Ani's 2017 Log

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Elenia
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Elenia » Fri Apr 07, 2017 7:19 pm

Finally caught up on your log, Ani! I just want you to know that I think you're fantastic!
3 x

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blaurebell
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby blaurebell » Fri Apr 07, 2017 9:32 pm

Ani wrote:My brain has turned to mush over here. I have a incredible drive to be productive and yet half or less the normal brain power to accomplish things. I haven't touched Russian in a few days. Feeling too foggy and intimidated.


I had a couple of weeks of that too. Russian must be the worst language for brain fog! It seems like all the vocabulary leaves the sinking ship as soon as I'm not 100% concentrated and cyrillic script turns into indecipherable squiggles! The other day I dreamed that all the Russian words turned into bugs and ran away as soon as I was trying to read them :lol:
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:33 pm

Elenia wrote:Finally caught up on your log, Ani! I just want you to know that I think you're fantastic!


Aww thanks! I have been reading the posts about planning for the gathering and I am super envious. I'd love to meet you all. One of these years :)

blaurebell wrote:
Ani wrote:My brain has turned to mush over here. I have a incredible drive to be productive and yet half or less the normal brain power to accomplish things. I haven't touched Russian in a few days. Feeling too foggy and intimidated.


I had a couple of weeks of that too. Russian must be the worst language for brain fog! It seems like all the vocabulary leaves the sinking ship as soon as I'm not 100% concentrated and cyrillic script turns into indecipherable squiggles! The other day I dreamed that all the Russian words turned into bugs and ran away as soon as I was trying to read them :lol:


Hah yeah that is pretty much how Russian is looking to me.. escaping bugs. I could probably get something done if I tried but... studying makes me so sleepy all of a sudden :) Hopefully my brain comes back soon!

------

After Fortheo's mention in his log, I ordered some books by Guillaume Musso. Central Park came today. I sat on the balcony in the sun and gave it a start. It looks like a perfect read for my level of attention this week. Yay.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:38 am

Finished Les Beaux Malaise. Season 4 turned out to only be 2 episodes long :( Sad, but I am glad they put in a real ending. I hate when shows just drop off.

1/3 of the way through Conjugasion Progressive. I feel like I am taking my vitamins :) This is good for me. I started with a new pen though and it is getting low on ink :lol:

I'm super thankful to have language learning in general and this forum specifically. It makes my life slightly more bearable while I sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for a baby. Also I found this onesie :)

Image
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:07 am

Watching everyone install LWT over the last couple weeks has made me curious. I decided to take a look and see if it might be of value to me. After 3 months of solely extensive reading, I'd like to read some intensively as well. I don't know if it would be too big of a pitb to set up lwt with an already pretty advanced vocabulary. Seems like it would take a LOT of marking before the statistics were accurate and in fact a lot of reading before finding a sizable number of words to even worry about learning. Still, now seems like a good time to collect vocabulary that I don't know since the words don't come around as often.

Before I even get into tech support issues, I realized I have no idea what I'd actually read. Looks like it needs to be an actual text file? I have a couple pdf's that are on my list, but I guess I'd need to find some out of copyright books? I'm not interested in searching all over for articles and bits and pieces of whatnot to copy and paste. If I really wanted to read them, I'd probably just read them while they were on my screen :) If anyone happens to stop by with recommendations I am all ears.
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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blaurebell
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby blaurebell » Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:20 am

I use LWT a lot and for learning languages from scratch I find it absolutely amazing. LWT+ Harry Potter is how I learned to understand French in 3 months. I've now started using it with Spanish too after reading a lot extensively. There are 2 types of "known" categories, one is "learned" where you add a definition and the other is "well known" which doesn't come with a translation. How I use LWT for Spanish is to mark any word where I'm not 100% sure what it means and then click the button "I know all" for the rest, which will then automatically mark the rest as well known. That way you only need to mark words that you don't know. As for statistics: They will probably only become an accurate reflection of your vocabulary after about 5000 pages, but in the meantime you can still use them with a bit of math on the side if you note down how many unknown words you add per book. By the way, I find that just typing out the dictionary definition is already enough to learn the words. You can export the words for anki, but it's really not necessary and tends to only slow you down. I tried to anki like that with Spanish and found that it was a waste of time, because most unknown words for me are low frequency words. It's not necessary to know every low frequency word to the accuracy that anki demands. How to pick up such vocabulary? Well, some authors and book topics use certain low frequency vocabulary more often. Reading such books and typing out every occurrence of such words will make them stick eventually. The important thing is not to skip words that you only understand because you read them 5 minutes ago, but to use every opportunity to practice them.

For importing books not in the txt format there is a trick: All you need is any ebook format, epub, mobi, whatever, and a software called Calibre, which is free and like iTunes for ebooks. You stick the book you want to read in there and then export it as a TXT file. You can then stick the TXT file into the long text import of LWT and it splits it up into shorter chunks for you. With new languages I tend to just copy and paste every single page because longer texts become overwhelming, but for languages that I already know well I use the long text import in combination with calibre. So, no need to stick to books that are out of copyright, there are plenty of sources for ebooks in the common ebook formats which you can use with calibre.
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: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:24 pm

Ahh thank you! I completely forgot about calibre. I mean, it is what we used to organize our ebooks on the computer but I forgot the conversion functions. I don't know if I'd actually be able to read 5000 pages or more sitting at the computer though. That is a lot of sitting inside. I'll have to think some more about it. Or maybe install it and see how much I like it (or not) for French, but plan to use it for Russian. I think it might be more useful at whatever point I get around to starting to read in Russian.


I started Ainsi Soient-Ils yesterday. I didn't really know what to expect but I am pleasantly surprised so far. DH had to upgrade our internet because of all this TV I have been watching :lol: Yes, I live in a part of the world that still has data caps :shock:
Still working on Conjugasion Progressive. Been reading bits and pieces of Grammaire Progressive avancé et perfectionnement. I have the books near two different chairs in the house, hence the double start. I really love the series, but the varying lengths of the books is just so odd. Débutant is short, intermédiaire is about double the length, avancé is the shortest of all, and perfectionnement is again a fairly thick book. Not sure what happened in the planning.
Also reading Central Park. Having a hard time with the weird decisions of the characters -- Go out partying in Paris, wake up the next morning handcuffed to a stranger in Central Park. Stranger says he was in Dublin the night before. Neither of you has any idea how you go there. You are both wounded. Instead of looking for help, you steal a phone and then a car, and then a second car. At least it isn't 300 pages of sitting at the bottom of a well ;)
2 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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blaurebell
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby blaurebell » Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:45 pm

Ani wrote:Ahh thank you! I completely forgot about calibre. I mean, it is what we used to organize our ebooks on the computer but I forgot the conversion functions. I don't know if I'd actually be able to read 5000 pages or more sitting at the computer though. That is a lot of sitting inside. I'll have to think some more about it. Or maybe install it and see how much I like it (or not) for French, but plan to use it for Russian. I think it might be more useful at whatever point I get around to starting to read in Russian.


I'm also not a big fan of reading at the computer, but it's so effective for me that I just do it anyway. I used it with French and my reading comprehension is just so much more precise, it's great! However, I can't really face more than 5000 pages either. After that amount I just continue reading with the kindle or physical books. Good plan with the Russian! Without LWT I'd be utterly lost with reading Russian! There is just no way to make the jump to native books without a dictionary, too few cognates! I mean, even with a dictionary the word order sometimes drives me nuts and I might not understand a sentence although I just looked up all the words. Ah, Russian :roll:
2 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:56 pm

blaurebell wrote:
I'm also not a big fan of reading at the computer, but it's so effective for me that I just do it anyway. I used it with French and my reading comprehension is just so much more precise, it's great! However, I can't really face more than 5000 pages either. After that amount I just continue reading with the kindle or physical books. Good plan with the Russian! Without LWT I'd be utterly lost with reading Russian! There is just no way to make the jump to native books without a dictionary, too few cognates! I mean, even with a dictionary the word order sometimes drives me nuts and I might not understand a sentence although I just looked up all the words. Ah, Russian :roll:


I understand the value of desk activities just being worth the work of sitting and getting it done. My French is probably too good to have patience for that (a word every few pages for most books) at this point unless I am reading Kant or something, but earlier I would have done it. Russian is probably going to be strictly a desk activity for a loooooooong time :)
4 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Sun Apr 16, 2017 1:47 am

My brain is still mush. Nothing is really working right. I'm too uncomfortable to stay in any position long enough to focus. Can't even manage to watch much TV. I did finish Central Park and managed about 2.5 chapters of Conjugaison Progressive. I'm on ch21 now. It took me 3 hours to do those 2.5 chapters because I spent more time staring and wiggling and practicing handwriting than actually doing the work. Central Park turned out better than I thought it would. It was a good read. This baby needs to get born NOW before I go out of my mind. :lol:
6 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.


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