TAC 2017-2018 dEhiN

[dEhiN]

Weekly Goals:

Tamil

• Do Year 1, Unit 1, Exercise 3 of TLIC - due by 08/04
• Do Year 1, Unit 1, Exercise 4 of TLIC - due by 08/04

Because I didn't get to do much language study last week, I'm going to keep the focus on Tamil this week and just stick with the Study Group goals. I will also try and catch up a bit with Anki and my language notebook. I have 4 pages worth of notes from my notebook that I need to add to Anki. Some of them are Tamil grammar notes from TLIC, but I want to create flashcards based on those notes nonetheless. I also still have new Anki flashcards to learn. I've been going at a slow pace for the past 2-3 weeks basically because of things like getting ready for camping, camping, etc. In this case, slow has meant sometimes several days of not doing any new flashcards. As a result, I still have 8 new French cards, 155 new Korean cards, 39 new Spanish cards, and 9 new Tamil cards.

I'm debating about dropping the Tamil tutor lessons once and for all. My tutor contacted me about what dates I'm available for classes in August. I kept the original dates (which were set up based on every other week) of Aug 4 and Aug 18. However, I'm not sure if private tutoring is really my thing. I have been doing it for about a year now (solely for Tamil), but in truth, I've only had maybe 15 or 20 lessons at most. That's because I kept cancelling for various reasons, including having months where I couldn't commit.

I think that going at my own pace using my own resources works best for me. Sure, there's the frustration sometimes of feeling like my learning is haphazard, but part of what would help with that is sticking to one resource. And, despite the haphazard feeling, I have been improving over the years while going at my own pace.

I still have until Aug 3 to cancel, although if I'm cancelling the lessons for good, in good conscious I want to let my tutor know a few days in advance.

[dEhiN]

So I decided to cancel the tutoring lessons. I'm just going to stick with the study group on here. Even if we go at a slow pace some weeks, doing it with Vijay is helping me to at least keep going, which means eventually we'll finish the course.

I finished this week's goals, so I might as well do an update while I'm writing this post.

Tamil

• Do Year 1, Unit 1, Exercise 3 of TLIC
• Do Year 1, Unit 1, Exercise 4 of TLIC

While doing Exercise 3, I had to look back at the grammar section from Dialogue 4. I realized that I didn't write out all the sandhi rules in my language notebook because some of them were part of the second half of the grammar section. So I'm going to add back one of the 2 goals from 2 weeks ago that I never completed. I also looked ahead at Dialogue 5 of TLIC and the grammar section looks like a lot. So I think next week I'm going to focus on writing out the grammar notes from Dialogue 4, as well as go through Dialogue 5 and write out the grammar notes from it. Perhaps the week after I'll get around to creating Anki flashcards from all those notes.

Weekly Goals (for next week):

Tamil

• Add notes from the grammar section of Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 4 of TLIC to my language notebook - due by Aug 11
• Go through Dialogue 5 of Year 1, Unit 1 of TLIC and add notes from the grammar section to my language notebook - due by Aug 11

[dEhiN]

I forgot to update my weekly goals, but in the Tamil Study group, we decided to do Dialogues 5 and 6 of TLIC. In addition, I decided to not worry about adding grammar notes from the dialogues to my language notebook or making Anki flashcards. However, the dialogues do contain new vocabulary which I want to eventually go through and add.

Weekly Goals:

Tamil

• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 5 of TLIC - due by Aug 11
• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 6 of TLIC- due by Aug 11

[dEhiN]

I decided to drop Swedish, Korean and Romanian from my active languages. I suspended my Anki deck for them. Language learning, while still enjoyable and a hobby, doesn't seem to have as big a place in my life right now as it used to. I think it's time I recognize and accept that rather than try to fight it and keep it at the same level of priority as in the past.

I still want to go through TLIC with the Tamil Study group. I also still want to keep going through Anki for French, Spanish, Portuguese and Tamil, including adding new vocabulary that I come across. I was also thinking about starting up a French Study group with Vijay and going through that website that he mentioned a few pages back in my TAC. (I'm too lazy to search for it right now, but hopefully he has the link saved; if not, I think I do). So, Vijay, when you read this, what do you say? I'm enjoying going through a website together. I'm finding it easier in some ways than a book.

As for Spanish and Portuguese, right now I'm not going to go through any particular resource - on my own or with anyone else. I will try to slowly add things to Anki that I need to learn and that would help me shore up gaps in my knowledge. Things such as the numbers 20 - 100 in both languages, and the conjugations for the preterite/imperfect/future tenses as well as the conditional present mood for the regular verbs and some common irregular ones. I already know most of the numbers up to 100 in both languages, but the gaps I have revolve around spelling, and, for a few numbers, pronunciation. These are things that would help me greatly in reading, understanding, and using both languages.

[vijayjohn]

I say oui and let's find ways to start study groups for Spanish and Portuguese while we're at it.

[księżycowy]

So now that you've trimmed your list, is there any room for Japanese now?

[vijayjohn]

At first, I thought you were talking to me, and my reflexive reaction was "trim my list? Me?!? Who do you think you're talking to?!" And then I realized who you were talking to.

[księżycowy]

Unless you truely wanna go mad, it might not be a bad idea.

[dEhiN]

I say oui and let's find ways to start study groups for Spanish and Portuguese while we're at it.

Sure, though maybe one step at a time is better. I apparently have a problem of overcommitting and then having to bail. (Ok, well maybe it's not a problem. But it feels like I've done that a few times on here. )

So now that you've trimmed your list, is there any room for Japanese now?

Didn't you read what I wrote above?! :O The point of trimming my list is because I don't have the time to dedicate toward a lot of language study.

[dEhiN]

I say oui

As I was hitting submit on the last reply, I was reminded of a joke I saw on Frasier yesterday. Frasier was at a coffee shop, and Niles came in with a sack of flour (which he was pretending to be a baby and carrying around like one of those home economics exercises they do with high school kids to help them prepare for parenthood). So he said to Frasier, "may we join you?", to which Frasier replied "mais, oui".

[księżycowy]

Didn't you read what I wrote above?! :O The point of trimming my list is because I don't have the time to dedicate toward a lot of language study.

So that you have more time for Japanese, right?

That's what I got out of what you said anyway.

[vijayjohn]

Unless you truely wanna go mad, it might not be a bad idea.

Sweetheart, I have LIDS, remember? So you're way too late!

I say oui and let's find ways to start study groups for Spanish and Portuguese while we're at it.

Sure, though maybe one step at a time is better. I apparently have a problem of overcommitting and then having to bail. (Ok, well maybe it's not a problem. But it feels like I've done that a few times on here. )

Fair enough! I...can always use a slower pace anyway.

As I was hitting submit on the last reply, I was reminded of a joke I saw on Frasier yesterday. Frasier was at a coffee shop, and Niles came in with a sack of flour (which he was pretending to be a baby and carrying around like one of those home economics exercises they do with high school kids to help them prepare for parenthood). So he said to Frasier, "may we join you?", to which Frasier replied "mais, oui".

I honestly had to read that through twice to get the joke, but that's got to be my favorite American TV series ever.

[dEhiN]

Update time:

So I'm a couple of days late, but better late than never!

Tamil

• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 5 of TLIC
• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 6 of TLIC

[dEhiN]

Weekly Goals:

Tamil

• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 6 of TLIC - due by Aug 18

As I wrote in the Tamil Study Group thread, I'm still debating on whether to add the new vocabulary from the dialogues (plus their associated notes) to my notebook and Anki. I didn't do that for Dialogue 5, and part of me wants to because the associated note contained some new postpositions that I never knew existed in Tamil. But part of me doesn't want to revisit the dialogue again, but would rather just forge ahead.

[dEhiN]

Didn't you read what I wrote above?! :O The point of trimming my list is because I don't have the time to dedicate toward a lot of language study.

So that you have more time for Japanese, right?

That's what I got out of what you said anyway.

Sure.....that's exactly what I meant!

Fair enough! I...can always use a slower pace anyway.

Yay! Let's keep doing Tamil, because I do feel like it's helping. Learning both the grammar and some new words along the way are helping me to feel more comfortable with Tamil. Perhaps in about a month we can start that French course (if you're still interested at that point)?

:lol: I honestly had to read that through twice to get the joke, but that's got to be my favorite American TV series ever.

It's great, isn't it?! My girlfriend and I are going through the whole series. I've already gone through seasons 1 and 2, and am now on 3. I especially like the episode where they speak German and Spanish at the same time. I could get the Spanish - though it helped that the subtitles were on, and that the subs showed the Spanish and German without translating - but not the German since I haven't been learning it.

[dEhiN]

As I wrote in the Tamil Study Group thread, I'm still debating on whether to add the new vocabulary from the dialogues (plus their associated notes) to my notebook and Anki. I didn't do that for Dialogue 5, and part of me wants to because the associated note contained some new postpositions that I never knew existed in Tamil. But part of me doesn't want to revisit the dialogue again, but would rather just forge ahead.

So after I wrote this, I read through Saim's Log, and realized that he doesn't seem so focused on vocab-collecting. It made me start to rethink the approach that I guess I've subconsciously been taking for the past year and a half or so: build up my languages by building up my vocabulary base. I've done this especially with French. My current Anki deck for French has quite a lot of uncommon words that I came across once or twice, and then looked up the meaning. A lot of those cards have multiple meanings because when I'd look up the meaning, instead of just adding in the definition that fit for the context in which I came across the word, I would add all the senses of the word. And then, since my cards are straight vocabulary devoid of any (sentence) context, I have struggled with remembering some cards - especially ones with unrelated senses. I wrote on here a while back about changing my cards to sentence-based. But the truth is I haven't done that. The only things I started doing a few days back was, when reviewing my French deck, whittling down cards with multiple (and especially unrelated) senses to just one or two, and suspending a few cards with uncommon words.

Maybe I need to rethink the importance I've been placing on building my vocabulary base? Sure, it's been fun at times trying to garner new words in any of my languages. I still generally have a >= 90% retention rate in Anki. I think for learning cards it's like ~99%, for short-term review cards it's like ~97%, and for long-term review cards it's like ~95%. But overall I honestly haven't felt a great sense of progress. This is particularly true of French where I feel like I've been plateauing at the B2-ish level for a good year or so. But I've felt this way even with my other languages, including the 3 that I recently dropped.

I don't know what other method to use. I don't know how to make language study fun again. How do I give myself that all-important sense of progress that generates satisfaction with my efforts, and motivates me to keep putting in more effort?

[Saim]

I don't know what other method to use. I don't know how to make language study fun again. How do I give myself that all-important sense of progress that generates satisfaction with my efforts, and motivates me to keep putting in more effort?

How much do you follow French-language media? Maybe you should drop the cards for a bit and try an "internet immersion" method, where you're trying to get as much French exposure as possible from varied sources (forums, songs, films, YouTube videos, Facebook memes, really anything).

What I did last September was export all my decks and then delete them from Anki. That way I didn't feel bad about dropping them because I can still go back to them if I really want to.

[dEhiN]

Update time:

Tamil

• Go through Year 1, Unit 1, Dialogue 6 of TLIC

I finished Dialogue 6, though I just did it today. I also kept up with Anki, which I'm happy about. I finally added new vocabulary from 4 pages of my notebook to Anki, totalling about 40 new words (actually 47, but seven of those were Swedish words, and since I'm no longer doing Swedish, I'm not going to learn them; I still added them to Anki for whenever I decide to return to Swedish). I even wrote down in my notebook some of the new vocabulary and grammar stuff from Dialogue 6.

[dEhiN]

How much do you follow French-language media? Maybe you should drop the cards for a bit and try an "internet immersion" method, where you're trying to get as much French exposure as possible from varied sources (forums, songs, films, YouTube videos, Facebook memes, really anything).

Truth be told, I don't follow French-language media that much. Over the years, I have gone through periods of trying to consume more things in French. I'm not sure if you remember my French journey, but basically I started relearning it in 2011. At the time, and for the first 3 years or so, I used a lot of language exchange partners, both online (through LanguageExchange.com, etc.) and offline (through Meetups and Couchsurfing events). Most of them were from France. I got a lot of conversation practice, which was great. The biggest problem was that I wasn't supplementing all that practice with self-study by going through some resource to learn new vocabulary and grammar. I was relying on the corrections and teaching that comes from conversation practice.

Then Meera (whom I had met through a language exchange website) introduced me to UniLang. So, from about 2014 until now, I shifted my approach to a more text-based one that did include using resources such as books, dictionaries, and one college French class. However, during this time my conversational skills slipped, and while my overall French knowledge went up, I was learning how to use any new vocabulary or grammar in writing, as well as recognize it in reading. And the resources I used were almost exclusively text-based (even if some of them were phone apps, such as WordReference's dictionary app, etc.). I have tried, especially last year, to watch the occasional French series on Netflix. But I invariably start off with French audio and English subtitles, and as a result, I focus so much more on the English subtitles that I barely focus on the audio to improve my listening skills. Either that, or I sometimes would try the first episode with only French audio, and then with only English audio in an attempt to improve my listening skills. But this would also backfire on me, because after listening to the episode in English, I would then continue the series in English.

These past 5 months, I've been in a new relationship with someone who's an Anglophone but who went to French Immersion School up until grade 8, and then did her Bachelors in French Language and Linguistics. As a result, even though it's been almost 20 years since her uni days, she hasn't forgotten all her French. So we have talked in French, which has benefited both of us. I've slowly improved my speaking and listening abilities, as well as learned the odd new word. The problem is that we're both native English speakers, and so maybe only about 10-15% of our conversations are in French. For some reason, I haven't even gotten into consuming French Youtube videos or French memes. It could be because I'm generally not a big consumer of Youtube videos; I mostly have only used Youtube to watch music videos (or just listen to the song in the background). I have some friends on Facebook who write in French, and I'm also on a polyglot group as well as two French groups on Facebook. So, I do get a chance to read the occasional French post. Perhaps it's time I make more of a concerted effort to immerse myself into French media? I could aim to slowly change at least half of the media I consume into French - be it on TV, Netflix, the radio, Youtube, the Internet, etc.?

What I did last September was export all my decks and then delete them from Anki. That way I didn't feel bad about dropping them because I can still go back to them if I really want to.

That's a good idea; my solution wasn't to export them but to suspend them. I have a deck called Stored Languages, where I basically have suspended cards in any languages I'm not currently studying. In the past though, I would suspend those cards and then also reschedule them to make them new. This time around, when I dropped Swedish, Korean and Romanian, I just suspended them. I figure that way, whenever I get around to picking up these languages again, I could decide at that point whether to continue the cards that are already in review as review, or relearn all of them as new cards.

[Saim]

I have tried, especially last year, to watch the occasional French series on Netflix. But I invariably start off with French audio and English subtitles, and as a result, I focus so much more on the English subtitles that I barely focus on the audio to improve my listening skills. Either that, or I sometimes would try the first episode with only French audio, and then with only English audio in an attempt to improve my listening skills. But this would also backfire on me, because after listening to the episode in English, I would then continue the series in English.

I think you're at the point where you'd seriously benefit from watching things in French with French subtitles. You're in luck because French is one of the languages where there is a lot of subtitled material. I think you could also do shorter sessions of intensive listening (actively trying to look up new words, understand as much as possible; this is much easier for material with transcripts or with subtitles in the target language) that will ease you into longer periods of extensive listening.

Here are two Facebook pages that upload short French videos with subtitles:

https://www.facebook.com/brutofficiel/

https://www.facebook.com/ajplusfrancais/

On YouTube there's a function that allows you to search subtitled videos only.

You could try checking out one of those graded readers for foreigners with audio that are around. I'm not sure if they're available in Canada (I never saw them in Australia), but in Europe they're quite common. This sort of thing: https://www.cle-international.com/reche ... facile-589. I noticed that after going through only one of them my comprehension in French skyrocketed.

If you look around a bit you should also be able to find entire films in French with French subtitles. If there's a French film you really want to watch with subtitles but can't find them on the internet, the DVD will likely have French subtitles (it may be worth buying the DVD if you know you'll watch it several times and will use the subtitles as study material).