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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 5229 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 121 of 158 26 March 2015 at 6:27pm | IP Logged |
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--- Weekly Update ---
This week has been a bit of a bust again. I'm had a lot of job interviews, so this is obviously more important to me at the moment. Still I did manage a bit of audio listening in Italian and read a Frech book, so some progress made. I have managed to fight my Anki deck Italian down from 300+ overdue cards to normal levels, still have to do the same for Franch & Mandarin. Lesson here is; keep chugging along even if it is only a couple of cards, backlogs suck! I really wish someone would just invent something that would inject languages into my brain with out all the bloody hard work! I've only got 40 more weeks to complete this challenge. I gotta step up the game. --- SC Statistics --- French : 49.4 books : 112.3 films Italian : 43.7 books : 80.1 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.046 books per week --> books per week Italian: 0.950 books per week --> 0.910 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 90.56 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 80.10 --- Output Challenge Update --- Haven't done anything this week, so the stats are same as last week. --- Output Challenge Statistics --- Italian : 757 words : 49 minutes --- 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 5229 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 122 of 158 02 April 2015 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
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--- Weekly Update ---
I haven't managed to get much done on the challenge this week, but I have got a job offer. So hopefully I'll get more done once after the commuting starts again. --- SC Statistics --- French : 49.7 books : 112.3 films Italian : 43.9 books : 80.1 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.046 books per week --> 1.014 books per week Italian: 0.910 books per week --> 0.895 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 89.24 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 78.80 --- Output Challenge Update --- Haven't done anything this week, so the stats are same as last week. --- Output Challenge Statistics --- Italian : 757 words : 49 minutes --- 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 5229 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 123 of 158 06 April 2015 at 5:05pm | IP Logged |
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OK, I got to have a rant. I cannot stand it anymore. IMHO, Italian TV sucks! It sucks beyond a level of everyday suckyness. It sucks so much there are galactic black holes which suffer from envy, black holes which take notes on the suckyness of Italian TV to try and learn how to suck.
Some hints for Italian TV producers and directors: - The size of a woman’s breasts are not an indicator of acting ability. - Not every scene should be shot in bright sunshine with smiling people. - People who have their children kidnapped aren't going to give smouldering sex looks to the policeman. If they do, they are suspects. - Ugly people can be police too! Ugly people can be actors, some are really good at it. - Does the dark mood music really go with the bright sunlit scene with happy smiling people? - It is generally frowned upon for a policeman to take his ex-girlfriend to a fecking crime scene! Please, please, please get a consultant for your script writers so they stop making shite up! - I am sure there are more than 10 actors in Italy, let some of the others have a go. Just about any bloke on the street could do a better job than some of those pretty boys. (remember ugly people can act too) - I'm fairly sure it doesn't just rain because two women are wearing t-shirts and running on a beach. Unless God really does have a sense of humour. - Gritty police drama should be done with moody lighting, See the point above about bright sunshine. (I realise you are in a country cursed with sunlight, but it gets dark and rains there too) - Send these (same 10) people to ACTING SCHOOL!!!! Teach them how to ACT! - Move the fecking camera around! Don't have everyone standing still while they deliver their lines. (I realise some of these women can't walk and chew gum at the same time, but at least the blokes can walk around!) - Women showering are rarely pertinent to the plot outside of a Hitchcock horror film. Just because the police-woman will get a phone call after her shower, doesn't mean you have to film a 10 minute shower scene. - Please GOD find someone else to write the music! Have a 2 year old bang on pots and pans, anything but that god-awful orchestra music. I'm going to complete my Super Challenge in Italian with podcasts, I cannot watch any more of this drivel. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 124 of 158 06 April 2015 at 5:20pm | IP Logged |
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Your rant made me laugh out loud!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4902 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 125 of 158 06 April 2015 at 5:45pm | IP Logged |
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That made me laugh too!
From the few Fellini films I watched, plot doesn't seem to be important in Italian cinema. So if you work in a tradition without plot, and you lack imagination, all you have left is shower scenes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 126 of 158 09 April 2015 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
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--- Weekly Update ---
After my aborted attempt to get some variety into my Italian TV watching, the result of which made me rant a bit I have gone back to pod-casting. For anyone who wants an informative podcast about technology, then you might be interested in digitalia.fm. This is a weekly podcast with many presentors; Franco Solerio, Massimo De Santo, Michele Di Maio, Giulio Cupini, Francesco Facconi. They discuss Internet, electronics, software, and other digital technologies and new stuff coming on to the market. You can subscribe with iTunes or RSS, or just listen to each episode on their website. It is all in Italian and it is an informal open discussion format, normally the podcast is between 1 and 2 hours long depending on the presenters and the topics they are discussing. So basically it is more like 3-4 friends talking about stuff as opposed to a formal newscast. They use modern technological slang as well as just using common everyday modern language. So might be a bit of a shock if your still used to straight, formal, enunciated Pimsleur, this is real Italian, real quick! I've been concentrating on reading French this week, mostly because I have two French books on the go and I'd like to get them done and out of the way. I have a book in Italian which I'm slowly reading, but only a couple pages a week. I've been thinking I may just knock out the French part of the SC and turn my attention to Italian, rather than trying to balance them. But I don't have a decision, and I fluctuate back and forth between balancing everything, just completing the film portion for both, or completing both French portions. I have done a lot of speaking in Italian this week, I attend a more advanced class in Italian now, and everyone there has been learning for over 15 years (except me) and they are all pretty fluent. It is interesting though the difference in the people who attend. One fellow, who listens to Italian opera and hence wanted to learn Italian, knows every Italian word in his dictionary. I swear I have only seen him look up one or two words, but even with a huge vocabulary he struggles to put together sentences. I think this is because he keeps mentally assembling the words into English sentences, then mentally reconstructs them to be grammatically correct in Italian, before finally speaking them. Another lady speaks very quickly, but she throws out the words, simply replacing the English words in the English sentence with Italian words. So although fast, she is depending on the listener to de-construct her English grammar and reassemble it into Italian grammar. I use various combinations of these two methods, although I do like to have the grammar correct where possible, but I struggle outside of the present tense. I can speak quickly like the lady, but this is more because I've memorised and used a lot of "sentence fragments" and "fillers" to construct the sentence, and to keep the ball in my court while I'm constructing the sentence in my brain. I might try to come up with some kinda mini-challenge for the Output Challenge to get people to use "fillers". Fillers and fragments, in case you don't know what I mean are parts of sentences or words you can drop in to fill time while you're thinking. Some examples in English are: - it is often the case that ... - although I agree in principle, I have to say that ... - it is clear to me that ... - in fact, I'm almost certain that I've heard people say ... - how can I put this ... - if I understand correctly ... - like... you know... like... <<--- This really pisses me off in English when I hear it, so I try to avoid single word fillers in French & Italian. If you have enough of these memorised (little mini-islands if you would) you can use them to give you a chance to think of what your saying, and also to keep people from interrupting you or completing your sentences. So this leads people in my Italian class to assume I know more than I do actually, but it gives me time to rack my brain and remember the meaning of the words they just said, or try to translate what they have said without bringing the conversation to a halt. I've noticed all this, because while editing my Output for this week (see below) I had to listen to myself speaking in Italian, and noticed that I do this A LOT! But it seems to work, and nobody has said it annoys them yet. Oh, I had mentioned previously that I was going to do some "time-boxing" so I should let you know how that is going and what it is. Basically time-boxing is something used a lot in the Agile Software Development Methodology. Time-boxing is a planning technique common in planning projects (typically for software development), where the schedule is divided into a number of separate time periods (time-boxes, normally two to six weeks long), with each part having its own deliverables, deadline and budget. Time boxing is also used for self-help and time management. So what’s this time boxing about? Fundamentally, it’s designed to establish a sense of urgency and to coerce the team to focus their efforts on getting something done. This is based on one of the Agile Manifesto principles that suggests the best way to show progress is to produce demonstrable working product, not documentation. For the individual like me, time-boxing allocates a fixed time period to each planned activity. This technique utilizes a reduced scale of time (e.g., thirty minutes) and deliverables (e.g., chores). Personal time-boxing can help curb perfectionist tendencies (by setting a firm time and not overcommitting to a task). Basically I give myself a specific period of time to accomplish a task, then I do only that thing until it is done. This is actually easier to use with output, e.g. I will write 500 words in Italian in 20 minutes, than with input, e.g. I will read 100 pages in 20 minutes. But it can be done. Which is why I did manage to clock up some time on the lame Italian TV shows but forcing myself to watch 10 minutes of it. The other advantage time-boxing gives in addition to stopping perfectionist tendencies, it stops me procrastinating. I just do whatever it is for 20 minutes, then I can stop and get on with something else. I haven't used time-boxing so much for language learning, but more for completing all the other stuff I have to do in order to get time to do some language learning. I do find it useful, but given that I'm so far behind on the Super Challenge you might not want to take my advice! :) --- SC Statistics --- French : 51.4 books : 112.3 films Italian : 43.9 books : 80.4 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.014 books per week --> 1.028 books per week Italian: 0.910 books per week --> 0.895 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 90.46 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 77.26 --- Output Challenge Update --- I did some conversation exchange with my friend in Rome, which I recorded (with her agreement) then I chopped out all of her parts of the conversation and the silences. I managed to get 21 minutes of myself speaking in Italian. It would have been more, but she also speaks French so we talked in French part of the time which doesn't count. It is a pity I can't record my Italian class, I'm there for 2 hours and the rule is "Italian only" so I could be racking up the output points if I could record it. *sigh* --- Output Challenge Statistics --- Italian : 757 words : 70 minutes --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. Edited by rdearman on 09 April 2015 at 4:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 127 of 158 16 April 2015 at 11:20am | IP Logged |
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--- Weekly Update ---
Well I have made some progress this week mostly in Italian films. I've been watching re-runs of Inspector Montalbano and Young Montalbano which I have. I'm watching without sub-titles and I feel I understand most of it. Now this might be because I've watched the whole thing before with sub-titles and remember the storyline. Books, I have mostly stuck to French books and I've only done a few pages in Italian. I'm feeling quite depressed after doing the maths and determining that I've got to read 75 pages per week in both languages 150 pages a week until the end of December. I just don't think this is possible. So lesson learned here is next time stick to only 1 language if you actually want to complete the challenge, if I was doing only one language I would have only 200 pages to read, and the films would have been done! Oh well, live and learn. --- SC Statistics --- French : 52.2 books : 112.3 films Italian : 44.1 books : 86.9 films Reading Averages Change French: 1.028 books per week --> 1.023 books per week Italian: 0.895 books per week --> 0.864 books per week The number of French books at the end of challenge at current rate: 90.05 The number of Italian books at the end of challenge at current rate: 76.06 --- Output Challenge Update --- I haven't done anything yet this week, but I do have a plan for this months mini-challenge for an instructional piece. I've decided I'm going to video and record myself cooking one of my favourite Italian recipes. I just need to get down to the shop and get all the ingredients. --- Output Challenge Statistics --- Italian : 757 words : 70 minutes --- Good luck everyone with your language learning and your own challenges. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4000 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 128 of 158 22 April 2015 at 4:25pm | IP Logged |
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I am just getting caught up on logs after being away from the forum for a while, but your rant really made me
laugh out loud and put a smile on my face! Congrats on the job offer - that is awesome! As always, you are doing a great job on the SC!! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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