What Expug is doing in 2015

[Expugnator]

It was an unproductive weekend. The end of my goals for the SC made me much less excited about the idea of watching series during the weekend. I must admit the SC did work as a motivating factor. But then I watched my first 'film' in Italian. It's the first film from the Season 5 of Futurama, Il colpo grosso di Bender. It made me both happy and sad. Happy because I could follow the episode pretty much fine, despite not being familiarized with the lines, gags and voices of the characters in Italian (I had been watching it in German). Sad because after spending 4 years on French, Norwegian, Georgian, Mandarin, German and Russian, I'm nowhere close to reaching this level of comprehension in any of these. I even get worse with time if I don't push it to a higher level, as was the case with French. This is just depressing, it makes me think that no matter what I do, I'll never reach a level of comprehension close to that of a similar language (Italian and Spanish to Portuguese). This is when I understand why some people only stick to 'easy' languages, even renowned polyglots, and once again I wonder why I'm doing what I'm doing, with so little concrete result. Either I think I'm doing everything wrong, or just being too lazy to go out of the comfort zone.

At the reading front I'm finding the Estonian lessons easier each day, even when they get longer and consisting mostly of texts. It's intensive reading that's paying off.

Finished the suplemement "Russian in One's Palms" from Ilya Frank's method. Now it's time for some grammar. Actually the remaning textbooks I want to study are either slang or grammar. Once they are over I will probably start a new language. So, I'm going to study 'Intermediate Russian a grammar and workbook'. I will leave 'Modern Russian Grammar: a practical guide' as a final resource since it is not just grammar but rather focuses on competencies. Unfortunately I don't have the workbook and even the kindle edition is awfully expensive.

German films, especially the newest ones, have too little dialogue, and thus are not that efficient as language-learning tools.

Time was just enough to read one page in Estonian. No German Glossika today.

[iguanamon]

Expug, I can't do what you do. I can't help you but I can tell you that you shouldn't be depressed. Most people here on the forum would love to be able to do what you can do. Maybe if you were just studying Mandarin and not the others plus Russian and Georgian, I'm sure you'd be at the level you think you should be. You are learning five languages simultaneously, three of which are opaque and two are not even IE languages. I think it's just going to take more time, and maybe, maybe, talvez, you might have to accept that in some of these languages you may possibly have to accept a somewhat lower level, especially if you're going to add a next language into the mix.

I am a huge admirer of yours, Expug, but I think you are being just a little too hard on yourself.

Feliz Natal, meu amigo!

[Elenia]

I second Iguanamon. I have seen, at most, only the last two years of your journey, and I can see the progress you're making in all of your languages. You might have to change the way you study a bit, but that's okay. Your languages will take a while, and if you want to make changes, it will probably still take a while to find your path, but all the time that you have spent, and the time that you will spend will continue to be worth it.

[Expugnator]

Thank you iguanamon and Elenia. This listening-rant is very specific, it's not the "I'm-doing-everything-wrong" type. I have been listening to my L2s all those years, I have at least 100 hours in each of them and I don't see much progress from, say , hour 50 to 100. So I have yet to figure out what I'm doing wrong or what I'm being neglectful about. It's not like with output where I know I am to blame just because I'm not doing at all. I try to listen but I'm not doing it optimally; since I can't understand much I have trouble focusing, it's hard to pay attention when you don't understand. So it's a sort of a vicious cicle that I eventually break only to be trapped in around again. I only hope this in the end is an upgoing loop, a spiral.

This is the last day of work and probably the last day of full study in 2015. I won't write evaluations now, will probably do so after Christmas or in January then, no rush.

[prz_]

Congratulations for your success in Papiamento. Now I wonder what to do with Kurdish - even if there are more materials for Kurmanji than it's for Papiamento, it's still - the brutal truth mode on - a language without a google translate support. And it makes the learning hell of a harder work at the beginning.

[Expugnator]

I hope Google will add all support to Kurdish in the future, prz. It seems that's a languagev that will grow in terms of resources against all odds. There are good readers out there so maybe you can manage it with reading practice and a good dictionary.

[Serpent]

Yeah nothing to feel bad about Note that in Italian you've had comprehensible input from the beginning. I do believe that a low level of comprehension can be okay, but it sounds like much of your material has been too difficult for your level. I'd also advocate having longer sessions when possible.

And I misread 100 hours as 1000 tbh. Hmm 100 isn't that much, honestly. It's not even one full Super Challenge - and for example Clare has benefitted more from a double challenge.

I do know the feeling - I've been focusing on Belarusian recently and I can often understand literally everything, or at least I feel like I do. I think in related languages we often feel like we understand more than we really do. And I've just given my first non-dubbed Italian movie a try - argh!

You know, of course, that my standard recs are audiobooks, lyricstraining, audio lessons at gloss But IDK if you're actually doing anything wrong. It's likely that you just need to keep going

[lukbe]

From your log, I get the impression that you spread yourself too thin. While I understand your passion for languages, I do think that trying to learn so many at the same time is counter productive. I've found that for progress to happen with reasonable efficiency, a certain amount of intensity is required until a level where one can use the language comfortably is reached. From my experience, I feel that if one is to learn 4 languages in 4 years, it is more effective to do it sequentially (e.g. 1 language each year) rather than in parallel. For me, it's much harder to keep the intensity when studying several languages at the same time.

And I also think that 100 hours of listening is not that much, especially if as you say you can't understand much.

Just my advice/opinion. 加油!

[Expugnator]

You know, of course, that my standard recs are audiobooks, lyricstraining, audio lessons at gloss But IDK if you're actually doing anything wrong. It's likely that you just need to keep going

I am already doing audiobooks. Sometimes I think I need to work on all the L1/L2-audio/text-dubbed/native-intensive/extensive combos to see real progress in listening. I need to pay more attention to the audio from the language learning point of view. Lyricstraining might be good for learning to associate sound and meaning in a faster way, but it's still difficult for German and I'd have to simply pause and look words up. It would work better for Norwegian but there's no Norwegian. As for GLOSS, I tend to save it for languages that have fewer textbooks.

From your log, I get the impression that you spread yourself too thin. While I understand your passion for languages, I do think that trying to learn so many at the same time is counter productive. I've found that for progress to happen with reasonable efficiency, a certain amount of intensity is required until a level where one can use the language comfortably is reached.

I'd like to politely disagree on this. I spend no less than 45 minutes on a language each day. I'm not sure one is interfering with the progress of another. People make progress at 1 language studying less a day I study each of my languages. It's rather a matter of concentration and the lack of practice on some specific skills, and I'm looking forward to fixing this in 2016.

Thank you all for the issues raised, I'll be addressing them in my evaluation posts and in the log for 2016.

[Expugnator]

(Reposting from the Super Challenge discussion thread, as much of my struggle this year has to do with re-evaluating the role of the SC in my routine. Sorry for the sequence of posts, but they are all specific)

Evaluating the Super Challenge is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks of the difficult year of 2015. I have mixed feelings about the way the SC went along for me, and 2015 was mostly about finding the right way (the quest continues in 2016, even though I'm not continuing the SC).

First, the languages I've signed up:

French full challenge
Norwegian half challenge
Mandarin half challenge
Georgian half challenge
German half challenge
Russian half challenge

Now my stats:



Quantitatively, I've reached all my goals for the SC, and beyond:

- I reached over 10000 pages in French, which would apply for an original challenge, or over 200 books in the 2014-2015 rules
- I reached a full films challenge for Mandarin

My total stats were (not likely to change much from December 26th to 31st):

27185 pages, roughly 543 books
796:06:37 hours, roughly 530 films

So far, so good in the quantitative aspect. Qualitatively, though. 2015 was the year I realized that I was wrong about making the SC my main learning moment. SC is about extensive reading/listening. I not only was listening and reading extensively, I was doing so unfocusedly. As a result, I noticed I progressed very little in my target languages. This is the main reason, the other one being the fact I was a shaky A2 in nearly all of them. Even in the stronger one, like French, I don't think I went that far. I was probably at a C1 level when I started and remained so.

That said, the SC was useful for me to find out what NOT to do. Before the SC, I had been reading mostly intensively and this is what led me to reach fluency in French. I was also combining different listening strategies: subtitles in L2, in L1, no subtitles, dubbed, native video. With the SC the focus was so much in quality, and in the bad, careless way, that I interrupted what I had been doing of good in my studies and replaced it with that careless reading/listening. I thought that, alone, with no conscious effort to pay attention and understand and make it into comprehensible input would lead me into my goals, and I was desperately wrong. I went from what was close to a traditional grammar-translation approach to a native-material one but without graded comprehensible input. A disaster.

As a result, I spent most of 2015 trying to correct what I was doing wrong, but as the pressure for numbers kept on I didn't always have the time or the mood to do the required intensive tools to get back on track with my languages, especially the opaque ones. I dealt with this partially through reviewing textbooks (Georgian) and working on new ones (Mandarin and Russian), but even when doing textbooks I sometimes would 'study' a textbook extensively, moving on without paying much attention to the content of the lesson, especially the vocabulary. Moving on to the next resource when you have hundreds of textbooks is no big deal for Russian or Mandarin, but a main ingredient of failure for Georgian. What's more, not paying enough attention, not studying at least a bit is troubling in either situation.

What I learned from the SC: no kidding about comprehensible input. Keep having it. Don't expect you'll learn massively from massive non-comprehensible input. Volume is important when you have to understand a tricky grammar topic and you remember having read this construction quite often; also when you read a declension rule and the 'right' way already feels natural as you have encountered it so often in the thousands of pages you've rea. But this is too much of a luxury given that there is so much you still have to learn intensively. Especially in my case: I don't use SRS, so if I expect to learn a word just through meeting it often enough, it helps to make sure I understand and reflect upon the context it is being used, especially the most important ones. And this is my mistake: I went for the SC before doing my homework. I don't know about others, but if I could start over I'd do most of my learning intensively (both with textbooks and native materials) and I'd slowly add extensive input, or rather i'd wait until I could take it, which hasn't happened for any of my languages but French and Norwegian, and this situation had much likely happened before the SC, when I still made most of my learning intensively. Actually, this is what I'm doing with Estonian: I added native materials almost intensively while still making good use of textbooks; I'm going to review grammar after having had access to this input; and I'm focusing on quality over quantity: 1 page of native material is probably 4 times a typical textbook lesson and so is enough for me to make my way into extensive readings later.

I should also learn to get rid of my crutches, or at least perform part of my learning without them. Much of my bilingual/L-R reading in German happened without enough attention to language, to vocabulary, grammar, word order, phonology, to associating meaning and sound, as I was reading important stuff in terms of content. So, in order not to lose content, I'd just have a glance at the German and then another one at the English and then reflect upon the content for a while. The material had a much diminished impact on language learning that way. What I should have done: tried to understand the sentence in German first, consciously, and only then resorting to the translation. The same goes for most of my Georgian and Russian reading.

Congratulations to the participants and good luck for all those who are going to try the next one. The Super Challenge taught me a lot about myself as a learner and allowed me to have access to some of the most fun books and videos I've ever enjoyed. I'm sure I have learned a lot from it. Now I need to fine tune my learning process and even though it doesn't match with the SC, I'm still sure it is a valuable source of motivation and team spirit.