Chove's Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Tue Oct 13, 2020 5:57 pm

I think I've picked up a cold, even though I've hardly been outside and have been wearing a fabric mask on my rare trip to the shops. :( So I'll probably be fairly unproductive for a few days. Luckily I'm on the revision week for my German course so just re-reading and so on. And I did get a very productive few days before this having discovered "study ASMR" videos on YouTube, where someone plays weather noises at you and it's supposed to help you focus. Which it actually seems to do, at least for me.
1 x

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:26 am

Feeling better now, starting to get back into studying. I've got an assignment to write in German that isn't due until November but I want to get started on it while the material is fresh in my mind and because I find production of language quite terrifying so I need to get over that. I was like this when I studied history too, I don't think I ever got an essay done before the last minute, something about having my work judged scares me and it's even worse when it's not in English. Because that's harder.

I have an iTalki Polish lesson this evening, probably going to revise accusative and genitive, which is what we covered last time I had a lesson with this tutor. She is very nice, she likes my pronunciation. Also with Polish I have started listening to the "intermediate"/"B1" material from Bloggy Polish and I can understand more than I expected of that. I'm not really working on my Polish much at the moment, but trying to maintain what I have already learned.

I bought the second book of A Series of Unfortunate Events in Spanish, might as well continue the series for now as I enjoyed the first book. I'm really just maintaining my Spanish at the moment, though I occasionally go over some grammar to improve my accuracy.

Still slowly exploring the basics of French, which I'd like to eventually be able to read basic texts in.
3 x

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Fri Oct 23, 2020 10:30 am

The aftermath of whatever cold-sort-of-illness I had is still wearing off, I've been sleeping a lot and my mood's been fairly low. But I've managed a bit of studying, though not as much as I'd have liked.

German is my focus at the moment, obviously, because of my coursework. I feel I need to work on getting more exposure to German but I am not sure where to find things that are at my level. I'm slowly reading an Enid Blyton book where I can follow the gist of events but there are a lot of unknown words. Just need to spend more time with it really.

Spanish is in the background, mostly a language I interact with rather than actively study, though there's a fair chunk of the grammar I'd like to go over sooner rather than later. Mostly I don't want to forget what I've learned. I'm glad I did the course, it proved to me that I can learn a language to a decent level if I put in the hours.

I feel quite stuck on Polish, since I'm not up to native matierals by any means but basic beginners material is too simple for me. Still haven't learned all the cases, which is at least partly because I feel like I don't know what to do to get further. Any recommendations for textbook courses? I need to find something I can stick with even when it's giving me such "useful" vocabulary as "Do you have contacts at the archive?"

And I'm experimenting with bilateral translation for French, which is a language I speak nothing of but can understand some simple texts because of cognates in English and Spanish. I'm working from "Easy French Reader" and trying to translate to English then back to French. No idea if this will be helpful but I hope it will be. It's basically how people learned languages academically in the early modern period, isn't it?

And I am trying not to learn anything else, as I don't have time and it would just distract me. But I have been looking "around" some other languages just to see how they work. I may or may not try to learn the Cyrillic alphabet but I've no use for it at the moment, it'd just be a thing to fill empty time.
4 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby cjareck » Fri Oct 23, 2020 4:30 pm

As for Polish resources, you may look for Polish FAST:
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... olish.html

Or some other DLI Polish courses (but I don't know them)
https://www.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/DLI-Polish.html

I have also a pdf from DLI(?) that has a few thousand pages but unfortunately lacks audio. I can share it with you if you are interested.
0 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:51 pm

I'm a bit scared of the DLI courses, are they really hard?
0 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby cjareck » Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:53 pm

Based on DLI MSA Basic Course I would say that they are easy, but quite boring since you drill some easy things many times. But you don't have a problem with recalling them later. FSI Hebrew was similar, but shorter - about 600 pages.
3 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Sat Oct 24, 2020 4:47 am

cjareck wrote:Based on DLI MSA Basic Course I would say that they are easy, but quite boring since you drill some easy things many times. But you don't have a problem with recalling them later. FSI Hebrew was similar, but shorter - about 600 pages.


I don't get on well with boring materials, I always get distracted. That's one of my problems, I suppose.
0 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby cjareck » Sat Oct 24, 2020 6:48 am

If you like the language and if you are motivated, you will enjoy even boring materials. With my FSI, I really didn't have any problems with repeating the same sentences 10 times while conjugating the verbs. The same applies to DLI MSA. On the contrary, the Polish ESKK course tries to be interesting but ends up being more complicated and difficult.
3 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:34 am

Turns out I can understand most of Spanish-dubbed 'Voyager' at 80% playback speed, which hopefully I can increase to normal speed over time. Quite pleased with myself actually! :lol:

The German course is getting a bit dull in terms of it's basically just reading short texts that I am not terribly interested in contentwise, so I'm trying to think of other ways to approach the coursework. First assignment is due in about two weeks, I have some of it written already but I'm not going to try finishing it until I've done the related tutorial next week.
4 x

User avatar
chove
Green Belt
Posts: 374
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 10:42 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: English (N), Spanish (intermediate), German (intermediate), Polish (some).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9355
x 920

Re: Chove's Log (Spanish, German, Polish, French)

Postby chove » Wed Nov 18, 2020 9:05 pm

Not the most productive few weeks, I feel like I haven't done much of anything recently. I had an online German tutorial this evening but there were 25 students there and it was a bit of a mess. Usually there's about 10 people in my tutorials, so I don't know why it was so packed. I think I might not bother with the other ones unless it's a topic I'm having difficulty with.
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Zomxilla and 2 guests