A mini plateau and goal setting

I realised the other day that I had almost forgotten about my blog completely.. oops! I think that was just because I really had nothing on my mind that would be of any interest or that I had to get off my chest. I think I just need to rant a little, and maybe someone out there will have some good advice for me!

Ok let's start with German. I got really excited at the beginning of the week when I pulled out some Deutsch perfekt magazines that I had bought ages ago. I flipped through and found some of the really easy texts and was surprised that with the help of a dictionary I was able to read them through quite easily. So I put a couple of LingQ and they came up as like 40% unknown words... cool! Anyway, after doing this for a few articles I began to get quite pissy when I came to words which I know that I have learned in the past and really should know what the mean... I'm finding that I learn say 2o words and 5 of the old ones I learned a while ago just drop out of my head. It's so irritating! But to be fair, reading is probably what I'm best at. I can take the time to go through slowly and make sure I understand thing. Trying to have a conversation with someone... drives me insane. Even when they speak slowly for me, half the time I still don't get it.. let alone thinking fast enough to reply. I end up looking like a total retard.. UGH. I guess I just need to practice more. I think sometimes I do just work myself up though.

I also have been thinking about goal setting and how useful (or not useful) it is. For German it's easy to set goals. If I have a test coming up I know I have to learn this many words on this topic etc. But for French and Russian it's a little trickier since I don't have a teacher or anyway of really assessing myself. Well that's a lie, there are ways I can do it, it's just easier than it would be for German. But for French and Russian I am going to set myself goals for the next since months.

(I switched to the Princeton course for Russian since it was completely free and I had heard great things about it from other people so I'm slowly working through that now. You can find it here http://tinyurl.com/pcourse1001 )

Goals for Russian:
- complete 2-3 lessons per week of the Princeton course using LingQ as an aid
- after 6 months have completed at least 60-70 of the lessons in SLA101

Goals for French:
- reach at least a B1 level by January 2010 using LingQ as the primary tool for learning.
- have my first conversations with a French tutor by November and after that continue to have regular conversations with them.

Of course I will add to these goals once I have pondered them a little more. And also depending on time constraints... but I think that if I stick to it I will see a noticeable improvement in my ability in all my languages by the beginning of 2010!

What's been happening

Ok so I've decided to take a little break from Russian... I was really starting to not enjoy it so I thought it would be better to just postpone it for a bit until I got back my motivation. I think you and I both know that learning a language should never be a chore, there really isn't much point in doing it if you're not going to enjoy! I was listening to some really cool French songs the other day, so I've decided to play around with that for a bit. It's also on my unofficial pencil list of languages I really want to learn, so no harm really. Music is such a beautiful thing, and it really gets me excited and motivated to get into a language when I have good songs to listen to in it. That's just me.

Back to Russian though, I found a course on the internet (http://www.gefix.net/sazov/) which looked really good. It was written for and used by mainly degree level students, which is perfect for me as it is written in a style that I'm familiar with. The 'textbook' is free though you will have to pay for the audio cd's to be sent to you (at reasonable price). When I decide to get started with Russian again I'm going to take my time and work through this course using the LingQ method. Hopefully this will get me up to a level where I will be able to hold small conversations and get through basic content in the LingQ library (here's hoping).

Well my holidays are officially over in 20 minutes and I will be back at Uni. That back to German lectures which I really enjoy. We have such a small chance that we get a lot of opportunity to speak with the lecturer. We work through a textbook and we also have a really good workbook which, at the end of each chapter, offers an outline for doing a written composition (or journal). Heh, my little epiphany... "why don't I submit these journal entries in LingQ" (as they're not marked in my course). Wow... I am a clever boy :D. I'm really looking forward to having my first German conversation with my tutor. I guess it will just give me a real sense of achievement, but I'm not going to force it. I will be ready when I'm ready.

If anyone has worked through the Russian course I'm going to use (the link is above), then I'd love for you to get in touch and let me know how it went for you.

Time

Here's my revelation for the week... learning a language takes time.... I know it sounds so simple, but it is still something I am having to come to terms with. I like to rush things and leave them to the last minute. You can't do that with language learning and it's for me to get used to! Right now, I'm seeing absolutely no progress in my Russian. I can't seem to figure out how things fit together and am basically just learning a few simple greetings and phrases and it's getting me down and making me reconsider why I'm doing such a hard language and not something a little easier like French or Spanish. Then I had a little think about it, I have only been seriously working on Russian for a few weeks. Is that really enough time to have acquainted myself with the language? God no! I can't find the forum post but I vaguely remember it saying that it takes a good 100 hours to get fully acquainted with a language.. and here I am upset that I'm not able to construct sentences and speak after a few weeks! Reality check!

Another thing that I'm having trouble with is learning vocabulary. Should I be learning the dictionary form of words (i.e masc. nom.) or should I learn the form that is in the text I'm reading and not bother thinking about case, gender ect? In Russian I've found that every word changes ALL THE TIME and it really just confuses me :S. I might just try finding the dictionary form and figuring out why the word in the text has changed... maybe it's being too pedantic but I will find out :D

Why reading and listening is important

This link was shared on the LinQ forums about the importance of reading in learning a foreign language and why it should be the focus as opposed to learning grammar by heart: http://www.benikomason.net/

I find this most applicable to my German learning at the moment (since I'm much more capable in that than in Russian right now). I'm learning German at University as well, which is through a grammar based approach and it's alright. A lot of the time though it's just boring. I am at the top of my class, so for me we go through all the content so slowly and I find myself daydreaming out the window and not really learning much at all. Anything we do study as well has be pre-determined by the authors of the book what is interesting and half the time it's really not. I seem to make the most progress in my studies when I'm at home and reading something that interests me. If I'm unsure on a why the structure of a particular sentence is the way it is, I can clarify it instead of spending hours and hours learning tables of grammar.

However, I do not believe that writing and speaking should be disregarded. One of the most helpful things I do is that when I'm well aquainted with the vocabulary of a some content (after much listening, reading, and going throught some flashcards) I write. For me, being able to relate the words I have learned to myself, my friends and my immediate surroundings and then writing it down into my own personal context really solidifies this new information. Read, read, read, listen, listen, listen and relate. If I cannot relate to something (and this goes with anything) I find it hard to understand it.

My new favourite thing to do at LinQ is that when I LingQ a word (because it's unknown to me) I can make little tags for that word or phrase so that when I go into my vocabulary list I can seperate the words into the categories I have chosen. I love learning words in categories. And the great thing is you can make multiple tags for each word. Just more fun organising for me :D. So in Russian if I wanted to learn greetings and goodbyes, or introductions I just click on the tag and I can learn things in one of those categories. Fun!

Thoughts of the day and something I've learned

Today was my first conversation with my tutor at LingQ, Rasana. It was a lot more helpful than I thought. Even though I only knew a few basic phrases and greetings, listening to her saying them helped with my understanding and comprehension so much more than just listening to the same audio multiple times. I think that every opportunity to practice (even if it is only from a small knowledge base) is useful for me right now. Since starting at LingQ I have heard many times about the importance of listening. Even at the beginning, every chance to listen to authentic, natural speaking that I understand is so valuable.

Going through my course at LingQ (which just has very simple dialogues) is providing me with a basis for further study. Like the dialogue I'm linking at the moment has phrases like "I'm going to the postshop" and this has made me think about the verb and how this word relates to this one in that context. It's like, this phrase is in this particular context, now I have to go and apply this to another context i.e. what would I say if my friend is going to cinema instead.

I have been thinking a lot about grammar recently. I understand the importance of learning words (lots and lots of words) but I also need the structure that grammar provides. So I've decided that each week I will choose a particular grammar point which is relevant to the content I'm studying and maybe not learn in by heart but at least get a vague understanding of it. Just so that when I'm doing my own writing, I will think, "ah yes, this verb ends in this... doesn't it have a different conjugation pattern because of it?" (I imagine this more of little alarm bells going off in my head) and then be able to go and clarify it. Slowly over time, as well as building up a vocabulary base, I will also build up some of the important grammar aspects of the language. We will see how successful this is :D

Here we go...

So... I thought it might be fun to start a blog. Everyone else seems to be doing at the moment anyway and who am I but a sheep!

Well from the title you can probably guess that this one is going to be about languages, language learning and my journey/experiences. One day I hope to be able to communicate in multiple languages, hence, possible polyglot.

Currently I am taking German papers at university and learning Russian through Lingq (www.lingq.com). I'd say I'm not quite a beginner in German, however I'm still not very proficient either. Russian... well that's a different. I'm starting from scratch using Lingq system and of course the helpful tutors.

I'm really not very good with goals but I guess I should put some down. At the moment my focus is on Russian but when I start working on German again, I don't know (probably when B semester starts).
Anyway, after about 2 months I'm hoping that my mouth will be used to the strange (from an English speaker perspective) consonant clusters in Russian and after 6 months I will be at least at a Beginner II level... that's the plan anyway. Maybe after a year or so I might be writing this in Russian or German, we'll see about that :D. For the moment I will just have to rant in English....