The 1 Week "Screenshot Mining + Flowverlapping"-challenge of life that doesn´t kill (hopefully)

Alright…so I decided to not spread myself too thin and focus on “only” English, French and Japanese.
The other thread had a “inspire and be inspired”-atmosphere and that was pretty cool. So, here´s another challenge…

This challenge is different, because…

-I won´t quit learning French^^

  • it´s much shorter
  • it has measurable goals

I guess not everyone´s familiar with the words “screenshot mining” and “flowverlapping”…so here´s a short explanation.

“Screenshot mining” is a word that I made up a few minutes ago…I think. It´s a variation of “sentence mining” (“collecting” sentences" and reviewing complete sentences) but it´s lazier and more visual(^^) than normal sentence mining. You take a screenshot of a sentence that you want to learn. It takes only a few seconds per sentence :slight_smile:

“flowverlapping” was coined by a guy called “idahosa Ness” (afaik) and it´s a little more complicated. You´re basically trying to make an audio recording, that is almost identical to that of a native speaker. It´s hard to explain…check out my second on this thread and/or wait for my first “flowverlapped” recordings.

My goals:

-creating and learning 280 French phrases by using “screenshot mining” (20 sentences per day)
-recording 14 minutes of “flowverlapped” French audio and uploading it on LingQ… (2minutes per day)

WHY?!?

Because I wanna try to use these techniques on a daily basis.

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***for those who want to “join” my challenge or at least try out the techniques I´ve mentioned ***


Screenshot mining:

-open a video with subtitles in your target language (youtube, movie, let´s play…)
-take a screenshot (http://www.take-a-screenshot.org/)
-paste the screenshot into Anki (probably works wiith other programs as well)

Flowverlapping

-get a microphone and an audio editing software (audacity is pretty decent and it´s 4 free!)
-get an audio-file in your target language (an mp.3 file from a lesson on LingQ for example)
-try to imitate the native speakers as best as you can (pronunciation, melody and rhythm should…you know…overlap. Imagine you´re trying to re-dub a movie or something like that)
-read this if you need more details: http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/idahosa-ness-the-mimic-method/

Recording and listening to yourself is a great way to hone and modify your pronunciation, imo. A key, perhaps, is to just find a voice you like and try to mimic it. Beyond just regularly recording yourself, flowverlapping sounds like a bit of extra effort (overlapping the audios)? In Mandarin, there used to be a great website called aichinese. It would play a sentence and visually display the sound wave form. You would then repeat, it would record your voice, and display your waveform and compare with the original waveform and indicate where you differed (indicating differences in tones, pronunciation, sentence intonation etc). You could then also listen to your voice again and replay the original sentence. Not exactly what you describe with flowverlapping, but close enough - and a big advantage was that it was automated, you didn’t have to do anything, beyond just regularly speaking and listening with feedback. I found this program invaluable for raising my own awareness of tones, pronunciation, sentence intonation, and generally emphasising areas to improve in my voice. But I think just hearing your own voice - most people can immediately hear where they need to improve, regardless, and doing this regularly is good enough.

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Day 1-3

I´ve create 63 flashcards so far :slight_smile:
I used a Let´s Play of the new “Lord of the Rings”-game and I really enjoyed it. The “problem” is that I rarely find new words and if I do…they´re mostly related to disembowelment, intimidation and “medieval” insults.

I decided to watch “Who wants to be a millionaire” in French because it´s “Screenshot mining friendly”…
You can get the question and the correct answer on one screenshot. The vocab is insanely diverse and (as a bonus) I´m learning random facts.^^

I also tried the flowverlap/overdub-technique but I was too perfectionistic. I´ll have to lower my standards next time I try…read this if you can relate —> http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/why-dont-you-stop-trying-to-score-three-pointers

PS: This article is even better -------> http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/stop-trying-to-do-things-well-getting-over-zero

Day 4-5

Me trying to “flowverlap” in French

Doing this takes much longer than I expected…that 30 second recording took me more than 20 minutes…which means that I won´t be able to reach the 14-minute goal. Well, the journey is the reward", right?

The “screenshot mining” is going well. Reviewing “Screenshot flash card” is much more fun than reviewing “old school flash cards” :slight_smile:

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