Stelle’s 2018 log

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Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Sat Jan 13, 2018 4:21 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I’ve found that for me, streaks are counterproductive. I get so stressed about losing them that the only way to lose the stress is to lose the streak, but then I don’t have motivation to do whatever the thing was. I have that problem with Duolingo. I had a long streak once and it made doing Duolingo almost painful. I dreaded it every day and after I lost the streak, I’ve never done it for more that about ten days in a row at most.

Now, if there is something I want to make a habit of doing most days, I make sure not to keep track of streaks. I might reward myself for having done something for ten days, but I don’t worry about them being ten days in a row. Of course, if they are very far apart, it takes longer to get the reward, so there is still an incentive to do it regularly.
Thanks for the insight! I thought a bit about what you said, and the fact that my goals seem to change from week to week, and I've actually decided to change my yearly goal from 300 days of Tagalog to 300 days of languages. It's a much easier, more attainable goal, and less likely to lead to that lack of motivation that you describe. I've definitely experienced that before, and I've seen it with Duolingo and my husband. Once the streak was lost, it became much more of a chore.

garyb wrote:Great to read more about Guatemala! That kind of trip seems like a much better option than normal backpacking if learning the language is a priority. I'd love to do something like that one day.

I agree with Brun Ugle about streaks. That's what put me off DuoLingo even though it's an otherwise useful resource.
We were really lucky because we were able to combine both language learning and backpacking. I feel that each one positively influenced the other. The backpacking was better because of the study, and the study was much better because of the breaks provided by backpacking.

I don't know how I feel about Duolingo anymore. I kind of like it, but I'm bothered by the constant L2 > L1 translations. Especially in Italian, my receptive skills far outpace my productive skills, so Duolingo is too easy for me right now, despite the fact that I struggle to string together a sentence.
cheng8907 wrote:Hi, I'm studying Tagalog too and I'm also using the elementary Tagalog textbook, can you share with me the italki tutor you've mentioned in your post? :D :D :D
Yes, absolutely! Her name is Carmela. She's a really warm, friendly person, and I love that her main focus is teaching Tagalog, rather than English. I haven't worked with her in over a year, and I'm really looking forward to getting started again. Good luck with your studies! I love when we get new Tagalog learners here!
3 x

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Stelle
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Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Sat Jan 13, 2018 4:25 pm

Cavesa wrote:I agree the post about Guatemala was great. I definitely believe one on one lessons in such a setting must have been very helpful, as the teachers seem to have been very good. A completely different situation form my abroad language lessons experience. It truly sounds like the quality of teaching was exceptional!

Thanks for lots of information, especially on the financial side. Guatemala seems to be quite an affordable choice for many more people, than it seems. More affordable than Germany. Right now not affordable for me, but perhaps in not so distant future, should I feel the need. Of course, for me it would include the plane tickets.

I wish the practical issues were being discussed more often overall. Most of the online articles about travelling and learning languages abroad seem to be a bit from a different world. Hey, I am even asking myself before the facebook pages of people I know "Where on earth did they get money for all this?". :-D If I counted well, you were somewhere around 300 dollars per week (with everything included). That sounds very reasonable. Yes, many courses in Europe (I was looking at German, French, Spanish, and Italian some time ago) are for similar prices, but those are large group classes around 12-15 people, and the quality of the schools seemed dubious to me.
Insofar as the practical issues go, J and I were able to travel due to a mix of choices and privilege.

Privilege: we're two adults with well-paying jobs, which meant that we were able to save money at a relatively quick rate by living a bit more frugally. We don't have children (well, not a privilege...but definitely a factor). We have family who were willing to store our cars. We owned a house in a strong market. We have family who needed a place to live and were happy to move into our new house and take on the low mortgage. We have Canadian passports, which means that visas were unnecessary. We saved Canadian dollars, which took a big hit when we exchanged our money, but it was still better than many countries' currencies. We're both very employable at home, which made a career break less risky and dangerous to our long-term well-being.

Choice: We chose to put our careers on hold and possibly come back to unemployment (I always say that we took a sabbatical because it sounds more grown-up, but the fact is that I quit my job). We chose to sell our house and put the money into a fixer-upper with a much lower mortgage, when holding on to it probably would have been a better financial choice (I say "probably" because the housing market has seen gone really wonky, and it could be just the opposite). We chose to live frugally at home and save as much money as we could. We chose to put our money towards travel instead of other things.

It would be very naive of me to say "Go! Anyone can do this!", because our privilege made everything so much easier. Change anything in our situation, and things could have been much more difficult, if not impossible. But I do feel pretty confident saying "If you can make it happen, then go! It will be worth it!".

Yes, I'd say that a single person studying in Guatemala could easily get by on 300 US dollars per week. 300 dollars would be enough to pay for 20 hours of language lessons, a private room with three meals per day (except for Sundays), meals on Sunday (not in the most expensive restaurants, but there are lots of restaurants to choose from in any town that has language schools), and a coffee or a drink in the afternoons. You might even have some money left over for buying some handicrafts - Guatemalan weaving is stunningly beautiful and shockingly inexpensive.

300 dollars/week would also be plenty for travelling around Guatemala. The country itself is beautiful, with lots to see and experience. The tourist infrastructure is pretty good, with affordable shuttles and buses running between most locations. There are also "chicken buses", but we tended to use those only locally, for day trips. If we were travelling longer distances with our bags, we usually chose more comfortable transportation, even though it was a bit more expensive.
4 x

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Stelle
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Sat Jan 13, 2018 4:40 pm

As expected, the first week back to school after the holidays was exhausting and left me with little energy for serious language study. Luckily, my commute gives me two built-in 25-minute blocks of listening every weekday. I've definitely settled in to the habit of listening during my commutes to and from work. I've been alternating Spanish and Italian during my drive. My drive is on quiet side streets, so I have no problem at all splitting my attention between the road and a podcast.

In addition to my hour-long conversation with Auri, I also listened to Spanish for a few hours last week. I listened to an episode of Futuro Abierto and an episode of Fallo de Sistema in Spanish. While there are other podcasts that I enjoy, these are definitely my two favourites.

In Italian, I've been working my way through the archives of Italiano Automatico. While I really enjoy listening to this enthusiastic young man's musings on language learning and self-improvement, I think that I need to branch out and find some native podcasts to push myself a little bit more. I'm going to do some digging this week and see if I can find the Italian equivalents to Futuro Abierto or Fallo de Sistema.

Tagalog was a bit slow this week - OK, reeeeaaaally slow, as in I only touched it twice. I need to put in more time, or else I know from experience that my motivation in Tagalog will sputter and die. Again. I have weekly sessions with an italki tutor staring on January 29th, so at least that will help keep me on track.

After thinking about the comments by Brun Ugle and garyb, I changed my progress bar to make success more likely. The last thing that I want is for my goal to be self-defeating (oh well, there's no way I'm going to make it at this point, so I may as well just give up altogether). Instead, my goal for 2018 is extremely simple: work on at least one of my languages in some capacity for 300 out of 365 days. This gives me some wiggle room for illness, travel, or plain old laziness.
10 x

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Stelle
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Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Thu Jan 18, 2018 12:48 pm

I made two jokes in Tagalog in one day! I am on FIRE!

(OK, they were bad jokes. But my English jokes are usually even worse.)

Joke number one:

My husband and I have started a low-carb high fat diet. Not quite keto, but sort of similar. My in-laws were asking about it, and I told them the best part was that if someone asks me how things are going, I can answer "Keto, buhay pa." ("Heto, buhay pa." means "Here, still alive".) Everybody laughed. Like I said, very lame joke, but still - word play! Go me!

Joke number two:

No word play here. Just teasing my father-in-law, who sometimes likes to go to the casino. J wants to go to Cuba with his Dad. I told him that a week in Cuba would probably cost less than one day in the casino. My mother-in-law said: "Say that in Tagalog!" as a joke. My first thought was that I didn't know how, but before I knew it, I said: "Mas mura isang linggo sa Cuba kaysa sa isang araw sa casino." Everyone was surprised - including me. And then everybody laughed.

Hey, I warned you that they weren't good jokes. And they probably only merited a laugh because they were said by a non-Filipino. But I thought that I should record them here, for posterity!
10 x

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Stelle
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:40 pm

I haven’t had much to report, hence the absence of reports! I’ve been listening to Italian most days in the car, I had a weekly Spanish lesson last Sunday, and I did the workbook pages for lesson one of Elementary Tagalog. Overall, a quiet week on the language front.

Yesterday, I sat down with my coffee about ten minutes before my Tagalog lesson, planning on just reviewing a few things to up my confidence before starting to speak. Well, somehow I managed to spill my coffee on my laptop. Bad enough if it were just black coffee, but it was a big cup with coconut oil and cocoa powder blended in. After staring in horror for a few interminable seconds, I did my best to clean it up. It’s currently flipped upside down over the heating vent. I won’t try to turn it on until tonight at the earliest, but I get a sense of dread every time I glance at it. I’m hoping that it will recover, but I have a sinking feeling that it might be computercide. I try to remind myself that it’s a five year old laptop, and that it’s just stuff...but it’s MY stuff, so I flip flop between feeling zen and feeling sad.

Anyway, all that said, I cancelled my lesson, since I was still scrambling around trying to clean up, and I don’t even have Skype installed on my phone. But next week, I hope to have a Tagalog lesson to report on!
6 x

ScooterZ
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby ScooterZ » Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:03 pm

First I want to thank you for all your posts. I have found all your tips/hints very helpful.

I'm trying to start my own language log for the first time and have a question about those nifty progress bars at the bottom of each post. How does one create them? How does one update them? By the way, here is my plan for Spanish...

First four months: 30 min/day Pimsleur, 30 min/day Assimil Spanish with Ease, 15-20 min/day Anki vocab
Post-Assimil: Destinos/FSI/Anki--with FSI taking at least 45 minutes a day. After Destinos, I will go on to more native telenovelas if still working on FSI. I'm planning on FSI taking a lot of time, possibly a lesson per week, and will start with the dicendi version.

That should keep me busy for a while...

Thanks again for all your help,

Scooter
1 x
assimil lessons completed : 21 / 150
destinos lessons completed : 21 / 52
anki days completed : 63 / 365

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Elenia
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Finnish?!
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=708
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Elenia » Thu Feb 01, 2018 8:15 pm

How's the computer doing Stelle? I spilled oil on my keyboard a couple of years ago, and it went through stages of being more or less usuable (what that usually meant was that I had to press each button unnaturally hard, which I figured out was doing a real number on my wrists. Also, I'm pretty sure the oil moved about as sometimes a key would become unreliable and stop working, and the next week it would be back). My fiancé has given me a bluetooth keyboard which is amazing. I forgot what it was like to type normally! It's also for the best as at some point after I started using it, the space bar on the laptop keyboard stopped working completely. Hope your laptop is still alive and, if it is, maybe look into a bluetooth keyboard!
1 x

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jeff_lindqvist
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:46 pm

ScooterZ wrote:I'm trying to start my own language log for the first time and have a question about those nifty progress bars at the bottom of each post. How does one create them? How does one update them?


BBCode request: progress bars

Go to User Control Panel|Profile|Edit Signature and add your code.

Example:

Code: Select all

Cookies eaten [progress= ]16/25[/progress]


...will look like this:
Cookies eaten : 16 / 25 (if you've eaten 16 out of the 25 in the box ;) )
1 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

ScooterZ
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Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2018 3:26 am
Languages: english (n), spanish (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 652#p99652
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Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby ScooterZ » Fri Feb 02, 2018 12:10 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
BBCode request: progress bars

Go to User Control Panel|Profile|Edit Signature and add your code.

Example:

Code: Select all

Cookies eaten [progress= ]16/25[/progress]


...will look like this:
Cookies eaten : 16 / 25 (if you've eaten 16 out of the 25 in the box ;) )


Thank you! This is really cool.
0 x
assimil lessons completed : 21 / 150
destinos lessons completed : 21 / 52
anki days completed : 63 / 365

User avatar
Stelle
Blue Belt
Posts: 580
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:37 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: English (N1), French (N2), Spanish (advanced), Tagalog (basic), Russian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=13312
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Contact:

Re: Stelle’s 2018 log - Spanish, Italian, Tagalog

Postby Stelle » Sat Feb 03, 2018 4:43 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:BBCode request: progress bars

Go to User Control Panel|Profile|Edit Signature and add your code.

Example:

Code: Select all

Cookies eaten [progress= ]16/25[/progress]


...will look like this:
Cookies eaten : 16 / 25 (if you've eaten 16 out of the 25 in the box ;) )
Thanks for this!

Elenia wrote:How's the computer doing Stelle? I spilled oil on my keyboard a couple of years ago, and it went through stages of being more or less usuable (what that usually meant was that I had to press each button unnaturally hard, which I figured out was doing a real number on my wrists. Also, I'm pretty sure the oil moved about as sometimes a key would become unreliable and stop working, and the next week it would be back). My fiancé has given me a bluetooth keyboard which is amazing. I forgot what it was like to type normally! It's also for the best as at some point after I started using it, the space bar on the laptop keyboard stopped working completely. Hope your laptop is still alive and, if it is, maybe look into a bluetooth keyboard!
Wala ang computer ko. (That’s Tagalog for “it’s dead”). So, so sad. I can turn it on, but the shift key doesn’t work, nor do half of the other keys. Because the shift key won’t work, I can’t even put in my password to get in. I’m trying to decide what my next move is, but for now I’m lucky enough to have an iPad with a removeable Bluetooth keyboard. (Thank you husband...the iPad was a birthday gift and the keyboard was a Christmas gift...both all the more appreciated now.) It works well, and I’m hoping that I can get accustomed enough for it to replace my computer altogether.

ScooterZ wrote:First I want to thank you for all your posts. I have found all your tips/hints very helpful.

First four months: 30 min/day Pimsleur, 30 min/day Assimil Spanish with Ease, 15-20 min/day Anki vocab
Post-Assimil: Destinos/FSI/Anki--with FSI taking at least 45 minutes a day. After Destinos, I will go on to more native telenovelas if still working on FSI. I'm planning on FSI taking a lot of time, possibly a lesson per week, and will start with the dicendi version.

That should keep me busy for a while...

Thanks again for all your help,

Scooter
Sounds like a good plan! I wish you buena suerte!
1 x


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