Flash Projects

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Teango
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Flash Projects

Postby Teango » Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:34 pm

In search of new horizons...
Image
source: sdnews.com (Jim Grant)

I've studied a lot of languages to a basic or intermediate level over the years, and I've enjoyed these linguistic flirtations and affairs. However I feel I've spread myself a little thin and sidelined serious commitments along the way, being far more interested in how people learn languages rather than buckling down to the task of learning them to a higher level. From the second half of 2019, I'd like to reboot this language log and put what I've learned over the years into more practice (health prevailing).

Approaching language learning as a series of shorter-term can-do "flash projects", rather than flash in the pan fiascos, my overarching goal will be to advance a skill set in each language to the point where I can genuinely start enjoying authentic native-level materials or activities, with minimal recourse to supplementary notes or translation. I believe that the best way to accomplish this is to study useful words and expressions and put them into good use as soon as possible.

I'd also like to hold on to what I've learned and build on what I know. So I plan to rotate through and advance a broader range of skill sets over the long-term, keeping a weather eye out for thematic gaps in vocabulary as well as reoccurring issues in grammar and language usage.

I hope the successful completion of each new project will lay the groundwork for further projects and enhanced enjoyment of each language, leading to the eventual establishment of a safe harbour for all the languages I've chosen to make a part of my day-to-day life. And when I introduce a new language, I'll add a link to it in my Progress Tracker (see below) and will endeavour to update this record from time to time for quick and easy reference, along with any Language Resources used (see following post).

I extend a warm welcome to anyone kind or curious enough to follow my linguistic escapades and peccadillos here, and wish you all pōmaikaʻi (good luck) in your own language adventures.

Ke aloha, T.
Last edited by Teango on Fri Aug 02, 2019 3:20 am, edited 104 times in total.
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Teango
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Progress Tracker

Postby Teango » Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:34 pm

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source: pixabay.com (tswedensky, modified by teango)

Flash Projects
Russian 1: Finish Ночной дозор (novel).
Hawaiian 1: Dream in Hawaiian.

German
+50 hours
  • Activities: I completed a beginner-intermediate level textbook, reviewed an additional comprehensive grammar, and watched the final two seasons of Der Tatortreiniger.
  • Progress: Besides putting a few grammatical bugbears to rest, and acquiring some fun idioms along the way, my reading level still sits in the 95-98% range across most texts.
Russian
+50 hours
  • Activities: I completed a beginner-intermediate level textbook, read and listened to 3 beginner-intermediate level novels (400-500 pages), and watched and studied 33 Easy Russian videos.
  • Progress: My reading vocabulary has increased by 2-6% depending on the overall difficulty of the text (e.g., a big leap from 92% to 98% in a political news article from pravda.ru, a small bunny-hop from 91% to 93% in a passage from a children's book like "Алиса и крестоносцы", and a more lugubrious lumber from 80% to 83% in a particularly challenging passage taken from "Ночной дозор"). I've also started thinking in Russian upon waking on occasion, and words and phrases feel more natural and less foreign.
+100 hours
  • Activities: After a false start with Ночной дозор, I settled down to developing some software to help me study and read other languages more efficiently. It's fair to say I got caught up in this activity for far too long, drawing on a variety of Russian texts as the bulk of my test material, but I'm now back in business and making steady progress.
  • Progress: A quick reading vocabulary test this morning indicates that I'm about the same level as where I left off several months ago (82% with "Ночной дозор"), so what I've been doing in the meantime has at least maintained my previous gains. And as an added bonus, I seem to be much better at guessing new words, both in and out of context.
+150 hours
  • Activities: I finally completed the first main story in Ночной дозор (131 pages, 40K words) and added several hundred words to my reviews.
  • Progress: I made significant progress in Russian during my first actual flash project in the language, and can now read 92-93% of the words in the above-mentioned novel. This is quite a jump from 82% in my last report, and although I still miss out on important details here and there, I can now follow and enjoy the text with a little help from my Kindle dictionary.
Last edited by Teango on Tue Oct 08, 2019 1:35 am, edited 49 times in total.
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Teango
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Language Resources

Postby Teango » Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:40 pm

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source: pixabay.com (Comfreak)

Russian:
  • Кухня (fast-paced tv comedy series set around a restaurant kitchen for native speakers)†
  • New Penguin Russian Course, 1996 (textbook for beginner-intermediate learners with a more comprehensive focus on grammar)†
  • Easy Russian (short street interviews with native Russian speakers)†
  • Ночной дозор, 1998 (fantasy novel about vampires, street-sorcerers, and shape shifters in the heart of contemporary Moscow, part 1 of a series)†
  • Рассказ-канонизация, 2015 (concluding story in our Guadalupean trilogy for intermediate readers)*
  • Рассказ-провокация, 2014 (further Guadalupean adventures for beginner-intermediate readers)*
  • Рассказ-сенсация, 2013 (short comical story about a Guadalupean banker for beginners)*
  • Assimil Russian, 2012 (textbook with parallel ru-en texts for beginner-intermediate learners)*
German:
  • Easy German (short street interviews with native German speakers, ranging from beginner to advanced levels)†
  • Das kleine Gespenst, 2008 (classic children's ghost story for intermediate readers)*
  • Der Tatortreiniger, 2011-2018 (comedy series revolving around the bizarre shenanigans and musings of a crime scene cleaner)*
  • German Grammar in a Nutshell, 2016 (a light-hearted German grammar summary)*
  • Assimil German With Ease, 2011 (textbook with parallel de-en texts for beginner-intermediate learners)*

(* completed reading, watching, or studying; † started using or an ongoing resource/reference material)
Last edited by Teango on Sun Jun 30, 2019 10:03 pm, edited 44 times in total.
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Teango
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Introducing Russian...

Postby Teango » Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:41 pm

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source: pixabay.com (Katya36)

My first big goal will be to break through to an advanced reading level (approx. B2-C1 on the CEFR scale) in Russian. To establish a personal baseline for Russian, I'll start with a little background here. I use English, Russian, and NZSL (New Zealand Sign Language) at home with my family on a more or less daily basis. The vast majority of my communication is in English, but I do speak a little Russian with my wife every day (usually short phrases and predictable domestic dialogue), as well as read aloud snippets of Russian children's stories to my daughter some days. My current (admittedly self-assessed) level of proficiency in Russian is slap bang in the middle of intermediate (somewhere in the B1-B2 range), and can be broken down further into the following traditional skill sets:

Speaking: At this stage, I can communicate with other native speakers at a basic conversational level and use an estimated 3,000-4,000 word families in the process. What I do know, I know well, however I'm still missing a lot of key vocabulary necessary for discussing more sophisticated topics, and this continues to have a huge impact on both my overall proficiency and fluency in the language. All in all, speaking in Russian for any length of time, given regular and reluctant recourse to circumlocution to work around frequent gaps in my vocabulary, leaves me feeling frustrated, demotivated, and exhausted.

Pronunciation: When I first met my wife, I had just a few well-honed phrases from Mr Pimsleur under my belt. However my wife's friends and colleagues (who I must also point out were sober at the time) were convinced I hailed from one of the Baltic States, which means my pronunciation mustn't have been too shabby. Although my better half rates me around 8 out of 10 on the Russian accent scale (and I must keep in mind that perhaps she's just being kind and hearing me through a rose-tinted ear trumpet here), I'm fully aware that there are numerous non-native features of my accent that make me still stand out as a foreigner.

Listening: Despite having watched hundreds of hours of cartoons, series, and movies in Russian (both with and without subtitles), as well as having listened to tonnes of music (not to mention my wife speaking to our little daughter or relatives in the background), listening still remains for me the most elusive aspect of the Russian language. I can usually follow the gist of a show or conversation, but I'm often plunged back into a world of oblivion where I have to make up the remainder of the plot with the sole aid of visual clues and lucky guesses. This problem is compounded when I find myself in groups of native speakers or subject to "noisy channel" conditions (e.g., I'm often totally lost while trying to understand my Russian in-laws speaking at breakneck speed over one another through a bad Skype connection).

Reading: My lexical coverage (i.e., the number of words I can understand in a given section of text) largely depends upon the material and topic domain. For example, I can score in the 90-95% range in the middle of a news article on a good day, yet barely scrape 80% in the initial ornate chapters of a contemporary novel on a bad day! Either way, my current lack and wanting diversity of vocabulary renders extensive reading far from comfortable or pleasurable.

Writing: While I can string basic sentences together with some degree of fluidity in writing, my grammar still has much left to be desired. This is largely due to having rarely studied grammar formally through a Russian textbook (I've mainly just used textbooks in the past to mine vocabulary or look up an occasional grammar note here and there). My ongoing studies will therefore include some light grammar study to fill in some of the larger gaps. And once my Russian gains a surer foothold, I'd like to attempt more free writing in order to analyze corrections and feedback from a native Russian speaker (i.e., I've roped in my lovely and ever-patient wife to assist me at a later date). This will hopefully allow me to keep track of my developing interlanguage(s), and help me iron out and redress some of my more recurrent and glaring stubborn grammatical blunders.
Last edited by Teango on Tue Sep 24, 2019 7:50 am, edited 18 times in total.
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Teango
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Flash Projects

Postby Teango » Fri Jul 20, 2018 11:39 pm

Image
source: biobreak.wordpress.com (screenshot from "Space Quest II" by Sierra)

Just a quick note here to let you know I haven't absconded or been abducted by aliens threatening to overthrow the world with insurance salesmen, but have been taking care of more mundane issues first in order to clear a small runway for setting off in Russian.

I'd eventually like to work up to a couple of hours of language learning a day, ideally dedicating half of my time to activities in support of my current "amber light" language (which is Russian right now), and the other half for maintaining and developing my "green light" languages (such as German). However I'll just have to wait and see how that goes...
Last edited by Teango on Thu Feb 21, 2019 11:07 pm, edited 14 times in total.
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Teango
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Russian and German (Jul 23 - Aug 05, 2018)

Postby Teango » Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:41 am

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source: en.wiktionary.org (modified by teango)

Week 1 (Jul 23-29)
- 18h study (9h de, 7h ru, 2h multilingual)

I managed to meet my initial target of an hour of Russian study a day alongside an additional hour or two of German. Things would have probably gone more smoothly if I'd spread my studies throughout the day in more palatable 10 minute bites (as originally planned), but the truth is my studies rolled haphazardly into less-than-idealistic mossy clumps, as and when I found the time and the fancy took me.

Week 2 (Jul 30-Aug 05)
- 2h study (2h multilingual)

With domestic issues eating into my time like ravenous mogwai after midnight, I all but completely sidelined my studies the following week. I was all too ready to beat myself up over dropping the ball so soon into the game, but my wife wisely put me straight, "you don't need to catch up...you just need to get back on the train". And besides, the second week didn't turn out to be a total loss after all, as I made a new (although somewhat unpleasant) discovery - the second locative (hmm...as though 6 cases weren't enough in Russian...*gentle silent rocking*) - this is something even my wife had never heard of before! I discovered this uninvited guest while trying to ascertain the correct stress placement for the phrase "к двери", something that raised its head while reading "Колобок" to my daughter one evening (a repetitive story much like "The Gingerbread Man"). In this case, the stress resolved to двери (in the dative), but when I looked at the declension table for this word (see image above), I initially thought I'd miscounted the cases. Sigh...it seems even the simplest of children's books can reveal all shades of linguistic devilry.
Last edited by Teango on Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:56 pm, edited 20 times in total.
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Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Green Flash (2018-)

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:42 pm

Kid’s books are the worst! Lots of flowery archaic language in your average fairy tale. I have had good luck with books aimed at the littlest kids (like one year olds) or books for new readers. Either way, simpler grammar and vocabulary.
1 x
Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
: 25 / 52

Pimsleur French 1-5
: 3 / 5

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Teango
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Russian and German (Aug 06 - 19, 2019)

Postby Teango » Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:10 pm

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source: pixabay.com (pexels)

Week 3 (Aug 06-12)
- 7h study (7h de)

I focussed on German for about an hour a day, hop-skip-and-jumping through the rest of Assimil’s German With Ease out of an already reluctant sense of “well I bought the book ages ago, so I really should finish it”. And by the end of the week I’d indeed completed the book, however I felt thoroughly bored and less athletically inclined with German, and dearly wished I hadn’t so readily accepted my initial self-deceiving logic. Note to self: if a resource bores or pains you (and you’re not a self-confessed masochist), drop it like a hot potato, or at least (as I must admit, I quite like hot potatoes) sideline it like a condiment well past its sell-by date!


Week 4 (Aug 13-19)
- 0h study

Having ostracized Russian for no good reason, you’d have thought I’d go out to buy an odd number of non-yellow flowers and make it up to her the following week. However when it came to my language studies, I was a wicked lackadaisical creature and disappeared down some other foxhole altogether. I did get a chance to have a short conversation in a mishmash of ASL and NZSL on Sunday, but in spite of my wife’s good advice last month, I’m still proverbially sitting on a train station platform, clutching a crumpled билет, waiting to catch a ride.
Last edited by Teango on Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:59 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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reineke
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Re: Green Flash (2018): In search of new horizons...

Postby reineke » Tue Aug 21, 2018 3:13 pm

Teango wrote:I woke up like a bear...


Some mornings.jpg
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Teango
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Flash Projects

Postby Teango » Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:25 pm

@Lawyer&Mom Очень голодная гусеница - you're up next, buddy! :)

@reineke ♫ Ooo, who... ♫
Last edited by Teango on Thu Feb 21, 2019 11:07 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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