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Italian - 1000 Hours
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Oasis88
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 5698 days ago
160 posts - 187 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Italian

Message 65 of 152

12 January 2011 at 4:36am | IP Logged

301 hours

Quote:

Good progress, nice to see you're keeping it up! My recommendation would be to
speak more and have conversations if you can. In my experience with French, no matter
how good a knowledge of the language you have from reading, courses, etc., conversation
(and in particular, expressing yourself) is a separate skill and the only way to
improve it is by doing it. Some people think that if they just study the language loads
they'll eventually be able to speak it well, but that just isn't the case in my
experience. I also find that when I learn something in a conversation, for example when
being corrected or when asking how to express something, I remember it very well
because my mind has the whole experience of the conversation and the associated
emotions (be it the bad ones from making a mistake or the good ones from successfully
expressing yourself) to attach it to.

Thanks Gary. I'll think take your advice by beginning to look for a conversation
partner or two. And you might even be lucky enough to find some Italian posts in this
journal over the next couple of weeks - no promises. You are of course correct, the
four skills in language are separate and must be trained as such. The roll-over
benefits from each of them can be useful but focusing on them individually is the best
way to improve.

Quote:

Now back to the dictionary issue. I wouldn't say that it's harmful to look things up.
It's that you don't get the benefit that you would like (ie. from now on I know the
word). A lot of words are elusive, you can't seem to nail them down and the dictionary
doesn't explain it well. And I suppose it also depends on how pedantic you are. For
instance, I don't feel like I must need to know every word in a book to enjoy the book.
There are words I don't really care about. My approach is heuristic (if you will), I
think I "get" to what extent I understand what I'm reading, unknown words or not, and
that's good enough. I almost want to say that narrowing down the meaning of a word from
a general impression I already have to the specific meaning it has often doesn't seem
worth it. Because I won't remember the nuance. And if it's a word I see a lot I will
refine my intuition about it.

Quote:

Oasis, here's a post I have archived on the subject:
rea
ding novels
First post on the page, by Cainntear.

Thanks for reminding me of that post. I of course can't at all fault Cainntear's
approach but there still seems to be something holding me back. When I started reading
my first book a couple of weeks ago I set out with a bit of a plan, so I'll follow
through with that. After that, the idea of a more fluid reading style is too appealing
to let go so I'll take your advise and give it a shot with my next book.
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 66 of 152

13 January 2011 at 2:12am | IP Logged

306 hours

Well that was quick.

I followed the link to Lang-8 that was recommended to me by Numerodix and have already
lined up a suitable conversational partner. After registering I searched for members
with Lang-8's matching feature for every registered Italian who was learning English. I
then sorted this list by last log-in date (to find active members). After this I
narrowed this list down to members with a large number of "Corrections Made". This then
gave me only those members who were active and showed a propensity to help people learn
Italian. I then added the best of these to Skype (about 50% of the profiles contain
skype usernames) and waited. More than half declined, a handful accepted but didn't
respond to my ceaseless ciao's, and just one kind young man from Tuscany responded.

At 2am I still found myself chatting away in my first ever Italian conversation. I'm
really grateful for his patience and encouragement. It looks like I've snagged a
conversational partner.

The conversation went well. At the beginning the words just did not want to come out of
my mouth. After I warmed up I felt that I could waffle on about general nonsense which
may or may not be completely comprehensible. But really, it doesn't matter. There will
be plenty of time to refine.

Seriously... Lang-8.... check it out. Thx Numerodix.

Edited by Oasis88 on 13 January 2011 at 2:13am
1 person has voted this message useful

numerodix
Trilingual Hexaglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 6776 days ago
856 posts - 1226 votes

Speaks: English^C2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin

Message 67 of 152

13 January 2011 at 9:32am | IP Logged

Gee, that's not what I meant you to use lang-8 for at all, it never actually occurred to
me to mine their member list for skype partners :)
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 68 of 152

15 January 2011 at 5:41am | IP Logged

311

I've been trying to write a new post every day on Lang-8 and I can already see massive
improvements.
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 69 of 152

17 January 2011 at 3:03pm | IP Logged

318

Haven't had a lot of time for Italian since I moved house today. Will take a bit to
settle in and get back to my regular schedule.
2 persons have voted this message useful

neonqwerty
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6156 days ago
229 posts - 239 votes

Speaks: French*, English*
Studies: Spanish

Message 70 of 152

17 January 2011 at 10:55pm | IP Logged

Hey - I just wanted to give you big thanks for blogging about Lang-8! I just checked it out, and it looks great.

Maybe one day we'll have some flawless Italian correspondence. :-) Until then, keep up the encouraging work!!
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 71 of 152

18 January 2011 at 7:39am | IP Logged

318

neonqwerty wrote:

Hey - I just wanted to give you big thanks for blogging about Lang-
8!
I just checked it out, and it looks great.

Maybe one day we'll have some flawless Italian correspondence. :-) Until then, keep up
the encouraging work!!

Visto che oggi non ho scritto neanche una parola in Italiano spero di non disturbarti
se
scrivo un po´ qui. La verità è che hai bisogno a ringraziare Numerodix per il link,
dato
che non ne sapevo 3-4 giorni fa. Quando hai imparato Italiano e perché? Se cerchi di
praticarlo un po' con qualcuno sono a la tua disposizione ma ovviamente il mio non è
molto raffinato dopo poco tempo. Grazie mille per i tuoi commenti.

Edited by Oasis88 on 18 January 2011 at 7:44am
1 person has voted this message useful

22atropos
Diglot
Newbie
Italy
Joined 5052 days ago
21 posts - 45 votes
Speaks: Italian*, English

Message 72 of 152

18 January 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged

Hi everyone,

Some day ago, while being carried around by the electronic
internet wind, I landed on this thread.
The matter of languages intrigues me too, and I couldn't help
reading your articles. I started from the beginning and,
one by one, ended at page 9. The only words I can say about
them it's I have no words. Couldn't easily find such a level
of skill, perseverance and depth. This is why I resolved to
subscribe. I was born in Florence and have been living all
my life in this small town.
If you wish to ask questions, exchange informations and/or
share knowledges I will be happy to give you my contribution.

Ciao

Edited by 22atropos on 19 January 2011 at 6:27pm

2 persons have voted this message useful

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