kanewai's book shelf (current: italian)

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:07 am

Sometimes it's just easier to give in to the monkey-mind. I went ahead and signed up for the free week trials for Kwiziq, Speakly, and DuoLingo. I already have a year membership for Lingvist. The next week will be all about playing the field. We'll see how it goes. I don't intend to even attempt to do everything on the chart; I just threw everything I might potentially play with on a spreadsheet. The only long-term commitment I have for any of these is for the traditional courses: FSI for Spanish and CLE for French.
languages.JPG


I'm already irritated with all the pop-ups in DuoLingo, but the Hawaiian course got a lot of press here, and I know some of the people who were involved in developing it. I feel I ought to give it an honest shot.

I don't really know what Speakly is, but it got great reviews from some of the forum members whom I trust. My pronunciation skills are weak across the board, so this sounds like something I could really use.

I'm already hooked on Kwiziq. I wish it weren't so expensive.

I should have done this before all the cyber-Monday sales. Maybe there'll be something for the winter solstice?
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Super Challenge - 50 books
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Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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Lianne
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby Lianne » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:22 am

kanewai wrote:I'm already irritated with all the pop-ups in DuoLingo, but the Hawaiian course got a lot of press here, and I know some of the people who were involved in developing it. I feel I ought to give it an honest shot.

The popups in the Duolingo app are horrendous. I can't bear to use it. The website is MUCH better, with ads only on the sidebar, not aggressively in your face.
I'm already hooked on Kwiziq. I wish it weren't so expensive.

Saaaame.
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: 3 / 100 French SC (Books)
: 7 / 100 French SC (Films)
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: 0 / 50 Italian Half SC (Films)

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DaveAgain
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Dec 07, 2019 8:50 am

kanewai wrote:
I just noticed all the posts on Kwiziq, so took a quick look this morning. I tried the CEFR French tests ... and it placed me at A1. Bâtards. A lot of my mistakes were basic, though. I don't know the names of the conjugations, so telling me to put the verb in the passé antérieur is not going to get results. When I looked at the stats, though, it was more comforting: I scored 60% at the B2 level. Weird. When I looked at what I got wrong it was my spelling that killed my score. I'll play around with the free version for a bit, at least until I can heal my pride by scoring higher than A1.
I'm trying to get into the habit of doing une dictée par jour.
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humerusthings
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby humerusthings » Sat Dec 07, 2019 12:16 pm

kanewai wrote:Sometimes it's just easier to give in to the monkey-mind. I went ahead and signed up for the free week trials for Kwiziq, Speakly, and DuoLingo. I already have a year membership for Lingvist. The next week will be all about playing the field. We'll see how it goes. I don't intend to even attempt to do everything on the chart; I just threw everything I might potentially play with on a spreadsheet. The only long-term commitment I have for any of these is for the traditional courses: FSI for Spanish and CLE for French.
languages.JPG



This picture is so pretty! Did you make it yourself on excel or is it an app?
0 x
: 19 / 40 Coffee Break French S3
: 88 / 113 Assimil French With Ease
: 3 / 16 Easy French Step by Step
: 33 / 100 Assimil German With Ease
: 4 / 20 Easy German Step by Step

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:03 pm

humerusthings wrote:This picture is so pretty! Did you make it yourself on excel or is it an app?
Thanks. It's just an excel spreadsheet, and I used snippet to grab a section and make it a jpeg.
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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

Cenwalh
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby Cenwalh » Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:03 pm

kanewai wrote:
humerusthings wrote:This picture is so pretty! Did you make it yourself on excel or is it an app?
Thanks. It's just an excel spreadsheet, and I used snippet to grab a section and make it a jpeg.


A jpeg you say?

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Double SC films: 200 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)
Double SC books: 34 / 200 (updated 2022-07-28)

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:12 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I'm trying to get into the habit of doing une dictée par jour.
Wow - I just followed the link. That site looks like exactly what I need, and I'm glad that it uses real texts rather than made-for-the-course book dialogues. Thanks for the heads up.

Lianne wrote:The popups in the Duolingo app are horrendous. I can't bear to use it. The website is MUCH better, with ads only on the sidebar, not aggressively in your face.
That's good to know, because I never want to open that app again. I'll save my thoughts for when my free week is up will all the apps, but so far DuoLingo is the one that's easiest to waste the most amount of time on, but also the one that feels the most like a waste of time.
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Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Wed Dec 11, 2019 10:31 pm

My monkey week - where I signed up for a free seven-week trial for lots of apps, and added every language that intrigued me on Memrise and DuoLingo - is over. The free trials have ended, and I've learned may very important lessons about language learning:

1. The apps that look like games are games. I can play five games on Memrise and three games on DuoLingo in one sitting. I can come home drunk from a night out with my friends and open the apps and still manage to study eight languages in an hour. I think there's still a role for these, but it's limited. By comparison, after thirty-minutes of active study with a course like FSI or Assimil I am mentally wiped - there's no way I could do these drunk, or even mildly buzzed, much less switch languages one right-after-the-other.

2. Sometimes you learn how to test rather than to speak a language. I knew this in college - I was good at figuring out the pattern behind test questions, and could get good grades in subjects I didn't study. I would score very low the first time I took a placement test in one of the apps, but then a few days later I would retake the test & find that I had jumped up multiple CEFR levels. I think this explains how folks on some forums are so confident that they reached B2/C1 in a half-dozen languages after three months of study.

3. I love the Super Challenges, and have benefited immensely from them, but after twenty months of passive reading and listening, and almost no active study, my active skills in my target languages have plummeted to abysmal levels. There's nothing like a stupid computer-generated quiz to show you how much you really don't know.

4. I now consider myself a "flawed intermediate" in my languages. This is one level up from "false beginner." And though I know I need to go back to the books, it's surprisingly hard to find good intermediate-level materials. I've tried starting over, or re-doing a beginner course, but that is excruciatingly boring & I never last longer than a few days. A few of the apps I've discovered this week are perfect for what I need.

5. And even though I know I should just focus on one language at a time, I just can't.

On to the show.

Cyber Courses: Bottom Tier

LingVist used to be good, right? Now it just bores me. I was forcing myself to drill vocabulary because it was good for me. The goals are pre-set at fifty new words per day, and I can't find a way to change that. The only thing I like is that it has voice recognition, so you don't have to type every entry. Now I've found better programs, and even though I have a year's membership to LingVist I doubt I'll be using this app much.


DuoLingo is super irritating. It's become more game than language-program, and there are so many ads on the free version that I no longer believe that it is a non-profit volunteer-driven platform built out of love. It's a commercial enterprise, and I am going to judge it like one.

Pros: It does have a lot of languages that you can't find elsewhere. It has improved over the years, and you no longer get stupid random sentences like "the ant is on the turtle."

Cons: Every couple turns the program will interrupt you with an offer to trade ingots or earn hearts or get a crown or some other game-related thing, or with a pop-up advertising how great DuoLingo is. Often these are downright idiotic, such as "You will learn more with thirty-four hours of DuoLingo than in one semester of college." The Hawaiian program has a blatant Christian focus that turns me off (I'm not religious). Some of the sentences still sound like they're computer generated.

Verdict: I'll see where the Hawaiian course takes me.


Memrise seems a step up from DuoLingo. I only used the official courses this round.

Pros: I really like the "learn with locals" feature, that has videos of people speaking the words. It's very nice to hear the same sentence in a variety of accents. Paid members can download the courses for use off-line. Arabic and Russian use the proper scripts, without Romanization.

Cons: Progress is very slow, and it can be needlessly repetitive. They don't have "learn with locals" videos for Arabic or Turkish. The voice recognition for the pronunciation practice is a great idea, but it also makes me want to cry in frustration. There are some words that I just can't get right. Words that seem basic. Words that sound right on replay. Is it the computer? Is it me? I mean, sometimes Siri doesn't understand me in English. There are programs like Speakly that will highlight what part of the sentence you get wrong. Memrise just says no, try again.

Verdict: I'd use it in conjunction with a grammar book for a new language, or to revisit an old language. For now I'll keep using it for Arabic, since I can use all the help I can get. I have a year-long membership, so I might play around with Turkish in the future. I don't feel like I made any progress in Russian - I would need to do a proper course if I want to tackle that language.


Cyber Courses: Top Tier

I love Kwiziq.

Pros: It's the first application I've found that feels like I'm actually learning. I like how it can identify patterns, and pinpoint exact areas of strength and weakness. It's also been humbling to see how much I fumble with basic things like the Spanish past tenses.
I've started combining it with written exercises - I'll write out the lesson in longhand for every question I get wrong.

Cons: I only have one day left of the free trial, and this is an expensive program. I keep waiting for the last-minute email with a special offer just for me. The free program only lets you do ten tests per month. Since this is a test-based program, ten is not much (I'm aiming to do three to five per day).


I jumped at the lifetime membership offer to Speakly.

Pros: The program will highlight the word in a sentence that you mispronounced. The voice recognition seems more forgiving than Memrise's.

Cons: You can only do the free-week in one language, so choose wisely. The free program only gives you a limited number of times per day to use the voice-recognition elements, so I'd run out of tries before I finished a lesson. I'm not always clear how to navigate the site, or how to track my progress - though this is a minor issue.

Verdict: I really like this one


And finally ... I can't thank DaveAgain enough for recommending Une dictée par jour. This free site manages to accomplish no paid program does: it's engaging, completely challenging, and uses interesting native materials.



Other Courses

Spanish
I've been working through FSI Book IV, and am getting my ass kicked by the past subjunctive. I can finish the drill when I have a pattern to follow. I struggle on Kwiziq with the basic past tenses of all the irregular verbs; I'm not sure it's worth my time to drill on advanced materials when I haven't mastered the basics.

French
My CLE International books arrived! I wasn't expecting them until January. This is really my impetus to put aside all the games and get to work.

Italian
Since I have the membership, I decided to give Italian a try on Speakly. And I could not speak a word. Once again, my brain can handle either Spanish or Italian, but not both.

Arabic
I go back and forth on how much time to spend on Arabic. Even a relatively easy task, like writing out the exercises in my Living Language book, takes a long time. And I was thrown by my 75% fail-rate with Memrise's voice recognition software. I wonder if I'm just faking my progress in Arabic.
7 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:00 am

It feels good to be properly studying again. I splurged on the lifetime membership (unlimited languages) on Speakly, and have three months each of Spanish and French on Kwiziq.

Spanish
courses: I've been trying to do a little bit on Kwiziq and on Speakly each night. My plan was to also try to finish the FSI Basic course, but I crashed half-way through Chapter 47 and the past subjunctive. I might try and revisit FSI once I've worked through more verb drills on Kwiziq.

books: I didn't finish El asesinato de Sócrates; it'll be just one more Spanish novel for the partly-read list. There are so many of them. I moved on to Manuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña. I was worried that it would be too experimental for me to follow, as it's told entirely in dialogue. It's been easier to follow than I expected, and I am fully enjoying it.

Super Challenge: Eighty pages to go to finish a full challenge.


French
courses: As if Speakly and Kwiziq and Une dictée par jour weren't enough ... I've started to work through Phonétique progressive from CLE International. I was skeptical that I could learn proper speech from a coursebook, but it's actually been super interesting and useful. I meant to focus intensely on Spanish - but I've found so many good materials in French that this has become my de facto focus. It's a bit too much, though, so I might back off on Speakly. It's good, but just not as good as the other courses at this point.

books: Half-way through Les mages.

Super Challenge: Finished a half, not gonna finish a whole.


Italian
courses: I've spent about three nights using Speakly.

books: Still slowly reading La forma dell'acqua,

Super Challenge: 130 more pages to finish a half-challenge.


Arabic
courses: I've hit a wall in Living Language and Pimsleur II. I tried using Memrise to work through the basics, but I'm at a point where I spend thirty minutes just reviewing old words & rarely make much progress on new words. Sometimes it's ridiculous - it will drill me on the same 'hard' word five times in a row; I get lazy and stop paying attention when they switch to a new word, so it makes me do the old word five more times the next day. It feels like busy work. I'm not quitting, but I'm not feeling the love either.


Hawaiian
I gave DuoLingo a shot, but I just don't like it. If I weren't getting serious about other languages I might still play around with it, but as of now I just don't have the interest. I'm not deleting the app, but I haven't opened it in a week.
7 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50

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kanewai
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Re: kanewai's book shelf

Postby kanewai » Thu Dec 19, 2019 8:00 pm

Snapshots after two weeks of Kwiziq. I love the foam tree (brain map), which lets you know which grammar topics you've mastered (dark green), which you're being tested on (yellow to shades of green), which you haven't tested on (grey), and which you've made errors in (red). It's so much more satisfying than any other program I've seen, which either give you a simple total-number-of-words learned, or contains arbitrary levels grouped around themes (food, sports, etc).

I'll be closing out 2019 and starting 2020 with some coursework (FSI for Spanish, CLE for French), some reading, some Speakly (French, Spanish, and Italian), and probably lots of Kwiziq. I want to at least fill in the green through the A-levels ... or at least try to.

Spanish
kwiziq spanish.JPG


French
kwiziq french 1.JPG


Brain map, detail
zoom.JPG
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6 x
Super Challenge - 50 books
Italian: 11 / 50
Spanish: 50 / 50
French: 16 / 50


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