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The 1-year challenge: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 57 of 244 14 August 2009 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you MLSUSA94 :-) Nice to know that people are reading. Hope your French studies are going well!
Haha Denis, no I was not hung over! So not a drinker and not a party girl either, just have sleep issues. Somewhat better now though. (Who would party on a weekday anyway? Oh wait... I'm Norwegian, so that would totally work. Nevermind.) Today was spent napping, recovering from napping (if you ever get the chance to go to a beach in the southwest of Norway, do not let the opportunity pass you by, the sun is magical here), and in meetings, so I basically only got around to finishing text 3 and not much else, but what I got done was massively useful. I like having a day for looking over my own mistakes and I'm learning so much about syntax from this it's silly. Oh and spelling, verbal tenses, vocabulary, gender, idioms, etc, etc, etc. Why have I not done this before? The Italian text at first glance has about the same amount of corrections as the previous two (if the amount hasn't gone down after maybe 5 more texts I'll need to reconsider my approach) but I've noticed that the mistakes are now more related to bits of vocabulary that maybe weren't stable enough before I wrote the text yesterday, but the syntax issues are starting to sort themselves out. I'm hoping I'll stop making stupid mistakes soon and make some headway with prepositions, I've already made some significant steps in the right direction from doing the text thing and going over things repeatedly over a couple of days really helps me remember things - things are improving, yay! Anyway I'm sure I'll be writing in Italian again here in no time... (Run for the hills!) I'll start my next text tomorrow, already decided which one I'm using so I won't need to spend time on that tomorrow. It looks like I'll have time to do the wordlist, though tomorrow looks like it might be another busy day. In unrelated news, I found out today that Estonian uses the oblique mood. I think I'm in love... I remember finding out that Bulgarian had that, and then speaking to a Bulgarian friend about it, and privately lamenting my lack of passionate interest in Bulgarian, cause I would just love to learn a language that has that cool a feature. It's weird, it's like the more I find out about Estonian the more I just adore it, and it won't leave me alone. I'll probably end up doing Estonian after Italian, possibly together with Greek, and maybe something else thrown in for good measure. But I have at least until April to decide, and I haven't decided yet if I'll start doing something else in addition to Italian if I'm not quite at the level I want to be at by April, so either way this is all quite far into the future, but time flies, and Estonian is looking mighty awesome from here. I think I just might have to study that sometime, at least a bit. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 14 August 2009 at 12:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 58 of 244 14 August 2009 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last day of work today, so I expect to be less busy starting tomorrow - despite the fact that I go back to med school on Monday. Interestingly that will be less chaotic in terms of time than my summer (so-called) 'vacation' this year. Though I'll be busy enough for sure - the projects I've been working on over the summer will continue and I'll need to get back on track with some other ones that have been put to one side to make room for the main priority one. Then there's the small matter (ho ho ho) of keeping up with med school, and sleeping and eating and friends and family, and on top of all that there's the Italian, which I'm obviously committed to continuing with at full force. From experience I'm happiest when I'm over-the-top crazy-busy, so I'm actually looking forward to this.
Today I did the wordlist for my 4th text, there were a lot of words in there that don't really come to mind when you think of words that are going to be useful (hay, anyone?) but that you would certainly miss if you were put on the spot and didn't know them. I've only written down the Italian words and sample sentences so far, partly because I just got out of a meeting at 9 and haven't gotten round to it yet, but also because I'm still not sure how I want to do this. I'm uncertain about the 5-7 route that Iversen's described and whether I should try that out more carefully or if I should just carry on what I've been doing, which is going through the list after a short break and writing down the English translations that immediately come to mind (first looking at the word and then, if I need to, the sample sentence, to help me remember) and then look up the rest, then take another break and then see if I can remember the ones I couldn't remember last time and if so, write them in. Then do pretty much the same thing for English -> Italian. I guess I just need to experiment more. Either way, spending 5 days on the whole thing means that most things stick by the time I'm done, so if I don't learn things from the wordlist on the 1st day I might remember them from doing the translation on the 2nd day or from reviewing the wordlist (English -> Italian only) on the 3rd, and if I fail to recall a certain word on the 4th when I write my Italian text I might then remember it after doing corrections for the text on the 5th and final day. The clean-up day is the most useful day out of the 5, and I've pondered putting the words that were problematic into another wordlist and then accumulate a few of these before doing another round, but so far I've decided not to - though I've kept my texts and the corrections are clearly marked, so I might do this later. I'm happy with near-100% recall and most things will come up again anyway, some words have already done this and I could remember and produce them without difficulty. Current word count (see page 6): 1012 unique words, based on 4 texts. At this point I'm still seeking out texts that will increase the number by at least 250 a day so that I will get to a realistic number as soon as possible - the number of words that go in my wordlist each time is still pretty small (I guess), the majority of words that come up are ones I already know (this is likely to be true for any text though, and increasingly so), but honestly I have no idea (none whatsoever) how many words I know at this point, so I don't know... Still nice to have a number I guess, cause my brain is apparently motivated by that sort of thing. But I knew that this number would be pretty useless in the beginning anyway - at least I can know that once I get up to 10k+ words it'll be closer to the actual number of words I know. Handy. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 14 August 2009 at 9:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 59 of 244 16 August 2009 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Translated my 4th text into English today, but not much else. Things to do, had family over to visit, fell asleep for a bit in the afternoon and it's been a generally weird day. My translations are getting more literal than they were before, partly because I don't want it to take more time than it needs to, but also because I think it helps me with syntax and whatnot. It's not like anyone's going to read and critique my translation anyway... And I suppose it's a bit like how you can use the mistakes a person makes when they speak another language as a way to understand how they would phrase the same concept in their own language, so it's useful I guess. Anyway the translation doesn't really take too long when I do it this way, which is good - don't want that part to turn into a big time-eating monster when it's just the prelude to the translation back to Italian, which is where all the magic happens.
Going back home again tomorrow so we'll see if I can make more of a structure for my day then, right now I just try to get everything done by the time the day is over, but that isn't necessarily the best thing even if things get done. I need something resembling a battle plan, I think... Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 60 of 244 16 August 2009 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Back home now (yay) and went over the wordlist for text 4 earlier this evening, translating from English and into Italian. Some gaps - some words and expressions just didn't come to me as quickly as I wanted, but it's ok, cause I'm tired.
Anyway, there is next to nothing to do on day 3 when I go over the wordlist like this - maybe I should consider doing it in writing instead (deforestation win) - so I had 3 options: cheat and do the translation I'm supposed to do tomorrow, do something else, or start another text. I opted for options 2 and 3, and have spent the rest of my evening looking for Italian art for the walls in my flat that have yet to be covered by it (All Italian All The Time, right? ...actually what I already have is from my pre-Italian era), as well as working on some tasks that needed to be done before I go to bed tonight. And I just started another text, a short one, and not particularly high-yield in terms of my word count, but it's one I knew I wanted to do at some point anyway so I figured I might as well do it now. Hopefully I'll be able to finish the wordlist tonight, I already have all the words and sample sentences written down (there weren't really that many, but the text had some pretty sweet idioms that I really liked), and if I don't have time to finish the wordlist all the way to the final column I can do the remaining work tomorrow. Current word count (see page 6): 1173 unique words, based on 5 texts. For the next short while the amount of words that my total increases by each time will be relatively small, because I have some texts lined up that are important for me to do that don't add that much to the total unless you look at them combined - once I'm done with this one and 9 more I will be over 2800. Once I'm done with typing up the Assimil active phase I will add that to the word count as well, and I might consider including some texts that I used before I started counting, song lyrics and whatnot... Most of the words in those will probably show up somewhere in one of the other texts anyway, but I'm still considering whether they should be included - cause there's lots of them. And I know every word in them (and yes, that DOES feel good), so I guess it would be sensible to include them, not least because I want the number to be accurate. I know it never will be, though, because there are plenty of words I learned from audio only. Additionally I spent a few hours listening to audio books today - what can I say, I had a lot of time on the plane and couldn't sleep. I didn't get that much out of it except a whole lot of practice in listening for the individual sounds (which is something I've found hugely helpful) and intonation, because I always set the volume to a level where I can barely hear it myself, because I worry about my fellow travellers hearing what I'm hearing. I figure that if I don't want to listen to their hip hop or death metal leaking out of their ipods for the world to enjoy (AHEM, people), then it's likely they won't want to overhear my Dante. One of these days I'll have to set my volume to a comfortable level and ask a friend if they can hear anything, cause this is a constant problem, though I reckon that if I can barely hear it myself then chances are that others can't either. Oh well. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 17 August 2009 at 12:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 61 of 244 17 August 2009 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
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In other news, I just re-watched the one video I've struggled most to understand, the audio quality is just awful, the person talking talks kinda fast in this particular video, and basically the last time I had a go at it I could understand next to nothing (it's been a while). Right now I can understand maybe 50%, in part thanks to the text work I've been doing. Practicing listening for every sound has also helped a lot, it has definitely made my listening skills better. Someday, hopefully soon, I'll be able to understand this particular video without difficulty, which will be somewhat of a milestone for me. Halfway there :-)
Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 62 of 244 17 August 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
On the other hand they can't hear a word of your Dante if they are listening to hiphop and death metal, so just go ahead ... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 63 of 244 17 August 2009 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Touché! & I know :-) But I was sitting next to an elderly fellow on the airport bus yesterday, he was reading a book and kept stopping for no obvious reason, I hope he wasn't doing that as a very Norwegian way of trying to get me to take a hint and turn the volume down already. I reckon most western Europeans are familiar with the "the trains must be on time!" sentiment in Germany (and good on them), I guess in Scandinavia it goes more like "the buses must be quiet!" so I do worry about this sort of thing ever so slightly. I should just go ahead and play at a comfortable volume anyway though, it's not like it's a big secret that I'm learning Italian :-)
Well I've found an overlap pattern for my texts that seems to work well. Just did the English -> Italian translation for my 4th text and the Italian -> English translation for my 5th, which I started 2 days after the 4th. That seems to be the combination that lets me spend about the same amount of time on texts every day (and that time has gone down a fair bit because I can do them faster now) so from now on I'm going to try to start a new text every 2 days. It seems sensible to do it this way because it means the new wordlist, typically the most time-consuming part, falls on the quietest day for the previous text, when I only really have the English -> Italian wordlist to do, which doesn't take long. So that's about as much of a battle plan as I have at this point. I kinda want to start doing Assimil again though, so we'll see how that goes. What with uni starting up again (pure awesomeness so far) and other projects continuing I have more than enough to keep me busy, so I might just have to plan my days out in a bit more detail than I'm used to. I don't particularly like micromanaging myself like that, but needs to be done if I want to be as productive as possible, which is kind of a goal in itself, since I can't fall behind in any particular area. For anyone reading this who hasn't read the whole thing, I stopped mentioning music a few pages back because it was getting repetitive :-) So I'm not just working on texts the way I'm doing, I'm also using lots of fun input, just because I like it, which helps a lot. IMO that's how it should be - the fun stuff that keeps us going and teaches us so much in its own sneaky little ways, supplemented by enjoyable productive study. Has to be fun though, and though I've changed my methods quite a bit since I started logging, it's still enjoyable, not least because I'm seeing some results. And just as a side note, yes my texts are all in order and clearly labelled now, including the wordlists :-) Told you! Liz Edited by Lizzern on 17 August 2009 at 11:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 64 of 244 18 August 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just corrected my 4th text, I'm still missing some words cause I understand them fine (so they don't go in my wordlist) but I can't produce them yet. I need to be more careful when I write my wordlists, it seems I always miss one or two. Also made some stupid mistakes, stuff I thought I knew (and sort of do) but I'm apparently still prone to making mistakes with some of these things (which isn't actually surprising, but still). It's good to know, though, that these idioms and words are 'in there' somewhere and that I could produce them at least well enough to be understood - then if I capitalise something wrong or write sulla instead of sull' or mess up with a preposition or occasionally use a single consonant where there should be a double or get the gender wrong or something along those lines then most of these mistakes aren't usually serious enough to produce confusion, though I hope people would correct me (which Italians don't seem to mind doing). Noun definiteness, of all things, doesn't always make sense, but then again foreigners speaking Norwegian get that wrong all the time, and nobody really cares (though we always hope people will figure it out eventually - which I intend to with Italian). Just from looking at the text there were fewer corrections than for my previous texts, which was nice. I am, of course, hoping that soon there will be none :-)
Also went over my wordlist for text 5 again, had issues with some words but in a couple of days it'll be ok. I'll start another text later today, possibly a long-ish one since I have the day off uni and don't have all that much to study yet (though there is no shortage of things to do otherwise). I should also start thinking about having a review day or something, but I've left the stack of finished texts in a place where I can just grab it easily and flip through them, so I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful |
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