Haven’t updated in awhile. Probably gonna update once a week-ish since I do the same shiet everyday lol.

-completed more lessons on duolingo
-watched 4th epsiode of extra en espanol
-actively listening to spanish music
-Practicing with friends


Hopefully everything is going well for you guys and nobody gave up :P.

Been living in China for nearly 5 years. Can confirm that Chinese is super hard to learn, especially as I live in a city where they speak a strong dialect that is very very different to mandarin, meaning all the online learning tools can only do so much for me.

My reading is far, far better than listening and speaking, which is kind of the opposite that I expected when I first started learning chinese!

I never really sat down and listened to pimsluer - mostly when I’m driving and on the train standing. I agree about the it’s a waste of time if you just listen too it at a table and do nothing else.
Overall imo it’s a great addition to your learning material but not essential

FLOTD:
Pimsleur French 3 Lessons 10 and 11.

italki tutor session: 45 minutes
Agreed. I haven't come across a language learning program that takes a learner from knowing nothing about a language, to being able to function seamlessly in the target language's society. There's so many different verticals one has to learn to acquiring a language. Grammar is one, speaking and pronunciation is another, and then the great equalizer that humbles everyone is "hearing and comprehending" the target language. Then if you're REALLY ambitious and went with arabic, mandarin, Japanese, Russian, you have a whole new alphabet to learn as well.

The reason why USA school education is so poverty at language learning is because it's rooted in grammatical work and puts speech and listening as a 20% afterthought.

Pimsleur -I recommend because it's the quickest format for taking you to from knowing nothing to actually speaking the language you want to learn. It provides instant reward and gratification from the very first lesson. That reward builds a desire to continue and as most in here will agree, simply sticking to the goal of learning a language is 70% of the battle. Pimsleur also does a good job of upping the speech speed as you progress (a fault in Assimil). The huge drawback on Pimsleur is the vocabulary selection in the entry stages, and you're limited to the world/vocab taught to you. That said, it's also a positive, as there is no "information overload" to scare you away. Just the vocab they spoon-feed you each lesson.


Assimil -I grabbed after Pimsleur and it was the perfect progression for me. After completing Pimsleur French 1 in a month or so, I had a nice pronunciation, mouth muscle memory, and couple hundred words foundation built up but minimal idea on how to construct my own sentences. Assimil has a ton of grammatical notes each lesson that explain the concepts without being dry. They're explained to you like it's a friend talking to you rather than a dry ass dictionary. Assimil lessons are also shorter and more bitesized, so if you only have 20minutes to spare in your day, you can sit down with one lesson in Assimil and drill it 3 or 4 times until it's really great in your head. I would say Assimil is the more complete language program as a standalone, but the major knock on Assimil is that the recordings are laughably slow and unrealistic. They don't speed up as you progress either. So you get this great grammar base with Assimil, you get speech practice but you still get completely mod-negged speaking to people in the target language because they're talk 3 to 4 times faster than everything you've heard.


I dabbled in Michel Thomas but listening to the students fuk up in the lessons was driving me crazy so I still stand by Pimsleur coupled with Assimil as the "Holy Duo" of language acquisition. I've told friends to run through the first level of Pimsleur in their target language just to get them through that honey moon "Hey I'm speaking the language!" phase, then Assimil for the grammar bits and beyond for more "active studying" bits. Everything after that is really just finding target youtube/movies/podcasts that you enjoy enough to listen to regularly in order to build your listening/comprehension (This is the hardest part in my opinion)



EDIT: For the truly sadistic FAs who want to go full obsessive Smeagol over their studying. The US Department of State's free FSI Language learning is allegedly great (in theory) but it's incredibly dry and requires god tier determination to get through.http://www.fsi-language-courses.net/...guage-courses/

That's actually a really cool idea to a gamer. I'd suppose it works better with RPGs and Story-driven games. Great with games that natively support other languages as well. You ever just play a game in another language entirely? Not with a side-by-side, I mean.


Also I've decided I'm gonna jump on learning Russian for sure, and a second language at a slower / lesser pace which I'm still deciding on between French and Spanish

Great observations on them all. Never tried fsi and doing it now. Seems well done just like you said dry lol

FLOTD

Pimsleur Russian 1 Lesson 26 yesterday and 27 finished today. I could push through another lesson but it's kind of a struggle and I rather spend some more time with French.Wouldn't recommendstartingtwo languages at the same time. Too much possibility to muck up grammar and muscle memory. I'd recommend getting to a strong A2 or weak B1 in one languages then introducing your second. Starting two at once can be done but it's the perfect storm for quitting both all together.

I chuckled. There's only like 4 active posters left in this thread.

Nobody got the dedication we got lol

imo experience gotta live in the country and be forced to speak the language. Or else you still aren't gonna be able to talk with anyone nobody how much grammer and vocab you know.

That is not always the best. I know a few people who moved overseas and went to school to learn the language and just spent there time with other xpats and barely learnt anything. It’s all about immersion - thanksnto Skype and italki you can speak with natives daily and watch movies in target language

Today’s studying - did npcr lesson one in the work book and text book. I am several lessons into book when I stopped but decided to redo the first several lessons and beeeze through them and get too where I belong.
Also did my flashcards on tofu and watched a full movie in mandarin

Biitch I better be one of them..

That being said, totally behind this week on Anki Reps, I got listening in most days, but completely slacked on the reps. Still adjusting to my new schedule so I'm figuring out a good time to knock em out.

That's how all new years resolutions go. You gotta incorporate language learning as a habit, like brushing your teeth. It's January 20th, so I expect most people that made NY resolutions have already quit them.

Did another Fluenz module today. Gonna look into Assimill. Hearing too much good stuff about it lately.

If that idea appeals to you, you should probably incorporate it into your language learning. My best and most rapid gains in Russian have come from playing Skyrim. It makes sense; you are essentially undergoing a complete immersion experience. You are reading and hearing everything in Russian. And if you've already played the game, you know vaguely or generally what is going on, so acquisition becomes easier. The only thing lacking is speaking practice.

It might be too overwhelming to a new learner, however. You might need to get to an intermediate level first. But if you were willing to slog through it with a good English-Russian dictionary it could be viable. At some point in your studies, you are going to have to slog through vocabulary acquisition regardless.

Also, with skyrim on pc you can pause during conversations--which means time to repeat what they are saying, look up words, study grammar constructions. Its a really undervalued tool.

If you’re actually doing all that then you will make an insane amount of progress by the end of the year.

I'm only starting Russian as of now. Decided starting two wasn't a good idea for the reasons you mentioned + time investment needed to keep up.I was looking for an excuse to play through Skyrim again

Inspiration...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hfrgGxvJnA

Update:

I decided to create my own version of the FLR method, and I added it to an SRS program.

Along with duolingo, that's my basic daily program.

FLOTD:
Pimsleur Russian 1 Lesson 28
Pimsleur French 3 Lesson 12
I agree and disagree. Living in the country merely requires the 4th vertical of language learning. You've got Writing, Speaking, Hearing, and then the 4th "recollection" which is really the same as speaking.

When one is progressing through Pimsleur, they ask you to say something from 5 lessons ago, you can usually spit it out really quickly because you've drilled it so many times, but when they ask you to repeat something you learned earlier in the same lesson, you'll often have like a 5+ second lag as you try to recall.

When you immerse yourself in a new country it's the same thing except the "card deck of questions" you're responding to is a lot larger. Even when I moved to my target country I noticed the first month was chit, but after that month of constantly going to the bank, café, restaurants, I knew what questions were being asked, and my responses were quicker since I had drilled them by living there. Pimsleur is essentially living in a mentally retarded version of your target country's reality lmfao. In all honesty though, just get an italki tutor for a couple bucks and it's theexactsame experience as living in the target country.Can confirm. Expat meetup groups are the worst for ones foreign language experience. If anything, its best to find a meetup up group of foreigners from non-english speaking countries so you can speak your poverty versions of the target language together (helps through repetition)Listening is certainly better than nothing, but yeah you'll get rekt if you go a week or so without any verbal reps.das it mane... das it

A new goal of mine is learning another language. I currently know English and Spanish. I actually studied some italian in the summer of 13', but dropped it after that for school. Wondering if I should continue it or learn something else. I like the italian language a lot. It's similar to spanish

Learn whatever will motivate you for months on end boyo. A few years back I briefly started to learn Swedish because I liked the sound of the language and enjoyed spending time in Stockholm but the fact is it's entirely useless outside of Sweden/Norway/finland. I picked up russian because I run into Russians EVERYwhere from Chicago, to London, Paris.

I think Italian, Spanish, and Polish would all be useful/usable languages. Starting a language just off mild intrigue is how you get the dozens of people who start a language and then quit after 2 or 3 weeks. You need an additional motivator to keep things going.

No substantial work done today. Just some anki reps, and some songs in the language. Still updating no matter what

FLOTD:

Pimsleur Russian 1 Lessons 29 and 30.

Pimsleur Russian 1 COMPLETE

Okay so I have my poverty 50 to 100 word base vocabulary. My mouth muscles are comfortable properly pronouncing every word I learned, and got myself the tiniest bit of confidence. That said, I know damn well I couldn't use these canned sentences on the fly. I need more grammar understanding to fully grasp how to properly think in this language. So from here, instead of going onto Russian Pimsleur 2 to learn more canned phrases, I lateral step over to Assimil for increased grammar gains. Feels good boyos. We all gonna make it.

I just find following a program so boring and repetitive so I'd rather interact with people from the language. Went on a date with a girl and we spoke pretty much only in my target language for about 5 hours, felt good.

I will start German, 30-60 mins daily.

Plan after reading a good bit about language learning:
1.Go through Assimil.
2.Listen to texts while reading them aloud, interesting texts only. Create flash cards for new words,always in context, and review them using spaced repetition.
3.Read books in target language. Watch familiar movies in target language.
4.Read newspapers and/or specialized texts.
5. Bidirectional translation. Translate 100-500 words texts from TL to native language, then translate from native to TL.

When I will know roughly 1k+ words:
1. Small talk about everyday topics.
2. Short speeches on specific topics.
3. Storytelling.
4. Describing concrete images.
5. Describing abstract concepts.

Goals:
1.Understand natives when speaking.
2.Full reading comprehension and ability to write.
3.Basic speaking skills.
4.Fluent speaking skills.

If you could do that you don't need a program since you're near B1/B2 levels of fluency anyway.


but
Spoiler!

Mostly it's just a want for personal accomplishment. Also due to the help I will get in future jobs/situations. I like Italian a lot and would want to visit Italy one day, I just think that language is dope af. And since it's similar to Spanish I thought i'd learn it easier. I thought about Chinese since it's the most spoken, but I don't think i'd be motivated to study that. More Japanese than Chinese.

I know another thing is how much it would be used. Where I live it's mostly english and spanish, but I still want to add another language. Mirin your Russian study. What's the difficulty on that one?

It’s a category IV per the rankings set by the Foreign Language Institute. Self taught myself french in my 20s. Can confirm. Substantially more complex.

https://www.effectivelanguagelearnin...age-difficulty

No work today, shame me boyos

Nah im srs brah, I have been learning it for a year with uni classes so I am probably B1/B2. I get nothing out of coming on the internet and lying.

Edit: I also watch a lot of Youtube, Netflix and use language exchange apps every day, so I do a lot of "study" its just not structured

Its really hard when you're trying to learn a more obscure language with respect to your region of the globe. For example. I use to be really confident in Russian, but only because I took a year of it in college. However, I'm losing a lot of it daily. There are very few Russians that live near me and the few that do already speak english so there's no need to speak to them in Russian. When it comes to learning a language, nothing beats an actual class with an instructor talking to you in the language and where you're forced to do activities and chit or literal immersion by just living in the country. I've tried all sorts of language learning software and I can't retain anything on those. Whats worse is that I was learning some stuff the wrong way. Before I took Russian I spend a couple of months really cramming for Russian with Pimseulr and a lot of what I learned was incorrect grammar or I was speaking using feminine suffixes.