Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

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zjones
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Re: Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

Postby zjones » Sat Dec 15, 2018 10:49 pm

Okay, as promised in the previous post, here's my current plan for Greek, subject to change:

I am going back to lesson 10, which is the first lesson where I started to struggle (they introduced a medio-passive verb, new random vocabulary, and the speakers started speaking more quickly). Here is my current plan:

1. Listen to the previous day's lesson and decide whether or not I am comfortably familiar with the content. Am I ready to move on?
If YES:
2. Proceed to next lesson.
3. Complete a regular Assimil lesson with lots of audio-looping and repeating back. Understand all important grammar concepts in the lesson, using English resources if necessary.
4. Translate the whole lesson from English to Greek by speaking aloud (yes, I plan on doing the active wave from the beginning).
If NO:
2. Work on previous lesson using a variety of CREATIVE resources like drilling, drawing pictures of what's happening, visualizing the scene as the audio plays, getting clear on specific grammar points, playing the parts of characters, translating from L1 to L2, creating new sentences etc.
3. Request help on the WordReference Greek forum if needed.

The reason for creative exercises is because I can only do so much drilling until my mind goes numb. But if I'm standing up in the living room with a phone to my ear and pretending I'm Nikos chatting to Kostas, it becomes a lot more realistic. I also like drawing cute little stick figure diagrams, so I want to use that to my advantage whenever I have the energy. My husband doesn't seem to mind all my craziness. :lol:

Disclaimer: I cannot draw 3d ports or quais... or boats apparently.

Image
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jonm
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Re: Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

Postby jonm » Sun Dec 16, 2018 12:38 am

That's such a cool approach! I really like the idea of listening to the previous lesson and deciding whether you're comfortable enough with it to move on, and if not, reinforcing it in those creative ways that you mentioned. I might try some of those techniques. They sound fun, and great for coming at a challenging lesson from different angles.

I'm really enjoying hearing you and garyb share your thoughts on this course. I've got it all ready to go, and I even did the first few lessons (which make the course look easy, little did I know!), but then I decided I was juggling too many new languages already. Probably better to wait till I could give it more time, but very interested to hear how things go, and it makes me eager to do the course before too long.
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Chmury
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Re: Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

Postby Chmury » Sun Dec 16, 2018 5:44 am

zjones wrote:
Thanks Chmury! This is exactly what I plan to do with my Greek! I'm kind of a nutter about looping audio and chorusing the words back, I guess I will just need to continue doing this with Greek. I'm going to have to look at your log (I assume you have one?) and see how you work on Polish and Anki. I'm very resistant to Anki -- I don't like the way it looks and I don't want to drill flashcards, but I also want to be efficient since it seems like Greek will take a long time. It's interesting to me that I feel like I have a lot in common with Polish learners. Maybe it's just the cases, similar difficulty level and smaller number of resources available for learning.


Yeah if you can somehow weave imitating and echoing back audio into your daily studies I think your pronunciation, comprehension, and word retention will be so much the better for it. I'm a big fan of Anki simply because of the results. It works incredibly well, you're essentially creating your own dictionary relevant to you, and whenever I use it, I always speak the sample sentences out loud, so it's an extra 15 minutes of pronunciation practice each day too. Sometimes when I read in Spanish I'll also read out loud and when I was first learning languages I'd go for evening walks everyday when the sun was setting and just have random conversations with myself (there goes that weirdo again speaking to himself in foreign languages as he stops to smell all the eucalypt and acacia flowers and pat the dogs...). Seriously though, I think it helped heaps. I'd also sing along to a lot of songs too and learn all the lyrics, which I think probably helped even more as your copying a native speakers pronunciation and if it's a good song, which when it comes to Spanish and Polish there's so much good music, you might listen to the same song literally hundreds of times and go back to those same songs and albums each year. Music's a massive factor for me when it comes to language learning, and whether the language in question has a good music scene or not can make or break whether or not I have the motivation to learn it.

Yeah I've got a log, it's basically entirely in Spanish though, but I am considering returning to Polish in the new year. Kind of like you, my Spanish is pretty good and simply reading and listening to podcasts will maintain it and improve it, so now I need a new challenge. I'm just having a bit of trouble deciding which language as nothing's particularly jumping out at me at the moment.

Yeah that's probably it, and the constant state of bewilderment. Such cool languages though. Would love to know Greek myself, and it's got such a unique and beautiful script! All the best Zelda!
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Hindernisse und Schwierigkeiten sind Stufen, auf denen wir in die Höhe steigen

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zjones
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Progress!

Postby zjones » Wed Dec 19, 2018 11:32 pm

Modern Greek

My studies are going well - actually, better than that. They are great. I'm spending more time on Greek than I was doing previously, but everything feels much lighter and more engaged.

I added an extra step that I didn't outline in my previous post. I think it's a great and useful tool, so I'm going to share it here in case it helps anyone else. After browsing through the audio and text of each 'new' lesson, I write some notes in a journal. The note contains the lesson name, the date, and two short paragraphs, Strengths and Difficulties. They aren't exact antonyms but they are the words that I like to use. Writing these notes help me clarify what I need to work on every day, and they have become invaluable for pinpointing tricky areas. Hopefully these notes will serve as a reminder of my accomplishments when I look back on them. Here's an example:

Lesson 14, Ο Σαρωνικός κόλπος
Strengths: I understand a large chunk of the lesson, I can hear word separation well. I can visualize the lesson as it is being described.
Difficulties: Vocabulary and prepositions in line 6. I struggle to process the meaning and parse the sentence, the words run together. I need to drill audio and use visualization for this line and the translation exercises. Also, my brain won't let go of the idea that there's a B-sound in το βουνό. There isn't.


I've been pairing my Assimil studies with Anki. I know, I know. I still don't like Anki, but I've never doubted its effectiveness. It was time for me to set my personal feelings aside and use it, because I wanted new ways to refresh Assimil content. For anyone interested, from Assimil Greek Lesson 12 and on I am putting the entire lesson into Anki, split into lines just like the lessons. The front of each card is in English (translated from French, of course), and the back of each card is in Greek and has the corresponding Assimil audio file added. When I see the front of each card, I translate it into Greek aloud and then I flip the card.

Front: I have been waiting for (I wait for) Niko for half an hour already.
Back: Περιμένω τον Νίκο μισή ώρα ήδη.
[sound:S05 (4).mp3]


So far I haven't been annoyed by Anki, but I've only been using it for 4 or 5 days. I am also using it for some pesky little French words that I've seen a million times and I just can't seem to retain, like envahir. To make it more bearable, I've been creating a specific study ritual before I use Anki. It involves being wrapped in a giant blanket, a giant cup of coffee or tea, and a Study with Me pomodoro video because I don't like feeling like I'm studying alone. Yeah, I baby myself, I know. But it totally works.
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zjones
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Re: Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

Postby zjones » Thu Dec 20, 2018 4:03 pm

French

Finished: Autre-Monde Tome 2: Malronce

Started: Autre-Monde Tome 3: Le Cœur de la Terre
Kindle version and Audible audiobook
Reading through a chapter or two at a time, looking up unknown text, and then following by listening to the audiobook and reading along.

Started: La Canique de Noël (A Christmas Carol)
Kindle version, free
One of my favorite Christmas stories, I was introduced to the 1984 film version when I was a kid and I watch it every year. I may or may not finish reading this in French, I just wanted something new to dabble in for the holidays.

Started: The Hookup Plan / Plan Cœur
French Netflix Original show
Watching with subtitles. The slang in this show is incredible. I can't understand most of what the characters are saying. I will need to rewatch this and pause every few seconds so I can look up all the unknown words and phrases.
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zjones
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Post-Christmas update

Postby zjones » Fri Dec 28, 2018 8:04 pm

Christmas mucked up my motivation and my learning schedule. I had a nice quiet Christmas, but without fail, my willpower decreases after holidays and I have to spend a few days getting everything back in order. (I'm seriously wondering if eating massive amounts of sugar might be to blame for me feeling so blah.)

French, meh

French has suffered the most from the holiday upset, partly because I don't know what to do with it. My brain kind of feels like mush when I look at something in French, and my production skills have flown away. I'm questioning my routine again because it feels like I'm not accomplishing or learning anything, but I know that my progress is going to be very gradual because I'm in the B-levels. In a couple days I'm going to purchase Didier's Reussir le DELF B1 prep book. This is obviously not a learning course, but I'm hoping that it will help me decide where I need to focus my attention with French, especially regarding my oral production. (To be honest, the DELF B1 looks very easy except for the speaking part.) It's really annoying to have my French studies be so random from day-to-day, but the moment that I get more strict with my schedule I start to feel trapped.

Some of my relatives are finally discovering that I've reached a solid intermediate level in French, and of course the inevitable question I get is "Oh, so you're going to teach it?" It's fairly annoying to get these questions because it seems like people don't think people learn languages for fun. However, if I do keep progressing in French steadily, in a few years I may consider tutoring, especially in our area where there are no French natives and very few people who speak second languages proficiently. I have already been asked to tutor a kid, but I declined because my French is really nowhere near solid enough (which is also something people don't seem to understand... they think that if you can read a book in French, you must be good enough to teach other people).

Greek

I have continued to do Assimil every day, Christmas didn't really affect that. I am now spending 2 days on each lesson, since they have increased in content. I'm figuring out the case and gender of most grammatical units. Anki is still a part of my daily routine. Not sure how long I'll continue learning Greek, but my goal is to at least finish Assimil which hopefully would put me somewhere in the A2-range.

2019 Resolutions

Since my language studies are all over the place, I've been spending more time preparing for the New Year. Our plan is to travel more often this year. I want to see the show Hamilton this year, and it looks like Chicago has a great cast for hundreds of dollars less than NYC. Chicago also has a wonderful improv theatre scene and an Alliance Française. If anyone has been to Chicago and has any tourist recommendations, I'd be happy to hear them.

And then of course I absolutely need to get a black-tie appropriate dress and shop for dress shoes, because I don't have anything to wear to Hamilton. I've been putting this off for years because I really hate shoe-shopping, nothing ever fits and I'm too tall to wear high heels.

I'm not sure about my fitness goals. I'd like to get my deadlift up to 200lbs in 2019, but I haven't been able to check with my trainer to see if that number is a good goal.
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zjones
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Re: Zelda's French Log (+ Modern Greek)

Postby zjones » Sun Dec 30, 2018 12:29 am

Ordered Le DELF -- 100% réussite from Amazon. Looks a little too easy for me, but I don't care, this is where I'm going to start. I want a certification without too much hassle, then I can worry about B2.

I'm taking a 2-3 day break from French before I start studying and using it again on January 1. I had to ban it entirely, because apparently I don't know how to stop doing French things. I am focusing on baking and cooking right now instead, and I am still doing my Greek.

I also banned chocolates. Bad sugar! :x
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