Bengali
A little update as I completed all the Emergent-level stories on StoryWeaver today. I have bookmarked 21, as I like to return and re-read things. There are not a lot of words in any of them, but they are typical young-child stories ranging from a few 'the toy is yellow' phrases to actual stories in sentences. I wrote down 15 unknown words - there were more, but I don't care about the names of e.g. all birds, just the name for "pigeon" which I see around my garden.
I'll start on level 1 over the weekend.
I also ordered some books of Abanindrinath Tagore, as the preview I could read on Amazon shows them to be close to 'comprehensible' for me.
On the video side, I took a peek outside of C-programming tutorials yesterday and tried listening to some videos about chess. Rather like the programming, these seemed half-comprehensible to me. In part, this is because of the peppering of 'standard' terms, like chess notation, but I felt I followed reasonably well a commentary on a famous game, recognising various words for the pieces, attack, defend etc.
It occurred to me that, over this last few weeks, I haven't opened either of my text books. I picked up Thompson's when I started this new learning phase, but haven't spent any time with it since deciding to focus on the listening and speaking, and now the reading. I'm sure I'll need them again if my reading progresses to the more complex sentence structures, but at present I'm embracing 'not fully understanding' and using a dictionary.
malach's log - Bengali and German
-
malach
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:52 am
- Languages: English (native)
Mandarin Chinese - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17627
- x 371
-
malach
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:52 am
- Languages: English (native)
Mandarin Chinese - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17627
- x 371
Re: malach's log - Bengali and German
Bengali
Surprisingly to me, I have spent some time daily on Bengali for the last 4 weeks - over 70 hours of study time.
Listening - still with the C-programming videos. A little tedious, but at least we are into arrays now and off loops! But it's a productive exercise. I'm learning words directly, and some of these have popped up in reading or other places, which is nice.
Reading - I think I wrote before that I had completed all of the 'elementary' stories on StoryWeaver, with a list of new words written down. Then I started on level 1, and wow, there is quite a jump in the amount of new vocabulary. I read through six books, and the last three I could barely understand due to the new words. So these need work. There are over 200 stories at level 1. I'm hoping the vocabulary repeats - their level guide says something like "for first 500 words".
But first, I decided to work through this new book I got - Abanindranath Tagore's Khirer Putul. If I have to be working hard with the dictionary, I might as well do that with a book I would like to have read. I first tried to just read it - after an hour I had completed just under half of the 34 pages. I noticed (a) I felt I understood the story in a broad sense, but not many of the details, (b) there are many unfamiliar words, and (c) there are many repetitions of those unfamiliar words.
I've worked intensively through a few pages now, at around 85% of known words. The grammar is mostly straightforward, so I can understand the sentences once I get the words (although I did have to ask on reddit about one construction). But some of the words are quite 'literary' having "poetic" and "rare" against them in my Samsad dictionary; this old-fashioned dictionary is essential - Google Translate has no clue. I suppose this is to be expected, as the book was written in 1896.
Actually, it was interesting at first, as in the first page we get a description of a very wealthy queen, and the language reminded me of a poem of his uncle's (Rabindranath Tagore) which I am quite familiar with! The "seven king's wealth" and "seven floored houses" and the jewelled bangles appear to be similar phrases. At least, I recognised and understood them without further lookup.
Speaking - continued with Glossika. Today I finished the 500 sentences of A1 low, so I graduate to A1 high! ~8000 repetitions done.
Writing - only one piece this week.
With these different activities, I'm getting quite a few coincidental cross-fertilisations of vocabulary. Earlier this week, there was a word from the videos I couldn't quite make out, and the next day it popped up on Glossika. Then a word from the video (for 'equals') came up in another book I'm reading (for 'the same' animal), and also a word from the book (for 'rows' of trees in a tea garden) came up in a video (for 'rows' of numbers to be printed out). I guess this is to be expected, but on one day I thought I had a 'spirit teacher' inhabiting my computer trying to help me along!
As I seem to still be safely in this undisturbed bubble, I hope to continue for another month in a similar fashion. I'll continue with Glossika and the videos for an hour a day. I expect reading will begin to take up more time.
Surprisingly to me, I have spent some time daily on Bengali for the last 4 weeks - over 70 hours of study time.
Listening - still with the C-programming videos. A little tedious, but at least we are into arrays now and off loops! But it's a productive exercise. I'm learning words directly, and some of these have popped up in reading or other places, which is nice.
Reading - I think I wrote before that I had completed all of the 'elementary' stories on StoryWeaver, with a list of new words written down. Then I started on level 1, and wow, there is quite a jump in the amount of new vocabulary. I read through six books, and the last three I could barely understand due to the new words. So these need work. There are over 200 stories at level 1. I'm hoping the vocabulary repeats - their level guide says something like "for first 500 words".
But first, I decided to work through this new book I got - Abanindranath Tagore's Khirer Putul. If I have to be working hard with the dictionary, I might as well do that with a book I would like to have read. I first tried to just read it - after an hour I had completed just under half of the 34 pages. I noticed (a) I felt I understood the story in a broad sense, but not many of the details, (b) there are many unfamiliar words, and (c) there are many repetitions of those unfamiliar words.
I've worked intensively through a few pages now, at around 85% of known words. The grammar is mostly straightforward, so I can understand the sentences once I get the words (although I did have to ask on reddit about one construction). But some of the words are quite 'literary' having "poetic" and "rare" against them in my Samsad dictionary; this old-fashioned dictionary is essential - Google Translate has no clue. I suppose this is to be expected, as the book was written in 1896.
Actually, it was interesting at first, as in the first page we get a description of a very wealthy queen, and the language reminded me of a poem of his uncle's (Rabindranath Tagore) which I am quite familiar with! The "seven king's wealth" and "seven floored houses" and the jewelled bangles appear to be similar phrases. At least, I recognised and understood them without further lookup.
Speaking - continued with Glossika. Today I finished the 500 sentences of A1 low, so I graduate to A1 high! ~8000 repetitions done.
Writing - only one piece this week.
With these different activities, I'm getting quite a few coincidental cross-fertilisations of vocabulary. Earlier this week, there was a word from the videos I couldn't quite make out, and the next day it popped up on Glossika. Then a word from the video (for 'equals') came up in another book I'm reading (for 'the same' animal), and also a word from the book (for 'rows' of trees in a tea garden) came up in a video (for 'rows' of numbers to be printed out). I guess this is to be expected, but on one day I thought I had a 'spirit teacher' inhabiting my computer trying to help me along!
As I seem to still be safely in this undisturbed bubble, I hope to continue for another month in a similar fashion. I'll continue with Glossika and the videos for an hour a day. I expect reading will begin to take up more time.
7 x
-
malach
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:52 am
- Languages: English (native)
Mandarin Chinese - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17627
- x 371
Re: malach's log - Bengali and German
Bengali
I'm still keeping to my plan. I have even slowly increased my time with Bengali to 4-5 hours a day over the last week. In part this is because I have a bit more free time to spend on (intensive) reading. But also I have let myself 'graduate' with the videos - I will finish the C course I started, as there are only a few hours left. But I seem to have reached some kind of threshold, as now it's getting dull! I've reached the point of understanding virtually everything he's saying - let me celebrate this - I've definitely improved a lot over only one month! But the repetition and easy subject matter has made the last couple of days feel more like a chore. When I started, it was so hard to keep up with the flow of words that I expected to move onto his Java tutorials after the C ones. But now the thought of more of the same is not appealing - maybe later I'll come back as a kind of 'revision'.
So yes, more topics. I've found some chess channels, and I'm starting in on those. It's cheating a bit, because it's like 50% chess notation and English, but there's some real Bengali in there to understand! And it's enjoyable. I had to force myself to stop after an hour just now. (This is actually a new stage for me - to replace something I would naturally watch in English with a Bengali version.)
I also found loads of English history and literature videos, presumably for students taking English-language exams. These will be a big step up in difficulty, but there should be some points of reference to help follow the topic. I'll try these next, after indulging myself in chess for a bit.
Listening - as above. Keeping to my hour a day minimum with the C programming course, and soon will move onto other topics.
Reading - I'm still slowly working through Khirer Putul. I'm also going through some books containing school-level prose, these are graded readers. Patches of text are quite comfortable to read now, but then there are patches containing new vocabulary.
Speaking - 1 hour a day with Glossika.
I'm still keeping to my plan. I have even slowly increased my time with Bengali to 4-5 hours a day over the last week. In part this is because I have a bit more free time to spend on (intensive) reading. But also I have let myself 'graduate' with the videos - I will finish the C course I started, as there are only a few hours left. But I seem to have reached some kind of threshold, as now it's getting dull! I've reached the point of understanding virtually everything he's saying - let me celebrate this - I've definitely improved a lot over only one month! But the repetition and easy subject matter has made the last couple of days feel more like a chore. When I started, it was so hard to keep up with the flow of words that I expected to move onto his Java tutorials after the C ones. But now the thought of more of the same is not appealing - maybe later I'll come back as a kind of 'revision'.
So yes, more topics. I've found some chess channels, and I'm starting in on those. It's cheating a bit, because it's like 50% chess notation and English, but there's some real Bengali in there to understand! And it's enjoyable. I had to force myself to stop after an hour just now. (This is actually a new stage for me - to replace something I would naturally watch in English with a Bengali version.)
I also found loads of English history and literature videos, presumably for students taking English-language exams. These will be a big step up in difficulty, but there should be some points of reference to help follow the topic. I'll try these next, after indulging myself in chess for a bit.
Listening - as above. Keeping to my hour a day minimum with the C programming course, and soon will move onto other topics.
Reading - I'm still slowly working through Khirer Putul. I'm also going through some books containing school-level prose, these are graded readers. Patches of text are quite comfortable to read now, but then there are patches containing new vocabulary.
Speaking - 1 hour a day with Glossika.
7 x
-
malach
- Orange Belt
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 11:52 am
- Languages: English (native)
Mandarin Chinese - Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17627
- x 371
Re: malach's log - Bengali and German
Bengali
I seem to be taking this mini-challenge of mine seriously! It's hard to believe I have kept to six complete weeks of daily study. Next week, if this continues, I'll have made it to 150 hours. Some days this week have required more discipline, but most days I've been enjoying the time spent.
Why do I keep the hours recorded? Two reasons really. The first is to keep myself accountable. I feel like I'm spending "all" my time with Bengali, but then I look at how many actual hours that is ... 3-4 hours a day? That's not "all" my time ... If I spend a full day at work, I expect to have that much spare time to read/watch TV, so on these more lax days I should have more time available. (I'm not sure where the rest of the time is going, but that's a separate issue!) The second is that I'm curious what 300 hours of study will do for me this summer - that's the block of time we allocate to modules where I teach. I have a sense of how much a student should 'improve' in that time, and so I can ... aspire(?) ... to achieving that myself.
Listening - this is now much more fun as the programming has been replaced with chess videos! The first two channels I worked through used quite a bit of English, and so they were straightforward. I'm now on a different channel where he uses "knight e3" for notation, but then "ghora" in the discussion, i.e. he's using mostly Bengali. His speech is also relatively slow and clear (compared to the programming guy), so I'm finding it easy to follow except for the new vocabulary, which I hope to pick up. (When I notice a word a couple of times, I look it up whilst watching. I'm not writing these down, just hoping to remember them when they come up again.) One word I've yet to learn is the word for "capture" - it seems pieces are either "eaten" or "killed"! Rather violent...
Reading - continuing. I have over 500 new words written down, 80+ a week. I run through them in the notebook from time to time, but my main test will be when I reread what I've read. I have made a little collection of stories/books on my table as my hopeful plan for summer. I have yet to return to StoryWeaver - all that new vocabulary at level 1 seems to have scared me off! Although mostly I just prefer to read paper books, especially as my other two main activities are computer based.
Speaking - not much to say here, 1 hour a day with Glossika. 20 new sentences a day, and then I slowly review the whole corpus. I'm getting close to 800 sentences, so a complete review is taking about a week I think.
I haven't opened a text/grammar book for a while. But I think I could do with spending a day or two on a couple of topics - compound verbs are everywhere, and, I'm forgetting the term but I remember this is in the book ... ok, so now I opened the grammar book ... correlative pairs. Those two give me a lot of trouble when interpreting sentences.
I seem to be taking this mini-challenge of mine seriously! It's hard to believe I have kept to six complete weeks of daily study. Next week, if this continues, I'll have made it to 150 hours. Some days this week have required more discipline, but most days I've been enjoying the time spent.
Why do I keep the hours recorded? Two reasons really. The first is to keep myself accountable. I feel like I'm spending "all" my time with Bengali, but then I look at how many actual hours that is ... 3-4 hours a day? That's not "all" my time ... If I spend a full day at work, I expect to have that much spare time to read/watch TV, so on these more lax days I should have more time available. (I'm not sure where the rest of the time is going, but that's a separate issue!) The second is that I'm curious what 300 hours of study will do for me this summer - that's the block of time we allocate to modules where I teach. I have a sense of how much a student should 'improve' in that time, and so I can ... aspire(?) ... to achieving that myself.
Listening - this is now much more fun as the programming has been replaced with chess videos! The first two channels I worked through used quite a bit of English, and so they were straightforward. I'm now on a different channel where he uses "knight e3" for notation, but then "ghora" in the discussion, i.e. he's using mostly Bengali. His speech is also relatively slow and clear (compared to the programming guy), so I'm finding it easy to follow except for the new vocabulary, which I hope to pick up. (When I notice a word a couple of times, I look it up whilst watching. I'm not writing these down, just hoping to remember them when they come up again.) One word I've yet to learn is the word for "capture" - it seems pieces are either "eaten" or "killed"! Rather violent...
Reading - continuing. I have over 500 new words written down, 80+ a week. I run through them in the notebook from time to time, but my main test will be when I reread what I've read. I have made a little collection of stories/books on my table as my hopeful plan for summer. I have yet to return to StoryWeaver - all that new vocabulary at level 1 seems to have scared me off! Although mostly I just prefer to read paper books, especially as my other two main activities are computer based.
Speaking - not much to say here, 1 hour a day with Glossika. 20 new sentences a day, and then I slowly review the whole corpus. I'm getting close to 800 sentences, so a complete review is taking about a week I think.
I haven't opened a text/grammar book for a while. But I think I could do with spending a day or two on a couple of topics - compound verbs are everywhere, and, I'm forgetting the term but I remember this is in the book ... ok, so now I opened the grammar book ... correlative pairs. Those two give me a lot of trouble when interpreting sentences.
6 x