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Rdearman Super Challenge Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 97 of 158 01 January 2015 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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--- Weekly Update ---
Happy New Year! I'm strangely pleased my weekly update fell on the 1st of January, because it means I can post a quick review of last years accomplishments. In 2014; I read over 1/2 a million words (530,000) in French and watched 134 hours of French film, and I read almost 1/2 million words (488,000) in Italian and watched 112 hours of Italian film! I managed to sneak in another star before the year end and got to 75 films in Italian. Quick calculation shows with only 1 year left of the challenge I need to be reading at least 1.3 books per week (65 pages per week) in both Italian & French. All in all a good year and an easy one for films. But books, the thing which would give me the biggest boost, is the thing I struggle to make time for. --- SC Statistics --- French : 35.3 books : 89.4 films Italian : 32.5 books : 75.0 films Reading Averages Change French: 0.980 books per week --> 0.980 books per week Italian: 0.888 books per week --> 0.902 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 86.28 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 79.44 - French - I'm still reading Tarzan on my tablet but I'm almost done with it. I have another fantasy book in French, the first of a three part series, I'm debating starting it or completing the last book of the Stephen King trilogy. I've been watching a film on NetFlix called Amour which I've dipped in and out of. Mostly I've been watching the Simpsons or Hero Corp (repeatedly). I've done subs2srs for Hero Corp so I catch more and more of it every time I watch, since I'm basically memorising it! - Italian - Read my last Hardy Boys book for awhile. I've been getting a bit sick of Frank and Joe Hardy and their good guy, all-star cleverness. You can really tell these things were written in the 50-60's. I've picked up a novel by Andre Norton which I read 20-30 years ago in English called "Exiles of the Stars", or "Gli Esuli Delle Stelle". I don't remember the plot or the characters although it is coming back to me as I read. I've watched a bunch of episodes in the series "Il Tridiceismo Apostolo" which got me my 3rd star in Italian films. They are about a priest who investigates paranormal activity. The guy who plays the Bishop was also in "Tutti Pazzi Per Amoure" so I figure they don't have a lot of TV stars in Italy. --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 98 of 158 08 January 2015 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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--- Weekly Update ---
I thought I was doing better this week until I looked at the statistics below! I did read 2.4 books in French and I suppose this is what made me think I was doing well. But in reality I'm still playing catchup, I need to be reading 2 books a week in both Italian and French. The book I've selected for Italian, "Gli Esuli Delle Stelle", is actually quite hard. Another misconception; I thought a book written for teenagers would be easy, but no. On a personal note, my tutor has invited me to her "Advanced Italian Group", which in reality is simply all the students she taught over the last 20 or so years who get together once a week and chat in Italian. Basically 4-5 people show-up each week and speak in Italian. Some of these people ARE Italian, and others have been studying for 20+ years. Seemed to me everyone was C2+ and I spent all my time saying "Lentamente! Lentamente." (Slowly, slowly). Language learning has taken a bit of a backseat in my life for the last month and half, but thanks to the Super Challenge I am still plugging away daily. I try to read a few pages of something, or watch a TV show. I've decided to order all three seasons of Hero Corp (French) and subs2srs at least the entire first season. I'm only 10 films from the end in French, so this would basically put me over the top. I am also at the beginning stage of Mandarin, so that is taking an hour or two's time away from my Super Challenge work. --- SC Statistics --- French : 37.7 books : 89.7 films Italian : 32.6 books : 76.1 films Reading Averages Change French: 0.980 books per week --> 1.018 books per week Italian: 0.902 books per week --> 0.881 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 89.66 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 77.53 - French - Completed Tarzan on my tablet and decided in the end to read the last book of the Stephen King trilogy. For some reason I prefer the physical book when reading in French or Italian. This is mostly I suppose because of the need to bookmark where I'm at, count the pages, etc. Much easier in a physical book. One thing I really did notice after what seems a long time away from Monsieur King's writing is how easy it was for me to read. I breezed through 70 pages of the book in a few hours. I have no explanation, since I don't think Tarzan taught me that much more vocabulary, perhaps it is just having completed 600 or so pages of his books I'm used to his style. - Italian - As mentioned above reading a novel by Andre Norton called "Exiles of the Stars", or "Gli Esuli Delle Stelle". It is really hard going and I'm seriously considering pushing it to the side for something easier, but just not the Hardy Boys. It would be nice to find a Petit Nicolas for Italian. Started watching the second series of RIS Delitti Imperfetti which is a crime drama. The series follows investigators in the Reparto Investigazioni Scientifiche, the forensic team for the Carabineri. I had watched the first series before the Super Challenge started. I understand more of it now, but still not perfectly. --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 99 of 158 15 January 2015 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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--- Weekly Update ---
RESULT!!! I have completed the film portion of the French Super Challenge! If only I had signed up for a single language (sigh). Anyway, it is a good result but I have to say I still wonder if it has helped me? The reason I wonder is because I watched the entire first series of Barquo on netflix with subtitles. Great, understood everything, and even noticed when what the person said and they wrote in the sub-title was slightly different. I have the second series, sadly without sub-titles. I've watched the first four episodes of the second season and while I get the gist of shows, I really don't understand the detail. I find this really frustrating! I've basically watched 9000 minutes of French e.g. I've watched over 150 hours of French and I'm still not sure if I'm better at understanding French. You'd have thought after over 150 hours my listening comprehension would be perfect. I can therefore only conclude either I'm stupid (the most likely thing), others are overestimating the amount they understand, or French can only be understood by French people. [BEGIN RANT] For example there is a sound in French which sounds to me like the word for a female horse in English; MARE. This sound seems to be interchangeable with the French words for SEA, MOTHER, MAYOR, and SHIT!!! It all sounds the same after 150 hours. There must be some kind of tipping point where I'm actually going to be able to diferentiate? Oh and don't get me started about the slurring of articles into the words. [END RANT] Don't get me wrong, there has been an improvement, especially in reading. But of course in reading you can tell if they mean MER, MÈRE, MAIRE, ou MERDE. I suspect I have been expecting to much of an improvement and perhaps another 150 hours will make it all better. But it is very frustrating and I just don't know how to make it better other than just watch more. --- SC Statistics --- French : 38.9 books : 100.1 films Italian : 32.6 books : 76.2 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.018 books per week --> 1.023 books per week Italian: 0.881 books per week --> 0.857 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 90.08 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 75.49 - French - Watched a lot of stuff this week in French. 1 & 1/2 seasons of Barquo as already mentioned and two really good films. Rebellion which is a film about the revolution in New Caledonia back in the 80's. I also watched a Roman Palanski film called La Vénus à la fourrure which I didn't expect much from but was actually interesting, with only two actors! Still reading Le Fleau by Stephen King. - Italian - Watched about 15 minutes of The Hobbit in Italian, and that was it. --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 100 of 158 15 January 2015 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I got a notification today to say that you'd posted in your log and I was really
confused. I thought "Rdearman always updates his log on a Thursday and today is Tuesday". Not quite sure what planet I've been living on for the past few days!!! Congratulations on finishing the films part of the challenge anyway :) Perhaps you don't feel like it helped you as much because you were already at quite a high level in French when you started? I definitely feel like I have made improvement in my listening but then I was starting from an extremely low position. Or perhaps French is just a really difficult language to listen to? I have personally always assumed that it can only be understood by French people :D 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 101 of 158 15 January 2015 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
See now you're confusing me! I actually had to look at a calendar, I update my Mandarin log on a Monday BTW. :P But yep! It is Thursday, I know this because I've been "moved" into my tutors advanced Italian classes and they are on a Thursday. Which actually makes it a little difficult to update the log. Of course with all this TAC activity it is easy to get confused about who updates what and when! I'm assuming you have somehow flagged my log for tracking? It hadn't actually occurred to me; A. That anyone was interested enough in my ramblings to read them or to flag them in some manner, or B. I could actually do this with all the logs I read! And C. that I'm far to predictable and an easy target for assassination.
mmm... perhaps I started at a higher level, and I expect to much, but the problem is I have this nagging frustration I should know more. and I don't know if it is because I am underestimating my abilities, or there is some other reason why I don't feel I'm making progress. It's my log, so I'm going to try and explain what I mean, hopefully in a coherent manner by comparing and contrasting my Italian and French. (Feel free to move on to a more interesting discussion) I think I'll start by comparing reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension on a scale of 1-10 in each language as I think I am right now. French: reading (6) writing (3) speaking (5) listening (2) Italian: reading (4) writing (4) speaking (6) listening (6) I have been studying Italian for longer in terms of the number of years, but I've studied French more or less the same amount. In other words I believe I've put the same amount of time studied & effort into both languages. When I listen to Italian, either TV/Film I have a fair understanding with few gaps (without sub-titles). Say 50-60% of the dialogue. In an actual conversation with an Italian speaker I'm much better, I probably know 80%+ words in a conversation, so I can talk with people and communicate. Audio books are difficult for me, the pace is quick and there are no visual clues, but I get the gist mostly. My reading is much worse in Italian, I struggle and read very slowly. French is a completely different beast. After 38 weeks of the challenge I can read French almost as fast as I can read English. I can read French easily twice as fast as Italian. And the couple of tests I've taken have marked me approaching C1 for reading in French. But ... Listening to films or TV (without sub-titles) is hard, I figure I only understand 25-30% of the dialogue, even when it is spoken clearly. Audio books are virtually impossible for me to understand, unless I'm reading along with the narrator at the same time. [THREE PARAGRAPH RANT ABOUT SILENT LETTERS DELETED] I seem to do better with 1-2-1 communication. I can speak with and understand most of the conversations I've had with French speakers recently. Perhaps this is because they can see my blank looks or furrowed brow when they are interacting with me then slow down and enunciate more clearly. All of this leads to my frustration that I should know more, I should understand more, and this should be a lot easier than it is. Of course I have the other frustration as well which is why is Italian so damn difficult for me to read and French so easy? How I'm going to fix these problems I don't really know. My only option would seem to be just watch more French films, and read more Italian books. 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 102 of 158 16 January 2015 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Regarding the French rant... mer, maire and mère are all pronounced exactly the same :) You just need to tell from the context. Merde of course has a /d/ at the end; since it's a swear word it's often pronounced emphatically, such that the "de" at the end tends to become its own syllable and it's said like "mer-deuh!"... maybe that's confusing you if it sounds like two different words.
French can be an awkward language to listen to, since words don't have their own lexical stress and are usually put together into syllable groups. So it can be tricky to pick out individual words, especially if you don't know every word. Watching with French subtitles/transcripts helped me a lot, and I see you're using subs2srs which might be even better. Italian isn't as bad in this respect, it's a bit clearer where the word boundaries are because of stress. I watched Braquo years ago and I remember it wasn't easy. I hadn't heard of RIS Delitti Imperfetti, maybe I'll check it out sometime. Recently I've been watching La Piovra, which is a bit cheesy but the actors speak very clearly. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 103 of 158 16 January 2015 at 11:56am | IP Logged | |||||
The frustration comes from being so close to understanding the French dialogue, but it seems to slip away from me. So I might need to do a double-challenge in French Films to pin that slippery sucker down.
I have yet to watch anything in Italian which I wouldn't classify as "a bit cheesy", but some are better than others. Actually "Il Tredicesimo Apostolo" is a cheese free TV Series. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4575 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 104 of 158 17 January 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Haha yes, it was definitely Thursday - my brain just seemed to be a bit scrambled! I didn't realise the Mandarin log was on Mondays; I don't think I am subscribed to that one. The forum seems to automatically subscribe me to any thread which I have commented on, but you can also subscribe manually by going into threads and clicking "Watch this topic for replies". You should then receive an email every time there is a new post in that thread, which I mainly find useful but occasionally a bit annoying if a thread suddenly becomes really popular and there are hundreds of replies in it. You can go into the thread and click "unwatch" to toggle the notifications off if that happens. I have subscribed to all the logs I find interesting. I guess I should probably make sure I'm subscribed to all the logs of my TAC team members as well :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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