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Made mah day.

Started by ETFROXX, April 14, 2011, 01:54:43 PM

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AmpharosAndy

innit

E. Gadd Industries

It means I get my first two years of university paid for (at the specific place I'll be attending, in combination with one other scholarship), and I'm in the top 15,000 seniors in the US. By what measure? Idk. GPA, community involvement, service, an essay, recommendations, an SAT score... so yeah
"Everyone is crazy but me"
-The Sign Painter


The entrance to my lab is hidden... somewhere...
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EFitTrainr

I like food.

E. Gadd Industries

"Everyone is crazy but me"
-The Sign Painter


The entrance to my lab is hidden... somewhere...
Spoiler

[/spoiler
[close]

LeviR.star

Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

AmpharosAndy

innit

Onionleaf

That sounds like an incredible feat, congratulations! Hope you can at least take some time off to celebrate. ;)

LeviR.star

Just got the part of Eugene in my school's production of Look Homeward, Angel. My first lead role!
Check out my Youtube channel for remixes and original music! LeviR.star's Remixes

Also check out my piano arrangements here on my PA thread! LeviR.star's Arrangements

E. Gadd Industries

Yay! That's awesome, congratz! :D Break an arm! (I think I got that right...)
"Everyone is crazy but me"
-The Sign Painter


The entrance to my lab is hidden... somewhere...
Spoiler

[/spoiler
[close]

Dudeman

Quote from: E. Gadd Industries on March 02, 2018, 06:49:20 AMYay! That's awesome, congratz! :D Break an arm! (I think I got that right...)
Spot on, no errors here
Quote from: braixen1264 on December 03, 2015, 03:52:29 PMDudeman's facial hair is number 1 in my book

Harvest

A few months ago I started learning Spanish.  It took me about two months to understand my copy of Hansel and Gretel, about two weeks to get through The Brave Tailor, and now I am very happy that it took me only two nights to get through Cinderella.  I only had to translate three words on each of the last pages for Cinderella, so I am pretty happy with the results so far.
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BlackDragonSlayer

Woo! Congrats! I'm not very good at learning languages myself, so I definitely think that's definitely an impressive accomplishment.
And the moral of the story: Quit while you're a head.

Fakemon Dex
NSM Sprite Thread
Compositions
Story Thread
The Dread Somber

Harvest

Although I think there are probably certain "natural" language learners, most of it is motivation, time, dedication, and methodology.  It's a huge pain learning a language and it's extremely frustrating at times, I don't think I have any natural ability but I do currently have a decent dedication to it and a healthy interest in it as well.  French I do for the sake of the homeland and possible future work and Spanish I do for the love of Latin women - one in particular at the moment. 
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FireArrow

Quote from: Harvest on March 03, 2018, 05:11:12 PMAlthough I think there are probably certain "natural" language learners, most of it is motivation, time, dedication, and methodology.  It's a huge pain learning a language and it's extremely frustrating at times, I don't think I have any natural ability but I do currently have a decent dedication to it and a healthy interest in it as well.  French I do for the sake of the homeland and possible future work and Spanish I do for the love of Latin women - one in particular at the moment.

I'm interested in your methodology. I was trying to teach myself spanish for about 6 months. After awhile, I could start reading at a very basic level, then I hit a plataeu and is felt like even with 3+ hours of studying everyday my abilities never improved. You seemed to hit a much better much faster than I have so.... teach me your ways.
Quote from: Dudeman on January 23, 2017, 05:35:59 PM
straight from the department of redundancy department

Harvest

Quote from: FireArrow on March 07, 2018, 12:13:45 PMI'm interested in your methodology. I was trying to teach myself spanish for about 6 months. After awhile, I could start reading at a very basic level, then I hit a plataeu and is felt like even with 3+ hours of studying everyday my abilities never improved. You seemed to hit a much better much faster than I have so.... teach me your ways.

It probably varies between individuals but I can give you some insight into how it has gone for me.   

I did spend 3 months in Guatemala in 2016 where I picked up the absolute basics.  A bunch of verbs only in the present indicative, a little bit of the preterite, and the simple future using ir.  I didn't learn more because I was conducting research on people who spoke English and most of my free time was spent in bars.  If I had the mindset then that I do today, I probably would not have spent so much time in money in those bars, but that was a different life. 

Otherwise, I didn't start learning it again until after I finished my graduate thesis last October.  So I probably started seriously studying it in November.  You have to do it every day, and review all the time.  Sometimes I miss a day, but if I'm really busy I do try to at least read a few pages in Spanish, or look up and memorize 5-10 words, or try to think in Spanish throughout the day (even if very simply)...or at least review some of my vocab notes.

What really worked for me was reading about grammatical rules regarding moods and tenses and trying to learn about them from multiple sources (videos, reference books, websites), then trying to understand them when I encountered them in my studies.  I often look up vocab whenever I can, write them down, put them on sticky notes or whatever, and review them whenever I can.

Also listening to songs, watching videos, trying to write.  Translate books, plays, the news.  Then reread them again and again, reinforcing the new words and grammar you've learned. 

What helped a bit also was I spent 6 weeks in Mexico in November and December, but a lot of the time people I was with spoke in English.  I did learn some though, and a lot of the days there I spent reading about grammar and vocab before reinforcing it throughout the day.  I do try to write in Spanish to the person I was visiting down there, and sometimes I skype with them and speak in Spanish but not that much because her English is better than my Spanish (although I'm catching up very fast and maybe one day Spanish will be the easier language for us to speak in).

I don't know what else to say.  Consistency, review, variation, and dedication. Get excited about it, know it's something you really want, envision yourself knowing it in the future.  For me reading about famous polyglots gets me excited...I read a book by the polyglot Kató Lomb where she describes her methods, which are heavily reading focused, and that really got me excited. Also I often read about Richard Francis Burton, the 19th Century British explorer and linguist who apparently spoke 30 or so languages.

Learning the grammatical basis of the moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), tenses (past, future, present, preterit, imperfect, perfect etc etc) has really smoothed the transition into learning French as well, because a lot of those things are the same in French so I do not need to spend the time understanding their function, except for a few minor differences like the preterit only being a literary tense in French.  Others seem to ignore grammar and focus on speaking only, that's not really how my mind works nor what I want to do. 

So yeah, it's fun, if it weren't fun I would need some kind of practical reason to do it. You need some kind of motivation or goal.



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