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Advice for someone struggling with L2? | ||
Tags: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4654 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 24 27 December 2014 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
It takes a good deal of team and a great deal of effort to become comfortable in a second language. If you set yourself the much higher goal of matching your L1 with your L2 then it's going to take longer. That's not to say that you shouldn't strive to achieve that goal, just that you should set more realistic expectations.
I expect that the most effective study methods for you will be ones you can stick with. There is (sadly) no silver bullet. So you should try a variety of courses, experiment with native materials, try shadowing, and so on. Stick with the ones that seem to help the most. Edited by dampingwire on 27 December 2014 at 12:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4998 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 24 27 December 2014 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, you are obviously doing a lot of things corectly and may just need more time.
Other things that might be helpful: -add some real, traditional grammar studying into this. Perhaps you need the more logical and systematic approach. Get a quality book with explanations, exemples and exercises and you might see some progress in your output pretty soon. Fluenz appears to me as a very good resource (I may buy it for some language in future) but from their list of contents, I am convinced another supplementary grammar source could do you some good. -vocabulary. If you are struggling to find the correct word, you might want to add anki or another srs to your routine for further practice of your vocabulary from elsewhere. -add even more listening. You've been watching tv in Italian, which is great, just continue. Many people on the forums have had great progress with movies and tv series but you need to devour lots of those. -if you wish to practice speaking now, consider hiring a tutor instead of the proposed conversation class. From my experience, many conversation classes follow rather boring and annoying strategies (such as wasting a lot of in class time on reading articles and such preparatory activies at the expense of the speaking time) and vast majority of your classmates will actually hurt your progress. For majority of the time, you won't be speaking or listening to a native or very good non native speaker. You will mostly listen to your classmates and their mistakes. This can work when the whole class is very advanced but listening to other intermediates is not a valuable way to spend your paid time, in my opinion. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 11 of 24 27 December 2014 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I second the tutor option. My tutor is brilliant, although she is my neighbour and pushing 85, so I don't have much experience with online tutors like the ones at iTalki. A tutor gives personalised help which is great. You might want to seek out language exchange partners. I found a language exchange partner about six years ago and we've been great friends ever since. I spent a couple of days with her and her family in Rome this year. I think finding people to speak with is a great motivator.
Also Italians seem to be a lot more forgiving when you're butchering their language, and I have yet to meet an Italian who didn't want to help me learn. If only the French were so accommodating. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| pagare Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3741 days ago 16 posts - 15 votes Studies: English | Message 12 of 24 29 December 2014 at 9:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am seriously considering the tutor option. I also and interested in language exchanges too. But I don't know
how to go about it? Should I have a prescripted lists of questions? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3831 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 13 of 24 29 December 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would experiment with an iTalki tutor - just browse the Italian ones and see who you like based on their profiles.
You can do three trial lessons. If you think you might want to get a package (5 or 10, say, lessons at a cheaper rate) look for tutors who offer those. You might also want to find one with a decent level of English so you can let them know specifically what you are looking for. The paid tutors should be able to guide the conversation. For language exchange I would just find someone (might have to go through a few) with whom you have stuff in common and go from there. The first conversation is going to be be basic stuff, personal information, family, job/study etc and hopefully should develop naturally the way English conversations do but there are also a long list of possible topics here: http://www.tobefluent.com/2014/09/02/language-exchange-so-wh at-do-you-want-to- talk-about/ 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 24 29 December 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sorry but it seems like you don't truly understand how much time/effort it takes. This quote applies to languages too: True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together. However, avoid burnout as well. You need consistency and patience. What are your goals? Is there an objective reason for them? LingQ is good but you need to read actual books too. Also, try lyricstraining. Edited by Serpent on 29 December 2014 at 4:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| pagare Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3741 days ago 16 posts - 15 votes Studies: English | Message 15 of 24 29 December 2014 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much for this. It is making me realize I have to work A LOT HARDER it get what I want. I really appreciate this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 24 30 December 2014 at 1:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Don't be intimidated. Use the hidden moments, try to have more fun in Italian (at least music for now and later comic books, movies, usual books). Overloading yourself is a very real risk. Just remember that Rome wasn't built in a day ;)
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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