Re-Inventing the System: Systematiker repeatedly changes his plans

[Systematiker]

Eh? What is swabian? It looks like a German dialect...

That's exactly what it is! Wikipedia: Swabian German

Ahem! I'll argue strongly language vs dialekt...

Hmm, what's a good Swedish newspaper?

Are you familiar with PressReader? Thousands of newspapers and magazines, are readable online. Many Swedish libraries offer this (international) service, but I don't know if non-Swedish IPs are blocked.

Thanks. That’s a brilliant app. I tried it out, and if you try to download articles or newspapers, you have to pay, but you can set it to show the top stories from each country you’re interested in and that seems to be free. And that’s probably enough news for me to be getting on with anyway. After a few tries, I even found out how to use my pop-up dictionaries with it. In case anyone was wondering: If you touch and hold a word, a menu comes up, choose “copy,” and a copy of the article will come up in a new window and the copy works with dictionaries.

This is not only a great app, there's also a great solution here, since I'm notoriously cheap (cf. that Swabian quote!). I'm a good hour from any hotspots in the app, so the top stories solution is great.

I'm really looking forward to reading about your experience with Machado de Assis and Eça de Queirós!!!

Five chapters in to "Ressurreição" and I'm enthralled with de Assis' ability to describe a character's personality and traits, and I love those little asides he does. I know it is an early work, but my first impression is that it reads much more (post)modern, very aware of the "conversation" between narrator and reader while telling the tale - and that does a lot for what looks at the moment like a rather predictable turn of the century drama. I'm not eloquent enough in Portuguese to tell, but I feel like the overall word choice makes for rich descriptions without actual wordy describing.


And now, an update, in which I prove the aptness with which this log is named, and in qhich I also bring back my progress bars:

Spanish
ES Reading: 4812 / 10000 ES Film: 154 / 200
No progress in FSI (see below!); began reading El Quijote, which had previously intimidated me. I feel pretty good about myself for it - I don't have an annotated edition, but I'm catching a bunch, which speaks for breadth as well as language (yes, I know, I'm bragging a little). I figure this means I can revisit Julio Ramón Ribeyro and Mario Vargas Llosa now (the former I struggled with and the latter I gave up as too difficult sometime in 2016, perhaps the summer).

French
FR Reading: 2142 / 10000 FR Film: 85 / 200
FR NT: 67 / 365 FR Bible without Pent: 33 / 90
So I'm on the panel for the interviews with our new francophone cooperation, and guess who opened his big mouth and offered to do some stuff in French if it were more comfortable for the candidate? This guy. So yeah, I've got about two months to get my spoken French sharpened up for detailed professional use. So much for my plan regarding focussing on Spanish first for this year...
But I'm reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (which I've tried long before and at the time wasn't able enough to enjoy) and L'Ecole des femmes, so basically the opposite of the skills I should be focusing on.

Portuguese
PT Reading: 0 / 10000 PT Film: 12 / 200
PT NT: 24 / 60
Reading Ressurreição by Machado de Assis and the NT some as well, as well as finding interesting playlists by decade on Spotify


Catalan
CAT Reading: 20 / 10000 CAT Film: 6 / 200
Following the elections has been a bit of reading, and I've been investigating my options for novels.

Swedish
SV Reading: 460 / 10000 SV Film: 32 / 200
SV NT: 67 / 365
I am now two weeks behind on PS, but the first episode is also the only thing I've watched in a while, so it's indicative. Part of me wants to do the literature thing I've started with the Romance languages and re-start Röda Rummet, part of me isn't sure I can quite do that yet.

Danish
DK Reading: 72 / 10000 DK Film: 5 / 200
DK NT: 14 / 168
Nothing.

Latin
LAT Reading: 50 / 10000
Nothing, but some planning.

Ancient Greek
GK Reading: 60 / 10000
More intentional reading, more temptation to get into Homer.

Hebrew
Assimil: 3 / 90
LR Psalms First Pass: 22 / 150
I need to get rid of that Assimil progress bar, I'm not even doing it. Sigh. The Psalms and maybe re-starting Pimsleur for Modern, to get going again?

Korean
Video: 6 / 200 TTMIK 1: 5 / 25
FSI: 0 / 19
Still didn't finish that FSI lesson. Actually, I didn't do anything since the last update (the night is yet young!)

Czech
Nothing, again, as planned.

Gaelic
Nothing.

Russian
MT Foundation: 1 / 8 MT Advanced: 0 / 5
Assimil: 0 / 90 Reading: 0 / 10000
I managed to write progress bars for my lack of progress! Actually, I'm really thinking about using a tutor, and in fact I think I know someone who teaches over Skype. I want to get through MT and Assimil first, so maybe that's incentive? Schedule-wise I couldn't until late Spring/early Summer anyway, so perhaps that will push me to get through these first goals by then (says the guy who couldn't find time to do a one-hour CD in a week).

Basque
Assimil: 1 / 90
Nothing.

Dutch
NL Reading: 66 / 10000 NL Film: 20 / 200
Nothing.

[Systematiker]

I don't quite have the time to post a full update (I'm not even caught up reading!), but I'd like to note:

I did finish unit one of FSI Korean, and did some more TTMIK

I'm now alternating French and Spanish FSI in the car

I have a first meeting with a Russian tutor next Thursday

I started a Catalan novel that Ogrim mentioned as good enough to read another, by Xaiver Bosch

I'm probably going to have some speaking tutoring in Portuguese

And I've been back to L-Ring the Psalms

[Systematiker]

Spanish
ES Reading: 4824 / 10000 ES Film: 154 / 200
FSI: 26 / 52
Mostly reading, though I've been doing a few podcasts as well. I've not had much opportunity recently to read the news, aside from headlines, or to talk to anyone. I've also slowed down on FSI as well, because it's not a huge value-added thing for me at the moment, it's just a way to force me to speak and use different structures. Still reading Don Quijote, and I'm reading El amor en los tiempos del cólera as well.
Here's an interesting benchmark: I have read this before, in Spanish, and though I don't think it was as comfortable as this time around, I couldn't manage Márquez when I came back a couple of years ago. So I'm going to guess that at one point I was around a C1 in reading comprehension, but given the massive imbalance in skills, it deteriorated quite fast and quite far. I'm much better all around now, of course, and I have less imbalance, but in terms of deterioration, I probably had had a similar drop across all skills, which means that although greater ability deteriorates more slowly, this only seems to happen at the rate which applies to the weakest skill. If I had been, say, an all-around C1, I think I would have seen much less of a drop. Does that make sense?

Also looking at what I'll be reading next, I'm looking forward to all this so much I can barely contain myself


French
FR Reading: 2271 / 10000 FR Film: 85 / 200
FR Bible without Pent: 40 / 90
FSI: 1 / 24
Mostly reading the Bible and Dumas, but also talking on Facebook messenger pretty much daily. Alternating FSI with Spanish is slow because I slowed both down, I'm only in the car so much.


Portuguese
PT Reading: 0 / 10000 PT Film: 12 / 200
PT NT: 32 / 60
Reading the Bible and chatting on Facebook. I'm about a third of the way through Ressurreição, and because of a device issue last night I also started reading O crime do padre Amaro. I've also decided not to pay for speaking practice at the moment.


Catalan
CAT Reading: 15 / 10000 CAT Film: 6 / 200
Just reading a bit of Algú com tu

Swedish
SV Reading: 589 / 10000 SV Film: 31 / 200
FSI: 2 / 16
Here's where some of my time in the car went - I put the FSI drills in a playlist and have listened to that some. I plan on finishing the third FSI unit today as well. I stopped the one-year NT plan, because it's little chunks but I don't always remember to do it and then it's such a pain to catch up in the app that I'm probably just going to put it on the 40-day, 60-day, or 90-day plan when I re-adjust my Bible reading.

Danish
DK Reading: 130 / 10000 DK Film: 5 / 200
Nothing, as planned.

Latin
LAT Reading: 50 / 10000
Nothing.

Ancient Greek
GK Reading: 60 / 10000
Nothing worth recording, but playing with a few lines.

Hebrew
Assimil: 3 / 90
LR Psalms First Pass: 25 / 150
Really no progress here. I saw a link to an HTLAL thread where someone did Assimil Hebrew in two weeks, with a structure for blazing through it in 1.5-2 hours daily. This has made me think, but more on that below. Sometime in February I'll probably re-start Pimsleur and use that as a base to move forward, I should have "audio time" available then.

Korean
Video: 6 / 200 TTMIK 1: 7 / 25
FSI: 1 / 19
Not much done here, but I did pay the 2.99 annual fee for the TTMIK app that lets me download the lessons, so I can use them while in the car or perhaps even while running. They're a good length for that. FSI is such a bugbear that I keep hesitating to start the second lesson, with all the more urgent things on my plate (but hey, I didn't plan on actually starting serious Korean until February, right, I have to do my Swedish-January [that's not going to work anyway] first).

Czech
Umm, I decided to not pay for Czechclass101.com? Because I signed up for the free trial and used it not at all. Czech is getting pushed farther back in the year, which is OK.

Gaelic
Nothing.

Russian
MT Foundation: 8 / 8 MT Advanced: 0 / 5
Assimil: 0 / 90 Reading: 0 / 10000
Knocked out the MT foundation, which is where a lot of my audio time went, and scheduled a tutoring session - which didn't happen. I can't really complain, I'm not paying for it. I have a contact with whom I've worked before who has expressed willingness to help me with Russian, and free is free. I don't know if we mis-scheduled, or she had something come up, but I'm willing to put up with a few missed connections for free tutoring.
I'm going to try and get through the advanced MT in the next week or so, and following that, I'm going to try the Assimil method that is described at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... ?TID=34839 (for which I have Jeff, iguanamon, and in some sense, s_allard, to thank).
Here's my line of thought: I know already that I have good comprehension of the first 10-15 lessons, and simply haven't tried beyond that. The step 5 listed, in which a dictionary is used, is necessary in the linked plan because the OP doesn't read the base language for the Assimil they are using. So that's just using the facing page. Each lesson gets gone through 12 times on the learn day, and read aloud once or twice on the review day. The whole Russian Assimil audio, songs included, is only 2:48, and assuming I read aloud at about the same speed as the audio, it's somewhere between 30 and 35 hours of engagement (the poster spent less than 30 with two big review days, too). The original claim is that the OP went from a high A1/low A2 to about a B1, which is probably about perfect for me to replicate, and gets me where I can start reading simple things and perhaps watching (I know my understanding will be pretty poor, but it gets me out of "just" coursework).
What's the benefit? This should jump-start me into a position strong enough that I can begin reading a simplified NT, and start doing at least the audio portions of the DLI Russian (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) in the car or while otherwise having dead time I could listen. That, combined with the time commitment to do some tutoring stuff (even if my current helper doesn't work out, I've got some more options, and I might even pay someone, a shock, I know), should make this a pretty productive year for Russian. The DLI Russian Basic has about 14.5 hours of lesson audio, 25 hours of practice dictation, and 6 hours of "phase III" stuff, which puts it at 46 hours. Assuming even that I don't have enough of a leg up and have to do a lot of repeating, to the tune of 90 hours, I should nonetheless be able to finish it sometime in the late Fall. Of course, there's an "intermediate", an "intermediate advanced", an "advanced" and a "proficiency improvement" course to follow, but one step at a time.
This all, of course, means that I also have to clear up some audio time, and that means working hard on the other audio stuff that's filling those slots.

Basque
Assimil: 1 / 90
Nothing, and it looks like it won't be much for a while.

Dutch
NL Reading: 66 / 10000 NL Film: 20 / 200
Nothing.

[Systematiker]

Update, the Russian session did happen, just delayed a couple of hours.

I desperately need more vocabulary. But apparently my pronunciation is pretty good.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I'm going to try and get through the advanced MT in the next week or so, and following that, I'm going to try the Assimil method (...)

I've written about my experiments with the method in a couple of places at HTLAL (my German log (the last post), Shadowing and Assimil and 20 hour technique), but I've never tried it with something totally new. The library has one Assimil course in a language I've never even looked at, so maybe this year...

[Systematiker]

I'm going to try and get through the advanced MT in the next week or so, and following that, I'm going to try the Assimil method (...)

I've written about my experiments with the method in a couple of places at HTLAL (my German log (the last post), Shadowing and Assimil and 20 hour technique), but I've never tried it with something totally new. The library has one Assimil course in a language I've never even looked at, so maybe this year...

Oh, neat, this is right in the hole where I was gone and wouldn’t have read it. Thanks!

Using it for a stronger language is an interesting idea. I actually read through all of Assimil Portuguese from a Spanish base in a couple of days at one point, though I didn’t have the audio, and even that one read-through probably helped. It’s kind of cool to know that one can re-visit these semi-intensively and get some good out of them, because I can probably usually justify a two-week jaunt.

This means some planning, I think, as I’ve got a number of digitized Assimil courses (however, I don’t have all the audio), even in languages which I’ve figured are past needing something like Assimil. Maybe I need to revisit those with a similar method.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Oh, neat, this is right in the hole where I was gone and wouldn’t have read it. Thanks!

It took me nearly one hour of G-searching to find everything...

Using it for a stronger language is an interesting idea.

I can imagine doing that as well! Maybe not for a language I already know, but something that isn't totally distant, say, something Romance/Germanic/Slavic/Celtic. (This language I kind of mentioned is Hungarian, but it has a rather low priority at the moment.) I'm always open for new methods.

I actually read through all of Assimil Portuguese from a Spanish base in a couple of days at one point, though I didn’t have the audio, and even that one read-through probably helped. It’s kind of cool to know that one can re-visit these semi-intensively and get some good out of them, because I can probably usually justify a two-week jaunt.

Thunter has written some inspiring posts about regularly going through the Assimil books (a few times per year!), and with your Portuguese via Spanish example in mind, I came to think of Theodisce who has talked about focused listening to content in a language related to something you know (from a Slavic viewpoint, I believe). Even hundreds of hours is a kind of shortcut, if that alone leads to success.

[MamaPata]

Update, the Russian session did happen, just delayed a couple of hours.

I desperately need more vocabulary. But apparently my pronunciation is pretty good.

Sounds like a pretty good result!

[Systematiker]

I actually read through all of Assimil Portuguese from a Spanish base in a couple of days at one point, though I didn’t have the audio, and even that one read-through probably helped. It’s kind of cool to know that one can re-visit these semi-intensively and get some good out of them, because I can probably usually justify a two-week jaunt.

Thunter has written some inspiring posts about regularly going through the Assimil books (a few times per year!), and with your Portuguese via Spanish example in mind, I came to think of Theodisce who has talked about focused listening to content in a language related to something you know (from a Slavic viewpoint, I believe). Even hundreds of hours is a kind of shortcut, if that alone leads to success.

I hadn't caught those about repeated Assimil, but what Theodisce has said is familiar. I hadn't ever made the connection, but I pretty much went straight to native PT materials, primarily by vehicle of listening. I did 2/8 of Michel Thomas' method on a long car ride, got irritated, and switched to native PT podcasts. I don't remember if I watched some of "3%" prior to that ride or not, but I know I didn't read until after I got back from that retreat, and I think I didn't do Assimil until sometime late in Matthew or early in Mark for L-Ring the NT (which I then super neglected and am only like halfway now but whatever). I know that was last year before my last vacation, because I used PT then. I've basically read Assimil, half the NT, half a novel, watched 3%, and listened to a ton of podcasts. And here I was more worried that I've done pretty much the opposite of what iguanamon suggests for starting PT post ES

Update, the Russian session did happen, just delayed a couple of hours.

I desperately need more vocabulary. But apparently my pronunciation is pretty good.

Sounds like a pretty good result!

I'm super satisfied, and will be having another lesson tomorrow. After that, probably once or twice a week.

[coldrainwater]

Still reading Don Quijote, and I'm reading El amor en los tiempos del cólera as well.
Here's an interesting benchmark: I have read this before, in Spanish, and though I don't think it was as comfortable as this time around, I couldn't manage Márquez when I came back a couple of years ago. So I'm going to guess that at one point I was around a C1 in reading comprehension, but given the massive imbalance in skills, it deteriorated quite fast and quite far. I'm much better all around now, of course, and I have less imbalance, but in terms of deterioration, I probably had had a similar drop across all skills, which means that although greater ability deteriorates more slowly, this only seems to happen at the rate which applies to the weakest skill. If I had been, say, an all-around C1, I think I would have seen much less of a drop. Does that make sense?

Your enthusiasm is perhaps contagious. I have only read a couple from Márquez, however, El amor en los tiempos de cólera is a clear favorite. I think your overall evaluation almost has to be spot on. Part of that thinking is me considering the mountain of hours that would need to go into elevating writing, listening and speaking to C1. Hours required to get reading up to C1 in comparison seem like a molehill. I recall you mentioning that your memory can be quite excellent, and I suspect you may have made the leap to C1 reading comprehension pretty quickly in terms of hours invested.

Right or wrong, I'd probably evaluate myself as reading around C1 now (and coincidentally making a first pass at some of the works you are currently enjoying) and I am very distrustworthy of what might happen if I were to back off reading even temporarily. When I evaluated a similar personal question on deterioration, I thought of it differently. My main idea was two fold. From an umbrella level, how long had I been at C1 reading? In my case, not many hours at all. Red flag not to give it up. The other idea is just how deep is the passive vocabulary knowledge as I am reading? With all the cognates in Spanish it wouldn't be to hard to guess your way up to a nice reading level even if the depth of passive knowledge isn't so rock solid. With all the languages you have studied and continue to study, I can imagine that your intuitive grasp of that sort of thing is much better than mine (far more nuanced).

If I were hypothesizing, I am a bit surprised that a long break caused as much deterioration in your case as it did, but it feels like validating a hunch I had as well so I am inclined to nod in the direction of agreeing with your analysis. As a thought experiment, if I put as many hours into pure reading as it would take to get the other three skills up to C1, I doubt the reading skill would deteriorate noticeably over time (and it would be C2 likely as well). The art of forgetting is often more subtle than the models we use to portray it.