Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Dec 18, 2017 11:03 pm

What I had planned for the weekend was basically reading further in my non-fiction book so as to finish it today. Mission accomplish. Refuse to choose is one of the most insightful books I've read in the past years. One of the best things I learned was to acknowledge that I do have a Good Enough Job and should be thankful for that. I had already realized it, but being able to confirm it was motivating and self-assuring.

Clozemaster. I'm more motivated about Clozemaster now. I could do the full set both on Saturday and on Monday, which means I've kept my streak for all days but Thursday, when I only went as far as Romanian. Clozemaster has been helpful. I'm starting to transfer my Estonian knowledge into Finnish, clearing some doubts during the drills and learning some etimology equivalence tricks and thus acquiring elementary knowledge in Finnish way before I get down to learning it. I'm also very happy with my progress in Greek: i'm getting more words right at the third level than I did when I started text input at the first level. Working more on Clozemaster meant I read less from the forum, but I still did read a bit. It was a calm weekend after all, I wasn't running from one place to another and I managed to spend a good time with the kids.

Now the highlight of the weekend: first I talked to the Georgian teacher/tutor with whom I had had two classes. She asked me to record a short conversation she wants to show in country. Maybe TV? Then I had a class with another tutor. I liked it a lot. This tutor is more strict, correcting all the time. I think their styles complement each other. Anyway, I'm starting to talk more comfortably and I can already aim for correctness. I'm at a point where I can self-correct almost all of my mistakes, which means it's just a matter of practice as well as of filling in some vocabulary blanks. I even have instances of hypercorrection, like using the nominative for the present object because I'm using to doing so in the past and perfect. Therefore, by keeping practicing like this, I expect to have all my language islands set down for Georgian.

Today I came by foot, which meant additional time for the Argentinian podcast. Ths time the host was actually interview at a Spanish podcast, and it was nice to listen to an accent from Spain once in a while.

I don't get the division productive x unproductive class of verbs made at Modern Russian Grammar: a practical guide. In Portuguese, we call 'productive' only the first conjugation, -ar. Any newly created verb that makes its way into the language gets an -ar ending. For Russian the conjugation models are many and I don't see a sense in the productive x unproductive separation.

The long narrative monologue flashback is over at The Invisible Man, and now there are plenty of dialogues. Only the Ximalaya app keeps fast-forwarding the audio more than 1 page ahead when I hit 'play'. 怎么办呢?

Feeling that 1 Assimil lesson was too little, I went on Mond.ly again. Still on basic vocabulary, but I'm learning quite many words and starting to form some sentences. All this without vowels, relying only on audio and transcription. I'm starting to learn the shape of the words! That feels great.

More staying overtime so I had some fun with the audiobook in Greek again. This time I did 2 pages and didn't even notice it. Soon I'll be able to do increase my daily amount of native material for Modern Greek.

Time also for an episode from the 5th season of Side om Side. Hilarious.
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Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Dec 19, 2017 8:57 pm

Last study day of the year. I have to write a wrap-up of the entire year, there is a lot to write about. I probably won't have the time today, maybe only after the New Year's Eve when I'm going to start a new log.

A Norwegian teacher well-known in social networks has launched a podcast, she's Norsklærer Karense.

I've started reading a long due book, An Experiment with Time. A classic. I've realized the app I use on the phone considers the epub pages to be much longer than the ones at standard font size on iBooks. I usually stick to iBooks for page count even if I read mostly on the phone.

Finished the third seasom of Skam. Looking forward to the 4th season in January-February, then maybe resuming Side om side.

As I was busy and behind schedule, I decided to just play the audio for Russian, catching up on the text later. I could understand many words but still not make sense of the text. Still that's progress from the last time I tried.

I don't get those who say there is very little transfer between Estonian and Finnish; much less those who say one becomes transparent after the other. What I'm noticing, after modest dabbling with Clozemaster, is that that transfer is powerful, and that passive knowledge is foreseeable in Finnish after having reached an advanced level in Estonian.

Busy as expected, but things went smoothly. Now I have a few days to reflect about 2017 and prepare for 2018.
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User avatar
Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:01 pm

2017 Wrap-up

So, here comes the time of the year (should actually be last year) when we're bound to reflect upon what we did and what we didn't do all the past twelve months.

I'll make it less painful by quoting myself from the first post on the thread, and I'll leave my overall impression for the end. It was a great year and I can see even clearer now where this is leading me.

I wrote:French. I keep telling I should apply for certification. Now things have changed a bit, and it's not a priority, but who knows? I want to keep improving my listening through watching cool French TV series, and I want to write more. Last year I wrote very few essays, though I did chat a bit.

No certification, even though I spent 4 months walking through the sidewalk in front of Alliance Française. It's not a priority, after all. Might try it this year if finances go well. I really want to do at least a placement test at AF. I didn't get down to watching series yet, as my plan to watch all the films from a given source hasn't come to an end. I admit it's a necessary step or else my French risks regressing to past Romance-cognates-only stage.

I wrote:Papiamento. It takes care of itself. I will keep using the news, the only resource I have offhand. I want to work on materials for teaching the language, but there's some online redtape involved.

A self-fulfilling prophecy. As for the teaching material, I got no follow-up either from the natives interested in working on a course or from Duolingo. Pity.

I wrote:Italian. I have only usage goals: I want to enjoy cool native novels and TV series. I want to chat more often in the language, even if not explicitly aiming for corrections in the first place.

Goals not reached. I'm still reading only 4 pages a day, but I'm also listening to audiobooks, and this for over 20 minutes. When it comes to series, though, I haven't done anything and I need it in order to improve my listening. No output. The Italians I know speak Portuguese and we talk either in English or in Portuguese.

I wrote:Norwegian. Another language for which I don't need any goals anymore. I just want to find cool stuff to watch on NRK, keep enjoying my audiobooks, keep chatting as often as I've been doing or even more. I will try to only watch and read material I'd really want to, regardless of language learning.

I said I had no goals, but I really wanted to improve my shaky B2 Norwegian. My comprehension improved quite a bit, my active skills even more, because I think I activated the previous passive-only words. I still have trouble with listening, though.

I wrote:Georgian. I want to resume writing so I can reach a comfortable active B1, while working on the newly added audiobooks for bordering a C1 passive. I will keep watching dubbed series which have been working really well, but I will also try to get more out of the native ones.

The audiobooks turned out to be a failure because they were severely abridged. Overall reading improved substantially, though, and I'm about to reach basic reading fluency. Speaking skills are finally existing. I had 3 Skype sessions that were enough to assess that. It's probably the language I improved the most in 2017 and the one I studied in the most relaxed way - only my 4 pages of parallel reading, 10 minutes of native series and 20 minutes of dubbed series, which proves that not worrying about reaching a goal might be liberating and help you move faster. I do want to try native series other than the soap operas.

I wrote:German. Yet another goalless language. I don't need German for any immediate professional activities, so I will keep enjoying the native materials I want, keep improving my passive skills which are bordering fluency and try to enjoy more native series.

German, on the other hand, shouldn't've been so goalless. I improved quite a lot in reading, especially non-fiction, but I'm still not at the stage where I can listen to audiobooks fluently, and I need to reach it because I believe this is what will allow me to improve my speaking as well.

I wrote:Russian. I should shift my focus to more tourism-related language and activating it, while keeping working on reading comprehension. Listening will be less of a focus and I will have to include dubbed series, given the scarcity of transcripts for native series.

I didn't shift my focus in terms of materials used for listening and/or reading, but I started having classes. I have some scarce active skills now, but Russian remains the multi-headed beast. The level I have now is still not enough to perform assertively as a tour guide in June.

I wrote:Mandarin Chinese. Here I will have to clearly reformulate my goals. Should I focus on material for tourists, through sentence drilling? Should I write and post both written and spoken samples for feedback? I should definitely find more time for it on a day. Reading and watching TV series will be less of a priority.

My listening and reading both improved considerably. I can almost read extensively. I caught myself reading some forum posts and understanding everything. I shouldn't refrain from talking anymore. And I just did it today! While shopping and the informal shopping center, I bought some gym shirts and asked if I could try them and if I could change them, all in Chinese to the Chinese saleswoman. I see a brighter 2018 for Mandarin which will become a solid asset on my resumé. I might contact my former teacher now and ask for evaluation of my skills. After Georgian, it's the language I improved the most last year.

I wrote:Estonian. No pressure for this one either. I want to keep working slowly and surprise myself with reaching basic reading fluency. Reading subtitles will be the skill that will prepare me for watching native series next year.

Just like Georgian, it progressed substantially in a low-pressure context. Just like Georgian, it improved faster than Russian. Unlike Georgian, I have a native soap-opera with subtitles which I also machine-translate, and thus I have true comprehensible input, as Estonia is a non-dubbing country. I'l almost at a point where I can read extensively. I just met an intermediate Finnish speaker at the Polyglot Meetup so 2018 looks promising for the Finnic languages.

I wrote:Modern Greek. It's a language where I progressed quickly. I want to get the basic tourist conversation down while keeping working on reading. Listening still isn't my main focus. I need to enlarge my vocabulary first. I will keep working on textbooks for this one.

I still haven't added native materials due to lack of time, but they're necessary now because I keep seeing the same words on textbooks and Clozemaster. BTW, I thank Clozemaster for keeping my active skills almost even/paripassu with the passive ones, but the latter need some consolidating for some core words which I've seen like 10x but still haven't mastered. It's a stage I was with Norwegian a couple of years ago, where I only need to finally get to know some core words in order to advance one CEFR level.

I wrote:Prospects - Indonesian/Malay, Tetun, Guarani, Swahili, Spanish, Esperanto, Romanian....Which one(s) is(are) going to be part of the list above? Time and availability of cool resources, such as Duolingo, will tell.

Indonesian became an (almost) official language. I'm studying it almost everyday. The Tetun Whatsapp group is vanished. The Guarani one is still active but I have other priorities, like Hebrew which I started officially. Spanish is officialy restarted now, but it's only reading, 10 pages a day, as I have no time for TV series. This with Esperanto, Romanian and Finnish are dabbling languages on Clozemaster.

2017 was a very positive year where I overcame many challenges. I had less time for studying because I started giving classes in the early morning and the evening besides driving the the girls to school and picking them up at noon (picking them up impacts directly in my study time as it's 1 hour less plus the inconvenient of doing a longer lunchbreak at work). Yet I managed to learn much more efficiently. The fact my opaque languages reached at least a B2ish level helped enormously with reading faster and saving up to 90 minutes a day. There was also Clozemaster that worked as my intensive learning tool - intensively reading phrases and even output. That's a compromise since I can't afford doing a full multitrack approach for all of my languages.

I can't evaluate in terms of CEFR levels but I think my stronger languages stagnated while the weaker ones advanced half a CEFR level, if that's possible, except for Georgian that I'm almost confident to being able to speak at a B1 level, plus B2 passive, meaning I've reached basic fluency for it. I believe by the end of 2018 I'll probably have a clearer contour of CEFRs for my opaque languages because I'm mostly working on consolidating frequent words I can recognize in context but not instantly; when I get this basic vocabulary down I'll probably see most languages look transparent eventually.

I'll be adding the link to my new log in an upcoming post as soon as it's published. Thank you all for the support!
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User avatar
Expugnator
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1728
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 9:45 pm
Location: Belo Horizonte
Languages: Native Brazilian Portuguese#advanced fluency English, French, Papiamento#basic fluency Italian, Norwegian#intermediate Spanish, German, Georgian and Chinese (Mandarin)#basic Russian, Estonian, Greek (Modern)#just started Indonesian, Hebrew (Modern), Guarani
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9931
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:41 pm

You can follow my 2018 log here.
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