Learning Persian: My Intensive Study Plan (1)
Not only will I be looking to see how much I can improve, but I also
want to experiment to see how we can sort of take all of the things that
LingQ offers in terms of input based learning and connect that to a tutor.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here today.
And today I want to talk about using a tutor at LingQ and specifically
with reference to my Persian.
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I appreciate it.
So if you've been following me, you know, that I've been sort of bumbling along in
both Persian and Arabic, and Arabic I've been sort of experimenting with, you know,
mainly Standard Arabic, but a little bit of a Persian, a little bit of Levantine.
And so I'm decided that for the next three months, I'm going to focus on Persian.
I'm going to work more closely with my tutor Sahra, one of our tutors at LingQ.
Um, you know, that I'm primarily an input based learner so I've been doing
a lot of input in these languages, somewhat leisurely, largely focused on
listening, which is easy to do, uh, trying to find the time to do some reading.
Uh, if I only have a short period of time, I'll maybe review my vocab.
Focusing in on the status three words where I'm likely to know them
so I can move more words to known.
I'd like to get my known words total up over 10,000.
I have about 27,000 saved words in LingQ, but I have less than 10,000 known words.
And I'm sure a lot of the words that are in that status three area, uh, I in fact
know them, but I haven't come across them again so that I can move them to known.
Uh, from experience, I know I can easily find a few hundred or more, uh,
there, so that'll move me over 10,000.
So those are the kinds of things that I'm going to do in terms of input,
continuing my input activities.
But I want to explore the ways in which a LingQ learner like me can
work more effectively with a tutor.
So I spoke to Sahra.
I said, I want to experiment over the next three months.
And, uh, we're going to look at the different things that we can do that
will sort of integrate LingQ learning, which is predominantly sort of using,
uh, input, content things we can find on the internet or beginner material,
uh, to move our learning along.
And we don't spend as much time talking about output, but
we all want to get to output.
I want to speak Persian better.
What are we going to do?
First thing twice a week, I'm going to speak to Sahra.
I've already scheduled that in and we are going to have a subject.
So we're not just...
up until now I just arrive and we talk, uh, Sahra keeps a record of my mistakes
or vocabulary that I was missing.
She sends me a report, which she records.
I review it.
And occasionally I go back and review previous lessons
and that's kind of been it.
So now we're saying we're going to have a specific subject.
So she, for example, has proposed that we talk about the economy of Iran of
Turkey, because she happens to be visiting Turkey and they have inflation and other
problems there, and the economy of Canada.
So with that, I say, okay, I'm going to prepare for that.
So what I did was I Googled, uh, first of all, I convert, you know, the economy of
Iran, the economy of Turkey, the economy of Canada, convert that into uh, Persian.
I cheat.
I use Google Translate to do that.
I put it in the search field and, uh, I see what pops up.
Now typically Wikipedia pops up pretty quickly and, uh, we have permission to
use Wikipedia articles at LingQ, so these are Persian language Wikipedia articles.
Uh, I'm going to study those uh, and Sahra is going to record them for me.
So that gives me some material to start to focus in on that uh, the,
the vocabulary surrounding economics.
Um, another source for Persian material, Persian language
material is at Radio Farda.
And there again, we have permission at LingQto share, uh, content from
Radio Free Europe radio, Radio Farda.
A lot of that is also very good.
So that's going to give me some more, uh, focus on, uh, vocabulary.
And in that case, I have the podcast and I use Happy Scribe
to, uh, transcribe the podcasts.
And so I can learn from those.
And the agreement I have with Sahra is that she will decide the
subject for Tuesdays, and I will decide the subject for Thursdays.
So she gave me the subject of the economy of those three countries.
And I've decided that I want to stay with that vocabulary so
that I'll get to know it better.
So I want to talk about inflation.
So tomorrow I have another session with Sahra and we're
going to talk about inflation.
And again, she will create a report and send it to me with the recording.
So I'm hoping to get, getting back to my discussion of the, uh, hockey stick.
I've sort of progressed past that steep blade of the hockey stick
stage and I'm somewhere here.
I'm not sure where I am, but I'm at the beginning of that long road from B1 to B2.
I consider that to be the longest stretch.
Some people say no, the longest stretch is from B2 to C1.
Uh, I mean, it's kind of arbitrary because unless you actually take a
test and I don't take a test, but I consider B2 means I'm comfortable.
I make mistakes.
I understand most things.
Uh, C1 means I make far fewer misses.
And there's nothing that I don't understand, but I'm not quite at the
level of vocabulary of a native or C2.
So I don't know how far that distance is.
All I know is that this long road to me is the most uncomfortable because I'm not
good enough to understand most of what I hear on these Persian language podcasts.
I'm not good enough to have a comfortable discussion about the
economy or inflation or whatever.
So I want to get to here, whether this is closer to C1 or not so close to C1.
To me, this is the most uncomfortable stage we feel we're not getting anywhere.
We feel we can't remember anything.
And yet we're not good enough to just listen and read.
Once we achieve what I consider to be this B2 stage where, you
know, I can just listen to Persian.
I can just talk to people, make mistakes.
Doesn't matter.
I'm comfortable.
I can watch movies.
So I'm not as good as I would like to be.
But, um, That's where I want to get to question is three months
working hard with, uh, Sahra uh, is that gonna enable me to do it?
Okay.
I also want to demonstrate to you a little bit of how I set up
to focus in on content material.
That's going to help me get there.
Uh, I'm also going to leave you some videos of me speaking Persian, uh, so that
at the end of the three months, we can see if I improved or how much I improved.
Uh, another purpose of this is to see working with Sahra what are
the ways in which we can better integrate LingQ functionality,
LingQ content, LingQ's ability to access material on the internet.
How do we integrate that?
Working with a tutor.
What are the, what can the tutor do?
Tutor can follow my activity level can prod me, nudge me to do more.
And so over the next three months, not only will I be looking to see how much I
can improve, but I also want to experiment to see how we can sort of take all of
the things that LingQ offers in terms of input based learning and connect that to
a tutor provided, you know, content that we can work, we can work on together,
whether it be from beginning beginner material that we already have in our
libraries or accessing material on the web, maybe it's the tutor, helping me
find things on the web so that the tutor becomes more of a guide, perhaps a guide
to LingQ a guide to content on the web, a coach on this sort of path where we want
to get again, picking up my hockey stick.
So we're going here, here, here.
Now we've got this long road and I'm looking to see how much a tutor, in this
case Sahra, can help me achieve my goals.
So, uh, that's what I want to do.
Check out my, uh, little walkthrough, you know, what I did on the site and
check out the videos where I speak Persian and we'll see how much I improve.
Thank you for listening bye for now.
So I want to show you how I generate content on the economy that I can use to
prepare for my discussions with my tutor.
So first I said, economy of Iran.
Uh, and so I cheat a little bit and I translated on Google Translate and I
put it in the, uh, Google search field.
And, uh, something comes up say it's related to ... crisis , but it's going to
have the technical terms that I require.
So now I need to get that into LingQ so I can go to my browser
extension here and click on it.
And, uh, I already created a course called economics, so I just click on import.
Okay.
So, all right.
So here's my lesson now.
Uh, there are other ways.
If I go to edit lesson, I can see that I have other lessons that I have brought
in, in the sort of economics banner here.
Um, I don't have an audio file, but because this is Wikipedia,
we are allowed to share.
So, but I don't want to share it without audio.
So I've asked my tutor to create a recording of this.
And what happens then is once I have an MP3 file and, and you can see her at the
bottom of my screen, that I have been uh, getting, uh, recordings, uh, MP3 files
from Radio Farda, uh, which I transcribe, uh, at the, um, Happy Transcribe.
And then, but the point is you just take one of these MP3 files
and drag it up here, but I'm not going to drop this because it
doesn't correspond to this content.
But when I get, uh, when I get a, uh, an audio file from my
tutor I'll put that up there.
If I want to change the name of this, I could call it something else.
Uh, you know, he economy of Iran, but ah, whatever it's up to me for the time
being it's only for my own personal use.
So I have no description and I don't worry too much about how it looks.
If I go to share this, now I'm going to have to improve it.
And, uh, so.
I can not go back to viewing the lesson.
All right.
Now the other thing is if I wanted to, I could also just simply, or
maybe like, so whoops, uh, whatever.
Yeah.
Copy and paste.
So I copy it.
Then I go to LingQ and I go to import and import lesson.
And if I didn't want to use the browser extension, but it's so much easier
with the browser extension, but, uh, I then could select the course.
So if I choose economics, EC and search it's going to come up.
