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Italian - 1000 Hours | ||
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5200 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 152 09 November 2010 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Trovo che ci sono più somiglianze che differenze, perciò impero le differenze, e molte de queste differenze sono più come l'inglese che come il francese. Per esempio l'aspetto progressivo (chi non esiste in francese), e la traduzione diretta da "there is"/"there are" a "c'è"/"ci sono" mentre in francese è "il y a" ("it has there"). La posizione dei pronomi è anche differenze ("je veux le faire" vs "voglio farlo") ma è facile da ricordarsi. Suppongo che ci siano altre differenze ma il mio livello non è ancora molto alto perciò non le ho ancora viste. Edited by garyb on 09 November 2010 at 2:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5698 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 10 of 152 12 November 2010 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Garyb, excuse me for not responding in Italian! Thanks for sharing that with me, it's
certainly interesting to see some of the differences between the romance language. As it stands, the only real differences I am noticing between Spanish and Italian are the latter's agreement rules between nouns and their prepositions/articles. Among a lot of other things all of the agreement rules and contractions will take some getting used to. I don't want to leave this blog completely dormant. I don't like to make large posts so I'll keep it short and sweet. My studies have been going well. I'm now at 80 hours of Italian and going strong. Here's what I've been doing: 1. Almost finished Michel Thomas foundation course. I rate this very highly point for a starting point. 2. About 2/3 through "Living Language: Ultimate Italian". I think this book is not bad to begin with, but I like a lot more drills and grammar explanations in a good book. I've been copying the dialogues out and doing all of the activities/drills. I've bee logging my time and have spent 25 hours on this book. 3. Trawling through my small Italian dictionary. I normally spend 15-20 minutes flicking to random pages and "shopping" for words that I like. I then add these to Anki for my daily review. 4. Anki. Spending about ~20 minutes a day on this per day. Currently have 173 mature cards. 5. Random reading. I've been reading some random bits and bobs from all over the internet. My reading at this point is really slow due to the fact that my grammar and vocabulary are letting me down so this is not my main focus at the moment. 6. Podcasts. I'm listening to all kinds of intermediate podcasts while I drive. I avoid anything with English in them like the plague. My listening comprehension for the intermediate material is probably around 30% at this stage (I don't know how I managed to describe it at 30%, though, this kind of thing is very inaccurate). In other news, today I picked up La Lingua Italiana per Stranieri from the library today (lucky) so I will have a look at that soon. I would like to finish working through my Ultimate Italian book first. I might actually do the last couple of chapters of this at a quicker pace so that I can get to the better book. So... who else is studying Italian full-time and wants to share in on the fun? Edited by Oasis88 on 12 November 2010 at 12:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5698 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 11 of 152 15 November 2010 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for another update. I've been studying pretty hard - 4 hours a day over the last
10 days which is not too bad for me. Here's what I've been working on: Ultimate Italian textbook - I've still working hard to finish this. It takes me about 50 minutes per chapter and I have 13 to go. The book isn't terrible, but it's not great either. Each chapter contains: conversation, grammar notes, vocabulary, questions, answers and "cultural notes". The problem with the book is that it is a bit sparse and some of the vocab is a bit abstract. The drills are also really easy which makes you second guess whether you are actually learning anything. Assimil - I've just started this and have been spending a lot of time on it. I'm really enjoy Assimil! I got a hold of the old Italian without Toil. I find the old cartoons and quirky conversations rather enjoyable. Here is what I am doing with Assimil at the moment. For the passive phase I first listen to the lesson without looking at the book 5-6 times to train my ear to comprehend as much as I can. I find that making things hard for myself helps the learning process. After listening there are normally 1-2 little spots which I can't make out the word/s, phrase/s. After this I listen to the lesson while reading the Italian. When I do this it really hits home for me. I like to be able to see the words I had trouble with right before me as I am listening in order to make that all important connection. I normally read and listen like this 4-5 times to train my ear for the correct words. After this I spent 10 minutes or so simply reading the whole lesson, translations, notes, etc. After this I listen and read (the italian) a few more times. Finally I listen to the lesson without the book until I am confident that I can pick out of the words and where they begin and end. While driving I listen to the lessons on repeat until I literally recite Assimil quotes in my sleep. Currently having a lot of fun with Assimil as you can see! I'm doing 2-3 lessons a day just to catch up since I'm not a pure newbie. Michel Thomas - I finished the foundation course the other day and now about 30 minutes into the advanced course. I love the new students. By this, I really mean to say that they are a whole lot better than the beginner speakers. It's nice that they are not constantly stalling and mispronouncing every second word, although this may change as the content gets harder. I'm thoroughly enjoying Michel Thomas at the moment. Anki - I'm using this quite a bit each day (around 30 minutes). I have to be honest, I am beginning to question the use of flashcards. After a bit of metacognition, it does seem to be that I am now thinking unfavourably about the use of flashcards because I've been a little "sucked in" to the Assimil passive wave theory. At this point I don't really want to focus on producing the language (thus why I quickly gave up the idea to post this blog in Italain). However, I will continue to use Anki since it can not in anyway be harmful to me and doesn't take up that much time. Just a few tingling doubts. Radio - I'm listening to the Repubblica TV radio podcasts which is way over my head obviously. Reading - On occasion I go "into the wild" and read a few native level tidbits just to humble myself but this is nowhere near the main focus. The plan ------- The plan for here is to well an truly focus on finishing all of my beginner materials. I still have about 15 hours for my Ultimate Italian book, 7/8 hours for Michel Thomas, potentially 150+ for Assimil and potentially 150/200+ for La Lingua per Stranieri sitting patiently in my bookshelf for after I am done with Ultimate Italian. Working through these materials will all be apart of my overall "passive phase" before any concerted efforts to produce the language. After completing all of these materials I'll probably start to pick up some massive books and just plough through them as best as I can knowing full well that I'll have a great handle on the grammar and decent vocabulary. I'll probably complement this with some L/R once I have first read the book. Following this it will be about conversation partners and writing/reading as much Italian as I can but that will come much later. The second major point I wanted to address as a slight change of focus/paradigm shift. To begin, I've thought about the title of my blog and it's pretty much a non-title as far as I'm concerned. After tracking every minute I've spent on Italian thus far (5,737 minutes) I've learnt to appreciate that languages are learned through effort as measured in time (I do know strong arguments can be made about this, but you get my drift). Instead of saying I want to learn a language in x months/years I think the focus should be on how much time you want to commit to learning a language. So for me, my new goal is going to make it to 1000 hours of Italian. After that I will reassess and see where I am. I think after 1000 hours I will be able to reach my main goal of reading fluency as well as to hold conversations "without sounding like an idiot". So, that's my goal. After 1000 hours it will be interesting to see what I am capable of. I just did a calculation in excel... if I continue this month's progress I will reach 1000 hours 8 months from now. How much can you learn in 1000 hours? Congratulations for reading thus far. *cookie Hour count: 96 Edited by Oasis88 on 15 November 2010 at 3:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6776 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 152 15 November 2010 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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The answer is: plenty. It's when you have those leaps in learning that it really dawns on
you how all this time is silently putting tiny bricks one atop another until the wall is load bearing. My goal was 600 hours in 6 months (ended on 700), only I set that goal "organically", it was based on my actual effort, not decided up front. I had 100h/month as the loosely defined target. On Anki I should say that I recommend using phrases or sentences over words. I made tons of flashcards of Italian words and it did teach me a lot, but also produced a lot of recurring words that I didn't relate to at all. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5690 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 152 15 November 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I surely agree on Anki.
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| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5698 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 14 of 152 20 November 2010 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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126 hours of Italian on the clock and I can already start to feel some things beginning
to click. Yesterday I finished the Advanced edition of Michel Thomas and on the whole I was rather impressed with it. I did feel at times that I just sat there conjugating verbs for 7 hours but it was quite effective to get me thinking. I really enjoyed the sections towards the end where Michel began talking about how to remember the different rules, such as: "Keep the shoulds and coulds out of the woulds!". The female was starting to get on my nerves towards the end... particularly when Michel neglected the male who usually provided correct answers rather promptly. I have to say, though, for a small investment in time Michel Thomas is the best out there at the beginner level to get you into the guts of the language. After listening to the tapes I now feel comfortable with most of the tenses and can conjugate them quickly without too much stress. Let's see... Avrei scrito in Italiano ma non voleva farlo. Spero che quella frase sia corretta, e anche questa. Vorrei che voi correggeste i miei errori. Are these 3 phrases correct? My bread and butter at the moment is still my Ultimate Italian text (3 chapters remaining) and Assimil. I'm still thoroughly enjoying Assimil and getting a lot out of it. Edited by Oasis88 on 20 November 2010 at 2:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6776 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 15 of 152 20 November 2010 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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- Avrei scrito in Italiano ma non voleva farlo.
volevo - first person. voleva - third person Other two are correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5586 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 16 of 152 20 November 2010 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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also, its' scritto, not scrito.
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