Judith's language learning blog

I was just answering Rebecka’s comment on my Modern Greek milestone and I found that my answer turned into a lengthy argument about why I like taking private classes and how I use my tutor. So I decided to write a new blog post about it instead, so that others could read it as well.

Right now I’m supplementing both my Greek and Chinese studies with 1-on-1 lessons on Myngle. I find them very useful in helping me advance quickly (the opposite of what I experienced in group lessons).

I typically take a lesson when I have a concrete need or goal. For example, the other day I was reading a learners’ grammar on the Greek tense system and found that I didn’t really understand the difference between θα γράφω and θα γράψω, or generally tenses based on the stems -γράφ-, -γράψ- and γράφει. The grammar had some examples, but each sample sentence was about a different topic and I couldn’t infer much about the crux of the matter. So I scheduled a lesson and asked Rania to think of sample sentences where the same idea (writing a letter) will appear in different tenses due to slight changes of context. For a native speaker, it’s not really hard to do if you ask specifically “What is a context in which I’d have to say ‘θα γράφω μια γράμμα’?”. Having these sample sentences with minimal variance really helped me understand why the changes occur, plus I have now entered the sentences into my Anki and test myself on them regularly (English to Greek).

Of course the lessons are never just about questions I have, we also practise conversation or listening comprehension or whatever else I feel is my weakest area at the moment. I do need a tutor for conversation at this point, rather than an unsuspecting native speaker, because once I’m talking about a subject, I refuse to give up on expressing something I wanted to express. I do try to rephrase sentences, but, if that does not help, I will ask for every single word I’m missing and then try to build the sentence. Unlike a lot of language learners, I do not keep silent or change topics if an idea is clearly beyond my level to express. Whether I’m having the discussion in Greek or in my mother tongue, I do not allow my limited vocabulary and grammar to hinder me from expressing the same ideas. Right now that typically requires angelic patience from whomever I’m talking to, so I prefer not to talk too much in Greek with friends. However, I believe it’s the fastest way for me to improve, because I’m learning words and structures that are 150% relevant and useful to me. What’s more, I can then discuss the same topic in Greek decently well with anybody else, no matter if it’s music, Berlin, what’s happening in our lives, the economy crisis or anything else I have talked about with Rania.

I just had another Greek lesson via Myngle and the topic was a text with lots of positive and negative imperatives. I thought that the explanations my teacher was giving didn’t appear to be very difficult language, so on a hunch I asked her to use Greek as much as possible in this lesson and only switch back to English if I appeared not to understand something.

You know what? It worked great. I actually understood 85% of the words, even though she wasn’t talking particularly slowly, and I understood 100% of the meaning. Some of it is probably because my forage into Greek verbs, which I’ve been practising on Anki, essential words for this context like χρησιμοποιώ (to use). But also I have the feeling that something just clicked and I’m a lot faster at both understanding and using Greek words now.

Okay, so here’s what I plan to do in order to improve my languages in what’s left of 2009. I meant to do a lot more until now, but work and graduating and life interfered, you know the story. I still haven’t graduated, but I believe that it’s time for a new resolution.

1. Chinese – Learn 1500 characters for a total of 3000, improve conversational ability, be able to read “The Little Prince” looking up less than 10 words per chapter.

This will be my main target. During the IJK I studied nearly 250 brand new characters in just 7 days and I have 1603 characters right now in my Anki (Hanzi statistics keeps track of them for me, great plugin!). However, I will need to spend more time on about 100 of these cards, so I’ll count it as ‘knowing’ 1500 characters right now. In January 2009 I only knew 833 characters!

In terms of conversational ability, I can get by in China, but I couldn’t talk about what’s going on in my life without first looking up one word per sentence or so. I’m working on this with my Myngle teacher Aileen.

Apart from my special easy reader “San Ren Xing”, the easiest Chinese reading I have available to me is “The Little Prince”. It has been getting a lot easier lately with all the characters I studied, but there is still a fair amount of words I need to look up, including words consisting of characters I already know, or characters I forgot. Wenlin makes it easy, but my goal shall be to have to look up less than 10 words per chapter by the end of the year.

2. French and Italian – Read two novels each

Reading in a foreign language other than English still takes me a LOT of time, so I want to practise that. Right now I have started on two novels: “Ségou” and “Il giro del mondo en 80 pizze”. I started on a different Italian book before but it was too hard. I will not set goals for active usage because I will have to finish two essays and one thesis in French in the near future anyway, for my degree. I will try to find a tandem partner for Italian though, because my Italian is so rusty.

3. Modern Greek – Finish reading “The Little Prince”, practise talking, increase Anki deck to >1500 facts

Right now I have only read four chapters of “The Little Prince” in Greek and my Anki deck contains 443 facts. My vocabulary is bigger than that, but here I don’t have the possibility of indicating words I know to get a better count. However, I will probably add all new words and phrases to Anki, so that progress shall be visible.

4. Spanish, Swahili, possibly Arabic, Indonesian or Maori – will chip away

I can’t say more than that I will continue to give these a bit of my time. For Spanish I currently attend an Edufire conversational class twice a week, for Swahili I’m slowly going through Assimil Swahili and I’m considering taking up the others again.

Everybody, please wish me luck and keep me faithful to this plan!

German – my native language, which I also teach at GermanPod101.com, Edufire and Myngle.

English – I speak it totally effortlessly and at a near-native level, but employing a curious mix of British, Scottish, Canadian and American vocabulary and pronunciations. Never managed to keep them apart in my head.

Esperanto – my third strongest language. I speak it as a secret language with my boyfriend and I’ve been attending more and more international meetings as well. I had to resign as a board member of Edukado@Interreto (Esperanto-based educational non-profit org) though because of lack of time. See my online Esperanto classes, also I wrote most of the articles for Esperanto.info.

French – I’m basically fluent and my degree involves reading lots of French literature classics in the original. I would appreciate the chance to practise speaking it more often though, especially with French Canadians because I love their accent and would like to copy it.

Latin – I can read it fluently and have taught Latin for more than 7 years. I’m not one of those who’d have conversations in Latin though, that’s what Esperanto is for. Check out my Latin classes on Edufire!

Italian – Studied it for 3 years at high school, after which I spoke it pretty much fluently and got an A- in my final oral exam. However, since 2003 I have used it at most once a year and now it’s seriously rusty. I would love to revive it.

Chinese – Following a summer course in Beijing and some serious studying in Germany, I can get by in Mandarin. At this point I know approximately 1500 characters and am always working on that. I study lots of characters at once, then counter it by studying lots of texts or textbook dialogs and also taking conversational lessons.

Modern Greek – I initially started learning Greek from and because of a friend, with whom I’ve been out of touch for a while now. I still like the language though, take the occasional Greek lessons on Myngle and try to at least not let it fall into disuse. At the moment I’d classify myself an upper beginner.

Arabic, Indonesian, Maori, Spanish, Swahili – All languages that call out to me and that I’ve studied at some point or am still studying on occasion. I’m a beginner in all of them. For Swahili I’m trying to study Assimil every day, but something always comes up…

Czech, Dutch, Lithuanian, Swedish – Studied these for concrete purposes, such as upcoming travels, but they don’t really call out to me and I’ve already forgotten everything or almost everything I learned. I can still understand Dutch because of my German of course, and same goes for most Romance languages.

In a perfect world, I’d be speaking all of the world’s known languages by the time I die (yes I am a Unilang member), but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t have a talent for languages, just an immense love for them. I’ll give it a shot.