Aledda's Log (2017 - )

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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Tue May 01, 2018 3:37 am

I haven't updated in two weeks, but it seems much more than that.

This post is going to be short, because I'll only post "news":

  • I applied for the Japan Foundation program I mentioned before. On Thursday, I have the written exam at the Embassy and then they let me know if I made it to the interview or not.
  • I'm trying to "revive" an old blog about languages that I used to update. For now I'm reviewing old posts, hiding the ones that are/were not good enough (or that need a little improvement) and leaving the rest there. I'm planning on posting more frequently not only about languages but I'm also thinking about writing entries about life in general (or whatever) in other languages. So maybe, I could post something in Portuguese on Mondays, something in Japanese on Thursdays, etc...
  • I've signed up for the 6 Week Challenge with Korean. As I said there, right now I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time studying it (at least during this week), but it's the excuse I needed to take it up "again".
  • I ALSO signed up for the Super Challenge :lol: (First time doing both 6WC and SC, so I probably thought "It's now or never" (?)). Anyway, on SC I'm doing a full Japanese AND a full Portuguese challenge. While I was considering it, I wanted to add other languages such as Korean or Italian, but I think I would have ended up doing none. For a moment I thought of doing a double challenge for English, but I think it wouldn't be a real challenge for me since most of the media I consume is either in English (books, movies, series) or with subtitles in English (movies, series, doramas). So I'll just keep track of what I do "unofficially"
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log - Challenges

Postby aledda » Tue May 01, 2018 3:50 am

6 Week Challenge - May 2018 (May 1st 2018 and June 11th 2018)
Target: Korean

1st week (01/05/2018 to 07/05/2018): 427 minutes of TL, 1009 minutes total

Study time by language:
Japanese: 510 minutes (08:30), 50.55% of total
Korean: 427 minutes (07:07), 42.32% of total
Chinese: 37 minutes, 3.67% of total
Italian: 35 minutes, 3.47% of total

Study time by activity:
Coursera (for Korean): 383 minutes (06:23), 37.96% of total ["Review"]
JapaneseClass (for Japanese, obviously): 127 minutes (02:07), 12.59% of total [Kanjis/Vocabulary]
Bunpro (for Japanese): 124 minutes (02:04), 12.29% of total [Grammar]
Minna no Nihongo (for Japanese): 120 minutes (02:00), 11.89% of total ["Review" for the test]
Clozemaster (Japanese, Italian, Chinese and Korean): 111 minutes (01:51), 11.0% of total
Class (for Japanese): 80 minutes (01:20), 7.93% of total
Duolingo (Japanese and Korean): 54 minutes, 5.35% of total
Lyrebird (for Korean): 10 minutes, 0.99% of total [Vocabulary]


2nd week (08/05/2018 to 14/05/2018): 294 minutes of TL, 926 minutes total (Accumulated: 721 minutes of TL, 1935 minutes total)

Study time by language:
Japanese: 497 minutes (08:17), 43.42 % of total (Acc. 1007 minutes (16:47), 52.04% of total)
Korean: 294 minutes, 31.92% of total (Acc. 721 minutes (12:01), 37.26% of total)
Chinese: 35 minutes, 3.80% of total (Acc. 72 minutes (01:12), 3.72% of total)
Italian: 35 minutes, 3.80% of total (Acc. 70 minutes (01:10), 3.62% of total)
Portuguese: 65 minutes (01:05), 7.06% of total (Acc. 65 minutes (01:05), 3.36% of total)

Study time by activity:
Coursera (for Korean): 193 minutes (03:13), 20.84% of total ["Review"] (Acc. 576 minutes (09:36), 29.77% of total)
JapaneseClass (for Japanese, obviously): 118 minutes (01:58), 12.74% of total [Kanjis/Vocabulary] (Acc. 245 minutes (04:05), 12.66% of total)
Bunpro (for Japanese): 118 minutes (01:58), 12.74% of total [Grammar] (Acc. 242 minutes (04:02), 12.51% of total)
Minna no Nihongo (for Japanese): 35 minutes, 3.79% of total ["Review"] (Acc. 155 minutes (02:35), 8.01% of total)
Clozemaster (Japanese, Italian and Chinese): 103 minutes (01:43), 11.12% of total (Acc. 214 minutes (03:34), 11.06% of total)
Class (for Japanese): 145 minutes (02:25), 15.66% of total (Acc. 225 minutes (03:45), 11.63% of total)
Duolingo (Japanese and Korean): 46 minutes, 4.97% of total (Acc. 100 minutes (01:40), 5.17% of total)
Lyrebird (for Korean): 18 minutes, 1.94% of total [Vocabulary] (Acc. 28 minutes, 1.45% of total)
Reading (Portuguese and Japanese): 100 minutes (01:40), 10.8% of total (Acc 100 minutes (01:40), 5.17% of total)
Coreano para Principiantes (for Korean): 50 minutes, 5.40% of total (Acc. 50 minutes, 2.58% of total)

3rd week (15/05/2018 to 21/05/2018): minutes of TL, minutes total (Accumulated: minutes of TL, minutes total)

Study time by language:
Japanese: , % of total
Korean: , % of total
Chinese: , % of total
Italian: , % of total

Study time by activity:
Last edited by aledda on Tue May 15, 2018 7:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
x 141

Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Mon May 07, 2018 2:37 pm

Well, first of all I didn't make it to the interview :( This year more people applied for it (last year we were 6, this year we were 13!), and it seems I wasn't good enough.
It's a little disappointing, but I can try again next year and I'll try to be better prepared for it. Besides, last week was so hectic at work, that my stress level skyrocketed, and if I had to add the stress of preparing for an interview, I probably would have collapsed.

残念ですが、安心な週末を過ごすことができました。
来年、もう一度申し込むつもりです。

To relax during the weekend, I binge-watched the episodes of the first season of 蛍の光 (Hotaru no Hikari) that I started last week, and I started the second season. (Btw, I need to tweet those for the SC). I'm not adding them to the 6WC, because I didn't "study" them, but I think I am going to rewatch this dorama without subtitles (or just rip the audio from it) to practice listening, because I think the voices of the actors are clear enough for me to practice, and since I know now how it goes, I won't be so lost.

About the reading part, I haven't updated yet because even though I'm taking note of what percentage of the ebooks I have read since the challenge started, I still haven't translated that to "pages" (compared to the number of pages of a paperback).

And speaking of the SC, I couldn't stop myself: I decided to try a half challenge for Korean too, since I'm doing the 6WC in Korean. The reading is going to be hard... but I'll do my best. 화이팅!

For the 6WC: I started the "First Step Korean" course on Coursera, as a way to make a "quick" review of what I already know, and I was planning to use a book I have in Spanish but I want to compare it to the FSI courses, to see which one is better.

I need to update the post of the challenges, to show my progress :D

I didn't do anything blog-related but it's on my to-do list...
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zjones
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9860
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Re: Aledda's Log (2017 - )

Postby zjones » Mon May 07, 2018 3:31 pm

aledda wrote:Well, first of all I didn't make it to the interview :( This year more people applied for it (last year we were 6, this year we were 13!), and it seems I wasn't good enough.
It's a little disappointing, but I can try again next year and I'll try to be better prepared for it. Besides, last week was so hectic at work, that my stress level skyrocketed, and if I had to add the stress of preparing for an interview, I probably would have collapsed.


I'm sorry you didn't make it to the interview. I know that must have been so disappointing. But don't give up, you can always try next year, as you said. Taking on too much at once is never a good idea. I hope everything goes well for you!
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Mon May 07, 2018 4:44 pm

zjones wrote:
aledda wrote:Well, first of all I didn't make it to the interview :( This year more people applied for it (last year we were 6, this year we were 13!), and it seems I wasn't good enough.
It's a little disappointing, but I can try again next year and I'll try to be better prepared for it. Besides, last week was so hectic at work, that my stress level skyrocketed, and if I had to add the stress of preparing for an interview, I probably would have collapsed.


I'm sorry you didn't make it to the interview. I know that must have been so disappointing. But don't give up, you can always try next year, as you said. Taking on too much at once is never a good idea. I hope everything goes well for you!

Thanks for the support :D
Since you have to be younger than 55 to apply for it, I still have many years to try again! :lol:
I'm trying to focus on the future opportunities and to do better instead of being sad for this "failed" attempt.
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Tue May 08, 2018 4:49 am

I know I posted earlier today, but I just realized that 1/6 of the 6 Week Challenge already passed :o So, I think it's time to draw the first conclusions:

  • I've never kept track minute by minute of what I'm doing while studying. I do have an "ideal routine for a typical day" that involves doing 15 minutes of this, 30 minutes of that, etc, and for some of those activities I have a "tracker" in my Bujo (like: practice JapaneseClass daily: done!). But I don't think I've ever tracked the time and it's something so obvious that I can't understand why I didn't do it before. Being able to answer questions like: Is that amount of minutes enough for this? Am I spending too much time doing this when I could be spending it doing that other thing? is very important when you have a full time job, you go to the gym, have a house to mantain, do errands, etc and you only have 24 hours/day. Even if I don't learn anything new in Korean, I learned this. :lol:
  • I don't think I can improve a lot in Korean (during these 6 weeks) if I keep doing what I'm doing. I mean, what I've been doing is not bad, but I can do SO MUCH better than this. If you look at the numbers on this post (I think I tweeted everything I had to update (except the pages read for the SC)), you can see that instead of making Korean my main focus, I divided my time half and half with Japanese (actually 50% Japanese, 42% Korean), and I'm not even counting here the minutes/hours watching doramas in Japanese...
  • Obviously I don't want to leave Japanese aside, so I'll have to find a way to dedicate more time to Korean without neglecting Japanese.
  • I need to spend more time studying in general. This week was particular since I didn't have to work on Tuesday, and I had the test for the JF program on Thursday. What worries me is that I had more time and a "excuse" to study and I only managed to study for less than 17 hours in total. I know it's more than 2 hours a day, but it seems very little (Not to mention that during a whole week I studied the "target" language for only 7 hours <- major facepalm).

The numbers don't lie... that's why it's so interesting to understand what they show.
Now I'm going to bed see what I can do different for the second week.
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log - Portuguese

Postby aledda » Tue May 15, 2018 4:25 pm

aledda wrote:The second language I learned was Portuguese and learning it was the opposite of what I experienced learning English.

As I mentioned before, since I was a child I considered Portuguese as a beautiful language. There were several reasons why I was attracted to it:
- The most obvious reason, specially for a child, is that it is a language very similar to Spanish. Without having studied it, I was able to understand a lot of what I listened/read in that language.
- The spoken language has a cadence and musicality that is not found in other languages.
- I grew up surrounded by the language, thanks to the music that my mother always listened to.
- My maternal grandmother was born in Brazil, and although she always spoke to us in Spanish (there were times when she spoke in some kind of "Portuñol", but those were very few), due to a feeling of loyalty towards the family or something like that, I always felt that I had to learn that language to get closer to my "roots". (I think I was around 8-9 years old when I made that statement :lol: ).

I was lucky to start learning it "seriously", when I was 14-15 years old (I'm not sure if it was on 2000 or 2001). The opportunity arose while I was still "suffering" with English, when the school opened a Portuguese course for the students of my high school. The course was very basic, but it was useful to lay a solid foundation of Portuguese. Unfortunately, the course was open for just one year, and then university and life in general happened, and I couldn't keep studying it until I took it up again in 2010.

At that time I was already working and in December of the previous year I had taken the ECPE exam, so I had both the time and money to spend them learning Portuguese. Luckily, I could afford to pay for classes at an institute where all the teachers were from Brazil. This helped to learn the language from natives, and also to learn more about the Brazilian culture (of Brazil in general and the distinctive features of each region of the country): the dances, the music, the carnival, the food, the history of the country, the folklore, the architecture, the literature (I became friends with the librarian of the institute, and she always recommended me books to read), etc.

As for the language, the most difficult thing was to differentiate it from Spanish, so as not to fall into the error of speaking "Portuñol". In addition to the obvious differences in vocabulary, the spelling in some cases was a challenge, things that are considered spelling errors in Spanish, are not in Portuguese and viceversa (things like "yo cantaBa" and "eu cantaVa", "liBro" and "liVro", even made me write badly in my own language in moments of distraction). And I shouldn't forget about the difference between the genre of some nouns ("EL equipo" and "A equipe", "LA nariz" and "O nariz", "EL árbol" and "A árvore", "LA sangre" and "O sangue", "EL viaje" and "A viagem", etc).

What did surprise me was the pronunciation. I always had struggled trying to pronounce well in English, and yet in Portuguese, my teachers praised my pronunciation. It helped a lot that in Portuguese there are "clear rules" about pronunciation (this letter before this other letter sounds like this, this letter at the end of a word is pronounced like this, etc), so just by looking at a word I knew how it should be pronounced, without having to go to look for the phonetic in a dictionary. For the introverted person that I am, that made me feel more confident when I had to speak the language. I know it's silly but, it was the first time I could enjoy talking comfortably in another language.

And after 3 years of dedicating all my Saturday mornings to attend classes, I prepared the CELPE-Bras and got my second certificate in a foreign language in 2013.

Unfortunately, even though I am still reading books and listening to music in Portuguese, I have barely used the language actively since then. Besides my trips to Brazil and Portugal, the only opportunities I have are when I come across Brazilian or Portuguese tourists visiting Uruguay (luckily a lot of Brazilians visit Montevideo) or when I met people from those countries on my other trips. Ah... It also helped me to understand Galician when I went to Santiago de Compostela and Vigo (in Galicia).

What I am trying to say is that I need to make more efforts to use it actively instead of just "mantaining" it, as I have done these last few years. That is the reason why I signed up for SC 2018-2019 with Portuguese, and one of the reasons why I want to "revive" my blog, so I feel the "obligation" to write more often in Portuguese.
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log - Challenges

Postby aledda » Tue May 15, 2018 7:41 pm

Super Challenge 2018/2019 (May 1st 2018 and December 31st 2019)

Japanese books: 0 / 5000 (100 books, 50 pages each)
Japanese films: 996 / 9000 (100 films, 90 minutes each)

Portuguese books: 40 / 5000 (100 books, 50 pages each)
Portuguese films: 0 / 9000 (100 films, 90 minutes each)

Korean books: 0 / 2500 (50 books, 50 pages each)
Korean films: 89 / 4500 (50 films, 90 minutes each)

On this post I will update what I read/watched during the SC (written in blue)
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
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Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Tue May 15, 2018 9:17 pm

I wanted to write about the 6 Week Challenge but I couldn't do it last night, so I'm going to do it today.

I decided to divide the post I had for the Challenges. At first I wanted to keep all my challenges together, so the progress for both the 6WC and the SC were in the same post of May 1st. But since I'm writing a lot of things for the 6WC and those had nothing to do with the SC, the post was getting a little messy and confusing, so I created a new post for the SC.

Ok, so about the 6WC, another week has ended, which means 1/3 of the challenge has already passed!

  • I finished the "First Step Korean" course I was doing on Coursera. The course itself was ok, it was basic (as the name implied) but it was what I needed to refresh things like pronunciation and particles. Korean was the first language I tried to learn by myself, which meant that I did not know very well how to teach myself, or what I should have learned to do well in the future. Now that I am a little more experienced, I thought it would be a good idea to take the time to reinforce or correct things that I had not learned well at that time. Yes, I "lost time" reviewing things that I already knew, but I also think that now I have better basis to continue learning the language.
  • After finishing the course, I needed to start using another book or course, so I spent "a lot of" time evaluating different websites, books and courses to see which one could be more useful, instead of studying. In the end I decided to start with one I already had ("Coreano para principiantes"), if it helps me, awesome, if not, I'll use something else, but at least now I'm doing something.
  • Since I have a full-time job from Monday to Friday, on weekends is when I have more time to learn languages. However, this Sunday was Mother's Day, and except for the first hours of the morning I spent the day with her. Which means that I couldn't do much that day.
  • I started to track the time I spend reading, which I didn't do during the first week. I'm still not used to do it, so sometimes I forget to pay attention to the exact time I start and/or finish. When that happens, I prefer not to include that activity on my spreadsheet.

This week I spent 2 hours less studying Korean than during the first week (most of it trying to decide what to use next, which was a big mistake on my part), but in general it was 1 hour and a half less (considering that I barely did anything on Sunday, it wasn't that bad)


Let's see how the third week goes.
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aledda
Yellow Belt
Posts: 67
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:26 pm
Location: Uruguay
Languages: Español (N)
English (C2), Português (C2)

Studying now: 日本語 (N4->N3), 한국어 (beginner)

Dabbling: Italiano (beginner), Deutsch (beginner)

On the waiting list: 普通话 (~A1)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=5561
x 141

Re: Aledda's Log

Postby aledda » Thu May 17, 2018 3:23 pm

Hoje vou escrever em português.

Este ano fiz um esforço para retomar a leitura nesta língua, com mais constância do que nos anos anteriores, e acho que foi o empurrão que precisava para recuperar dia a dia a fluência que perdi. Pouco a pouco a pequena voz na minha cabeça que narrava meu cotidiano quando eu estava estudando a língua e me ajudou muito a falar em português, está acordando. Agora a qualquer hora do dia, paro e percebo que estou pensando em alguma coisa ou descrevendo mentalmente alguma situação em Português. Só espero que esse despertar da minha narradora de língua portuguesa, não torne a pouca fluência que tenho em japonês ainda pior.

Ainda não comecei a assistir a nenhuma série ou filme para o SC en português. Eu acho que esse é o próximo passo que preciso para recuperar as expressões idiomáticas ou gírias que eu possa ter esquecido. Alguns colegas de trabalho recomendaram que eu assistisse a "O mecanismo", mas acho que ficarei entediada com essa série. Se alguém tiver alguma recomendação, por favor me avise, agradeço.
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