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IT/NL Not knowing where this is going log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 25 of 112 04 July 2010 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's a mental thing. When I first got to Rome I would speak the same sentences, but I completely lacked the confidence. Almost a month later I would be saying the same things, but by then I'd had enough reinforcement from people to feel that yes what I'm saying is right. Not just because I know it is, but because they keep confirming it. I imagine that people who learn a lot of languages have a lower threshold, because they've been through it several times already. Actually my problem is not that my speaking is poor, it's that it's extremely under-rehearsed. I have a whole lot of words and expressions I can use but that I've never actually tried saying. Yet. It's all picked up from tv and books, but there's always a chance you might mess something up slightly. You see this sometimes with people who've watched a lot of English language tv/movies and they use common expressions, but slightly wrong. That's what lots of practice cures. If you've ever watched Steve Kaufman's videos on youtube he talks about this a lot. How you build up your "potential" during passive learning, which you can then profit from once you have a chance to talk to people. And according to him, the more you absorb beforehand, the more you have to draw on once you're there. I think he's right.
Yeah, that's a basic problem indeed. It's much more fun doing Italian stuff now that I can pick anything I want. Rather than learning basic Dutch. Oh well. Edited by numerodix on 04 July 2010 at 3:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 26 of 112 04 July 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Look at the sunny side ...
Welcome back! 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 27 of 112 09 July 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, staf :)
[nl] Well, I'm putting my hopes quite squarely on Assimil. Ironically, I find it hard to motivate myself for it, because it takes so little effort (and so little time) to do. I can do two lessons of Assimil in 30mins, reading over the text, transcribing it into a notebook (as a way to remember), doing the exercises and recording new words in Anki. I'm still using the same mechanism to motivate myself, which is my spreadsheet, but 30min is so little that it hardly seems like I'm... doing anything. Strangely enough, if it took 1.5h I'm pretty sure I would be better at doing it everyday. And longer streaks of effort also provide a much more solid reinforcement of daily habit, as I found out last year. What I think I would like to do is start reading already in Dutch. But when I pick up a book I realize that it's still too soon for me. So I hope I can get through Assimil to fill in more of the basics and then try to start reading, cause it really is a lot easier to motivate myself for that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 28 of 112 10 July 2010 at 10:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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I suppose you are using Assimil Dutch which begins with: "Goedendag mevrouw De Vos"? Good Luck Martin.
There surely will come lessons who are more difficult than the first ones, and studying Dutch in Holland should you give the opportunity to speak the language and to hear it a lot. I'm thinking at sending you simple jokes in Dutch :))) 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 29 of 112 10 July 2010 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, the Dutch Assimil is quite odd and interesting. The first story is about a guy who's sick, whose whole family is sick. The next story is about a guy who never goes to the movies or the theater, never reads books or magazines. You start to wonder if they're trying to make you laugh or just doing this unintentionally. But it's a lot more interesting than the "hello I've just arrived in Rome, where is my hotel" stuff that you get in courses like Linguaphone.
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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 30 of 112 22 September 2010 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's been a while since I've logged anything. I think it's because I don't need it as
much as I used to. I have pretty consistent study habits now, so I just keep it going. In the last few months my biggest activity has been that of reading. After I started reading in Italian last year, I realized at one point that I've always had the potential to read in Swedish in Danish. Which, for some reason, I'd never capitalized on. So recently I've been reading in all languages that I'm able to read in, including those two. I still pay special attention to Italian, but I don't really study Italian any more, I just keep developing it passively. I've had a lot of trouble motivating myself for Dutch, and I'm now on a pretty consistent daily Assimil, halfway into the course. I gave up transcribing the lessons by hand (which I did at first) and I now mine each lesson for new expressions and sentences that go into Anki. I find this works much better than what I used to do for Italian: record single words. It does take more effort to type a whole sentence, but the reward comes in not having to see the same card over and over because it has too few hints about what the word means. Thus for now I've stopped using my Italian deck of single words, I wasn't making very much progress there anyway. Dutch is an okay language, but it doesn't have nearly the same appeal to me, so I'm a bit exasperated at my slow progress and wish I would be further along. I've been tempted to start reading a book in Dutch, but fighting the temptation on the grounds that I don't know enough yet, and I'll just end up demoralizing myself. After all, when you're still learning elementary words like "zodra" are you ready for a book? But I'm halfway, so I started. Today, in fact. It's an autobiography of Patrick Kluivert, so nothing spectacular. I can't remember if reading my first pages of Italian was harder or easier, but it's doable. It takes deep focus, but I am understanding most of it. 10 pages a day should be an appropriate pace for now. 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 31 of 112 22 September 2010 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Looking ahead, I've also decided that it's going to be both more fun and possibly more
effective learning my next language with Italian as base. In my study of Dutch I make my flashcard translations in the language that closest resembles the Dutch words, which often is Norwegian. Thus I suspect that Italian-to-French is going to be more direct. www.ibs.it has tons of Assimil courses, including both the basic and the intermediate French courses. I have my eye on those. 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 32 of 112 26 September 2010 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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[nl] Starting to read was definitely a good decision. It's been five days and although
it's quite hard and the book isn't that good, it's had a positive effect on my morale. It's helped me regain the diversity that I've missed in my Dutch study. I get the feeling sometimes that studying is like a group of people trying to push a car out of a ditch. Not everyone is pushing equally hard all the time, but they oscillate in their performance. That's the kind of influence my study materials have on me. One day I really feel like reading another piece of the book, some other day I really feel like doing another Assimil lesson. It's important to have several things, because they take turns in motivating you. My routine has become a bit more substantial, I spend something like half an hour on the book and another half hour on Assimil+Anki. I've just entered the active phase in Assimil and much to my surprise I seem to like it. I flip back to the earliest lessons, which then seemed so dull to me, with the expectation that I can translate the English back into Dutch. And I succeed. My performance might drop over time, but my first impressions with the active phase is that it's a whole lot more fun than it seems. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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