Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

[Cavesa]

Yeah, the good old "I didn't take any bribes, and the amount is not correct either."
Get used to this kind of jokes. The Czech newspapers are full of them
Explanation: a famous quote of I can't remember what politician, who was corrupt and was defending himself so eagerly it went wrong. In original: "Žádný úplatek jsem nevzal a ta částka taky nesedí." It is often jokingly used to express the total distrust towards someone's loud claims of innocence.

[Elenia]

Yeah, the good old "I didn't take any bribes, and the amount is not correct either."
Get used to this kind of jokes. The Czech newspapers are full of them
Explanation: a famous quote of I can't remember what politician, who was corrupt and was defending himself so eagerly it went wrong. In original: "Žádný úplatek jsem nevzal a ta částka taky nesedí." It is often jokingly used to express the total distrust towards someone's loud claims of innocence.

No but really! I can barely ride a bike down my road! And a kayaking the very thought brings back awful memories of being dumped in the Thames...

I'll happily take blame for everything else but sport? Never.

[Cavesa]

A quick Clozemaster question. How reliable the data (from Tatoeba I believe) is?

Das macht Tom, um seine Unsicherheit zu kaschieren. That is a nice sentence and the word definitely belongs to the 100 most frequent. But a sentence about feathers and nests?

But I like it. It definitely cannot hurt. At least as long as it is not the only resource, since it partially relies on google translations and computer voice.

My German needs progress and this is quite a benign way to reintroduce it to my routine.

[Cavesa]

Still reading Moon over Soho. I love those jokes. I wanted to share some of them here, but that might spoil it. Read those books! The story is great too, even though a little bit less thrilling than the first one for now (I am in one third of the book). But I am laughing out loud in public transport.

Watching Gotham in Italian. I really like the show and love the language. But I won't have time for it for the next few days.

Another Lukyanenko in the bookstores (in translation). I need to start learning Russian again. Why must days have only 24 hours?

I am still in the middle of exams. Our faculty is like the Arkham Asylum. Not sure what kind of monster I'll be, when I finally get out with my "sanity certificate" Someone should tell the faculty that Kafka's novels were not meant to be taken as an example to follow.

I had the trial lesson at rypeapp and I think I will pay one month, as it is 50% off. It could really be helpful for my writing. This teacher said I spoke like a native with a slight accent that could be attributed to just being from another region. Well, let's see how it goes, when I finally have a chance to speak about something difficult requiring my brain to focus on the content a lot. I suppose my troubles will emerge at that point. I wouldn't have gotten this tutoring before my DALF, due to low experience of the teachers with high level students (let's see what will others be like), but I have already passed the exam and noone is going to take that certificate away, so I can risk a bit And I need more human contact. With more humans. Non-medicine related humans.

Bought myself a cheap second hand DELE B2 preparation book. If it is easy enough, I'll proceed to the real level I aspire to, C1. I need these exams to stop, I want to learn my languages!!!! Even Mandarin would be easier than dermatovenerology.

[Systematiker]

Of those Greek and Hebrew crazy ideas, I blame you, Expug, zenmonkey, Tristano, Tarvos (perhaps she doesn't learn these two, but she is definitely among the suspects), Language Transfer, Memrise, Duolingo, and Youtube. Shame!

As someone who does both of those, I'm totally glad I didn't get any of the blame!

[tarvos]

Obviously, I became part of Elenia's/BrunUgle's/rdearman's evil Czech masterplan before I even knew it

A few points:

1.I desperately need to improve my German asap. That means as soon as some of the most pressing exams are gone. I've reorganized them a bit, it is a chaotic mix, but I must get through. I need German for reading and medical comunication. Talk all you want about English being the number one in science and everything, it simply stops being true once you focus on a particular field, where the situation may be a bit different and other players may be important. French was one of the best decisions of my life (thanks, 9 year old me, and thanks to the rest of my younger mes (yes, this is a plural of "me" and I don't care how wrong it is) for being stubborn enough to stick with it). But I need Spanish and German too. And I am beginning to think I might need an asian language in future. Some of the countries have definitely a lot of information to offer that might interest me. But some of it only to those getting through the barrier.

2.I am trying one of the "unlimited" tutoring services next week, as I've desribed in another thread. I am curious. It will probably be not worth it, but I can try.

3. I need to improve my French. I've been looking into some resources for natives. Some of them look pretty promissing, such as Projet Voltaire. It is a grammar improvement site for natives who want to write better. On their very short test, I got 71% and recommendation to buy their second level of courses (approximately 40 euro for a year of access) and I am seriously considering it. I think most FLE learners would score high on that tiny little test, but I think the site may have a lot to offer.

......
Yes, I've started Moon over Soho and it is awesome! I am in the third or fourth chapter and won't progress too fast, I need to study.

Of those Greek and Hebrew crazy ideas, I blame you, Expug, zenmonkey, Tristano, Tarvos (perhaps she doesn't learn these two, but she is definitely among the suspects), Language Transfer, Memrise, Duolingo, and Youtube. Shame!

I speak both Greek and Hebrew, although my Greek is noticeably better.

[Cavesa]

You are both so right, I apologize. The corrected version: I blame Elenia, Expug, zenmonkey, Tristano, Tarvos, Systematiker, Language Transfer, Memrise, Duolingo, Youtube, and Systematiker again. Shame.

I really like Clozemaster. Finally a game that trully teaches me something, I am afraid both Duolingo and Memrise are headed to the way of shiny easily sellable toys for masses rather than fun tools for various learners.

I find the sentence choice interesting.
A good thing: I get basic words in not basic sentences, which is great for my weak intermediate German, and it keeps me from getting bored.
A not so good thing: The frequency based mechanism choosing the gap in the sentence is a little bit flawed (which is totally understandble and to be expected), as it takes weiß as one and highly frequent word in both the sense of the colour white and as ich weiß/er weiß. Or vor. It takes it both as the preposition, and as the separable part of the verb. This is not a complaint, it is just interesting and I'll see how it all turns out, when I am more advanced. For now, I can see clear progress in getting right new examples with mystery words like "los" more often, the content based learning is probably working.

[Cavesa]

Clozemaster: I am in the middle of the "first level" of German from English, making my way through the frequency based levels.

Still reading Moon over Soho, I am near the end now, looking forward to the next book.

Unexpected Italian comprehension practice: we watched Perfetti Sconosciutti with friends yesterday. It's an awesome movie. It is harder to understand than my usual dubbed tv series but I think I would manage, if there weren't the subtitles (in Czech), which were really distracting. However, I would definitely miss quite a lot of stuff, so it would be a good movie to watch twice or to simply rewatch individual harder bits a few times.

Passed one exam, three more to go. One is next week and I need to complete some prerequisites for it first. The other two are probably in September, not sure when.

I am very interested in rdearman's study. I think it could bring some great results and I'd like to participate, even though it looks like I would be more suitable for the control group, despite being a devout native input user, as I simply don't use native input to write down words and memorize them. But being in the control group would still be useful.

[rdearman]

despite being a devout native input user, as I simply don't use native input to write down words and memorize them.

Participation may show you an improvement if you did write them down or confirm the srs as not useful. Either way data is useful.

[Cavesa]

despite being a devout native input user, as I simply don't use native input to write down words and memorize them.

Participation may show you an improvement if you did write them down or confirm the srs as not useful. Either way data is useful.

I am considering starting Russian for Lukyanenko books and your study. It is not that foreign, so even if I am in the testing group I shouldn't struggle too much, but it is still more foreign than Italian or a theoretical fourth romance language. And I definitely don't have any huge plans for the language in the forseeable future, which is another plus.

If I do the SRS+input thing with a language that doesn't matter now, there will be no risk. Either I am pleasantly surprised, or I "prove" intensive approach to be futile, you are right. If I happen to be in the testing group, than I'll just normally progress with not that big amounts of time needed and enjoy learning a language similar to my native one for the first time in my life, so that I don't have to be jealous of all the romance natives anymore