Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

I'm a bit tired of studying Russian grammar and I still can't concentrate enough to turn it into actual - study - , but I think I'm retaining part of it that might help me consolidate the intermediate level. The numbers finally start to make sense now, for example.

Reaching the end of Jo nesbø's novel. I can't keep up with the harsher scenes, especially those involving the main characters. I just read quickly in Portuguese and wait for the Mandarin audio to meet. No stomach for this.

Not a perfect day. The study came to a halt at Assimil Hebrew. The first lesson of the final series is so long for Assimil standards that I decided not to force myself into reading it in a hurry.

[Expugnator]

I'm been having some thoughts about Assimil. I'm using several editions in several languages now, both for learning and for teaching. I've always regarded it as a false-beginner textbook, but I'm more and more convinced that it should be taken in excerpts: you do the A1 stage from other sources, then you do some tenths of Assimil lessons. Then when you notice it's too hard again (like the lessons deliberately becoming longer at Assimil Hebrew) you take a break from it again, then consolidate your knowledge on another resource (like pod101) and then come back to Assimil. I started Assimil Hebrew and it got harder after a while. Then I started using Clozemaster in parallel and more or less kept up with Assimil. It hardened again. So I started Routledge Hebrew. Now the difficulty jumped over again and I'd consider giving it a halt until my level improved and it came up as comprehensible input again, but it's only 6 lessons left anyway. There is the old edition I can study from scratch as well, and I'm really looking forward to the pre-intermediate resources I have gathered, such as Linguaphone. The most important is that I reach a level where I can make good use of them, without being stuck due to lack of transitional materials, as I was in Georgian.

Learnin' La Vida Loca. I've complained here that the first audiobook in the Avvocato Guido Guerreri's series has very low volume, and so I don't get to hear it properly while driving. And I mean it: I can understand nearly everything at proper volume. So, today I was driving a little longer (yes, I filled it up on Wednesday fortunately) and I decided I wanted to keep listening to it. I put my phone on my right thigh instead of leaving it at the passenger seat, so I could hear it properly. It did help me driving a little more carefully (kids, don't try this at home). This series is really useful for Italian, as it's narrated in the first person and the main character describes his daily actions. There's enough vocabulary recursion without making it repetitive.

There is an Whatsapp group on Indonesian that started slowly, but now has many learners and native speakers sharing important information. That's the spirit with thriving groups.

I had a lot of work for a Friday, and all the news on the truck drivers' strike popping up, so I couldn't study properly. Better luck on Monday.

[Expugnator]

I didn't study properly on Friday, and then no study or reading at all during the weekend (which was great, btw). All I want today is a productive, enlightening study day, the chance to get back to Hebrew and Indonesian after 5 days. The girls didn't go to school so I'll be able to study during my lunch break, that's an extra 30 minutes so I hope I can make it to my schedule.

For those learning and/or reading Scandinavian, I found what seems a good blog on book reviews, written in Norwegian. I might spend some time there as it will provide me with the vocabulary for writing my own reviews:

Reading Randi

An interesting article about bilingual (actually trilingual) education in Curaçao:

Interes grandi pa investigashon bilingual na Korsou

Peter Mollenburg mentioned on his log what seems a good French podcast. I need more optimism in my studies to make up for the conspiratory Argentinian podcast. I'm better off with some more exposure to non-fiction French as well, as aI hope to incorporate useful expressions into my active vocabulary.

The day was almost successful. I stopped halfway at the Routledge Hebrew lesson. No Pedro Páramo read. I have some thoughts about my process of learning Hebrew and Indonesian that I ought to mature and share.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I left Routledge Hebrew, Pedro Páramo and most of the Clozemaster undone, but at least I managed the Hebrew Clozemaster on TTS. I'm on the second level, 500 most common words, and it's much harder. I like it how I'm starting to see patterns, like the future and the past.

Finally a day of completion. I decided to just resume yesterday's Routledge Hebrew lesson (was halfway) and not to do a new one, as that lesson I was working on was critical on verbs.

I'm still longing for better resources in Hebrew. There's a Brazilian one pretty much recommended, but I won't buy it unless I can see an extensive preview, as it doesn't show vowels and has many exercises with those 'blanks' typical of classroom textbooks, so I want to know how useful it will be at that stage. I've got a new grammar that is unfortunately on Biblical Hebrew, but it deals with most evident topics such as prepositions and the construct states. I've more or less given up on finding evenly graded resources for Indonesian. I might use some pod101 lessons to fill in the blanks.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I managed another two rounds of Clozemaster Hebrew. I was tired, but the little I did taught me something. I also managed some of the useful Speak.ly Estonian - now I can definitely recommend it to other languages, there's Finnish for example.

I've mentioned that I wanted to add a new podcast, a French one. I'm wondering if I shouldn't add it as my busy-time slot, which means I'd leave it paused and play it whenever I needed to work on some tasks and needed to be isolated from the noise around.

Another day when I'm going to tell how much I enjoy learning through Routledge Hebrew. I'm impressed at how the learning curve doesn't get any steeper (though Unit 2 seems slightly more intense than Unit 1). I'm having to check the dictionary for words I haven't consolidated, but these are words I've seen at the book already, I just didn't memorize them.

A calm, productive study day to end the week (tomorrow is a holiday and I won't study on Friday either). two hours left and I have to be creative about what to do next.

SO I decided to check my previous app learning to see what was still worth keeping. I had added many apps for Hebrew because I thought textbook study wasn't enough, but that was before I started Routledge Hebrew. I like the idea of having some looks ahead into past tense, object pronouns and other grammar features I have yet to reach consistently.

So, I checked Mond.ly and I think I'll keep looking at it once in a while. It's theme-based so the content taught isn't graded through levels of difficulty but simply through vocabulary. That's not bad at this stage, since it has sound and transcriptions and I can already make sense out of the sentences.

The Memrise - Duolingo Hebrew course. I like the activities but it's too much effort put on remembering words out of context - time best spent on Duolingo itself - which doesn't feel that hard anymore, now that I've almost finished Assimil - or on Clozemaster.

Now, Duolingo itself. I like the lessons. They work better for false beginners indeed (wow, I'm a false beginner in Hebrew now!). I just need to remember to open it.

That gets me thinking that with some opaque languages you might need different preparation for different types of resources. That's when those apps might come as useful, as they allow for that lighter commitment, less "serious" than starting a textbook (if you are like me and you feel sorry about dropping a textbook but doesn't care about an app as you are supposed to be able to get back to it anytime). As my experience with learning opaque languages increase, I start to see well-defined checkpoints where the choice of materials become critical, and insisting on materials with too much of a steep curve or not daring take the next step can both harm your learning trajectory. It helps to be able to map these instants and even plan some resources ahead. I usually do so especially for the A2~==B1 stage, but in the case of opaque languages even the A1 or the A1~=A2 transition can be traumatic, as you don't have the blessing of being able to understand nearly everything - even grammar explanations for natives - which you do with a transparent language that you might already read at a B2 level.

[Expugnator]

The extended weekend was basically app learning. Apart from Clozemaster, I gained some rhythm in doing Duolingo. I'm better at flipping through useless screens and focusing on learning. I'm happy with the lessons drilling on specific topics, such as the possessives in Hebrew (finally made sense of them) and even the inverted tree Russian-Spanish has proved pretty much effective. I might give Duolingo more proeminence over Clozemaster for those two languages, and I might add new ones, because the sentences in Duolingo are more relevant grammatically, even if not quite so lexically. I'm also happy with maintaining a streak on Speakly.me for Estonian, though it would be much easier if I made it work on the desktop, with typing, instead of the phone where I can't swype (might be blocked by the app) and have to hit the letters one-by-one. I did some Mond.ly for Hebrew but it's certainly low priority, like once in a while. Memrise is out of question.

I'm still having trouble using my own purchase, that Greek book with DRM which I simply can't load on this computer here without installing a software. That's outrageous. I accept any help on this matter. I managed to download the DRM-protected epub at home where I installed Adobe Digital Editions and I was supposed to upload somewhere so I could check it here, but apparently I didn't. Have to try later.

My home computer started to crash. Might be something physical. It shuts down whenever there is too much open and too much HDD processing. I've cleaned up but I might take it to the repair, maybe replace some stuff, maybe buy a new one. Fortunately it doesn't impact Skype because I can use the iPad and just play the audio from my phone, the mic on the iPad is good enough for that. Unfortunately, it will affect my resource gathering if and while I remain without a computer. The last four days I didn't do much at this respect so my series might soon run out of epiodes for watching if I don't manage to do so next weekend. Let's see how long it will last.

Spent some time on the forum, not enough to catch up but enough not to feel desperate about lagging behind. Other than that, no italian podcast, no reading ahead for the week. I read a bit, not language-wise but that's something. Weekends are not about building habits but about making a better use of the time for things I enjoy, and I'm working on it. Most important, I spent 4 days with the girls, we played a lot at the new floor in the house after the renovation, we went out (Saturday was their first trip on our tiny surface metro train) and had a good time together. I even decided I'm going to learn to play basic nursery rhymes on the piano so they can learn along. Now back to real life where I only see them briefly early in the morning, when I pick them up at the kindergarten at noon and then in the evening.

=========================
I've decided to start Grand Bien Vous Fasse. It is going to be my idle audio listening, like now when I wrote all above. At first I thought it would take me some time to get used to the voices. That was merely a thought. It's already transparent, and I want to both think of what I hear in such a way that it could become part of my active vocabulary and be able to understand even when I'm not paying attention, almost native-like. Now I just need to pay little attention and it's transparent, even with concurring voices. Yes, transparent native French audio. I thought I'd never get there.

Almost done with Snømannen and the next one is Panserhjerte, Jo Nesbø in Mandarin, selvfølgelig. It stands after the former and Hodegjerne, which I've already read, and in what concerns Harry Hole it's the sequel to Snømannen, so I'm on the right track. I want to try something else next time - it would be great to find translated YA fantasy in Mandarin, but I think they have enough fantasy of their own and wouldn't be so keen on translating European one.

So, Clozemaster has preview now. The right letters you type are green, till you type something wrong and it gets red. I don't know if it's for the good or for the bad.

I'm learning to swype in Hebrew. It's much easier with fewer letters, and I also learn to memorize the roots by doing so. The autocorrect isn't that bad in predicting.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday was a good day for Clozemaster. I managed almost all the text-input tasks - the ones that help enormously, especially for Modern Greek, Russian and German. I decided to do Hebrew and Indonesian even without access to TTS, that was better than not doing it. I know that TTS is essential for Hebrew in order to avoid fossilizations of mispronunciations for new words I have no clue about, or even for known words I haven't memorized yet, but for the TTS I have to pick the iPad and the girls keep wanting to watch cartoons anytime they see it =D

On a sad note, I'm at one of those moments when I feel I'm not learning anything at all, or at least not enough. My concern is mostly about opaque languages, because reaching passive C1 in a transparent language is a walk in the park. The problem with opaque languages - in my case anything that's not English, Spanish, French or Italian - I seem never to get to a comfortable passive B2, no matter how much I try. I don't think 2h30, 3h a week through 5 years is too little for reaching that goal. I don't feel I'm doing something plain wrong, rather that I'm not doing something that might be essential, but what? I'm totally clueless and frustrated at this point. I'm listening to the Norwegian audiobook and I see improvements everyday, but the vocabulary is still limited for allowing me to follow the story comfortably. Wondering if it's time to hit the textbooks again for Norwegian, German, Georgian and Estonian, or if it's the lack of output that prevents the input from consolidating.

Finished Snømannen in Mandarin, and already started Panserhjerte. The transition is smooth, although the recording voices are different.

The band No.4 (can't be found on Youtube proper, only Spotify) has a song on Unge Lovende. I managed to understand the lyrics on my own. Here's a cover version:



Managed to find the correct frame rate for the dubbed German series. Not 25 as labelled but rather 23.956. The problem is that I can't use double subtitles because it sort of refreshes and thus unloads them. I'm back into reading the Portuguese subtitles in a separate Notepad window, hoping that it actually lends me to improve my familiarity with both written and spoken (dubbed) German.

The advantage of a podcast with music:



Not a bad day for reading in Georgian (starting to read longer at that book), Estonian and even Greek and German.

A very productive day depsite being busier than usual. I lost my headstart I had got in the morning, and ended my tasks at the usual time despite starting earlier. On the bright side, the French podcast is really worth my time. I listened to a full episode and started a new one. It's a moment I wasn't using for anything else so far, and it's not tiresome at all, it's just listening to the radio on the background. I managed to maintain my Speak.ly and Duolingo streaks.

[Expugnator]

I'm still totally clueless about verbs of motion in Russian and still uncertain about aspects. Only cases seem to have gotten better, though not much. I'm more and more convinced that studying all forms at once, exhaustively, is as pointless as learning categories of vocabularies, that is, you might even understand the underlying the principles, but it just messes up with the forms in your head. I'll have to find a way after the current grammar. Maybe I'll study a single book on verbs of motion. Actually it works better when I do the exercises right after reading the explanation, so Clozemaster won't help at this respect either.

I wish French had a living imparfait du subjonctif. That wuld have made life much easier (for me, what a selfish thought).

Finally a better day in reading Georgian. Starting to tackle longer, descriptive paragraphs with less effort. That's a step towards reading fluency (though I believe I might be able to pass the airplane test for Georgian depending on the book).

Did a sprint with German reading, reading ahead of the audiobook which was playing at 1.2x speed. A skill that I can't wait for learning properly.

Finished Pedro Páramo. Interesting, but not a masterpiece. I would have preferred a linear narrative. Now I'm going to read Mario Vargas Llosa for the first time.

I don't know if it was the profusion of dialogues, but Estonian also seemed more intelligible today. Probably it's intensive work on the short Clozemaster deck and the larger Speakly.me repository. I'm really looking forward to being able to read Estonian.

La chanson du jour:

[Expugnator]

Not done everything on Clozemaster, but that was expected, given that Wednesdays are busier days, and so are Thursdays. I have very little time available in the evenings.

Finished watching La Guerre des Boutons (2011). A nice movie, I recommend it.

Started Mario Vargas Llosa. Doesn't seem that bad to follow. I'm only afraid it sounds too much like reading a plain History book or the news. It's too familiar. I was planning on reading an author similar to Carlos Ruiz Zafón, which is Agustín Fernández Mallo, who wrote Nocilla Dream. Anyone knows where I can buy ebooks in Spanish? (Assuming I can't buy from Amazon.es, which I can't anyway). I found it in Portuguese, English and French but not the original language.

Today's Routledge Hebrew lesson was a review of question words. There were sentences involving each question word, but I was clueless about their translation. Online Hebrew OCR does work.

[Expugnator]

Not much done on the sentence-method app field yesterday, but that was expected. Some streaks lost.

The Argentinian podcaster uses the word 'prolijo' all the time as a good attribute, of something that is prepared carefully and attentively. In Portuguese, 'prolixo' only has the meaning of wordy, verbose, long-winded.

Speaking of podcasts, I'm really happy about the effect of prolonged listening (either several minutes at once or the effect over time). I can understand spoken English, French, Italian, Papiamento and Spanish, and I'm on my way to reaching that level in Norwegian - not to mention other languages where I already have the phonetic part settled down and only need to improve vocabulary in order to be able to understand the spoken language, such as German, Russian and Georgian.

I was caught off guard by the faster, more amateurish reading of the Panserhjerte audiobook, but surprisingly - or not - I'm already getting used to this new speed and I'm starting to decypher characters in a way I would never have imagined previously. It does help to force yourself a bit once in a while. I admit I'm not training listening-only in Mandarin, but if I did I might be able to cope with the phonetics part and mostly lack vocabulary.

A smooth Georgian reading session. Almost starting to think I could pass the airplane test. Estonian reading wasn't that hard either. I remember when I was at that stage in Georgian, fewer lookups, only for longer nominal phrases. A real confidence boost.

A good momentum with Greek, too. I'm even considering increasing from 4 to 10 pages a day, because I have plenty of audiobooks and now a source for ebooks. The learning curve with Greek seems to be leaving the plateau. It's much easier than any totally opaque language, anyway. I couldn't tackle that much content after only 2 years of Georgian or even Norwegian. But then I know it was due to the quality of the Greek resources I had at my disposal, two Assimil editions, the Kypros course and Language Transfer, all sounding much like a patient teacher giving explanations on the language. I can't wait to reach the podcast and native series level with Greek, but so far I still have a long - but fun - path with audiobooks.

Accomplished Language Textbook: L'Hébreu (2007)



The end came much faster than I had expected, but then the book is shorter than average, 85 lessons only. It's great when more than one Assimil edition is available, even more so for opaque languages. I tend to start with the newer edition, which tends to be more learner-friendly and possess a smoothier learning curve. So was the case with this book, but not that smooth though; it just so happened that every couple of review lessons the level suddenly increased, or at least the length of the lessons. It's never a book I could be able to use on its own, and it somewhat goes against Assimil's philosophy as it gets rid of vowels in the exercises pretty soon. Other than that, a good Assimil book with useful vocabulary. I plan to get back to it later, for a second wave, for reviewing and consolidating.

Now I still have good sources of material ahead, such as the old Hebrew and Linguaphone, and I'm already tackling not fully learner-friendly resources such as the Routledge Hebrew course. It's a new reality for me, and while I'm happy with what happened to Hebrew, being able to read some familiar words without vowels much sooner than I had thought, I can't help but fear fossilized mispronunciations while reading from the same Routledge Hebrew, Clozemaster and others.

That said, I'm taking one step back, both in terms of time spent and difficult level. I'm resuming Hebrewpod101 lessons. This time I'll be familiar with the alphabet already, so I hope the final, random sample sentences will be more palatable - actually it' s a big issue with the pod101 courses, that even when the dialogues are evenly graded you get those random final sentences with no prior explanations and you either ignore them totally or you force yourself into reading ahead without the necessary grammar. And the sentences are too many on each lesson. I only hope that at my current level I can tackle them already, as I've been doing Clozemaster.

I'm going to restart Hebrewpod101 at the Absolute Beginner level, speeding up at the earlier lessons if I feel that's wise, and Routledge Hebrew will become my main, challenging resource. That will also save up some time, in the hope I can later address Hebrew Clozemaster on a daily basis. In no way I'm going to waste useful resources just for the sake of completionism. I'll put resources on hold when necessary, always to be sure I'm working on the ideal comprehensible input level. If necessary, I'm also going to review resources - not in terms of overlearning but as long as the texts there still seem too opaque for a book supposedly read and learned.

I'm really enjoying the Speakly.me app, trying hard to keep my streak. You can see a path, some algorithm involved in presenting you new words in a consistent way, doing a solid learning path. I'm out of my comfort zone but not that much so in a stressful way, I'm learning through small bits and I'm finally activating my Estonian. Sometimes I'm impressed at how I managed to remember a specific word which I thought I didn't know yet.

A good day of studies in a good week. I could have gone further into Clozemaster, and I haven't started Vargas Llosa's book proper, but I'm happy with my newer languages.