500 hrs by May

[bombobuffoon]

More writing, more reading out loud.

I decided to form a new habit which I stuck with for two days. I receive the local newspaper, which I leave out on the breakfast table the night before, and put a pen down on it. In the morning during breakfast I do an hour reading.

I tried similar with national newspapers online in the past but I couldn't ever stick with it. I don't like being at the computer that long and I got sick to the back teeth of them bleating about the same grift over and over, covid this and that, the wars.

But the local one is much more relevant without that endless repetition and also generally has more everyday vocabulary. I can read personals, ads, lots of charming local news pieces. So I feel good that this will stick.

[jeffers]

... I receive the local newspaper, ...

Wait, so you're in Finland? Did I miss that in the thread?

[bombobuffoon]

... I receive the local newspaper, ...

Wait, so you're in Finland? Did I miss that in the thread?

Yes. Not sure if I mentioned explicitly although I tried to imply that.

Read an article this morning about a chap trying to swap from meat to plant based food for health reasons. As is my habit I underline all words I don't know well and then lookup on wiktionary and try to make out the article. Was fairly easy this time, 6 or 7 unfamiliar words. If there are more than a dozen words I don't know I will pass on that article.

[bombobuffoon]

Also I went to the library yesterday and picked up this:


I love this its full of teenager slang and very readable.

I also picked up the Twilight Stephanie Meyer comic and as Prince of Persia comic. Also I find these readable.

I do hit the library quite a bit but generally the material is overwhelmingly difficult (adult fiction) or too easy or childish (toddler books). I do enjoy comics for CI, I count this as CI as its images and text. But its not quite so simple to find material I engage with either. Most of the comics are Donald Duck which is immensely popular here. Tarzan, Tex Willer also. I don't enjoy those particularly and the language is very archaic and quirky. Teenager novels are completely beyond me as well.

I can just about manage a text only book for 8 or 9 year olds if I have a dictionary. If I can get up to reading books for 12 year olds maybe the subject matter gets more interesting.

[bombobuffoon]

The theme for this month is active!

Focusing a lot more on active input and effort. Whilst I continue to do 1 hour of listening and reading, I am doing of speaking(reading out loud) and workbook exercises, and writing.



This really should be easy but I keep messing up, these sort of scores are what I am consistently getting.
I may redo the workbook.

Whilst I have no problem comprehending the book or creating basic sentences, part of the problem I think is too much focus on passive has meant I cannot deliver low error output. If I manage a low error rate on these work books I would feel that I could move onto the next stage which will be working on producing these kinds of spoken sentences (eventually at real time). And then conversations can happen. But that is some way off.

[emk]

Whilst I have no problem comprehending the book or creating basic sentences, part of the problem I think is too much focus on passive has meant I cannot deliver low error output. If I manage a low error rate on these work books I would feel that I could move onto the next stage which will be working on producing these kinds of spoken sentences (eventually at real time). And then conversations can happen. But that is some way off.

Ouch, yeah, that looks tough. Are you doing this all by gut feel, or trying to apply the rules? Can you explain where you're going wrong, specifically? Are you using the wrong forms of words, or are you writing down word forms that don't exist?

Depending on what the exact challenge is here, there are a lot of different approaches that might help.

[iguanamon]

There are two people here who can help you more than in a general way with Finnish- Serpent, and tiia.

Serpent learned Finnish to a high level on her own. tiia is German. She taught herself Finnish and moved to Finland. They probably haven't visited your log because the word "Finnish" isn't in its title.
To change the name and add Finnish, go to the first post and click the "edit" button. Then edit the title to add "Finnish"to it or change it entirely.

Alternatively, you can PM both of them, or either one.

[bombobuffoon]

Whilst I have no problem comprehending the book or creating basic sentences, part of the problem I think is too much focus on passive has meant I cannot deliver low error output. If I manage a low error rate on these work books I would feel that I could move onto the next stage which will be working on producing these kinds of spoken sentences (eventually at real time). And then conversations can happen. But that is some way off.

Ouch, yeah, that looks tough. Are you doing this all by gut feel, or trying to apply the rules? Can you explain where you're going wrong, specifically? Are you using the wrong forms of words, or are you writing down word forms that don't exist?

Depending on what the exact challenge is here, there are a lot of different approaches that might help.

I believe that applying some rigour by working through these exercises will improve accuracy. It stands to reason. The book says it should get me well into A2 by the end which I believe it will as I'm early in. If those 4/18s starting turning into 6/18s 30 pages later, then 7/18s 40 pages and so on then later I will know its progress.

In that exercise section mistakes include,
Word order is maybe not entirely wrong but its a bit odd in parts. This bad habit comes from thinking in English.
Spelling mistakes.
Wrong choice of case.
Wrong nouns.

When I lookup the answers I know immediately from the correct answer why I am wrong, and I roll my eyes.

Case choice cannot be made by rules of course, you just need to build it up by feel as well as getting familiar with the case forms the verb objects require. Whilst I know a lot about the grammar I generally try to do things by feel, especially in this workbook which is a spoken dialect.

[bombobuffoon]

There are two people here who can help you more than in a general way with Finnish- Serpent, and tiia.

Serpent learned Finnish to a high level on her own. tiia is German. She taught herself Finnish and moved to Finland. They probably haven't visited your log because the word "Finnish" isn't in its title.
To change the name and add Finnish, go to the first post and click the "edit" button. Then edit the title to add "Finnish"to it or change it entirely.

Alternatively, you can PM both of them, or either one.

I live in Finland already and have access to a lot of natives so I can get stuff checked quickly. So no excuses from me.

500 hours is trying to get me to the point that I can begin conversation which in turn will lead to greater ability. However if I cannot form even trivial workbook sentences correctly, nor speak in a comprehensible accent then you can imagine how badly it goes when I try to speak real time. Almost nobody wants to speak with someone stuttering and searching for words. To have a conversation you need a base standard, and I am working towards that.

[emk]

In that exercise section mistakes include,
Word order is maybe not entirely wrong but its a bit odd in parts. This bad habit comes from thinking in English.
Spelling mistakes.
Wrong choice of case.
Wrong nouns.

I'm someone who loves input-heavy methods. But one of the unfortunate facts about input-heavy methods is that eventually you need to work at noticing the little details. For me, I remember the first time I was startled by an native speaker's use of un when I expected une. I was like, "Apparently I did not know the gender of that word."

Here are some things which might or might not help. If I were in your shoes, I might look for exercises that required me to reproduce small amounts of language quickly and accurately, with rapid feedback. The Assimil active wave is one example, though not available for Finnish. Echoing audiobooks aloud as you listen to them works for some people. FSI output drills are popular. Cloze cards (aka "fill-in the blank") can help, and they can allow you start with tiny chunks, and squeeze in tons of exercises per day.

Anyway, good luck!