Re: Yuurei's Language Log (ZH, KO, FR, JA, ES) [Now with more LR]

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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH)

Postby Brun Ugle » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:12 pm

I loved Mikeneko Holmes! That's one of the reasons I need to scrape the rust off my Japanese again. But it's so hard.
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (Latin, Spanish & Dutch) [TAC 2016]

Postby DaveBee » Sun Feb 19, 2017 9:01 am

Yuurei wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
Yuurei wrote:... bought 11 novels ...


I appears you might have forgotten to list them O:-)

My bad, my bad. XD

The books in question are:

*Une histoire naturelle des dragons by Marie Brennan (actually the only new book I bought, the others are all used. But this one's quite new in France and also really, really pretty; not to mention that I've heard good things about it and it doesn't exist in Spanish. So I decided to splurge and buy it at full price. Did I mention how pretty it was?)
*Le vol du dragon (Pern #1) by Anne McCaffrey
*Légende by David Gemmell
*Xanth (1) by Piers Anthony
*La voie de la colère (Le Livre et l'épée #1) by Antoine Rouaud (originally French)
*Le Chevalier (Haut-Royaume #1) by Pierre Pevel (originally French)
*L'ange du chaos (L'Agent des Ombres #1) by Michel Robert (originally French)
*Le Prince Ecorché (L'Empire Brisé #1) by Mark Lawrence
*Roma Mater (Le Roi D'Ys #1) by Poul & Karen Anderson (Fantasy set in Rome? How could I possibly resist?! XD)
*Le Silence du rossignol (Tales of the Otori #1) by Lian Hearn (I actually read this novel in English many, many years ago. I remember liking it, but never read the sequels, so I thought it might be worth a re-read. Also it was only 1.50€ =x)

and, last but not least, I got one non-fantasy novel (shocking, I know XD):

*Le fils du songe (Alexandros #1) by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Le vol du dragon
, Légende and Xanth are 3 of those classic fantasy novels that I never got around to reading, but probably should. I don't need to read them right now, but I'm sure I'll get around to reading them sometime. Most of the others I'm really impatient to read though. :oops:
I saw a copy of A Natural History of Dragons at my local library the other day (I noticed the cover after seeing the photo you put here).

Looking at Ms Brennan's website today, she sounds like she'd fit in here pretty well :-) :
3) I've studied a number of foreign languages, though I'm not fluent in any of them.

So far it's been Spanish, Latin, Japanese, Irish Gaelic, and Old Norse -- I don't really count the two weeks of Finnish and Navajo, because I never got beyond a few sentences in either of those languages. But I used to be able to translate both Latin and Old Norse pretty well, and have some remnants of conversational ability in Spanish and Japanese.

Read more: http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/books/mari ... 40215.html
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Yuurei » Fri Dec 08, 2017 10:16 am

*sneaks in*

So, man, it's been nearly a year since I last posted here, it seems. :roll:
What can I say, life happened, my language learning motivation went down pretty drastically (which may-- I say may-- have been caused by my sudden addiction to Wuxia dramas) and I somehow fell out of the habit of even coming here, much less writing anything. *sighs* Also, due to the timing of the Gathering and its new location going there turned out to be pretty impossible this year, so apologies to everyone who was hoping for cookies. *ducks*

If I had to summarize this year language learning-wise it'd be a lot of Japanese in January, followed by a huge emptiness between February and June, complemented by some more or less successful, but certainly very haphazard language learning in the second half of the year. So, suffice to say, it was a far cry from 2016, unfortunately, though strangely reminiscent of a lot of years before 2016, so clearly I should try and go back to weekly goals and log entries (and general keeping in touch with all the awesome folks here on llorg) again.

And for the long version, here's some random facts and impressions from my languages in 2017 (with no guarantee of completeness):

Spanish
Nada.

French
Weekly French nights continued normally. At some point before the end we decided to stop watching Psych and moved on to Grimm and have so far watched the first 2.5 seasons. I know I watched this series in Spanish before, but what can I say, it's a pretty good series. My favorite part has got to be the silly and at times almost incomprehensible gratuitous German. XD

Went to Paris with my friend for a couple of days at the end of October for our annual book shopping and coffee drinking trip - and that even though the number of French books I read this year amounted to 0.0 before the trip. It has since increased to 0.6. Amazing.

I started reading "Les Manteaux de Gloire" 2 or so weeks ago (after buying it in Paris), but while I really enjoyed it to start with after putting it down sometime after the 60% mark I have yet to pick it back up. I should maybe do that though, so that I'll have read at least one French book this year.
I did read the new Asterix volume while I was in Paris, since it was shortly after the volume came out and it's one of the few French media things I actually like.

So yeah, not a lot of French this year either, but at least enough to prevent my French from regressing, methinks.

Latin
In the first half of the year I'm pretty sure I did some Latin, but not as regularly as last year and also, er, I don't really remember what I did. Not too much certainly.

In August my friend and I went to a week-long living Latin thing - nothing but speaking Latin all week long. It was brutal. Also fun, but frigging exhausting and afterwards I wanted to have a week of holidays, but instead I had to go back to work ~_~. Listening was actually quite alright - it would get exhausting trying to concentrate on understanding for an hour at a time and stuff, but I had little trouble understanding basically everything, which was nice. :) Speaking myself was a whole other matter though. It wasn't exactly something we practiced previously and even though there was a sort of active Latin course in the mornings it wasn't too helpful and being unable to properly express myself proved somewhat frustrating. Still, I'm really glad we went and I'll probably want to go to some other living Latin events in the future.
Unfortunately, aftwerwards our Latin studies ceased for the time being, since my friend became very busy with her PhD thesis and I wasn't really motivated enough to keep it up on my own.

Japanese
The January tadoku went really well - I ended up reading just over 2500 pages, 1000 pages more than I had set as my goal. The novels I read were:

*三毛猫ホームズの推理
*三毛猫ホームズの追跡
*鼠、江戸を疾る
*鼠、闇に跳ぶ
*鼠、影を断つ
*怪盗探偵山猫 1
*怪盗探偵山猫 2: 虚像のウロボロス
*怪盗探偵山猫 3: 鼠たちの宴

I followed the tadoku up by reading the fourth volume of the 怪盗探偵山猫 series before more or less stopiing with all things Japanese.

During January I also watched some Japanese drama, namely Nobunaga Concerto and Katou Tantei Yamaneko (怪盗探偵), the latter of which prompted me to read the novels on which the TV series is based, but I liked the drama a lot more than the novels. Unfortunately I watched those dramas with English subtitles, because I didn't manage to easily find them raw and was too lazy to painstakingly scour the internet.

In April I went to Japan for 2.5 weeks with some of my friends! Suffice to say it was awesome. While such a holiday with friends doesn't provide a lot of opportunities to have philosophical discussions and such in Japanese, I was nonetheless able to use my Japanese a lot and felt completely at home while doing so, which made me even happier! (Compared to my previous trip to Japan, where I could get by in Japanese --much to my amazement-- but it was difficult and every Japanese encounter filled me with a certain amount of anxiety) I especially liked Osaka, where people generally seemed to assume everyone spoke Japanese and basically never tried to speak to me in English. (My non-Japanese-speaking friends seemed to disagree though XD) I could go on about the food (the food!), the bookshops, the lovely scenery and temples/castles, all the opportunities to speak Japanese, actually getting to watch a Detective Conan movie in the cinema (I've been a long-time fan, okay?) and, basically, all of the things, but suffice to say it was amazing and I want to go back. Unfortunately, this didn't translate into any sort of motivation for doing Japanese after my return and so everything went back to pretty much nothing for the next couple of months.

During summer I started reading an English translation of a Chinese web novel (The King's Avatar - highly recomended, especially if you like video games, but it's not necessary) and it was only after I'd already read several volumes in English that I found out that there happens to be a Japanese translation of the first 4 volumes. So after catching up with the English translation (which is still a WIP), I decided to go back and re-read the first 4 volumes in Japanese.

Possibly motivated by my enjoyment of reading the abovementioned novels, combined with the realisation that reading them was still a bit more difficult than necessary, at the beginning of September I suddenly felt the urge to take the JLPT (at the beginning of December). This urge hit me a whole 1.5 days before the application deadline, so naturally I signed up (for level N2). I've never taken the JLPT before, but I thought it might be a good motivation for actually doing a bit more serious Japanese study. My plan was basically to learn some vocab and work through grammar/reading/listening workbooks in September and November, while using October to participate in another Tadoku round. This worked reasonably well and I worked through one listening workbook and 3/5 of a reading workbook in September, familiarized myself with about 1000 new vocab words through Anki in September and October, read about 1780 pages of Japanese in October (I sort of burned out a week or so before the end of the month and stopped reading) and worked through about half of a book of sample questions from the language knowledge section of the N2. Instead of actually working through a grammar workbook I went through an Anki deck with all the example sentences from the N2 Shin Kanzen Master grammar book (incl. explanations) which was very helpful and I found that there were quite a few grammar concepts on this level that I was pretty shaky on. All together, I feel like those two months really helped me improve my Japanese and that makes me very happy. Of course, I then went on to do basically nothing for Japanese in November, but such is life. I sat the JLPT this past Sunday and nonetheless felt pretty well prepared. Listening was quite a bit harder than I'd anticipated and grammar was a bit hit and miss, but I'm pretty sure that I passed and it shouldn't be too narrow either - moji and goi sections went better than I'd feared and reading is definitely my strongest area and I think I only messed up on the compare two opinions questions. Well, I'll know for sure at... the beginning of March, apparently. But really, as far as I'm concerned, I already have no regrets because it'd been a couple of years since I did anything that even comes close to studying for Japanese and I'm convinced that my Japanese really profited from those two months of 'serious' study.

When I was looking for something to read while waiting for the JLPT to start & during the break, I naturally wanted to pick something Japanese - to stay in the language, so to speak - and ended up picking up another volume of the Nezumi (鼠) series - a series of jidai shousetsu by Akagawa Jirou of which I read 3 volumes in January and when I started reading it I noticed almost immediately that it seemed easier to read now than back in January where I remember it being very borderline and almost too difficult to be enjoyable, so that was very nice. I've continued reading it since, but only really on the way to and from work (all 20 minutes of it =x )

Chinese
Chinese too was not safe from my general lack of motivation in 2017. I think I did like lesson 6 of NPCR in January and then started on lesson 7, but never finished it. In February I kept doing a bit of Skritter, iirc, but then that stopped too.

Instead of actually, ya know, learning Chinese, starting in February I started collecting reasons to learn Chinese instead. XD
It started with a cautious foray into Wuxia dramas that quickly blossomed into something of a Wuxia drama addiction and went on until April/May, by which point I had sort of ran out of translated dramas I was interested in but that was probably a good thing.

Afterwards I sort of started getting into Chinese (web) novels (in translation, of course!), starting with The King's Avatar and including Nirvana in Fire, Border Town Wanderer and Tales of Demons and Gods.

Towards the end of October a series I'd been looking forward to for quite some time - The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) - was finally nearly completely subbed and so I started watching that (and finished sometime towards the end of November. Chinese TV shows are long. Very long.)

At the beginning of November I actually started doing some Chinese again. However, I most definitely didn't feel like working through a textbook, so I chose a different method which has been working very well so far: I got a bunch of pretty easy Chinese graded readers (though still not easy for me at that point) with audio and every day I go through a couple of paragraphs (about 3-6), first listening to see how much I can understand, then listening again while reading along. Then I mark the words I don't understand and look them in a dictionary. Then I listen-read again to until I understand everything (usually 1-2 listens) and then I listen without looking at the text. If there's some grammar I don't understand (which happened a lot in the first reader) I'll look it up in the Chinese grammar wiki or google it. Of the words I looked up I pick 5-10 to add to my flashcards (I try to keep it at 5 because I don't want to have too many reviews due in the long run, but sometimes I can't help myself and pick a couple more, but more than 10 is definitely not okay, since I know I'll regret it.) I prioritize words I've encountered before but not added (due to the limit), words I remember from all my wuxia watching (but can't read) and words that seem useful. Afterwards I review the words and maybe do another listen of the whole reader up to the point where I got. Sometimes I repeat this listening (or previous stories) 1 or more times during the day, but that's purely optional. The next day I first review my flashcards, then re-listen (blindly) to the previous day's parts and then get started on my new paragraphs. Rinse and repeat. :D I've been doing this every day for the last 34 days and so far I can say: It's fun, it's (as of now) easy to keep up and I feel that it's very helpful. I've gone through 6 readers this way (each reader has 24 pages/paragraphs comprising 1000 characters).

Korean
*ducks* This is how it goes - I'm away for a year and suddenly come pack with a new language in tow. XD
I'll keep this one brief, since this post has already gone on for too long: Sometime in May, when I ran out of Wuxia dramas, I decided it'd be a good idea to try out kdramas instead! (Spoiler: It was not.) After picking up a word of Korean here and there (often due to a striking similarity to their Japanese counterparts); I decided to at least learn Hangul (and the correct pronounciation that goes with it), because Korean romanization is the worst. That being done, I could not squash the urge to learn some Korean because a) watching dramas all the time made me want to understand more and b) hearing Korean all the time made me like Korean (what can I say, I'm easy like that ^^#). Feeling a bit uninspired as to how to go about learning Korean (all while realizing that this was a very, very bad idea, naturally), I decided to get a Korean lesson on italki. I ended up liking the first teacher I tried out a lot, so I stayed with her and have been taking one Korean lesson per week in most weeks since then (barring 2 cases of scheduling conflicts and a period of 1 month where I ended up not taking lessons due to illness/business and general lethargy) for a total of 15 lessons so far. I combine this with pre-learning vocab for the upcoming lesson in Anki and, more recently, going through 5 sentences from Evita's sentence deck (+ reviewing previous cards of course) every day. I've been enjoying the italki lessons quite a bit, but pre-learning vocab is something I begin to dread more and more, especially since I'm learning the vocab productively (English -> Korean), so I'll be able to use it in the lesson. Right now the routine doesn't seem sustainable, but I'm not sure how to change it up. If I don't pre-learn the vocab the lesson just becomes frustrating because I'm really bad at remembering and using new words ad hoc. Any tips would be appreciated. [Okay, so that wasn't as brief as I'd hoped :? ]

Anyhow, that was my year so far. As for where to go from here, I'm not quite sure yet...
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Elenia » Fri Dec 08, 2017 12:03 pm

WOOOOO KOREAN!!

Also, it's so great to see you back! :D :D :D
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Dec 08, 2017 2:48 pm

Welcome back! I'd wondered where you'd gotten to. I think your "unproductive" year is almost as productive as my normal year.
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Yuurei » Mon Dec 11, 2017 2:43 pm

Elenia wrote:WOOOOO KOREAN!!

Also, it's so great to see you back! :D :D :D

Haha, thanks. Good to see you guys again!
Brun Ugle wrote:Welcome back! I'd wondered where you'd gotten to. I think your "unproductive" year is almost as productive as my normal year.

I still haven't caught up un your logs to see what the two of you have been up to in my absence, I'll have to do that posthaste!

@BrunUgle: I can't help but doubt that. I can still remember reading about you and Cavesa racing through 'Gramática de uso del español' as though it were a particularly gripping thriller instead of a workbook. :lol:



Stuff I did in week 49 (2017:)

French
*Watched 80 minutes of Grimm S3

Japanese
*Watched about 60 minutes of a Let's Play of Fire Emblem Fates [Part 1-3]
*Read a couple of pages of my Nezumi novel, but I didn't count, so I don't have an actual number

Chinese
*Went through reader number 7: Flog the Sheepskin
*Did daily vocab reviews (+5 new words/day)

Korean
*Did daily vocab reviews (no new words)
*Did daily sentence reviews (+5 new sentences/day)
*Had another italki lesson (probably the last one for the year due to upcoming Christmas parties etc. That's probably not such a bad thing though since I've been meaning to try out some other learning methods for Korean anyway, since I feel my current method is lacking in input...)



I was on the fence as to whether or not to start right in on setting weekly goals, since I have no plan and as such feel woefully underprepared for any kind of commitment, but then I had to remind myself that I'm not trying to go from 0 to 100 in one week here and that setting a handful of super easy goals is probably the way to go here anyway - first get myself hooked on weekly goals again and then reap the benefits. :lol:

In fact, reflecting on 2016, I'm pretty sure the goal setting worked so well for me for the longest time was because the hurdles were almost always very low and my list was full of things I was pretty likely going to do anyway instead of a list of things I felt I should be doing due to a misplaced sense of masochism. And by taking these things I was likely to do and making sure I actually did them (a feat that does not require a lot of willpower) week after week, I managed to secure not only a sense of accomplishment, but also a previously absent consistency, which in turn raised both my motivation and my progress and made me less likely to drop the ball. So these are some thoughts that I'll try to keep in mind for my upcoming weekly goals revival.

On that note, I feel, for example, rather tempted to add Spanish and Latin back to the mix at least in a sort of maintenance role, so that I don't forget what I learned completely (which would be especially frustrating for Latin, where I invested a lot of work in getting to the point where I am), but doing maintenance in Spanish and Latin is something that I'd be very unlikely to do this week if it's not on the list, and so it's more of a should and less of a want to and has no business on the goals list. [NB: I'm not completely opposed to putting a 'should' item on the list from time to time - in fact I certainly did so sometimes last year, but it should be done with caution and taking into account my current level of motivation, willpower and free time.] Instead, I'll keep that thought in mind and when I feel like doing something in those languages irrespective of my goals, then I'll consider the matter. A second problem with adding either of those languages to my list is that 2016 made it abundandly clear that 4 languages seems to be my upper limit and trying to add a fifth one never really worked out long-time - I might have to consider doing some rotating for maintenance languages in the future and see how that works out...



All that being said, here's my plans for the upcoming week:

Weekly Goals for Week 50 (2017)

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film
*Read 30 pages

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of Let's Plays

Chinese
*Read/listen to reader #8: Identifying the Thief by Touching a Bell

Korean
*Watch 40 minutes of anime/drama [subs allowed]
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Dec 11, 2017 8:29 pm

Yuurei wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Welcome back! I'd wondered where you'd gotten to. I think your "unproductive" year is almost as productive as my normal year.

I still haven't caught up un your logs to see what the two of you have been up to in my absence, I'll have to do that posthaste!

@BrunUgle: I can't help but doubt that. I can still remember reading about you and Cavesa racing through 'Gramática de uso del español' as though it were a particularly gripping thriller instead of a workbook. :lol:


Ummm. :? This year we were supposed to do level C. I think I did the first two lessons.
But next year, I'll finish it for sure. :D
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Yuurei » Thu Dec 14, 2017 12:39 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:
Yuurei wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Welcome back! I'd wondered where you'd gotten to. I think your "unproductive" year is almost as productive as my normal year.

I still haven't caught up un your logs to see what the two of you have been up to in my absence, I'll have to do that posthaste!

@BrunUgle: I can't help but doubt that. I can still remember reading about you and Cavesa racing through 'Gramática de uso del español' as though it were a particularly gripping thriller instead of a workbook. :lol:


Ummm. :? This year we were supposed to do level C. I think I did the first two lessons.
But next year, I'll finish it for sure. :D

Haha, I see. It just left such an impression on me last year. :lol:

Chinese
In other news, I've had some great successes with Chinese this week that I wanted to share. Apparently doing my intensive listening/reading payed off, because when I went through reader number 8 this week I was able to listen to quite a few paragraphs with very good understanding while blind-listening to them and I actually went through the whole reader in 3 days. That might have been coincidence, but then today I started reader no. 9 and after going through the first 7 paragraphs in the usual manner, picking out 7 words to add to my flashcards, I actually went and blind-listened to the rest of the reader and was able to understand it almost perfectly - minus maybe 2 or 3 words that gave me some trouble, but not enough to detract my general understanding! I'll still go through the rest of the reader again tomorrow to pick up the missing vocab (frequently there are words which I recognize while listening [the payoff of all those Wuxia dramas, I tell ya!], but can't actually read), but I was quite happy to see that the method seems to be working for me. (Not to mention, it's also quite fun!)

Afterwards I decided to also test my reading comprehension for unknown texts and gave the first (sample) chapter of the Mandarin Companion level 1 reader "Emma" (an adaption of Jane Austen's 'Emma') a try. I'd actually already taken a look at that chapter a while ago - after I'd gone through somewhere between 1 and 3 of my readers, I don't quite remember - and at that time, although it didn't seem too difficult, it was definitely too difficult for me to read extensively due to too many unknown words and I stopped reading after a page. Well, this time I read through the whole sample chapter and - besides the glossed 'unknown words' there were only 2-3 words that gave me trouble and otherwise I could read it just fine (although obviously still way too slowly). :D
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Yuurei » Mon Dec 18, 2017 2:44 pm

Well, that was a pretty good week, I'd say. :) Putting a bit of French reading on my list was all the push I needed to finish my novel completely and - although the novel as such disappointed me somewhat in the second half (unnecessary cliches, unnecessary keeping the main character in the dark for no reason at all) - I find myself unexpectedly motivated to read more French right now! In fact, I was kind of, low-key, thinking that - now that I've managed to read at least one French book this year (:V) - I might try and squeeze in a Spanish novel as well while I'm at it, but I've been unable to find anything at all in Spanish that I want to read, for some reason, but I keep stumbling over French books (both original and translated) that I want to read. So, yeah, that's that. :D



Weekly Goals for Week 50 (2017) - All done \o/

French
*Watch 80 minutes of TV/film [Grimm S3 ep. 15-16]
*Read 30 pages [Les Manteaux de Gloire]

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of Let's Plays (or similar)

Chinese
*Read/listen to reader #8: Identifying the Thief by Touching a Bell

Korean
*Watch 40 minutes of anime/drama [subs allowed] [I Hear Your Voice ep. 1]

Other stuff I did:
French: Finished reading Les Manteaux de Gloire (+156 pages).
Chinese: Finished studying reader #9 (Tian Ji and the Horse Racing) and started on reader #10 (Jingwei Tries to Fill Up the Sea) [18/24 pages]; Daily Anki reviews (5-10 new cards/day)
Korean: Started studying an Anki deck based on the kdrama I Hear Your Voice (produced with emk's excellent Substudy) [~10 new cards/day + daily reviews]; Daily Anki reviews of Evita's grammar sentence deck [5 new cards/day]; Watched I Hear Your Voice ep.2.

Korean & Substudy
So, at the beginning of last week I decided to try out emk's Substudy to make a deck for Korean. It's based on the drama I Hear Your Voice, which I watched sometime in spring and liked quite a lot and I thought of all the dramas I liked, this one might be the one with the most 'normal' language, and thus most suited towards SRSing. I think an animated series like Avatar or Hikaru no Go might be better suited as a first subs2srs deck (especially when you're basically still a beginner like me), but unfortunately I don't know of any such series that exists in Korean with accurate subs, so dramas is the best I can do. I wasn't sure before I started, whether subs2srs would indeed be the right thing for me in general and whether a deck based on I Hear Your Voice would be a good choice in particular, but after a couple of days I've already become quite fond of my deck and think that this could be a pretty good method - although it's still a bit too early to be sure.
I do delete some cards due to the subs not matching the audio, unclear pronounciation and duplicates as I go, but all in all the vast majority of cards is pretty much perfect. So far I suspend cards that I judge too long/complicated/difficult in favor of easier pickings, but I do keep long cards where I know the majority of the vocab and can generally make out the sense of the sentence after seeing the translation. Even of the ones I keep though, most are difficult - people speak fast, sounds merge into one another and there's quite a bit of grammar I haven't exactly encountered before and I still have to work out the best way to deal with that. Right now I tend to opt towards the "Good" button even when my comprehension isn't all that good - knowing that the card will come back and I'll familiarize myself with it over time and disinclined to brute-force it into my brain from the get-go. I do usually listen to the card again another 2 times before moving on in those cases. I think I'll give it another week to see whether that approach produces results or whether I need to be stricter. I do intend to become stricter as time goes on, but right now there's a lot of new vocab and grammar being thrown at me at lightning speed and I'm not sure repeating each card ad nauseum would be very enjoyable.



Weekly Goals for Week 51 (2017)

French
*Read 30 pages

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of Let's Plays (or similar)

Chinese
*Finish reader #10 (Jingwei Tries to Fill Up the Sea)
*Study reader #11 (Mr Dongguo and the Wolf)

Korean
*Watch 40 minutes of anime/drama [subs allowed]
3 x

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Yuurei
Green Belt
Posts: 266
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:57 am
Languages: German (N), English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, Italian
Studying: Japanese, Chinese, Korean
Maintaining: French, Spanish
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1721
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Re: Yuurei's Language Log (FR, JA, LA, ZH, KO)

Postby Yuurei » Mon Dec 25, 2017 6:14 pm

Weekly Goals for Week 51 (2017) - All done \o/

French
*Read 30 pages [Le Chevalier Rouge]

Japanese
*Watch 60 minutes of Let's Plays (or similar)

Chinese
*Finish reader #10 (Jingwei Tries to Fill Up the Sea)
*Study reader #11 (Mr Dongguo and the Wolf)

Korean
*Watch 40 minutes of anime/drama [subs allowed] [I Hear Your Voice ep.3]

Other stuff I did:
French: Watched 2 episodes of Grimm (S3 ep. 17-18).
Spanish: Watched 2 episodes of Buffy (S1 ep. 1-2).
Chinese: Finished reader #12 (The Legend of Chinese New Year's Eve); started studying reader #13 (The Cricket) [10/24 pages].
Korean: Studied my Substudy Anki deck [~10 new cards/day; 7 days].



Weekly Goals for Week 52 (2017)

French
*Read 30 pages

Japanese
*Read 2 manga volumes

Chinese
*Finish RB level S reader #13 (The Cricket)
*Study 2 chapters of CB level 1 reader #1 (Wrong, wrong, wrong!)
*Read 20 pages of Emma (MC level 1 reader) [Extensive reading]
Legend: RB: Rainbow Bridge; CB: Chinese Breeze; MC: Mandarin Companion

Korean
*Study I Hear Your Voice Substudy Anki deck (at least 5 days)
*Study grammar sentence deck (at least 5 days)

I'm really tired today (due to extreme lack of sleep), so I'll actually be brief for a change: The week went well - I even managed to sneak a bit of Spanish in there (yay!). I was weirdly in the mood to re-watch Buffy (I mean, it has been 6.5 years since I watched season 1 in French) and I thought it might be nice to use that enthusiasm for watching it in Spanish, since it'll be a really effortless way to maintain my Spanish a bit. Long-running series are really the best for that, since it keeps me from having to look for something new to watch every few weeks. Also, I really enjoyed Buffy a lot the first time around. :)
My Korean substudy deck is going really well and I'm still enjoying it - will probably write more about that in a week or two.
As for Chinese, I actually finished the last of my lowest level readers today! \o/ The readers I've been reading are from the Rainbow Bridge Graded Readers series - level S (150 word level - although I'm 99% sure that they mean 150 characters, and not words, because otherwise it doesn't work out numerically), which I've been enjoying a lot. Next up is level 1 (300 characters) from both the Rainbow Bridge Graded Readers series and the Chinese Breeze series of graded readers. The CB readers are quite a bit longer than the RB readers (around 8000 characters for CB vs 2500 characters for RB at level 1), but from my first look at both the CB readers seem a bit easier, so I decided to start with those. Also, I've decided to add a bit of extensive reading into the mix (basically no looking up of words and no audio), since that is also important.

Happy Holidays to all of you!
7 x


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