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Gary’s TAC 2013 - PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 81 of 160 01 July 2013 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So, back to reality. Back to speaking Italian most days; I'm glad to say that my Italian ability doesn't seem to have declined after not having done any work on it aside from a very short conversation with an Italian receptionist at my hostel in Paris. Last night I was out with two Italian girls, but between feeling tired and ill after my trip and the loud music I was struggling to understand everything and join in their conversation. And back to not being able to use French much; I was with a few French speakers earlier on yesterday, who spoke French with each other but weren't keen to do so with me, and again due to feeling ill I didn't really have the energy to be insistent. Sadly, the boost to my French motivation doesn't seem to have lasted and I'm again entertaining thoughts of giving it up in favour of Spanish. I'm still going to give it a few more months and see if things improve though. And three foreign languages is quite a scary thought at the moment, even if one is on the back-burner! Spanish is probably going to swallow up what remains of my life, and I don't feel quite prepared for that right now.
I've got a full meetup programme for the next few days: language café tonight, an English/Italian meetup that a friend has organised tomorrow (the day that a French person does something like that will be the day that pigs fly!), and French meetup on Wednesday. Unfortunately I'm still ill so I don't know if I'll make it to all of them. I said I'd properly think about my plans for the rest of the year after my trip, so here's my rough plan for the moment: French - Finish Grammaire Progressive. - Work through Alter Ego. And keep up the films, TV, radio, reading, conversation attempts, etc. during that time. Italian - Finish Super Challenge (see below) - Do some grammatical study to tidy things up a bit, if I can find decent resources for this. - Go to Italy for a week or two; I'm currently thinking late September or early October, so I don't die from the heat. And of course keep speaking lots. After that, Spanish. I had a funny thought: I was planning to take a "Speak From Day One" method, but I must have easily had several hundred hours of exposure to spoken Spanish by now so in reality it's going to be much more of a "silent period" approach. Not updated this for a while: Italian Super Challenge Films: 75 done, 25 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. Three quarters of the films done!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5201 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 82 of 160 01 July 2013 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Interesting trip report, Garyb,- thanks! I've bookmarked Attica as one of my bookstores to visit when
I'm next in Paris (though, heaven knows, I don't actually need more language-learning material - just using the stuff I already own should keep me going for a while yet. And (thanks to Google Maps), the big BD store must be La Rubrique à Bulles, another bookstore for my wishlist. I myself couldn't get into the whole graphic-novels "thing" for the longest time. Despite owning Maus (by Art Spiegelman), my interest wasn't piqued by any other authors/titles. - It was Neil Gaiman who was my "gateway" author to the genre. And (spurred on by the infectious enthusiasm of several BD-reading Htlal members) once I started exploring them in French, it opened a whole new world of reading opportunities. - Plus, it's perhaps a shallow motivation, but there's also something very satisfying about being able to finish a French book in a relatively short period of time, rather than the weeks or months that an adult Fr novel normally takes me. (I'm in awe of people like Kanewai who tackle Proust and Victor Hugo!) So I know that BDs aren't necessarily for everyone - but if you wish to try (or re-try) them at some stage in the future, I'd urge you to check out http://www.izneo.com/. I notice that earlier in the thread you said you might prefer printed copies to online/digital ones, but (especially if you're just starting out and aren't familiar with any of the authors/titles) the rental prices for digital copies are affordable (1.99 euros for ten day access ), and Izneo's free first-five-page previews enormously useful. By the way, there's also an Assimil store in Paris, at 11 Rue des Pyramides, in the 1st arr. The "contact" link has a map. http://fr.assimil.com/ Edited to fix a typo. Edited by songlines on 02 July 2013 at 6:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 83 of 160 01 July 2013 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the helpful post!
That's the one!
Yeah, I like the idea of them: more conversational language than a typical book, illustrations to give context, and quick to get through. As I say I just haven't had the time yet, and the idea always goes to the back of my mind. That site looks useful, thanks, I'll check it out when I have a bit more time to spare than I do now.
I had no idea - I must have walked straight past it at least twice without noticing! I'm surprised; you'd think that a big Assimil sign would catch my attention straight away. I have been thinking about picking up a copy of Assimil Spanish with the Italian or perhaps French base for when the time comes. I might be able to find it when I go to Italy, or of course just order it online, but there's something nice about buying it in a real shop. I might also look for Lingua Italiana per Stranieri Superiore (or Medio for that matter; I don't know what their definitions of intermediate/advanced are) when I'm there; so far that book remains a complete mystery to me, with no online previews or reviews, and even Attica didn't have a copy. Edited by garyb on 01 July 2013 at 3:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 160 04 July 2013 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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French meetup was pretty good: there were several real live French people there, in fact it was about half and half. My French really wasn't at its best, but I'm still ill and tired so I wasn't expecting miracles; I shouldn't even really be going out, but I can't turn down a French opportunity. Unfortunately though, I won't be able to make the next meetup, so it could be as long as a month before my next opportunity to speak French with somebody. Realistically, something will probably come up sooner, but that's the worst case.
So I've decided to take a leaf out of Benny and other language bloggers' books, and do a mini-mission just to try and prove that something is possible: Conversation improvement without conversation. July is looking a little bit more calm than May and June, so I'm aiming for a daily commitment of at least 15 minutes. My plan is: At least 5 minutes of exposure: Film, TV, Youtube video, etc., to get my ears and brain into "French mode". At least 5 minutes of accent work: The chorusing method I've written about, or shadowing. At least 5 minutes of self-talk: Talk about a particular thing and my thoughts on it - an image, a news story, the video I just watched, an event, or whatever. Ideally these will be consecutive and in that order, but if that's not possible then I'll fit them in however I can. That's obviously the minimum, and more time on each would be much better, but I'm trying to be at least somewhat realistic and I figure a few minutes is much better than nothing. Let's see how this goes! Recently I've been feeling like I'm really reaching the point where I can't improve much more unless I converse frequently, so I'm trying to prove myself wrong. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 85 of 160 09 July 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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French
I've managed to stick to the plan so far; at least 10 minutes of each activity in fact. With chorusing/shadowing in particular, I find that you need at the very least 5 minutes just to warm up and get into the groove, so that really is the bare minimum. It's less than a week so I can't say much about results; I was at the language café last night and I did think the French was rolling off my tongue slightly more easily, but that could be due to any number of factors, and it's probably more down to me slowly starting to feel healthy again. My pronunciation is still all over the place, but I realise that any improvement is going to be very slow. I'm once again toying with the idea of looking for a French exchange through Gumtree/Couchsurfing/the University tandem group, but then I remember how much hassle I've had with them in the past. Maybe I should add an "only reply if you're serious" type disclaimer to my ad. Italian I found some Italian-looking people at the language café and talked to them; my suspicions were correct. I also briefly went to the Italian meetup afterwards, where I was speaking markedly better: further confirmation that I speak better in a quieter environment. I suppose I should just accept that conversation in a noisy environment is a high-level skill, over and above just plain conversation. Incredibly, my Italian still appears to be progressing almost linearly, so my plan is just to keep doing what I'm doing. I have been reading a lot more lately: articles on La Repubblica, a joke news site along the lines of The Onion and Daily Mash called Lercio, and I follow a Facebook page with funny pictures and internet memes in Italian, Notifica. Italians, unlike French, mostly write their language fairly correctly, so comments and online conversations are also a useful resource. Also, not a real Italian resource as such, but Cher Hale's blog has some good Italian tips such as useful everyday expressions, and she has a great sense of humour. Edited by garyb on 11 July 2013 at 11:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 86 of 160 12 July 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I got some more good Italian conversation yesterday, mostly in a group with three native speakers. I was quite happy with my "performance": I understood most, although when it got fast I had to really pay attention, and I had no problem joining in and expressing my point at almost full-speed when I wanted, although I was perhaps a bit more shy about doing so than I would be in English. And this was a relatively deep and varied conversation, not just the usual small-talk. Still some small mistakes with things like gender and verbs, but far far fewer than, say, at the start of this year.
I had another look at the good old CEFR self-assessment checklist. I don't think I quite meet all the B2 criteria yet, but I'm getting there and it just seems like a case of filling in gaps, getting more exposure on diverse subjects, and of course practising. On the other hand, I'm sure I said the same thing about my French a while ago regarding going from B2 to C1, which turned out to be a colossal understatement! But I've already done the whole B1-to-B2 thing with French (although as always I'm talking about self-estimated levels as opposed to taking the test!) so I think I have a better idea. There were also a couple of French guys and I managed to get in a few sentences of that, but not enough to really constitute practice or for me to reflect on to get useful information. The point where my Italian overtakes my French is starting to become visible on the horizon. I'll guess sometime next year. Like I keep saying, in Italian I'm already more comfortable, more fluent in "easy" conversations, and probably have a better accent; I just need a few hundred more hours of exposure and a couple of weeks in the country to reach the sort of level of broad and diverse knowledge that I currently have in French, at which point I'll be pretty shit-hot at it, as we say here. I'm quite excited at the possibility of reaching that sort of level in a language, even if it's not the one I originally thought it would be. I'm still not convinced that reaching a proper C1 level is realistic or worth the effort given the scope of Italian, but a combination of the between-B2-and-C1 knowledge I have of French with the comfort and consistency I have in Italian would be a level that I'd be very happy with and that seems attainable with spare-time study. Edited by garyb on 12 July 2013 at 12:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 87 of 160 15 July 2013 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Update mostly about media:
Italian Italian Super Challenge Films: 78 done, 22 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. I watched the first half of La meglio gioventù, a 6-hour long film which for the Challenge purposes I'm going to count as 4 films. So far it's very good, for the story and for the historical, cultural, and political perspective. I also saw Ieri, Oggi, Domani, an old comedy that has three parts: one set in Naples, one in Milan, one in Rome. An interesting one for hearing different accents. I have to admit that the Naples episode completely defeated me with its accent/dialect and I had to use subtitles. French I've been reading more and more in French, partly to up my exposure and partly because I've simply had a recent desire to read more. I read Albert Camus's La Chute, which I enjoyed a lot. It's quite different from everyone's second French book, the good old L'étranger; it's written in a much more elegant and literary style, and so it's more difficult, but still far easier than some detective novels that I've attempted in the past. I read it outdoors in the sun without a dictionary at hand, and there were a few points where I came across words that I didn't know and couldn't figure out and it would've been nice to have one, but I still enjoyed it and got through it quite quickly. Since then I've started reading the translation of Dune, which I think Emk read a while ago if I remember correctly? It's a book I had been meaning to read for years, so two birds with one stone. I found it quite slow-going and difficult at first, but I'm getting more into it now, and I'm reading it on my Kindle which has a useful but not perfect dictionary. Sci-fi isn't really my thing to be honest, but Dune is supposed to be one of the best. I saw Le nom des gens, a fairly recent drama/comedy film that I thought was quite well done and mostly very easy to understand. At the weekend, I had several short Italian conversations as per usual, and I spoke some French with a Belgian and a Moroccan. Also, I was out partying with a big international group on Saturday night, and at one point I was trying to understand a full-speed French conversation about some sort of drama in the social circle while there was loud music on. I suppose that's the sort of "real life" use of the language that I was complaining about not having enough of! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5199 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 88 of 160 19 July 2013 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Another Language Café night on Monday. I was speaking French with a couple of people who were relative beginners, but quite keen ones so it was interesting. Explaining/teaching things can be quite useful as it helps me understand things better myself, but obviously my own French is far from perfect and at times I'm not completely sure of things myself!
I recently found out that there's some sort of very cheap pizza night in a bar in my city that also happens on Mondays. It seems to be where all the cool kids are going these days, including many Italians and a few French. I might go there instead of to the Café next week - while the Café is great on a good night, it's busy and noisy and a bit far away and very hit-or-miss for my languages, so I'm absolutely open to alternatives. Similarly, I've been meaning to go to a Couchsurfing meeting in my city for ages, and I think I'll finally take the plunge next week, since I've now met a few other people who attend. It is, like almost everything here, on Wednesday nights, which clashes with the French meetup every second week. I'm told that there are quite a few French people who go to CS, but whether they'll be willing to speak French with me is of course another question. I'm starting to think that language meetups maybe aren't the best places to meet and make friends with target-language speakers, and there could be better alternatives for those who are "in the know" and have the social skills and connections to take advantage of them. Recently I seem to be improving at these. At some point soon I think I'm going to write a post about the "secondary skills" for language acquisition that are often ignored, like the social skills to find and meet TL speakers who're willing to speak to you in their language, and the ability to seek out good media. I know Benny Lewis covers that stuff a lot, but he often makes it sound easier than it often is, as if you can just walk out your front door and find yourself partying with native speakers. Although I'm sure that did once literally happen to me for Spanish. Last night, for the first time in a while, I stayed in and had a very productive evening at home: I managed a good bit of study of both languages as well as some meditation and some music practice. I did some more French pronunciation work (I'm finding some of the recordings on IELanguages are useful, especially as they aren't too fast) and some self-talk, which I seemed to do better than usual. I might be going into another "up" for French, but I'll wait until I actually speak to someone to see. Recent films: I've watched To Rome with Love, which is half in English and half in Italian. The plots range from entertaining to stupid, and the acting from good to painfully bad, but the funny moments and the Italian kept me going. Unlike Midnight in Paris, which I gave up on after about twenty minutes. I also saw the start of a Belgian film, Rosetta. Edited by garyb on 19 July 2013 at 12:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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