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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| staf250 Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium emmerick.be Joined 5699 days ago 352 posts - 414 votes  Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 129 of 182 21 December 2009 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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At some point of study, one should begin to write. Writing needs thinking in the target language and this is very
useful. Edited by staf250 on 21 December 2009 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 130 of 182 27 December 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finished the textbook! How it flew by, 103 short days and woosh all done. I have to say it was the most thorough study of any textbook in my life, and probably never to be repeated. I have now in my possession what amounts to a handwritten copy of the entire text, sans the dialogs and some other minor omissions. It's been fun and most of my Italian I owe to thee. What I hoped to get out of this was to assimilate the grammar so that I could read freely. This objective has been met! Recently I don't remember seeing anything grammar wise that is foreign to me. That's not to say I know all the conjugations inside out, I still am prone to mixing up passato remoto with congiuntivo in some particularly obtuse cases. But by and large I have them all untangled and I know what I'm looking at. I imagine it will take years to be able to use it without having to think about it, though, but that's alright.
I'm now set to review the last 11 chapters in the textbook, probably one per day. After that I'm completely finished with the whole thing. Grammar wise I think that's it for now. Perhaps I'll return to the matter somewhere down the road. A review of the textbook should follow one of these days, once I've been able to collect my thoughts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 131 of 182 01 January 2010 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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The last few days have not been terribly productive. I've taken on some reading, which one could strain to express as a "well rounded" learning strategy (I insist on it!).
Here's what I have going: - The Ludlum book - Harry Potter audiobook (been using this one a bit over the last few months to practice listening. At first I was missing a lot of words, but now I can follow it) - Personalita' confusa (yes, finally) - Forums - Assimil booklet The last two are marginal, I do a lesson of Assimil once in a while, and forums are not really made for "now I'm going to read" time planning. So I'm still on my first deadtree book and I'm too lazy to read everyday, so I pick it up on a slack schedule. I have to say I'm probably overdoing it. Now that I've covered all the grammar, when I'm reading I sorta play the role of a spotter. "Oh look that verb there, that's gotta be congiuntivo imperfetto, oh look there's an odd conjugation in passato remoto". I'm trying to notice these things so I get them into my system, but it disrupts the reading. I also read out loud sometimes, because the practice is useful to me. But that also disturbs the plot a bit, although less than it used to. Then there's the audiobook which I've decided to do in two passes. I do 30min and then later listen to the same thing again, it fills in some missed words. Since it's a children's book, I assumed I would hate it (because as a kid I hated that type of thing), but I have to say it's not so bad. Then there's blog reading, which for the moment is only one blog (but a good one). It's more demanding than a lot of other reading material, so I look up words almost in every single blog entry. But I go a little Khatzumoto and do sentence mining as I go along. In the past I've had some problems with using Anki because the word wouldn't stick, it needed context. So I would try to google up an example of a sentence, but that often failed, I would find the word in a sentence that didn't explain the word well. So now that I'm reading this blog anyway (and I have the context of the whole blog entry), it's not that much effort to just copy sentences into Anki with the word highlighted. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike789 Newbie United States Joined 6329 days ago 39 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 132 of 182 03 January 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
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| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 133 of 182 03 January 2010 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||
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mike, I'm meaning to do a proper review of the book within a few days and address those issues.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 134 of 182 06 January 2010 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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REVIEW: TEXTBOOK LA LINGUA ItalianA PER STRANIERI
At last it's time to review this textbook. First of all, perhaps one should ask "why use a textbook?" The simple answer is: because it's there. After Pimsleur and Michel Thomas I needed to get a hold of the grammar so I could start reading freely. I had started reading a novel at that time and I was frustrated by how much effort I had to spend trying to decipher sentences. Even if I asked people to explain something it would only cover a slice of the whole text. So I thought that if I go through this textbook I'll get to a point where I'll be able to read comfortably. It turns out I was right. The textbook, as explained in the preface (although this will be very challenging to read if you're just starting out with it), is desiged to a so called "integrated" method. This means that you get a "full package" of instruction, it's not just grammar or just vocabulary or just this or that, it's a little bit of everything, mixed together in a way that makes it good for learning. The book is organized by grammar topics, so the first chapter takes you through some of the present tense, for example. The layout of a chapter is like this: 1. A dialog 2. Grammar topic A - 1. Instruction - 2. Exercises 3. Grammar topic B - 1. Instruction - 2. Exercises 4. Tests The exercises are built up so that at the very beginning they follow the grammar instruction very closely, so you know "what they mean". Later, after they expect you've mastered that part, they give you exercises that pick answers from the whole body of the chapter, so now you have to figure out what they expect the answer to be. (This was a bit frustrating in the beginning, because at times I didn't know what they wanted from me.) Every chapter also has a certain amount of new vocabulary, and whenever a word appears for the first time somewhere on the page, it's also written at the bottom of the page for reference. Personally I gathered up all these words and the ones I hadn't learned just by working with the textbook I entered into Anki. INSTRUCTION IN Italian I think this is a very good thing. It's a bit hard at first, because you are getting instructions and explanations in terms of words you don't know. But I think they have done a very good job of minimizing the problem. Basically, the book is laid out so that you *can* start in a place where you know little and then gradually work yourself up. Now if I grab a grammar reference, I can't use that as an instructional text. I have one at home, and the explanations are too hard to understand, the example sentences may be idiomatic, but certainly not well adapted as examples for someone who's just learning it all, there are too many foreign words and expressions in them. By and large the instructions in a chapter only use concepts that have already been taught earlier in the book (so this means definitely use it sequentially). And I definitely have to say that the further you advance into the book, the less of a problem this becomes. So even though there *will* be times when you can't grasp something, by going on and on, it will very likely become clear at some later time, because you've had a chance to understand things necessary to grasp the point. So then it makes sense after a while to look over the old material and see if the thing that was causing you problems still is. I think there are a couple of important reasons why instruction in the target language is good: 1. You learn the names of things in the language itself. This is useful, because if you're going to look up any of these topics later on, chances are you will do that in Italian, not English. If you're going to look for a language reference, or ask an Italian, you'll need to name the "imperfetto indicativo", not the English name for it. 2. "Living in the language". This I think is an important effect, because when you're working with the textbook, you're in a world of Italian. I don't think it really helps you to use a book where most of the text (instructions, explanations) is English, because ultimately Italian is the language you need to be in touch with. And by having all the explanations and clarifications right in the target language, you start to feel accustomed to this environment. I would venture to say that there is a certain "osmosis" effect at play here. At first you may not understand all the instructions, but by seeing them again and again formulated much in the same way, this is a way to learn those kinds of phrases. EXPECTED RETURN ON INVESTMENT I can say without fail that this textbook is the most useful piece of material I've used so far and probably will ever have used to learn Italian. I have gone through every chapter, copying out every sentence of instruction, doing every exercise, and I've been doing this every day for 3.5 months. It's taken just over 200 hours, and I've filled an entire ring binder with all the paper I've used up. But it has taught me more than any other piece of material, nothing else even comes close. Pimsleur and Michel Thomas have their place, sure, and I would still very much recommend doing those before the textbook. If your goal is to learn to write Italian, then you will be getting tons of practice writing out actual sentences from the book. Imitate before you innovate. I would also say that the book teaches you all the grammar you need to know. It takes you from the most basic forms to the most formal ones ("it is said that..") and having done the whole book, there is no grammar I encounter anymore that is not familiar to me. I cannot say how much of a boon this is to me right now as I read new things. Sure there is a lot of vocabulary I still need to learn, but the most complicated obstacle to understanding is gone. What is more, some of the more advanced grammar is probably more than I even need to know. I will probably forget some of it, because it doesn't come up too often. But I have seen it and I'll recognize it when encounter it. CONTENTS (00) Unità introduttiva (01) Il presente indicativo (02) Verbi di moto [motion], - Verbi modali (dovere, potere, volere), - Le preposizioni semplici (a, per, fra/tra, con, di, da) (03) Il presente di alcuni verbi irregolari, - Le preposizioni articolate (da + il = dal), - Gli interrogativi (che, quale) (04) Participio passato - perfetto (passato prossimo), - Verbi transitivi e intransitivi, - Verbi ausiliari (avere, essere), - Accordo del participio passato con il soggetto (l'ha vista) (05) I possessivi (il mio, la mia, ..) (06) Il futuro semplice e composto (sarà, sarà arrivato), - La particella avverbiale "ci" (07) I pronomi diretti (lo prendo) (08) L'imperfetto indicativo (ero) (09) Pronomi indiretti (gli do), (10) I verbi reflessivi (alzarsi), - Forma impersonale (uno si esprime) (11) Pronomi combinati (glielo), - Imperativo diretto (tu, voi, noi), - Forma perifrastica (sto per partire, sto scrivendo) (12) Il condizionale semplice, - Il verbo andare con i pronomi diretti (mi va di..), - Le particelle "ci" "vi" e "ne" (13) Il condizionale composto (avrei mangiato) (14) I pronomi relativi (che, chi, cui) (15) I gradi di comparazione (più alto di..), - Gli interrogativi (che, cosa, quale, chi, dove..) (16) Il passato remoto (fu, ebbe..), - Gli indefiniti (ogni, qualche, qualsiasi..) (17) Il piucheperfetto (avevo avuto), - La concordanza dei tempi dell'indicativo (18) Congiuntivo presente e passato (sia, abbia..) (19) Imperativo indiretto (dia, scusi, guardi..) (20) Congiuntivo imperfetto e trapassato (fosse, avesse..) (21) La concordanza dei modi e dei tempi (22) Il periodo ipotetico (se farà bel tempo..), - Forme alterate di sostantivi, aggettivi e avverbi (benino..), (23) Forma passiva (la lettera viene imbucata..), - Forma impersonale (si mangia), - "si passivante" (si studiano diverse lingue..) (24) Le forme implicite - gerundio, infinito, participio (arrivando ho visto..) (25) Il discorso diretto e indiretto (Anna ha detto che non sapeva..) WHAT TO GET This textbook course is published with a number of accompanying texts. You don't need all of them. You need these: La lingua Italiana per stranieri: Corso elementare ed intermedio - Volume unico (the textbook) - Chiavi (the answer booklet to the exercises in the textbook) I also got the "Esercizi di vocabolario", but I don't find that is a very effective way to learn vocabulary and I've abandoned it. Publisher: http://www.guerra-edizioni.com Course link: course Edited by numerodix on 07 January 2010 at 11:25am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 135 of 182 07 January 2010 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
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As I was writing this review of the textbook last night I was quite tired, so I went over it today and fixed some typos, added a few things I forgot to mention. As I think about what the book has meant to me over the course of months I have so many thoughts that it's very hard to effectively collect them all together when it's time for a review. Edited by numerodix on 07 January 2010 at 11:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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