Trying to take it easy

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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Thu Nov 25, 2021 11:48 am

luke wrote: I might should look up more words than I have been, but I've been doing this as kind of an extensive reading experiment. Some words though are difficult to get from the context. Probably should start marking them with a highlighter or something so I can look them up later or even look them up now.

This is always a question for me. How many words should I look up? What should I do with them? I'll write down here the chaos that's in my head regarding the topic.

1. Giver of good advice: You've already learned English. How did you gain your vocabulary knowledge? Try to think back, and build on the experience.
Me: As far as I remember I read a lot of books, hardly ever looked up new words, never studied new words intensively. I don't know, after a while they just stuck.
Giver of good advice: So, what's the problem?
Me: As far as I remember, I don't know. These two phrases.

2. Once I've seen a video with Paul Nation about the effect of extensive reading on vocabulary. He said that one needs to meet a certain word 7 times for retention. My take: this number is an average. There are certain words that I need to meet only once, and there are others that I need to meet 14 times. Is it a good idea to force a certain word list on myself? Is there a way to find the '1-3 times words' and learn those ones? Can I turn a '10-14 times word' into a '1-3 times word'? If yes, how? Trying to figure out the meaning from context? Searching for texts that create emotions? I hope it doesn't sound philosophical, but somehow I think that I don't choose words, words choose me.

I've tried Anki, but it was a total failure. It was so boring that I couldn't learn any words. I just gave up doing the cards, didn't try to recall the words, always pressed 'I don't know'.

Now I have a small notebook and write the new words in it. But there might be better options. When I work with the El País articles, I highlight with colour codes, but that's totally different. The type of the text also determines what you can do with the vocabulary. In the case of newspaper articles it was obvious for me.
Colour 1: key words (important to talk about the topic)
Colour 2: connectors
Colour 3: grammar structures that I'd like to remember (including word+preposition structures)
Colour 4: new words not related to the topic, fixed expressions, frequent combinations
Then I try to summarise the text.
But with novels? I don't know either, how the get the most out of them.
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luke
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby luke » Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:35 pm

BeaP wrote:I'll write down here the chaos that's in my head regarding the topic.

1. Giver of good advice: You've already learned English. How did you gain your vocabulary knowledge? Try to think back, and build on the experience.
Me: As far as I remember I read a lot of books, hardly ever looked up new words, never studied new words intensively. I don't know, after a while they just stuck.

That was mostly my experience too. Leading into one summer, I had a great grade school teacher who got us into this "bookworm" thing. We made a little mark on the bookworm for each book we read. During the class year, it was sort of a contest, a bit like some of the contests here, where the book one person reads is not necessarily the same challenge as the one another reads, but the idea is for everyone to read more, and if that happens, the contest is a success, regardless of one's placement in the contest.

That summer, when the school year was over and it was no longer a contest, I just kept making marks on my construction paper "bookworm". By the end of the summer, I'd filled it up with marks for books read. So at that time, I wasn't necessarily challenging myself with the most difficult books, I was racking up numbers. Two side effects were: 1) coming across good books just in the game of reading more. 2) my reading progressed a lot that summer.

Oh, and I wasn't looking up words then either. Also, I was reading a lot more that summer, because I didn't have normal school taking up 8 hours of the day.

Perhaps the best choice is just whatever feels right at the time.

This morning, reading about 15 pages, I looked up one word. feto = fetus. I also looked back at another word I'd looked up before and written the word in the book. compangido ~ remorseful.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby Caromarlyse » Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:44 pm

I have similar questions for myself about learning vocabulary. I learned French and German in academic settings, not perfectly but to a level where I was able to work in the respective languages. This was at a time before electronic flashcards, and I don't remember even the most dedicated of students ever using paper flashcards. The most anyone did was to go through a list, but even that was only occasionally. So how did I learn? I have no idea!
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:29 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:This was at a time before electronic flashcards, and I don't remember even the most dedicated of students ever using paper flashcards. The most anyone did was to go through a list, but even that was only occasionally.

It's the same with me. Usually I get the reply that we had a lot of time, but no, we didn't. At the university we partied a lot, I went out with boys and spent even more time talking about these boys with my friends. And I don't think I was the only one who didn't see learning as the absolute priority. I also remember that my German lessons at the language school were 90 minutes long. That's not a lot of time. At home I only did the exercises in the Themen workbook, and never repeated anything. I didn't even hear about spaced repetition or pomodoro, and couldn't care less about efficiency. Of course I did mind if I passed an exam or not, but that was all.
One thing I'm almost completely sure about is that we could concentrate much better. Social media and the internet in general doesn't let people concentrate for a long time, and even if you cut them out of your life for a while, they have an effect on your nervous system that you can't get rid of with a period of abstinence.
Another thing that I can think of is that there are so many gurus who tell us how to be efficient that even if we don't realise it, we might pursue an efficiency, a learning professionalism, that is only a burden, and doesn't really have benefits. Maybe Luke is right. The best choice is doing whatever feels right at the time.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:01 pm

BeaP wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Can you please tell us the name of that Portuguese grammar?

https://www.lidel.pt/en/catalogue/brazilian-portuguese-as-a-foreign-language/materials/gramatica-ativa-1/
There is a European Portuguese version as well, but that one doesn't contain CDs, only the Brazilian. There is also a second volume for intermediate students.
It's not so much that I want to learn Portuguese, though that is not entirely out of the picture, but rather because I'm interested in seeing an example of a well-made grammar. IMHO, most grammars are wretched, and even a bad one with lots of examples would be invaluable. Thanks.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Fri Nov 26, 2021 8:45 am

I'm a bit slow nowadays. I've just recognised that the Italian series Strappare Lungo i Bordi has been available on Netflix for a week. I've bought two comics by Zerocalcare this summer: Macerie Prime and Macerie Prime sei mesi dopo. I started two read the first volume, but I found it too difficult and put it on the shelf. I was very happy to see the TV series. I've read a bit about it in Italian online papers, and saw that it caused a huge controversy because of the language. They say there is too much romanesco in it, so it's hard to follow even for native Italians. I'm starting to get used to this phenomeon, that the best Italian productions are not in Italian (like Gomorra was in napoletano). I've watched the first episode with Hungarian subtitles (I hardly ever do that), and it's very witty. One episode is 20 minutes long, but it's so dense and quick that it feels like a long movie somehow condensed into a short one. I tried to concentrate on the Italian audio, and it's not as impossible to understand as Gomorra.

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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Fri Dec 03, 2021 10:25 am

Recent acquisitions

Several members of my family have started to learn English recently, so English textbooks are back in my life. I've found 3 books from the Access to English series in a second-hand bookshop. I'm still missing the second volume (Getting on), but sooner or later I'll get it. :D I've already written about this series, because I liked it very much. It is outdated, but not so much, because it is based on a story, not contemporary life and culture. The recent communicative books age in a much worse way in my opinion, because of the focus on celebrities and trendy things. It's a bit funny that people smoke everywhere and they use a typewriter, but it's still a great book, and the audio is uploaded to youtube.

I've also bought a bilingual course from Pons, which is actually a pack for autodidacts. There's a book in it with several CDs. It's similar to Assimil, but I prefer Pons from various aspects. The dialogues are more touristy, so you immediately feel that you learn useful phrases. The grammar is presented in a clearer way, and there are more and better exercises in it. I don't know in which countries it exists, as it's originally German. Also it is sometimes called Langenscheidt instead of Pons, so in other countries it might exist under another brand name. In Germany my version is not available any more, and it went through an unfortunate Verschlimmbesserung. I don't know why publishers do this. My old copies (for French, Italian and Spanish) are all much better than the new ones, which are total chaos.
This is the preview sample of the new course (click on Im Buch blättern under the picture):
https://www.langenscheidt.com/shop/englisch/selbstlernen/sprachkurs/langenscheidt-komplett-paket-englisch-978-3-12-563325-4?c=624
You can see some pages from the old version here, if you scroll down here and click on Lapozz bele:
https://www.pons.hu/pons-nyelvtanfolyam-kezdoknek-angol-konyvcd-uj
One obvious shortcoming compared to Assimil is that these courses are only available in a few languages.

I started to read through the Balboni Italian book, and I liked it so much that I bought the volume I was missing. It's outrageous how much cheaper these books are in Italy. (Amazon: 16 EUR vs 32 USD) The concept is that it's a relatively small textbook with extra material online to make the programme more affordable and portable. Well, the affordable didn't really work outside Italy, but the portable is OK. I'm planning to write more about this book when I finished reading it. I haven't studied Italian for 20 years except watching some videos on youtube and reading one novel. I'd like to brush up my knowledge, and I chose to read a textbook like I'd read a novel to achieve this. So I'm not doing any repetitions, and I want to be as quick as possible to be able to finish with the A1-B2 stuff relatively soon.
I also started to read through Un nuovo giorno in Italia. Review coming up in this case as well.

I really admire those of you who are juggling several languages at the same time. For me Spanish seems to be too much in itself most of the time. I'd really like to establish some kind of routine with Italian, but I wouldn't like to slow down Spanish. My plan is to read one chapter (3 pages) from the Balboni book or 3 pages from the other book every day.

One interesting observation: In Spanish the b/v distinction only exists in writing, not in speaking. When I started to learn Spanish, I was sure I would never be able to apply this rule, as v is a common sound in Hungarian. But now that I've taken up Italian again, I recognised that I say Italian words like this: bengo, bado, boglio. I also recognised that I sometimes make mistakes in English that a Spanish native would make. If I achieve something, it creates a mistake elsewhere. Nice.
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BeaP
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby BeaP » Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:19 pm

I had to admit myself that I can't learn two languages at the same time. Actually, if I'm totally honest, I've never learned two languages at the same time, not even in school. When I took up German, I was already about to pass the English exam, which freed me from attending English classes. When I later improved my English to the C levels, I stopped learning German, and concentrated only on English. I can watch TV or read articles in several languages on the same day, but I can't concentrate on learning (improving significantly) two languages simultaneously. And it's not a question of time. I wouldn't be able to do it even if I had 5-6 hours of free time. It's too much mentally.

So, I decided to postpone learning Italian, and there is a second reason for this as well: it interferes a lot with Spanish. It's much worse than French or German. Actually I think it's the worst duo a language learner can choose. And I'd really like to pass the DELE as soon as I can. I have invested a lot in my other languages as well, so sooner or later I'd like to improve them all to at least a C1 level. If I don't use a language, I start to lose it, but according to my experience a C1-C2 language never declines below basic fluency. Unfortunately, a B2 language does. I could say that I've already reached the C levels in Spanish, so I could move on to another language, but I want the certificate. For me it's like the peak of the mountain, and I've climbed so much that I don't want to stop this close.

I've promised to review the Italian books I studied this past month. Un nuovo giorno in Italia was a little bit disappointing, because it wasn't as appealing as the English narrative textbook (Access to English). However, it was still much better than the average communicative course book. I can't say that I couldn't wait to read the next chapter, but it was pretty interesting and very thorough. For a good, independent learner it's possible to learn Italian only from this book to a B2 level. I always have a feeling that the writers of a given book have a presumption about the audience they'll reach. Here I've felt that the authors take me for an intelligent and curious person, not a robot or a narrow-minded idiot. And this is the biggest compliment I can give to a language textbook. I've felt that the authors were interested in me, they wanted me to enjoy the journey, to improve quickly and don't want to give up. If I take up Italian again, it will be with this book.

The Balboni book was equally impressive, as it was clearly different from the communicative garbage the market is flooded by (Espresso, Progetto, and all the clones that are basically the same book with different pictures). It's obvious that Balboni is very experienced, and that he put all his methodology knowledge in this book. He often gives an explanation why an exercise is beneficial (he also thinks that the learner is an intelligent person with thoughts of their own). The books are divided into small sections, which is a great benefit for someone with little time. There is a huge amount of audio, and there are some old-school exercises (like dictation) as well. The whole book is not ruled by trends, but by the concepts of the writer, which I find very rare nowadays. One huge minus: there is no key for the exercises.

So, from now on it'll be only Spanish. I hope to pass the DELE next November or 2023 May. We'll see.

I've done the 2nd Listening from El Cronómetro. pp. 116-118.
Results: 5/5, 15/12, 6/6
Conclusions tomorrow.
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luke
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby luke » Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:43 pm

BeaP wrote:I had to admit myself that I can't learn two languages at the same time.

You had me on the edge of my seat immediately!
So, I decided to postpone learning Italian.

And exhale. Thank you!

BTW, your reviews of the Italian methods are very interesting, even though Italian will never be on my plate.

Now I'm like, 'what's BeaP going to say about El Cronómetro and what has she already said?

BeaP wrote:Conclusions tomorrow.

Back on the edge of my seat. :)
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Le Baron
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Re: Trying to take it easy

Postby Le Baron » Tue Dec 14, 2021 5:35 pm

BeaP wrote:If I don't use a language, I start to lose it, but according to my experience a C1-C2 language never declines below basic fluency. Unfortunately, a B2 language does.

This does seem to be the case. I don't know how to measure accurately because I think some "B2" speakers living in the country who never opt to pursue further qualifications/tests, also get the language so deeply embedded through usage, that they never really lose it. Maybe experience has shifted them beyond B2.

I won't bore you with my French background, but I was living in French-speaking Belgium for quite some time and using it daily in a professional work and social capacity, then when I relocated and didn't need it or get much opportunity to speak it, the language really deteriorated for me. But I resurrected it. I don't think I could do the same with German.

When you say you've never learned two languages at the same time I think I can agree for myself. I may have been pursuing more than one, but I always end up putting more effort into one, otherwise it just feels like spreading your efforts too thinly. It's like trying to properly look at more than one painting at the same time in a gallery. No-one can really do that. I have ended up putting really all of my learning effort towards Spanish simply because I can't properly learn more than one language at a time. I don't want to get just a little of the way with many simultaneously, but most of the way with a least one more.
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