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South, North and East...TAC15 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 9 of 49 30 December 2013 at 3:03pm | IP Logged |
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Monday, December 30th
My aims for 2014 Italian TAC 2014 : objective B2 This is my first TAC and my main objective for the year is NOT to drop out for lack of time!! I have to squeeze my language learning between the upbringing of my two (still young) kids and the marking of essays in English by my beloved B1-B2 students. So if I manage to update this log every week, I'll be very very happy. I have read a lot and I would say I'm B2 for reading and listening, but A2 for speaking and writing due to lack of vocabulary, practice and I still have to etch in my brain a lot of grammar rules and I need practice as far as tenses are concerned. So on the whole I'd like to level things out to a solid B2 if possible. Books I'll probably be working from BLED italien, grammaire et conjugaison, a B2 basic grammar book for French speakers. I find it clear and sufficient for the time being. As far as vocabulary is concerned, I adopted Pro e contro, dibattere in Italiano, which presents 87 controversial topics with lists of arguments and vocabulary for and against. I also plan to make lists (still by hand, not an Anki fan) of the words encountered in my readings. And of course the odd Assimil lesson (Perfectionnement italien) whenever I feel like it (a daily basis is too much of a constraint for me) Practice I should make a detailed list of what I really want to achieve e.g. write 100 short texts or conversations, or 20 ten-minute long monologues. More on this later, once I have made up my mind. I really like Stelle's idea of learning something every day ( a little bit of reading/ listening/ speaking/ writing every day) German : listening + vocabulary It has been on the back burner for too long. I studied German for 7 years all in all, both in high school and at the university and was supposed to have achieved a strong B2 (low C1)LOL. No kidding!It's far from being the case, especially as far as listening and speaking are concerned. Reading might be OK, but I have tried listening to the news on TV and I seem to be totally deaf to German. I can't understand a thing. So this year I want to train my ears by listening to podcasts and Cds I've got at home, as well as try to remember the I hope-not-lost-forever vocabulary I used to master a long time ago. So nothing formal, but some sort of immersion programme on the (very) long term. Others Probably some Norwegian, Dutch, Japanese or other just for fun and to recapture the first fun moments of learning a language when you assimilate everything at a very fast pace 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 10 of 49 01 January 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
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In the course of December I have experienced a new way of learning vocabulary which I plan to go on using
since it suits me well. I keep my favourite vocabulary books on my bedside table. Just before going to sleep I choose 5 words in each of my TLs (so far in Italian and in German) and I repeat them several times. When I wake up the following morning I write those five words down along with their translations (organized in 2 columns) as soon as I get up, before having breakfast . I was surprised to see how easily I retained 5 additional words every day . I even chose a nicely- adorned little notebook especially for this purpose ( yes, once a girl always a girl!) If I manage to keep the pace, I'll be able to learn about 1800 new words for each language in 2014. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| corjine Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4018 days ago 55 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 49 01 January 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
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Buona fortuna, fellow team Italian member! Edited by corjine on 01 January 2014 at 9:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 12 of 49 01 January 2014 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
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Grazie mille! Tanti auguri anche per tu!
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| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 13 of 49 08 January 2014 at 3:56pm | IP Logged |
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Wednesday 8th January
Time for a weekly update!I've made a more detailed list of my goals for this year : - listen to 100 (20-minute long) podcasts in Italian - write 100 texts (At least 150 words each) in Italian - read at least 100 articles on the website La Stampa. - learn at least 1500 words and of course go on reading whatever I can lay hands on, but I needn't state this here because I looove reading! What have I done so far? -listened to 2 podcasts - written 1 text -read 3 articles - learnt about 30 words Here comes the text I've written (without the help of my dictionary, just with the list of words I had picked up from the articles I had read) La settimana scorsa ho letto parecchi articoli estratti della Stampa sul web. Allora mi sforzo di utilizzare il vocabolario incontrato durante la lettura. Ho letto un articolo che si tratava di una donna che era scomparsa negli Alpi. Si temeva per la sua vita perche doveva nevicare. Un altr' articolo si tratava di William, l'erede al trono d'Inghilterra. Gli Inglese si spaccano sul'ingresso di William all'università di Cambridge. William no ha avuto voti ottimi al esame della fine del liceo, e i sui voti non sono abbastanza buoni per consentire a lui di entrare in una università cosi elitista. Una vera crociata è stata avviata contro il principe. Doveva seguire un corso sull'agricultura, credo che sia forzato di cambiare idea! Leggere la stampa è il migliore metodo per ritenare il lessico, mi ne sono resa conto, a patto che mi sforza di scrivere le parole che provo ad imparare. Comments and corrections welcome! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 14 of 49 22 January 2014 at 3:28pm | IP Logged |
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Wednesday 22nd January
So in the past two weeks, I have been fairly active in my Italian learning, so much so that I think I have reached an upper level (well, compared to the one I had before ;) Goals update - I've listened to 3 more podcasts (that makes 5 since 01/01) - I've read 6 articles (=> 9 since 01/01) - I've made a 7-page long list of the unknown words (so roughly 170 words)I encountered in the course of my reading and listening, which I need to repeat now and then, I can only recognize them but not use them yet in active speaking or writing. I downloaded the Memrise App on my phone with the 2000word beginner course; I know most of the words, only 10% are totally unkown but it's really helpful to etch them on your brain. I conscienciously repeated the subjunctive present forms for both regular and irregular (at least the 30 most commone ones)verbs, and I think I have internalized the vowel shift quite well so that I don't have to think too much before producing a subjunctive form! As far as reading is concerned, I've just started I pesci non chiudono gli occhi by Erri De Luca.It's a bit too difficult to read without a dictionary but I've also got the book in French so that helps a lot and saves time. I also fished my 4 (yes 4!!) assimil books from my upper shelves. I've got -Le nouvel Italien sans Peine (1983 edition with cassettes!) - perfectionnement Italien (1987 edition with cassettes) - Assimil Italien (2012 edition, only the book because it's much easier than the previous edition) - Pefectionnement italien (2012 edition with CDs) I started listening passively to the 1987 perfectionnement cassettes, and I was happily surprised to discover I was able to understand most of it! Careful, I didn't say I would be able to produce all the spoken sentences perfectly(far from it!)but as far as listening understanding is concerned, that's a big step! I plan to listen to all the cassettes of the old editions, to make vocabulary lists, to race through (once again!) assimil 2012 before tackling perfectionnement italien (2012) in a more traditional assimilistic fashion. I'm really starting to think my B2 goal is doable.So motivation is very high for now! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 15 of 49 31 January 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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First month's TAC update
Reading -I pesci non chiudono gli occhi : 50% read -I've read 10 articles from La Stampa and made vocabulary lists from them Listening -I've listened to 10 x 20 minutes (podcasts, or live TV) -I've listened to and repeated Lessons 1-17 from Perfectionnement italien (1987) Vocabulary - 200 words on Memrise from the "First 1000 words in Italian" - an approximately 200 word long list from my various readings in Italian Writing - I've only written one paragraph, that's the field that I really want to work on, because I know once I start actually using the words in my own sentences I'm more likely to remember them in real face to face interaction. Speaking Shame on me! Apart from exchanging a few sentences here and there with the Italian teacher in my school, I have done nothing. I haven't even tried talking to myself. Miscellanious I'm happy to have finally overcome my gut fear of subjunctive in Italian, but I'm aware all my congugations need practising. I also had the time to read The Hobbit in English, in order to compare the original written version to the film. Well IMHO the film doesn't stand the comparison. They made a three-part movie which had no point in being divided into three parts, except generating more money for the film makers! I picked up another word synonymous with " bewildered" (see my post on the previous page about the synonyms of "surprised") : bewuthered, which apparently is a Tolkien neologism. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4633 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 16 of 49 31 January 2014 at 3:48pm | IP Logged |
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The advantage of this forum and TAC participation in general is that it urges me to actually "do something" in Italian if I eventually want to register progress in this log! Believe me, it had a lot to do with my (humble but regular) achievements of this month!
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