Jeff's language log

[smallwhite]

However, in the case of the study, I feel it is important to be very accurate and I find that I'm actively avoiding contact with the languages outside of proper study time in order to avoid any untracked time. It's a little frustrating.

I've learnt to control that after years of participating in 6WCs. During a 6WC, when I am studying and counting it, I try to really concentrate (eg. no spontaneous clicking on irrelevant weblinks), and when I'm not studying, I just relax and do non-language stuff. If I have random little things I want to do in TL, I write them down and do them together in the next study session. Over time, the contrast between study and non-study time has become more clear-cut, and my study sessions have become much more productive. I therefore don't feel bad for not exploiting downtime or for not using my TL here and there. Kind of like "work hard play hard", I guess.

If something is important to you - by all means, keep track of it.

I have no problem tracking for myself. I know what information I want to know, and I know what should count and how. I only have problem tracking for RD's Study. But after reading your posts, I've been rethinking my concerns. Now I would ask myself, "How would Jeff track this?"

[jeff_lindqvist]

I have no problem tracking for myself. I know what information I want to know, and I know what should count and how. I only have problem tracking for RD's Study. But after reading your posts, I've been rethinking my concerns. Now I would ask myself, "How would Jeff track this?"

And after reading your posts in the Study thread, I came to think of a few sayings (all by RDearman):

"You're all over thinking this." (Source)

"I have no need for perfection, and I don't need all the answers." (Source)

"If I were to write out detailed instructions for how to train for a marathon, and one of the instructions is to always breathe in and out when your left foot hits the ground. Should I have you stop running and call me every-time you accidentally breathe out when your right foot hits the ground? No, I'm giving you a general instruction which you should try to do as much as you can. But I wouldn't expect you to generate a running log where you recorded 12,354 steps with left breathing and 6 steps right breathing. I would simply give you guidelines on how to breath, and to record your running times. If you asked me why you should breath in and out on one foot, I would say it is so you avoid getting a side stitch when you run. With increased running speed, your body needs more oxygen. Irregular and shallow breathing can especially lead to a side stitch. As is an efficient stride, the breathing rhythm is also crucial." (Source)

Maybe I'm tracking too little, maybe you're tracking too much?

By the way, the current podcast format is similar for both languages (because of the production team, no wonder). There's a lot of English. I shadow anything in the target language, but that's usually a lot less than one minute (half a dozen phrases said twice?). I can't track it as "Listening while repeating aka shadowing" (simply because there's not enough shadowing).

<side note>
When I logged on,I saw something strange - I checked the new posts and found only three (!) topics (in 13 hours). It felt like a ghosttown.
</side note>

[smallwhite]

Maybe I'm tracking too little, maybe you're tracking too much?

If you get paid by the minute for studying, I bet you'll track more than I do now

[reineke]

[
<side note>
When I logged on,I saw something strange - I checked the new posts and found only three (!) topics (in 13 hours). It felt like a ghosttown.
</side note>

<side note>

And I felt like a ghost. Boooo!

[jeff_lindqvist]

2017 - Summary of week 33

Anki - the chaos continues. Still over 400 (!) each day in three languages. (And the reviews start piling up for CS and YUE too)

Duolingo - daily skills. Sometimes when I'm on the phone, the app gives me 10 points extra when I start doing my reviews. And when I'm on the computer, the web browser (at least Chrome) sometimes gets stuck in a loop and refreshes the window a number of times. The result? I get A LOT of points by just doing one session of Strengthen skills.

CS: I finished the Czech in 3 minutes path (25/25) and have done a little more than half of Getting Started (6/10). Still not much more than isolated phrases. After the remaining lessons I may have a look at something else. I haven't checked the other paths/playlists but there ought to be something interesting.

YUE: About the same progression as Czech; Learn Cantonese in three minutes (25/25) and Getting Started (10/15). Phrases and some important pieces of grammar.

ZH: Another week of shadowing. I went through all lessons and suddenly reached a short audiobook I can't remember the name of, nor the content. The narrator doesn't have a particularly clear pronunciation and the target group is probably natives.

The other day at a café I heard a family speaking a Slavic language. I first assumed it was Polish, but after a few minutes there was something about it that didn't sound Polish enough. My two next guesses were Czech and Slovak. Definitely not Russian, I thought to myself. And then I heard half a dozen words that probably are among the Top 100 in Russian. Who knows, maybe they were speaking Slovio ...

[jeff_lindqvist]

One thing I have noticed with the "[Language] in 3 minutes" lessons is that they seem to have the same format.

Concepts are taught in the same order for the 25 lessons.

The hosts use the same kind of "humour":
What number is []? I’m not telling you! Okay, okay, it’s "thirty-nine"! "It costs thirty-nine HKD."

They lessons sometimes have the same explanations:
"Did you notice how both sentences, [A] and [B]? use the same words for “When” even though the first sentence is referring to a future action – "When are you coming home?" and the second one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?"
So you can use [] to talk about any moment, whether past or present."

...speaking in a tone implying it came as a big surprise. If there's no distinction in either of the target languages nor the teaching language, why even point it out?

[jeff_lindqvist]

2017 - Summary of week 34

Anki - it seems I have reached a constant number of reviews for my big decks.

<Duolingo rant>
Something I've noticed a long time ago is that the system lets you pass even if you make a spelling mistake. As long as the misspelled word isn't the important point of the sentence. For instance, place names, a missing accent or an apostrophe here or there, non-capitalized nouns in German. Fine. Fast forward to a lesson which is about numbers. Take a two-digit number... achtundsechzig - I can write sixty-eight or sixtyeight, even 68. Wait a second - I can even write 68 if I'm asked to translate sixtyeight into German. Yeah, that's a great "translation". At one point I accidentally typed 67, and I still got a correct answer.
</Duolingo rant>

CS: Current status - 47 completed lessons (as of yesterday). The playlists/paths overlap a bit. Most of "Essential Czech for emergencies" is covered in "Survival phrases".

FR: Yes! I needed something to listen to during my walks and found Le Petit Prince on my mp3 player. More than two hours of French means a lot more than I've listened to this year.

YUE: 43 completed lessons (as of yesterday). At this point, no dictionary use, all the hanzi are there in the lessons.

ZH: I "finished" the nameless audiobook (~75 minutes). Not a very good week for Chinese.

I started (and finished) five during the week. I attended a crime literature festival in the beginning of August, so that's why I'm reading more than usual (another three the week before). Having two weeks off helps a lot.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2017 - Summary of week 35

Not a very good week for languages.

Anki - nothing new here. Daily reviews.

Duolingo - I've levelled up in French, Italian and Portuguese (18). Close to levelling up (to 21) in Irish, German and Spanish. The app launched some new badges under the Achievements headline. I got one badge for joining the Llorg Club (mentioned in the German study group log).

CS: Current status - 63 completed lessons. It simply means that I've clicked the button "Mark complete", and I do that after I've listened to the lesson once, and copypasted the new vocabulary and phrases to Anki.

YUE: 52 completed lessons. At this point, no dictionary use, all the hanzi are there in the lessons.

My thoughts after one month with two new languages
It's boring as hell to listen to "teaching language" in podcasts. Period. (It's also difficult to track in the spreadsheet.)

There has been a lot of cross-posting about ALG and comprehensible input. Although I doubt that I would be able to stick to listening for hundreds of hours (800! ), I could try it for a shorter period. But where can I find such content? Is there even any? I'm thinking of the simplest cartoons (e.g. Dr Seuss), podcasts (dialogues in the style of Assimil?) etc. in other languages.

Any ideas?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Intermission

All the threads/posts on ALG and comprehensible input inspired me to take a temporary break from lessons. I spent some time looking around for decent material to listen to (or watch) and ended up with two resources for my two target languages. (More about that in my weekly summary - stay tuned.)

However, as I devoured the content, I felt that my tracking was a bit limited. Indeed it was! I hadn't seen all of Zenmonkey's categories ( ) - for instance, there is one for pure admin work! I have to edit the spreadsheet so that everything will make sense. I have changed a few parametres and have faced some problems: (Some cells have the note Invalid: Input must fall within specified range, despite having exactly the same content as the ones which work, as well as having the right label.) This will take time.

I assume that it's enough with one for radio and one for Youtube (and other movies?) - I can always specify the contents in another field, and also exactly how I use it (listening normally; watching movies with no subs, L1 subs, L2 subs etc.). I'm still not sure how to track a mixed-language podcast where I shadow the L2 (whenever there is any...), or for that matter, movie content which isn't 100% dialogue. Any ideas?

[reineke]

Yes. Don't do it. This type of tracking, I mean.