Ani's 2017 Log

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Ani
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:25 am

Fortheo wrote:FSI seems to be the beast that keeps popping its head up! I remember last year there was a time when you, Peter, and I were all using FSI, and then I think we all kind of just drifted away from it.

Now that the warm weather has returned, I've been able to get back to walking again, which means I have more time for audio courses, so I picked up FSI where I left off (unit 13). Maybe we'll both finish it this year! Which unit are you on?

Weeeellll I have explained my inability to move on with FSI without perfection and about 10 repetitions or more. :roll: I am going back through the hardest tapes this week upto and including the review lesson 6. Next week I'll review and write out lesson 7 (again :shock: ) and then hopefully move on from there. If I ever finish this, I will be the master of snobby diplomat speech.

Fortheo wrote:Anyways, I can relate to the feeling of being less than enamored by French these days and the feeling of having sacrificed other areas of my life in order to progress in French; it's kind of bitersweet in a way when I look at the progress I've made in French, but then notice my stack of unread English books. Recently I've cut my 3-4 hours a day of French down to 2 hours--but I I think you can still progress even with one hour a day, especially if it's focused study on your weaknesses.

Yes I am not too worried about stalling or regressing with only 1 hour of FSI. I will probably also read a few books for fun and watch a little TV when it suits me. Just not a novel a week +15h/tv. I also speak in French with my kids for several hours a day so it is still on the brain.

Fortheo wrote:How is Russian going? Are you still using the same course? I'm loving Russian, but I still can't find more than 30-45 minutes a day for it. Progress is sloooow.


Really good! I mean, slow of course, but I am having fun. My goal has always been A1 by the end of the year so I think I'm on my way to being a proper beginner :lol: I am still using Le russe à votre rythme. Still very much love it. I am certain I would have quit already and never learned how to pronounce this language without it. It is really fabulous. I am not sure if Russian is easier to hear than French or if this course is really just awesome but I already feel like I could take a stab at transcribing Russian TV. Of course, I don't know any of the words and wouldn't get the grammar right. But I can hear most of it and that feels really fun after how long it took me to feel comfortable listening in French.


---

Day 2 of new schedule! I realized today that I had made my plan with the idea that "1 hour FSI" would mean doing 2 tapes, or 1 tape two times. Dawned on me today that many tapes are 20 minutes.. that means 3 tapes a day. That is a ton of FSI. Don't ask me why two 30 minute tapes seems fine while three 20 minute tapes makes me want to cry.

Between the Russian and the FSI, my tongue hurts :lol: My "favorite" exercise from Le russe à votre rythme so far is in lesson 4:
ири-три-ри
ире-тре-ре
иря-тря-ря
ирё-трё-рё
ирю-трю-рю
My poor tongue doesn't have the strength for that :lol: I'm practicing it several times every day now to build up muscles.
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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 » Thu Jun 08, 2017 8:18 am

Ani wrote:Day 2 of new schedule! I realized today that I had made my plan with the idea that "1 hour FSI" would mean doing 2 tapes, or 1 tape two times. Dawned on me today that many tapes are 20 minutes.. that means 3 tapes a day. That is a ton of FSI. Don't ask me why two 30 minute tapes seems fine while three 20 minute tapes makes me want to cry.


It gets worse when I remember that one pass of FSI Spanish Basic will take 55+ hours. For you even more :shock: That's a heck of a lot of translation drills and variation drills and replacement drills and ... always the same! :roll: By the way, my strategy is a little different, I am now doing one pass allowing myself to stop the tape if I can't do it quickly enough "in the pause provided" (I hear the dude saying it in my mind :? ) and then go for perfection with pass 2-10 ;) This way I think I'll benefit more quickly from it.
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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 Jun 09, 2017 7:29 am

blaurebell wrote:It gets worse when I remember that one pass of FSI Spanish Basic will take 55+ hours. For you even more :shock: That's a heck of a lot of translation drills and variation drills and replacement drills and ... always the same! :roll: By the way, my strategy is a little different, I am now doing one pass allowing myself to stop the tape if I can't do it quickly enough "in the pause provided" (I hear the dude saying it in my mind :? ) and then go for perfection with pass 2-10 ;) This way I think I'll benefit more quickly from it.


I do my first pass at the computer, reading the answers where needed and thinking about the text as much as possible, then I write out the unit. All the sentences. I know I know.. it is barely sensible. Then I re-listen either with the text in front of me if it is still hard, or just several times without the text. I still stink at big numbers and long dates with years various centuries in the past, but I have been working below my level grammar and vocabulary wise for a long time with FSI so I am really just after the speed and intonation. If I pause before answering at all, I consider it a failure and repeat the whole tape some more :roll: Not a way to progress quickly. FSI will be at least a 1000 hour project for me by the time it is finished. Good news is, I am a quarter of the way through it, bad news is I realize I have probably spent 250 hours of my life on it so far :lol:
As a by the way, do you ever get database errors in LWT? I have abandoned my projects because a whole pile of words started saying something about there already being an entry for that word. The word stays blue no matter what I try to do with it.
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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 » Fri Jun 09, 2017 10:39 am

Ani wrote:FSI will be at least a 1000 hour project for me by the time it is finished. Good news is, I am a quarter of the way through it, bad news is I realize I have probably spent 250 hours of my life on it so far


Oh wow, that is indeed quite ambitious! I'm not sure I'd have the patience for such a mission! I already think that doing 2 passes is pure torture! Tbh, I don't count it as a problem if I have to stop in the translation or variation drills and there are so many of those in the Spanish Basic. My Spanish is not linked up to anything, I've learned it in immersion so English and Spanish are pretty much entirely separate for me. It's good because I never make English sentences with Spanish words. It means that I actually need to think how I would translate English into Spanish though, something I never do. And with the rest of the exercises I almost never need to stop unless I haven't quite figured out the exercise yet.

Ani wrote:As a by the way, do you ever get database errors in LWT? I have abandoned my projects because a whole pile of words started saying something about there already being an entry for that word. The word stays blue no matter what I try to do with it.


I've never had that problem before and I have like 66000 entries in my LWT. Hmm ... if I were to run into that problem I'd first try to repair file permissions on the hard drive (I'm on a mac, don't think that makes any sense on windows) and then try to check whether the database is corrupted - if so, try to repair it. Also, I hope you don't have any sort of automatic updates turned on for the webserver / database stuff, I'm sure LWT is more stable when you don't mess with the underlying structure. I haven't touched the backend since I installed it - I'm not in the habit of repairing stuff that isn't broken.
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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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Elenia
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Elenia » Fri Jun 09, 2017 12:05 pm

Ani wrote:As a by the way, do you ever get database errors in LWT? I have abandoned my projects because a whole pile of words started saying something about there already being an entry for that word. The word stays blue no matter what I try to do with it.


I know this wasn't directed to me, but I have gotten it a couple of times. There was a specific thing that I was doing while creating cards that caused this problem, although I can't quite remember what now. Sorry, I couldn't be of more help!
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Ani » Sat Jun 10, 2017 5:49 am

blaurebell wrote:I've never had that problem before and I have like 66000 entries in my LWT. Hmm ... if I were to run into that problem I'd first try to repair file permissions on the hard drive (I'm on a mac, don't think that makes any sense on windows) and then try to check whether the database is corrupted - if so, try to repair it. Also, I hope you don't have any sort of automatic updates turned on for the webserver / database stuff, I'm sure LWT is more stable when you don't mess with the underlying structure. I haven't touched the backend since I installed it - I'm not in the habit of repairing stuff that isn't broken.


I'll have to investigate further. Its Windows and its a huge number of errors in probably 1000 words total. I didn't get very far. It is possible automatic updates are on, but the problem started very shortly after installation.

Elenia wrote:I know this wasn't directed to me, but I have gotten it a couple of times. There was a specific thing that I was doing while creating cards that caused this problem, although I can't quite remember what now. Sorry, I couldn't be of more help!


Hmm...The only thing I was suspecting in card creation was that I went too fast. Some that I clicked and then clicked to edit again failed -- words like "moi" where I wasn't actually going to write a definition but then decided to tag it well known while I was there, but then I went back and couldn't edit anything. Maybe I was too lucky on ease of installation and I'll need to put in my time one way or another.
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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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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Fortheo » Sat Jun 10, 2017 9:33 am

Ani wrote:I do my first pass at the computer, reading the answers where needed and thinking about the text as much as possible, then I write out the unit. All the sentences. I know I know.. it is barely sensible. Then I re-listen either with the text in front of me if it is still hard, or just several times without the text. I still stink at big numbers and long dates with years various centuries in the past, but I have been working below my level grammar and vocabulary wise for a long time with FSI so I am really just after the speed and intonation. If I pause before answering at all, I consider it a failure and repeat the whole tape some more :roll: Not a way to progress quickly. FSI will be at least a 1000 hour project for me by the time it is finished. Good news is, I am a quarter of the way through it, bad news is I realize I have probably spent 250 hours of my life on it so far :lol:




I'm burnt out just from reading that :o

It's impressive that you've even finished one unit going through it like that. What are you reading in French these days by the way?
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby Elenia » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:48 am

Ani wrote:Hmm...The only thing I was suspecting in card creation was that I went too fast. Some that I clicked and then clicked to edit again failed -- words like "moi" where I wasn't actually going to write a definition but then decided to tag it well known while I was there, but then I went back and couldn't edit anything. Maybe I was too lucky on ease of installation and I'll need to put in my time one way or another.


I think that's where my problem cards cropped up too! I wonder if there is a way to get rid of all your old data and start again?
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Re: Ani's 2017 Log

Postby blaurebell » Sat Jun 10, 2017 11:53 am

You might be onto something there. I either click on it to edit or leave it alone and mark all as well-known with the button up top. If I want to edit a term that is marked well known I delete it first and then treat it like a new word. Never had any problems with that workflow.
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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 » Mon Jun 12, 2017 7:46 pm

blaurebell wrote:You might be onto something there. I either click on it to edit or leave it alone and mark all as well-known with the button up top. If I want to edit a term that is marked well known I delete it first and then treat it like a new word. Never had any problems with that workflow.


The delete button might be the key! I never used that, just thinking edit would cover everything. I tried to use it a bit more the other day and no issues. A few of the words I remembered being a problem were fine and already marked well known so I'm not sure what happened. I'll give it another run and see if the problem comes back.
Fortheo wrote:
I'm burnt out just from reading that :o

It's impressive that you've even finished one unit going through it like that. What are you reading in French these days by the way?


My pile à lire is pretty gross right now. Tons of "dipped my toes" in books as Brun Ugle said in her log the other day, and I am not really committed to finishing anything right this minute. I am reading the translated Hawking's Une brève histoire du temps, Darwin's Sur l'Origine des Especes (with LWT on the computer), and my first Marc Levy Toutes ces choses qu'on ne s'est pas dites. How about you?
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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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