aaleks's log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Tue Jun 12, 2018 11:23 am

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
3 x

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:00 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
2 x

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby Ani » Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:19 pm

aaleks wrote: And it was the 8th edition of the book, so originally it might have been be a soviet textbook.


aaleks wrote: The problem was that it wasn't so easy to find a German book in Russia back then, so I didn't have much of choices.

Many choices, a lot of choices, lots of choices --- listed in order of formality. All are fixed expressions and any of them would work.

aaleks wrote:I don't ask to point out all the mistakes and oddities. That would be too much to ask, but may be there is one you tripped over,


"I'm not asking for anyone to..." "maybe"

And two typos -- everything and okay.

That's all I found in the last three posts.

I would think the thing that would make your English better at this point would be learning to write for different registers. Maybe giving yourself projects like writing a book review in formal academic style, writing a short children's story, writing a poem?
2 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:45 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Sun Feb 27, 2022 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
0 x

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby Ani » Wed Jun 13, 2018 9:39 pm

I know it is kind of daunting -- like how much academic type effort do you want to mix into your fun language learning hobby? :) I'm feeling this way about French right now. Checkout "annotated bibliography". The book summaries use language that is appropriate for college academics, but aren't so long as to be overwhelming. There are lots of examples and tips online. You could cover a book you've read in any language, or flat out make something up :)
1 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

User avatar
Neurotip
Green Belt
Posts: 332
Joined: Mon Dec 25, 2017 10:02 pm
Location: London, UK
Languages: eng N; ita & fra B2+, ell & deu B2-, ísl B1 (spa & swe A2?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9850
x 660

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby Neurotip » Wed Jun 13, 2018 9:44 pm

Hi aaleks, I enjoy reading your log so I thought I'd bite...

I would never have | would have hardly hardly would have ever understood what the Present perfect is about had I not had enough exposure to English through TV and books, i.e. without input. The way they usually explain it in textooks is insufficient, and sometimes even misleading IMO if you look at it from an English learner perspective. It happens like that: you read about the tense in a textbook, try to make some sense out of what you've read, think that you get it, then you open a book and see that the tense is used quite differently, not the way you expect it should or would be (used).

At the same time, when I was google-searching about the Present perfect I found out that some of English learners have difficulty understanding to understand the difference between the Present perfect and the Present perfect Continuous (Progressive). Things like: I have studied vs I have been studying. But I have figured it out just by reading, watching and listening to native materials*. So that's never been an issue to me.
...

It was sometime | at some point/stage somewhere in the early 2000's, when I tried to learn English the first time. I never competed the textbook. I doubt that I'd gone through half of it. I got bored of the "proper" way of studying pretty fast and skipped to the last pages of the book where there were short explanations of the grammar rules grammar rules explanations. And then I tried to read a native book which, of course, was an enormous task back then. 6 years ago I skipped the grammar part of language learning almost completely. I only looked through those last pages to be sure that I could can distinguish future, present and past tenses. Then I found the English learning forum and there was a lot of talk/discussion | were a lot of posts were a lot of talks about grammar, so I felt that I was doing something wrong and I turned to the so-often-recomended Murphy books. But I did the same - skimmed through it just to be sure I had some concept of grammar. Up to last year, 2017, the last, 2017, year I'd not studied grammar, not paid much attention to it if at all. And even then I focused on tenses in the first place, plus articles. I remember reading about prepositions but I've not studied it in the way of grammar drilling, exercises. Adjectives, adverbs, all those"-ly", "-able", "-ness", "-ment" in the end of words, or "des-", "ir-", "un-", etc. in the beginning I have learned from exposure. Idioms, phrasal verbs, and whatever other things like that are called - all these I've learned known from reading, watching, listening. And I've never had any trouble parsing to parse a sentence, I don't know why.

I do beleive that I've been learning English by consuming a lot (or enough) of native materials in the first place. And even though I tried to find the truth about that paticular grammar topic called the Present perfect :mrgreen: in textbooks I ended up figuring to figure it out from watching series, not even from reading. But I think that it wouldn't be fair to deny the fact that textbooks helped me too in the way that they introduced me to grammatical constructions, provided some tips. My mistake was putting grammar rules above the language itself.
----

I hope this is the sort of thing you wanted :)
1 x
Corrections welcome here

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:39 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Sun Feb 27, 2022 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
0 x

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Sat Jun 16, 2018 8:37 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Sun Feb 27, 2022 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
1 x

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:32 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
6 x

aaleks
Blue Belt
Posts: 884
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 7:04 pm
Languages: Russian (N)
x 1910

Re: Just a log (English, Italian)

Postby aaleks » Sun Jun 24, 2018 5:24 pm

del.
Last edited by aaleks on Thu Aug 01, 2019 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 2 guests