work on getting through Illusions perdues for my bookclub this week. Also have some interviews this week and need to keep applying for jobs. I probably need to revise my expectations for how much I'll get done, since it's becoming apparent my initial plans only really work if I'm 100% focused and don't go and slack off at all, which doesn't happen. It will get a bit more complicated starting around now with MotoGP and Formula 1 coming back to compete for my time, to boot.
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