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.