zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

[zenmonkey]

If you don't mind me asking, at what point in your Hebrew journey did you find it useful to start working with a tutor? I was thinking of starting around the A2/B1 level so that I actually have something to say; however, I'm also open to the idea that starting earlier could help avoid the formation of bad habits/pronunciation.

It's also hard for me to keep up with reading right now, so I wasn't sure how much I'd get out of text feedback during the exchange.

Ask anything, I enjoy the interactions!

I found it useful from almost the very start, because I use it as a motivation tool to be regular and work on something.

For the actual language learning, you need to be very selective in who you use. My first tutor would not have been useful in the A0/A1 level and I ended up dropping him.

Find someone that has educational training of some sort, and is aligned with the material/level you are using. Do a few test sessions, see how you prepare for them too.

If reading is a weakness, this is also something the teacher can help with, giving immediate feedback.

[zenmonkey]

... He told me that he found Igbo and Yoruba hard, and suggested, half-serious that I should learn Hausa.

I've got a really nice Skype contact who speaks Hausa.. just throwing that out there

Thanks!!

[Brun Ugle]

Did you tell Rick yet that we’re all dropping Setswana and switching to Igbo?

[zenmonkey]

Did you tell Rick yet that we’re all dropping Setswana and switching to Igbo?

Umm. Why not both?

[rdearman]

I got Hausa in the language jam. But I am not going to bother.

[zenmonkey]

I got Hausa in the language jam. But I am not going to bother.

Oh, yeah, I think I signed up for that. No idea what my name was. I'm not doing it.
(I just got Japanese or Bulgarian. Niet.)

[Brun Ugle]

I got Hausa in the language jam. But I am not going to bother.

Oh, yeah, I think I signed up for that. No idea what my name was. I'm not doing it.
(I just got Japanese or Bulgarian. Niet.)

Do Japanese! Then we can study that together too.

[zenmonkey]

I've been struggling. Can't really say I was actively studying for several weeks but these last few days I've been trying to get back to things.

I had a Hebrew italki session last week and towards the end of the session, my teacher suggested we go back to the first lesson, to get me to speak more. I could have seen that as truly discouraging but I think it was an honest evaluation of where I was that morning after several months of not doing much. It was a somewhat fluid first conversation, given that it is material that I should know! So, quite the stumble, but I'm not too concerned, it's part of the learning curve.

I signed up for Setswana for the 6WC and I still want to finish the Memrise course I started but right now, I'll I've done is play catch up. Perhaps by the end of this weekend I'll be back to learning. Our team session was not very successful - I had missed a prior session, wasn't up on the homework and we ended up cutting it short. I need to think about what I want to get out of a session with other beginner learners. Still, I enjoy the quick interaction even if we really didn't work on the language much.

With German - I listened to a free CD of audiobook samples and was a bit disappointed. My comprehension across the different voices was lower than I hoped. And bad enough that I struggled concentrating on what was being said. I'm trying to read some massive Sci-Fi tomes (The Void series) but I'm wary of being buried by the task of looking up words for literally thousands of pages or losing comprehension. I expect my German will be significantly better if I ever finish this series.

So, not the most positive entry but the slope of the curve is in the right direction.

[tags: #tagLangHE]

[zenmonkey]

Mid-week report - Setswana is more active and I'm finally back to learning in Memrise (instead of just reviewing). Given that the material I am using really does not have sound, I thought about contacting a native speaker and having someone record sentences for me (paid). So I ended typing out about a 100 sentences of starter material. Really just retyping the material I found useful from the Peace Corp manual. I then got busy with another project and rooting around on my computer, found the hundreds of sound files i had already created from other material. So before I start a new recording project I'm going to try to spend some time on audacity echoing that material.

The other project I was working on is one of my apps for learning the alphabet. I had someone record the sounds, names and example words for the Georgian alphabet and needed to organise and import that into the app. Of course, that also resulted in a bit of debugging and other improvements. It's take a little longer than expected. Am I learning Georgian? It's a beautiful script and I'd love to, but for the time being I'll stick to only playing with the alphabet.

[tags: #tagLangTsn, #tagLangGeo]

[zenmonkey]

My youngest is finally motivated to learn Spanish. She was recalcitrant for years because she felt she wanted something unique for herself compared to her three older sisters and she had decided to learn Italian. We encouraged that, figuring Spanish would come later (she can't avoid the contact with my family).

In school, she's in an exchange program and met some Mexican student. Made great friends and wants to go to Mexico for a Quinceañera in two years. So now she's got her motivation to work on Spanish. We started a bit of listening / repeating yesterday.

Today, I'm trying to assess what we should focus on, and I suspected she has strong passive vocabulary and we just need to work on grammar structures, set phrases and output. She says she understands a lot. She came to our morning session, dressed as a unicorn and we've done short sets of paper cards throughout the day. I have a box of almost brand new German/Spanish Langenscheidt A1 set.

We did about half of the A1 vocabulary (400 out of 800 cards). She knows about 80% of that passively (she can guess the meaning) from French (and a little Italian) and passive listening to her sisters and me. Which means I won't bother her with learning vocabulary much.

Now she's making chocolate cake. Cake is better than Spanish.