One problem I had with this particular session was she wanted to do the whole thing "audio only"... harder for me to understand her. The missing visual clues really made my comprehension suffer more than in the previous two lessons. I might need to split test this somehow, doing some lessons with video and some without. I didn't think it would make that much difference, but I did notice it.
I'd be interested in the results of your split test if you end up doing it. There are waves of intriguing factors worth considering on a practical level. Part of the visualization help is very much related to maintaining an appropriate level of attention. When I go audio only, I find it incredibly important to approach the listening with my eyes closed in order to partly compensate for that lost attention (when possible). Perhaps it helps me mindfully process the individual words with greater focus and clarity. The quality of the audio input also becomes much more important and I end up choosing my very best headphones (never speakers or earbuds). Sometimes, with my eyes closed, I can then almost read what they are saying and I get a boost in understanding (noted b/c you said you read French well so you may be able to do that too). When actually watching the teacher, the mechanics change (or rather are often substituted) since you are then looking also at body language and other potential presentation materials. Quite an interesting playground for testing.
Languages: Bad English: native Samoan: speak, but rusty Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time Spanish: read French: read some Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
(joke)I find closing my eyes while listening in an L2 helps a lot. I can get to sleep much faster. (/joke)
In seriousness, one of my favorite times is when my family is asleep, I've checked outside, and locked the doors, turned off the lights, and I finally lay down and listen to Spanish or French (usually audiobooks) in the dark with my eyes closed.
One of my big reasons to study languages is to get away from my day to day life, and when it's night, and I'm listening to an L2, I can get pretty far away from the day to day stuff.
6 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川
the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way Basho[1689]
What’s outside Sfuqua? I’ve been failing to do that. I get lots of interesting language learning ideas from you - i might adopt your going to bed routine.
Long time with no update. Basically I'm doing the same old thing. I do my Anki reps and speak to a tutor once a week. I've scheduled a lot more conversations, one a week for the next month. And I've just completed a month. I've added some more money to my iTalki credits and I will probably try to get in two sessions per week instead of one.
My lesson today went well, it was the second time with the French fellow I did the first one with. He has since moved to Germany. This time however there was slightly more English, and I keep having to remind myself not to fall into the trap of using English. I don't really know if this helps, but I hope to see results.
I have completed my first Stephen King, Dark Tower book and started on the second. The first was 384 pages, but in reality I should have completed it weeks ago. I've just not been reading or watching TV as much as I did previously, even though in theory I have more time at the moment. However, work expands to fill the time available. I'm very busy learning to use Emacs org-mode for blogging and getting my website restored. After the hacking which got this forum, and all the other sites on my server, I haven't yet got my sites back up. I'm putting them back as static sites, so less likely to be backed into.
I'm going to start doing some short videos with Dave on YouTube for no good reason. But these will be in English. I'm definitely interested in doing a presentation in French, and I'm already lining up resources for it. I also want to do more presentations and training courses in English for people, and I'm trying to get that moving too.
My language update is just, read a book, did a lesson, and did some Anki. One thing I did find while doing these lessons is that I prefer Google Hangouts to Skype. Don't know why, but it just seems cleaner and easier somehow. Although in reality there isn't much between them.
I still cannot understand French spoken at speed, but I know it is because I'm being lazy and not putting in the effort with intensive listening, or any of the other dozen of recommendations for improvement I've had. A lot of this isn't just because I am lazy, but also because I'm busy. My daily to-do list averages 12 recurring tasks, and 10-15 non-recurring tasks.
I'm using org-mode habits to track things I want to become a habit, but as yet I haven't added any language related stuff to the list. Anki is already a habit.
My French lesson for this week was a bust. The tutor couldn't make it home in time and had to reschedule, which is fine, but didn't leave me with a contingency for this week. In a couple of weeks however I'll have two lessons that week.
To be honest I haven't been doing much, but I have been reading and doing my anki cards. Anki is just a habit now, so pointless to report on it really since it is the one thing which I consistently do. I've been doing a ton of stuff over the last few weeks, not really language related, or at least only slightly. I've reworked my website over again so that I can blog in Org-Mode of Emacs. It generates static pages, so no more sql injection attacks, or php piggybacking, or all that other hacker crap, and since it regenerates it nightly from source, even if they did get into it, their rubbish gets overwritten.
I've started a YouTube channel and posted a couple of videos about how to translate using google sheets, how to use corpus analysis software to make word frequency lists, etc. Hopefully I'll be adding more stuff to it. The idea is basically to screencast software for learning languages, at least the stuff I use.
I wrote up the guide to installing substudy,etc on windows. I think I'll try recording each step and creating a playlist. Don't know if anyone would find it useful. Here is an example:
Don't know how to get my ugly face off the screen, so if that doesn't scare you off then happy days. This particular video uses a bit of linux shell scripting, so I should probably record another one on this topic just using Windows.
Well, that is it. Nothing to report until next lesson, or I finish the second book in the Dark Tower series.
Having some issues with iTalki lately. The tutor that missed last weeks lesson, missed the rescheduled one too. Fair enough because she is getting married and had to go sign something, but the date booked was the one she suggested? Anyway, I had another lesson today with a French lady who lives in Italy and it seemed to go well. It was difficult to understand her a lot of the time. I don't know why this is, but she often would drop into Italian to explain it to me. Again, this was ok, since it was our only shared language, but I have a lot of difficultly switching languages at the drop of a hat. My mind is not the ultramodern Japanese bullet train switching system. Mine is the old turn of the century guy with a long iron pole and telegraph switching system. Or if you prefer the telephone analogy, my brain isn't fibre-optic, it is a bunch of switching operators saying "how may I direct your call?". It takes a long time for my brain to identify the other language, prepare itself for this modified input, make the required changes to the output, then respond. Course by then she was back to French and wondering why I was just staring off into space for a couple of seconds. It was actually easier to just stick to French.
I remember sitting through a Polyglot lecture in Berlin with a woman who taught her students 3-4 languages at a time, and was constantly switching between them to get used to the idea. Perhaps I should sign myself up for that type of brutality?
One thing about the lesson, since she didn't speak English, when I didn't know a word or phrase, I had to explain what I meant using other words, or long descriptions. Description of "The Home Counties" around London was a real brain buster!
It should be remembered that London, as an autonomous administrative region, has only existed since 1889. In that year, an Act of Parliament was passed creating the County of London from the metropolitan parts of the three counties of Surrey, Middlesex and Kent. it was ruled by the London County Council, later Greater London Council (abolished 1984), and now effectively reconstituted as the Greater London Assembly. Hence, the term 'the home counties' has since come to be applied to those counties which are now entirely or in part subsumed by the Greater London metropolis - the original three, plus Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. ' The 'home' derives ultimately from Westminster, 'the home of parliamentary democracy'.
So I ended the lesson with one hell of a head ache. Her summation was that I needed more vocabulary. (hummm... ya think?)
I am doing the same old things, reading Stephen King in French, now more than 25% of the way through this second book. Anki, and iTalki. However, this week I've gone back to watching some more TV. This time it is The Punisher but I use French sub-titles and audio. I've also discovered Kabul Kitchen on one of the catch-up TV streams. I'm planning on watching some more of that.
I have been wondering lately if my French is declining, improving or stagnating. Depending on my day, or mood my estimate fluctuates wildly. I've decided not to worry about it and just keep plugging away. I have noticed that since October I've been tailing off and not watching as much TV or reading. Although a little of this is down to a lack of enthusiasm and lack of time, I need to schedule myself more time to work with French.
I've gotten back to using org-mode to schedule my life and todo's and I'm getting tons of things done, but I'm not really sure that I'm getting all the right things done. Need to take a little time out and review my strategic goals, the big ticket items, and making sure I'm allotting time to all of them, not just one of them.
I did a couple of YouTube videos with Dave Prine (can't remember dave's forum handle) where mostly I sit around rambling, while Dave tries to keep his kitten from clawing him to death. The idea was to talk about language learning, but we do seem to go off-piste a lot. I'd be interested in thoughts about it, and what topics would actually interest people. I promise to stop linking to my YouTube stuff now.
I'm getting the message that playback on sites other than youtube has been disabled by the video owner? (I'm going to go watch on youtube now, but thought you might want to know)
Elenia wrote:I'm getting the message that playback on sites other than youtube has been disabled by the video owner? (I'm going to go watch on youtube now, but thought you might want to know)
If I disabled it then it was an accident! I barely worked out how to do it in the first place. But thanks for letting me know, I will try to figure out what i did wrong.
