Progress 30/06/2010

It's currently 22:05 and I'm currently only 93 words away from reaching my '700' new word goal which I've set for Portuguese. So that leaves me with less than 2 hours to go through all my lessons on lingq and tick off all the words that I'm now confident I know to get my status from 87% up to 100%. Whilst Portuguese is almost at a full bar, French is dismally empty so I think I'm going to just remove it for July.
On other new, I completed the 19th lesson of FSI Portuguese which I've been neglecting as of late for many valid reasons but I would like to get the first unit finished so I'm going to stick to it until the 24th lesson and then I'll decide whether to continue from then.
Earlier this afternoon, I completed 3 exercises in Hugo's Portugese which focused on the passive voice, past participles and the pluprefect tense.

Update 23:19
Eu fiz isso!
I made it in time [with quite a wee bit left to spare] but I didn't copy any of the vocabulary into my anki deck so I'm off to do that now.

Progress 29/06/2010

Got my laptop back today but I couldn't find a way to transfer my new anki decks on my other computer onto my laptop so I had to make yet again make another new one. Found quite a few Brazilian rock songs that I like which I've been playing non-stop. I'm hoping to get quite deep into the Brazilian music scene. I've currently found a few samba and bossa-nova songs which I thought I wouldn't like but did indeed like. But for me, learning another language opens doors to different ideas and different styles of things such as music and discovering these different things makes language learning very enjoyable. I'm hoping that by getting into the music scene, it will really help my listening abilities as listening to Japanese music for the last 2-3 years has made my listening skills far exceed my reading, writing and speaking abilities [granted that I haven't been practicing these abilities much and have been neglecting them for months on end].

In other news, studied a chapter of Colloquial Chinese after a new package off ebay containing this arrived:





Despite still not being sure which university I'll be going to and hence which languages I'll be studying, I'm stocking up on language books so that as soon as exam day arrives on the 4th August, I can spend the whole month afterwards learning some of the language to prepare myself. The first chapter of Colloquial Chinese was much better than I'd expected. The introduction was also very helpful in guiding how to produce some of the awkward Chinese sounds so I think I'll be becoming very acquainted with this book.

Again, in other news, I just found out that iTunes has a section where universities can post podcasts and there's a language section so I might download a bit of Greek or some beginner's Spanish. Haven't came across any Portuguese material yet.


Update 23:53
I got round to reading a few other blogs that deal with language learning and it was nice to see the different points of views and methods out there. I remember reading a post, I'm pretty sure it was on Spanish-Only, about how advanced students should read books in their target languages for fun without preoccupying themselves with looking up every unknown word. Whilst I haven't tried it out [mainly due to the fact that I'm not yet at an advanced level in any language thus far] I do think that as soon as you have mastered the basics, you should get yourself into some literature. Not only does it give a nice insight into the different customs, culture and history of a country where your target language is spoken [assuming the book isn't set in an alternate world] but different authors have different styles. The same author might be fond of a certain expression, word, sentence structure and so you will continually be exposed to that certain expression, word, sentence structure and the more exposure you get to something, the easier and faster you'll learn it.

Then there was another blog that used to 'TV-method' which as the name suggests, revolves around learning languages through continuous exposure through tv. So I googled 'Portuguese Dramas', found a teenage drama series called 'Morangos com açucar' [Strawberries with sugar]. And watched 10 minutes of an episode. I would like to watch some more but I'm afraid to it would slow down my internet connection since I've already watched far too much television online this month. So I settled for finding a good radio show which plays high quality, predominantly Portuguese speaking music. Hopefully making good use of the radio will help me with my listening skills as well as giving me some enjoyment from finding new songs.

Progress 26/06/2010

After my laptop charger failed to work, I've been forced to use another old computer in it's place. I used to use this one all the time but then it broke and everything had to be wiped off it. However, I've decided to start a new anki on this computer which I will transfer onto my laptop to replace the old muddled up one. Taking advantage of books.google.com, I'm looking through the book 'A frequency dictionary of Portuguese' to increase my vocabulary which I think is the main thing slowing down my progress. I'm picking up vocabulary by topics and I'm currently finishing 'animais'. Anytime I look at a new word, I search that word into the searchbar on tatoeba which is a sentence database that I found and which currently contains about 5000 sentences. Currently my anki vocabulary stands at 193 and sentences at 81. Any additional vocabulary in the sentences are added to the vocabulary anki. Now just off to read a story in portuguese over the idiom ' lobo em pele de cordeiro' or 'a wolf in sheep's clothing'.

Update
After reading the story about the 'lobo em pele de cordeiro' I realised I only knew half the story. I knew about the wolf adopting the sheep's skin to deceive his prey but I didn't know about the ending where the shepherd went to the barn to get some meat for the next day and pulled out the wolf in sheep's clothing, the moral of the story being 'Sempre que nós enganamos os outros, pagamos pelo nosso erro logo em seguida' - Whenever we deceive others, we immediately pay for our error'. Anyway, I'm glad that I came across that story because I learnt something new due to being able to read a little in a foreign language. I gained some results of my language learning and it feels good ☺.

Progress 22/06/2010

Did quite a bit of chapter 7 of Portuguese in 3 months which is mainly focused on nem...nem and ou...ou and other negatives. I glanced over the future tense and the conditional tense which look easy enough but after taking a lot of new things in yesterday I'm going to postpone learning these two tenses for a couple of days. Submitted both a writing and a speaking exercise on livemocha and have noticed a slight improvement in my writing but still making silly little mistakes such as saying 'o televisão' rather than 'a televisão'

After searching through my dvd collections for subtitles last night, I noticed the majority of them had subtitles for scandinavian languages. I've always wanted to learn one of them but due to lack of resources, never really got round to it. So I'm going to do some lessons on livemocha for Swedish [of which according to Lingq I already now 50 words =)]. I thought against it at first because I'm meant to be focusing on just Portuguese but learning languages should be fun and even on a whim, if I think it would be fun to learn some Swedish then I'm going to learn some. I think I have a fear of neglecting my Portuguese because I've never advanced in a language so quickly, without having become fed-up with it, but as long as I review words and acquire some new vocabulary then I'll still see improvements.

21/06/2010

Completed the rest of lesson 5 and all of lesson 6 of Portuguese in 3 months. Went over the imperfect tense, the imperative and pronouns. Did 5 exercises composed of translating sentence to and from Portuguese to English, each exercise consisting of 12-16 sentences which gave me a good amount of practice. Also did chapters 5 and 6 of TY Portuguese [which really isn't too helpful without the accompaning cds]. Found a nice song in Portuguese from a singer from Lisbon and it was good to hear the European accent opposed to the Brazilian. Translated the song into English.

I feel that a lot of what is holding me back from having a higher level of Portuguese is my lack of experience and exposure with the language. So I've raided my dvd collection and have singled out those which have Portuguese subtitles and so now I'm off to watch happy Gilmore

Progress 19/06/2010

Got a new Japanese book in today called みんなの日本語　「Everyone's Japanese」　which is one of the three main series for having a good base for Japanese since I started semi-learning it in 2007. The drawback is that in my version, everything is in Japanese but I got it for £1.50 off ebay so I can't complain, it just means that my Japanese dictionary will be one of my new best friends for a while.

Also started learning bit of Spanish from my Living Language course but it's a tad too slow for my tastes. For quite a wee while now, I've been focusing mainly on one language [Português] which has brought me great results but it's started turning something that should be a hobby into a chore so I might start to dip into other languages too whilst improving my Portuguese. I don't want to take a break from Portuguese or start to become really burnt out from it since it's exciting to see results from a language plus I might have to stop it in August. If I go to Stirling University then I'll be doing a degree in Spanish [and French] and I don't want to study both Portuguese and Spanish at the same time as I feel I would confuse myself easily over the two languages. That being said, I feel that my Portuguese has improved the little Spanish I know due to their similarities.

In regards to Portuguese, I've almost completed FSI Portuguese unit 17 which focused on the preterite form of -ir verbs and some time expressions such as ontem de noite etc.
I also listened to a couple of podcasts from Brazilianpodclass.com which is great as it not only provides phrases of which I would otherwise find hard to find a translation but everything in the lesson is said in English and then in Portuguese and not just the dialog.
In addition to this, I also translated another song from Portuguese into English [making three in total]. I intend to translate them now and make any modifications as I progress.

Progress 17/06/2010

Not did much for the last few days until today. Did another unit on the A1 Busuu course about jobs. Completed a writing exercise on what I wanted to do. It was very similar to an entry in my [currently abandoned] journal on lang-8 just after I finished my exams at the start of this month except this time it was much easier to construct it and I didn't make any mistakes =]. I like it when you can see proof if yourself advancing and I had one of they moments after completing that exercise. Spent a large part of the day listening to songs in English whilst reading the Portuguese translations of the lyrics and copied down around 100 new words into my anki deck.

Progress 18/06/2010 [Since I forgot to add it in]
Read Jack and the beanstalk in Portuguese which was really nice as I don't think I'd even read it before in English. Found a few good songs in Portuguese and started translating them into English. Also found my first Korean Rock song [which I have been looking for for a good 2 years now] which makes me tempted to start learning Korean when it comes up on LingQ. However I'm trying to dissuade myself since I tried to learn Korean way back in 2007/2008 and failed miserably plus materials for learning Korean are very scarse, more so than Portuguese which frustrates me to no end.

Progress 14/06/2010

Not really been studying the last couple of days but did a little bit of the grammar sections on busuu since my 7 day premiere membership which provides the grammar lessons was about to run out. Did a lesson on the passive voice and the preterite. I'm in a very musical mood so I might go looking for some Brazilian bands to practice my listening skills.

Update 22:03
Just reviewed the 80 or so overdue items on my anki Portuguese vocabulary deck. Also listening to Mombojó whose music isn't heavily instrumented which is good to listening practice.

Progress 13/06/2010

Did the majority of FSI Portuguese unit 16 which focused on the preterit form of -er verbs last night but that was all. Used busuu talk to talk to someone in French but I found myself really struggling to find the correct way to express myself.

Progress chart update.

Going to yet again change the way I monitor my progress chart. I decided to go back to the original method using lingq. Anytime I find a word I know and mark it as 'known' I'll add it to my progress chart. I'm also going to change the languages. Currently I'm monitoring progress for Portuguese, French, Mandarin and Japanese yet the last time I studied Mandarin was around March and the only language I've really studied this month has been Portuguese. So my new target will be 700 new known words in Portuguese and 350 known words in French.

From 10/06/2010 my known words in Portuguese was 1896 and French 1795 so I'll start counting from their.

Progress 10/06/2010

Completed the third and fourth lessons on Hugo Portuguese in three months today. Was just talking about the present tense and had to do a good few writing exercises for it. Also completed that final unit on the second line of A1 Portuguese on Busuu. Online right now listening to a radio which plays Brazilian music. Was originally looking for the Portuguese translation of Japanese songs until I came across a site for Portuguese speakers learning Japanese which encouraged them to listen to music as a means of increasing their language skills. Having learnt a lot of Japanese in this way myself, I've decided to do the same with Portuguese. The only problem is finding songs that I like but I hope that the more I search and listen, the easier it will be to find good songs.

Update 20:47
Just managed to finish FSI Portuguese 15. I have a love hate relationship with the thing and right now, it's closer to the latter than the former. It has started to become very tedious yet again.

Progress 09/06/2010

Didn't get round to doing much yesterday at all. Did one small unit on Busuu on colours but that was all although I did read some Portuguese translations of some of my favourite songs.
Today I'm planning to get the second line of busuu A1 finished, do an overdue writing on livemocha and FSI unit 15. Might do chapter 3 of Portuguese in three months.

Been really slipping these last few days with my studies. Only got through two more units on the second line of A1 busuu and got round to doing half of unit 15. Did do a little bit of French out of a new grammar workbook I got but after I couldn't find any French translations of songs I like, this encouraged me to move back onto Portuguese.

Progress 07/06/2010

Completed half of unit 14 on FSI Portuguese. Starting to move onto more complicated stuff such as the perfect tense and even the verbs with an irregular conjugation for the perfect tense. Might have to go back over it but hopefully I'll have grasped it by the end of the lesson. Finished the first line in A1 Portuguese on Busuu [there are 6 altogether]. Learnt some good vocabulary in the lesson 'Como vai você?' such as estar farto de - 'to be fed up of' and orgulhoso - 'proud' etc. Submitted three writing exercises and I'm starting to feel more confident about writing in Portuguese. Might do the next overdue speaking exercise on livemocha Portuguese 101.

Update 22:49
Finally finished unit 14 of FSI. Think I have quite a good grasp of the singular forms of the perfect tense but I'll still probably need to reinforce it more. Also completed two speaking exercises on livemocha. One with a horrible accent which I have no idea possessed me to use whilst talking and one which I feel much more comfortable with. I found a site with the Portuguese translations of a lot of English songs so I'm going to listen to some songs whilst reading the Portuguese and pick up some new vocabulary.

Busuu

I remember being on busuu.com way back when it was first created but I was far more interested in livemocha at the time. I've just signed-up again after around 1-2 years and I'm impressed by the changes. At first there was only 4 languages available : English, French, Spanish and German. However now both Italian and fortunately Portuguese is available.
The site offers courses whose units follow the European Common Framework for languages. In the framework A1 is a novice to the language whilst A2 is a high beginner. B1 is a low intermediate [probably where I currently see myself as being in French] whilst B2 is a high intermediate. C1 is basic fluency whilst at C2 you can consider yourself fluent. Busuu offers courses in all 6 languages from A1 upto B2.
You follow a series of units on topics which you would be required have knowledge on at the level your following. In A1 Portuguese you start off learning basic greetings before delving into topics such as food, clothing, weather and grammar such as the present continuous, comparative and superlative adjectives.
If you have some time, it would be beneficial to try it out.

Music

Of all the reasons why I learn languages, music is probably the biggest driving force. Music was the first thing that introduced me to Japanese and currently my Japanese music collection is probably as big as my English one. Finding a great song I love really encourages me to learn the language so I can understand what they're saying. If I go through a period of 'burn-out' with a language where I'm finding it hard to motivate myself, I usually turn to music as a way to inspire me to continue. A couple of nights ago, when I was really starting to lose motivation to study Portuguese due to the boring FSI course and lack of materials to learn the language, I tuned into my bossa nova collection. It's great when you don't listen to a song in a while but when you listen to it again, you realise you can pick out words that you hadn't noticed before. It's an indication that you've made a bit of progress. It's probably down to music that my listening skills in Japanese are far better than any of my other skills. Bur, it may well be that this is the reason why my Spanish isn't good. I haven't yet found any Spanish songs that I like enough to motivate me to study. So, I'm going to go off on a hunt for some songs on youtube.

Progress 06/06/2010

Did two speaking exercises on livemocha. Found out that I really need to practice the word 'eu' and I think today was the first time that a native speaker has ever told me to speak their language slower. Did the speaking exercise on careers and on time. Learnt some good time phrases off semantica :

às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of

I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.

Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]

Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.

Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.

Progress 05/06/2010

It's 01:36 am but I just managed to finish unit 12 of FSI. The basic sentence structures of 'ter que' and 'gostar de' were introduced which was nice to practice. There was barely any tedious reviewing in this chapter which has lead me to think that I may actually finish the course although I think I'll take a break in between volumes 1 and 2. Hope to do Teach yourself Portuguese but I'll need to find the audio CD before I can properly delve into it. I have been reading some of the posts on Portuguese by Semantica which is good for some more colloquial phrases such as 'na moda' - in fashion so I might continue going through that.

FSI Portuguese

The FSI Portuguese [Foreign Service Institute Portuguese] course is a free course by the US government made around the 1965's as a language service for soldiers soon going to a country where they would require to use that language. It focuses on heavy repetition as a way of drilling the material into your head. Whilst repetition is a good method, it is possibly the most mind-numbingly boring method on the planet. I am on unit 11 out of 48 and I still have 'os carros' being drilled into my head despite it being introduced 7-9 lessons beforehand. Having the material continuously reinforced for 2-3 lessons is understandable but 7-9 lessons afterwards is a bit extreme. But that's not all, anytime I re-enconter 'os carros' it is not said once, but anywhere from 2-4 times. It's a very unfulfilling course to work through but I must admit that I have saw improvements through it, in particular with my listening skills. The problem is that it is becoming very hard to motivate myself to study Portuguese as it is the only course I can properly follow. There are barely any affordable courses out there for a broke student who get £10 per week to spend leisurely. I know that as boring as it is, it will allow me to have a good base to build upon but the question is can I really finish it if I'm having difficulties motivating myself less than 25% in?

04/06/2010 - Progress

Gotten through unit 2 of 'Portuguese in 3 months'. Learnt that the present continuous tense can be created through estar + a + infinitive but I think this is more of a European Portuguese feature than Brazilian Portuguese which I'm mainly focusing on. Still it's useful to know these sorts of things. Intended to do unit 11 of FSI but couldn't motivate myself to do so.
Was going to move on and do some Japanese. Even if I want to focus on just one language I shouldn't completely neglect all others. If I could add at least 5 new words in the other languages I', learning into anki per day then that'll suffice. But I'm going to keep on going with Portuguese for the time being.

Update 17:41
Still struggling my way through unit 11 of FSI. Would happily abandon it for another course but Portuguese materials are hard to come across. Did do unit 3 of Teach Yourself Portuguese but unfortunately a lot of the lessons are audio based and I don't have the audio but I'll still try to make the most of it.

Progress chart.

Before, I was using the amount of flashcards I had mastered on lingq [where you must correctly review a flashcard 4 times before it is considered known] but now that lingq has impose it's 100 limit flashcard system, I can no longer use it unless I upgrade. But I recently discovered a more inconvient but manageable way to track my known words. I found out that anki tracks how many times you have correctly recalled a word. Once I have gotten 4/4, I will consider that word mastered, will change the tag on the card to 'mastered' and will keep track of how many words I have mastered. I have upped my target to 600 items but this will include both words and sentences. Now off to review some more on anki and watch the bar charts in the header grow bigger ☺.

03/06/2010 - Progress

Completed Lesson one/Primeira lição of Hugo's Portuguese in three months. Have read it in the past but never took time to do exercises. Also did unit 1 and unit 2 of Manuela Cook's Teach Yourself Portuguese. Think I'll need to go over unit 2 again about directions, since I always find learning about directions boring and hence might not take it in properly.

Update 4-5ish
Just finished FSI Portugese unit 8. The exercises are getting a little tedious but I'll try to persist in getting through all 48 units. Might look for some Portuguese courses on Smart.fm for a change to keep up my interest.

Update 21:00
Managed to get through FSI Portuguese units 9 and 10 though felt as though I really had to force myself at times. They're getting very tedicious and I felt sick of doing them but I know I'll benefit from them so I'm going to keep on going. Learnt material that was slightly more advanced: Queremos evitar o tráfego. Found some expressions off livemocha to use aswell in a flashcard set which I might use to write sentences in my lang-8 journal but probably not tonight.

02/06/2010 - Progress [if you can call it that]

Only got round to doing unit 7 of FSI Portuguese. Almost a whole day wasted. I now do have the phrase 'se você quiser' now drilled into my head. Pretendo escrever a couple of words using that phrase in my journal on lang-8 as well as sentences using the word só - only or not....until. Até amanhã.

Update 22:50
I love submitting exercises for Portuguese on livemocha. Submit an exercise and within 15 minutes there are 20 comments on your faults and how to improve your pronunciation. Unlike French, where you'll be luck to get any comments at all. Just completed the speaking exercise on unit 5 of Portuguese 101, which leaves me 73% complete. I need to practice the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter 'l' especially when it comes as 'lh' but hopefully with FSI and listening to tv in Portuguese my pronunciation will further improve.

6 years of language.

Currently, I'm on ebay looking for AS French language books. I figure AS level to be the equivalent of the Scottish Higher level of which I have a Grade B but AS level goes into a bit more detail than higher. I'm really disappointed with how SQA [Scottish Qualifications Authority] deals with teaching foreign languages. We start learning a foreign language in primary 6, when student are around 9-10 years old. In my school it was compulsary to learn a language at Standard Grade [GCSE]. After 6 years of studying French at school, I have friends who would not have a clue how to order in a French cafe or how to construct a sentence such as 'I have long hair' or answer 'Oú habites tu?'. Yet in other countries there are children who are at an advanced level after 6 years of studying at school. I'll admit that I never studied for my Higher French. I had a native French teacher during Standard Grade level who taught us verb tenses such as the future tense and the conditional tense which you are not supposed to learn until Higher level. I became very unmotivated to learn French after going into my first higher French lesson and learning basic grammar such as 'de + le = du'. An education system which takes 6 years to teach such a basic grammar rule is clearly one in need of reform.

01/06/2010 - Progress

As predicted, I studied a bit more of the FSI Portuguese course [now units 1-5 are complete]. I feel that it has really helped with my listening and pronunciation skills and I learned basic verbs which I have skipped in the past. Hoping to go on to study a bit on livemocha. There are some writing and speaking exercises that I have skipped in the past that I should be done.

Update 19:46
Just studied a little on livemocha. Submitted a speaking exercise and I feel my pronunciation is much better than in the past. The course is now 70% complete. I would really like to finish a course on livemocha. After having it for over 2 years I have not once completed a course. Hopefully I can finish Portuguese 101 and move onto 102 which I have the feeling that I may have already started.

Update 23:50
Studied unit 6 of FSI portuguese and then wrote some sentences into my journal on lang-8 on the words 'pretender' - to plan on or to intend to and 'querer' - to want, plus a couple of other sentences. Did a writing exercise on livemocha and completed unit 4 of Portuguese 101 in which I made two spelling mistakes: barato - cheap and esta - this. Watched a bit of a cartoon in Portuguese and noticed a slight improvement in my listening skills which was encouraging. Rediscovered the site Brazilianpodcast so I might start using that once I have finished with FSI.