Amanda's Log: Spanish and Ancient Greek

[philomath]

Have you seen any of these?

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/trav ... ssian.html
http://www.learnetarium.com/2010/08/nov ... uages.html
http://www.learnetarium.com/2011/01/spe ... guage.html
https://www.linguacore.com/polyglotdrea ... e-islands/

Then there's Boris Shekhtman's book "How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately" (review here).

Thank you! This definitely looks like a good method for me to follow. I just need to think of what islands to make. So far I have a general introduction about myself and a little explanation of why I'm learning Spanish.

[jeff_lindqvist]

You can always start with yourself - name, age, location, profession and so on - the classical introduction which you may already have used hundreds of times in your life (partly or fully). Simple answers to questions starting with Who/What/Where/When/Why/How. Who are you? What do you do for a living? Where do you live (work/come from)? When did you (start learning X/leave your home town/move here)? Why did you (start learning X)? And so on... RDearman has a post about this (based on Moses McCormick's FLR method).

Many textbooks have chapters based on certain topics (family, work, at the restaurant...). Explore those!

[philomath]

You can always start with yourself - name, age, location, profession and so on - the classical introduction which you may already have used hundreds of times in your life (partly or fully). Simple answers to questions starting with Who/What/Where/When/Why/How. Who are you? What do you do for a living? Where do you live (work/come from)? When did you (start learning X/leave your home town/move here)? Why did you (start learning X)? And so on... RDearman has a post about this (based on Moses McCormick's FLR method).

Many textbooks have chapters based on certain topics (family, work, at the restaurant...). Explore those!

Good idea, I definitely need to make an island about my career, because it's something that comes up often when meeting new people, and yet I still don't know how to talk about it in detail in Spanish. Having islands about my family and my hobbies would also be very useful.

One thing about Boris Shekhtman's method that I'm a little bit skeptical about is his insistence that students learn to recite each island automatically, without having to think about it. In his book, he writes:

Only an absolutely automated “computerized” island which has been drilled into the native speaker to the point of becoming like a reflex, can get the foreigner through the pressure of the communicative environment with a native speaker.

It seems to me that you would need to adjust your islands based on the situation; for example, sometimes you might want to leave out certain details that aren't relevant to the conversation, or just shorten your response in general for the other person's comfort. I've made two islands so far, and I've been practicing them but making slight changes each time.

[jeff_lindqvist]

One thing about Boris Shekhtman's method that I'm a little bit skeptical about is his insistence that students learn to recite each island automatically, without having to think about it.

I agree. You have to know your island well enough, but also have to be able to adapt unless you have 100% control of the situation (and personally, I think such situations are very rare when it comes to target languages...).

It's like giving a presentation which you've written yourself and learned by heart, word for word. If someone asks a question, you must know your stuff well enough in order to give a reply, and to get back on track.

[philomath]

I agree. You have to know your island well enough, but also have to be able to adapt unless you have 100% control of the situation (and personally, I think such situations are very rare when it comes to target languages...).

That makes sense. I'm looking forward to making some more islands because it seems like a really useful method.

[philomath]

A brief update:
I've started making Anki flashcards again, for both Spanish and Ancient Greek. I'd rather not delete my entire deck again like I did with Spanish, so I'm going to make more cloze deletion cards instead of just putting a word on one side and its definition on the other. I think they'll be more interesting to review. I'm also going to limit myself to adding 20 or 30 new cards a day and suspend cards when I get bored of them, so reviewing cards doesn't become too much of a chore. I'm definitely finding Anki useful for remembering Ancient Greek words so far.

[philomath]

Another update! I may start posting here more frequently, although I'll probably slow down again when I start a full-time job in a few weeks.

I've been hearing a lot about Clozemaster lately, so I finally made an account. I like it so far, because the sentences are interesting, but I'm not really sure where I should start. I skipped to the 4,001-5,000 most common words and started studying those. However, earlier today I was reading Glossy's log and saw a link to these quizzes that estimate the size of your vocabulary in different languages. I forgot to save my result, but it was somewhere around 7,500 words in Spanish. So maybe I should jump to Clozemaster's level for the 5,001-10,000 most common words.

I've also been flipping through my vocabulary notebook and making new Anki flashcards for the words I want to remember. For each verb I make one or two cloze deletion flash cards showing how the word is used. (I suppose Clozemaster inspired me!) I've increased my new card limit to 30 new words per day. I could probably make it even higher but I don't want to get sick of Anki again.

Today I also practiced my language islands a little bit. I only have two so far, so I'd like to make some more to practice. I'm moving back to Boston in three weeks, and I want to join a Spanish conversation group where I can practice my islands. Right now this is the only speaking practice I feel like doing. Instead I'm going to do more writing practice, so I bought an A4 notebook to use as a Spanish journal.

I need to do more reading in Spanish. I've only read 85 pages this month. I'm enjoying El tiempo entre costuras, but I never make the time to sit down and read it. Today I read a few pages over lunch, and then I read an article from El País, which I liked. I should read news articles in Spanish more often.

[philomath]

Spanish Goals for June

- Do 15 hours of listening practice. Use Spanish subtitles less often.
- Do 5 hours of speaking practice (iTalki lessons or speaking by myself). In addition, do FSI Basic Spanish Units 1-30. (I’ve never done any FSI courses before so I have no idea if this is a realistic goal or not.)
- Review grammar for 5 hours.
- Learn 300 new words. (This is a lower goal than last month’s because I want to make sure I learn how to use the words instead of just memorizing their definitions.)
- Read 450 pages. (I plan to finish reading El tiempo entre costuras and also start reading news articles from El País.)
- Write 4,500 words.

Accomplished
- Did 9 hours of listening practice, almost entirely La casa de papel with the occasional podcast. Did not use subtitles at all.
- Did 1 hour of speaking practice, because I wasn't feeling motivated to speak at all. I found out about the language islands method and made two of them.
- Reviewed grammar for 2 hours. This consisted of reviewing all of the verb conjugations and trying to write them out from memory for different verbs.
- Learned 204 new words. I did not use Anki until the end of the month, when I started making cards again. This time they are mostly cloze deletion cards. I started using Clozemaster as well, but so far it's just been review, so I didn't count any of the cards in this monthly total.
- Read 85 pages. This small number is not the result of a slow reading pace in Spanish, but rather the fact that I never set aside any time to read nowadays.
- Wrote 1,600 words. Eventually I realized that I should buy a separate notebook for writing in Spanish in order to motivate myself. I'm looking forward to writing in this notebook next month.

Ancient Greek Goals for June

- Do Lessons 1-4 in Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners.
- I might end up doing more because Lessons 1-3 are very introductory and just discuss pronunciation and syntax.

Accomplished
- Did Lessons 1-4. For each lesson, I spent a few days learning the grammar, another few days memorizing the vocab using Anki, and then I did the translation exercises. I've been checking my work using this answer key.
- Ordered a copy of A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect: Expanded Edition, which arrived in the mail today!

[philomath]

I didn't want to post twice in a day, but... I had such a good time studying Ancient Greek this morning! I finished Lesson 4 in my textbook. The last part of the lesson that I needed to learn was the part about accentuation rules. I'd been putting it off because I thought it would be boring, but it was really neat! I'd been having a hard time remembering where all of the accents went when declining nouns, but now it all makes sense. For example, θάλασσα --> θαλάσσης because you can't have an acute accent on the antepenult if the ultima is long. Interesting!

While I'm at it, I thought I would share a cool resource I found: The Chicago Homer. It really is an amazing website:

The Chicago Homer is a multilingual database that uses the search and display capabilities of electronic texts to make the distinctive features of Early Greek epic accessible to readers with and without Greek. Except for fragments, it contains all the texts of these poems in the original Greek. In addition, the Chicago Homer includes English and German translations, in particular Lattimore's Iliad, James Huddleston's Odyssey, Daryl Hine's translations of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, and the German translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Johan Heinrich Voss. Through the associated web site Eumaios users of the Chicago Homer can also from each line of the poem access pertinent Iliad Scholia and papyrus readings.

The database has a very detailed search feature, so for example, I can search for nouns that appear in the Iliad over 50 times, and it will generate a list of 84 words. You can even search for words based on which character said them! So of those 84 nouns, 78 are said by Achilles himself, and 2 of them are said by Hector quoting Achilles. I haven't actually used the website for my studies yet, but it's very cool.

[philomath]

Spanish Goals for July
- Do 8 hours of listening practice, without Spanish subtitles.
- Do 15 Pimsleur lessons.
- Do 5 hours of speaking practice.
- Review grammar for 2 hours 30 min.
- Learn 465 vocab words.
- Read 310 pages, including at least 15 El País articles.
- Write 4,650 words.

Notes:
- These goals are a lot lower than my goals last month, but I don't want to get burnt out again. I'll be traveling for the first two weekends of the month and then starting a full-time job, so I'll be pretty busy.
- I mentioned that I haven't felt motivated to speak Spanish lately, but I hope to join a Spanish conversation group when I move back to Boston in the middle of the month, and I think that will make me more motivated.

Ancient Greek Goals for July
- Do Lessons 5-12 in Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners.

Notes:
I made this plan earlier in the year, before I realized how busy I'd be in July. This is my plan to get everything done:
- Week 1: Do Lessons 5-7. Lesson 7 is actually just a review lesson. (Monday: Add all of the new words to Anki, start learning them at the same pace as usual. Tuesday-Friday: Learn the new grammar. Saturday-Sunday: Do the translation exercises, and review anything that was confusing.)
- Week 2: Do Lessons 8-9.
- Week 3: Do Lesson 10.
- Week 4: Do Lessons 11-12. Lesson 12 is another review lesson.