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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 33 of 160 01 February 2013 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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As usual thanks for the feedback everyone; always nice to know that people read and appreciate the log!
Not done a whole lot in the last week because it was a pretty busy one: working hard on a work project, short lunch breaks and staying late and all the rest, and I was playing with my band so that took up the remaining time. Overall January was a crazy month, but certainly a productive one in every area of life. I did make it to the French meetup this week. It was unusually busy and there was a good atmosphere, although precious few French people as usual. It was indeed a bit more serious than the University one: one person was a beginner but insisted on making an effort to speak and understand in French rather than switching to English, which was great to see. I'm hoping to go to a film night organised by the meetup group tonight as well. I'm thinking of going to a pub to watch the rugby tomorrow; it's France vs. Italy so I imagine some opportunities to hear my languages may well come up. Other than that, not much to report, but I think my spoken Italian is finally improving a bit: in my last few conversations the words were coming more easily, I made fewer mistakes, and things were a bit more fluid. I wonder how it'll be after the next hundred hours of conversation :). A few posts ago I said I'd be happy to settle for a B2 in Italian, but now I'm not sure... I've really been enjoying my recent progress in French and the ability to express myself well and talk at least somewhat fluently about all sorts of things, which I suppose is the beginning of getting into the Cs (I'm certainly not claiming to be C1 yet, but I think I'm now closer to there than to B2), and it would be a shame to not get my Italian to that sort of level as well. B2 is pretty useful but I don't think that things really start to all come together until after that stage. Who knows though. Half the time I think I'll be happy to just keep going at French and Italian until I get really good at them, and half the time I feel like I want to get onto Spanish sooner. 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 34 of 160 04 February 2013 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Français
I've done a good bit of speaking lately. I went to the film night on Friday, where we ended up watching Paris nous appartient. Or rather, half of it, by which point everyone was bored and half-asleep. Not the best film for a Friday night after a long week. Plenty conversation opportunity though. Then on Saturday I attended the University meetup again, and it seemed a bit more serious than last week: the level was higher, people were making more of an effort to explain themselves in French, and a real, live Frenchman even made an appearance! My next French film will be Radiostars, which is apparently like "American Pie, French style". I'm looking forward to it, it should be entertaining and a good source of conversational language. Italiano Plenty more conversation as usual, which is mostly going well but at times I find myself falling into bad pronunciation habits like reducing final vowels and pronouncing the /u/ like an English /u/: two traps that are quite easy to avoid in French because of its lack of lexical stress and need to differentiate between /u/ and /y/. Nothing that stops me from being understood, although a reduced vowel at the end of a verb can cause confusion (for example /'parlə/ could be heard as "parlo", I speak, or "parla", he/she speaks, and /'vjɛnɨ/ could be "vieni", you come, or "viene", he/she comes), but it's wrong all the same. I get it right most of the time but as an English speaker it's certainly an easy habit to fall into if you're not paying attention. I started watching Nuovo cinema paradiso, which I've heard a lot of good things about. 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 35 of 160 05 February 2013 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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More language practice last night, I just don't stop. I went to Language Café but it wasn't great: I didn't really seem to be in the mood to begin with, the atmosphere wasn't the friendliest, and there was a French guy who seemed intent on getting his English practice by insisting on turning every conversation to English as soon as possible and so ruining it for everyone else. People sometimes have a strange concept of an exchange, but I can't complain too much since in recent weeks there has been more French than usual. That meetup can be quite challenging at the best of times, not least because of all the loud noise and music, so if I'm tired or not in my most sociable mood I struggle to get into it.
There was also an Italian meetup on last night, so I left the Café quite early and went to that instead. First time I had been there in a couple of months, and it was good. Almost all of my Italian practice in that time has been with the same person, which is great but I found speaking with other people to be quite refreshing and inspiring. I seemed to be mostly speaking better than usual, particularly regarding accent. There seems to be something magical about a good group conversation that you just can't replicate by speaking to one person or from listening and TV. The Italian meetup is good for that because it's a small group, in a quiet bar, and most of the people there are either native speakers or fairly advanced learners. I'd definitely go more often if it weren't the same night as the often more exciting Café. 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 36 of 160 11 February 2013 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Another good weekend of practice...
There was a French meetup on Friday night that I managed to go to. My French felt a bit rusty and it seemed to take me at least an hour to really get warmed up, and even after that I didn't feel like I was at my best. Probably just tiredness at the end of the week, as well as the usual ups and downs, and the noisy bar environment didn't help. It was a good night though and I had some interesting conversations. I also went to the University meetup on Saturday afternoon, and I think I was speaking better; the ten hours of sleep between the two probably helped. There were two French guys there this time; it keeps getting better. I watched Radiostars, although while doing other things so I wasn't really giving it my full attention. I'll need to watch it again more attentively. More of the usual Italian too. I think I'm still making decent progress, but I'm still making far too many basic verb mistakes and I think that's something I should give more attention to. For French, it seemed that exposure and practice were enough to master the verbs, but the Italian ones are far more complicated, especially since there usually isn't a subject pronoun to "guide" you towards the correct conjugation, and I think some specific work on them would be helpful. I'm not sure exactly how to do that, but I'm sure verb exercises aren't exactly hard to find. Doing some writing might also be beneficial. I started watching Il cuore altrove for the second time. I thought I had understood it quite well the first time, but it seems like there were a lot of details that I missed and I'm only picking up the second time round. I enjoyed the bit where the main character is chatting up a woman and trying not to get annoyed when she keeps making grammatical errors. I already wrote about this film on last year's log, but I'll repeat myself and say that it's good for hearing a variety of Italian accents: the main character is a teacher who speaks very "properly", his father has quite a thick Roman accent, his roommate's from Naples, and most of the other characters are from Bologna. Edited by garyb on 11 February 2013 at 11:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 37 of 160 11 February 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure if this Practice Makes Perfect Verb Drills might be helpful. FSI seems to be great for drilling, too, although I've never used it. 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 38 of 160 12 February 2013 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, that looks like the sort of thing I'm after, I'll check it out. In fact, a while ago I saw a copy of "French verb drills" on someone's bookshelf and I thought to myself, I could do with one of these for Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5387 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 39 of 160 12 February 2013 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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They have them for Spanish, French, Italian, German and English, I think. They are really useful in drilling. I just bought the one for French pronouns and prepositions last week. :)
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 40 of 160 19 February 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Recently it's been all practice and no theory for me: no time to study but I've been using my languages socially a lot. Which is great, it's a situation I'd have killed to be in a year ago, although these days I very much see the value of both sides.
I went to the University exchange again, and it seems to just keep getting better. I was at the French table, but it turned out that most of the people there also spoke Italian and/or Spanish so there was a lot of these too, and towards the end it just became linguistic chaos, with people answering questions in a different language from the one in which they were asked and all sorts. Good fun! The level was reasonably high as well: there was a French girl and an Italian one, and two guys who spoke what I'd say was upper-intermediate French but with surprisingly good accents. I also ended up at a Spanish party one evening. It's been a while since I was at one of these! Needless to say I couldn't understand much when they were talking full-speed in the noisy environment, but I could make sense of some of the quieter conversations and even tried to exchange a few words with a girl who didn't feel comfortable speaking English. There was also a French guy and an Italian guy there, and I somehow found them rather quickly. Last night there was the language café where I spoke a bunch of French; I think it went quite well but I was tired and I definitely noticed some sloppiness in my pronunciation. Then I caught the end of an Italian meetup. That was interesting because there were four Italians and one woman who was the wife of one of the Italians and spoke pretty fluently. I used to feel quite nervous about speaking in situations like that, where it feels like I'm interrupting their high-speed conversation just to talk slowly and make mistakes, but these days it hardly bothers me. I still feel a bit of pressure but overall it's no big deal, and I find that if I make a real effort like that then people will generally respect it and hear me out. Again though I was tired and staying focused on the conversation got difficult. I'm noticing that I pick up accents more and more easily when I speak with some people, particularly with the more "catchy" accents like those from Milan, Emilia-Romagna, and Naples. Of course it doesn't really last, it's just a temporary thing, but maybe it's contributing slightly to the formation of my more permanent accent, which I suppose will end up as some sort of mixture. Who knows. I'm not sure which accents I like best; the ones I mentioned seem to be easier to pick up, but they can sound a bit strong and harsh at times, while "gentler" accents like Venetian, milder Rome area ones, and Pugliese sound more pleasant but they just don't have that "catchiness" about them and they can be harder to understand. This is all just my perceptions of course! Plenty more of the usual Italian conversation at the weekend too. I seem to have surpassed the plateau I was on for the last few weeks and it's coming to me more easily, but there's still times when I either just can't remember a word or I say something completely wrong; this seems to happen often with numbers as well as with the verb forms. It just needs practice, and I'll get a hold of that verb drills book in a couple of weeks when I have more free time. Good progress overall: a few weeks is a pretty short time for a plateau! Apparently I haven't updated this in a while: Italian Super Challenge Films: 50 done, 50 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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