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Gary’s TAC 2014: Spanish, Italian, French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 121 of 138 03 November 2014 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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The current state of things for Italian...
The other day I was at a party with lots of Italian and Spanish people. I tried to speak some Italian but generally didn't get great reactions; the usual wondering why the hell I speak it and refusing to reply in Italian. So I mostly just indulged their wishes and stuck to English. And while my Spanish is far from being at the level where I can chat with groups at a party, being able to understand the conversations was great. It occurred to me that I actually have considerably less confidence with speaking foreign languages than I used to. If I had been in the same situation a couple of years ago I reckon I would've been much more willing to try out my Italian even though back then I had a fraction of the skill that I have now. I suppose it's an interesting rebuttal of the idea of not feeling confident to start speaking until you've reached a certain level: not only is there no defined point where you suddenly start feeling confident, but it can even work the opposite way. When you're a beginner, you're excited to try out the language and people think it's cute that you know some phrases; when you're fluent it's no big deal and you just get on with it and speak. But in between those points it's a bit trickier. I suppose when you've put a good few hundred hours into learning a language, you feel more emotionally invested which can put you under pressure and reduce your confidence. Recently I've just generally been in the sort of mood where I focus on the negative over the positive in most areas of life, so losing confidence with languages is probably just a symptom of that and will hopefully improve as I sort my shit out. Plus it can be a vicious circle: the bad reactions at the party were quite possibly due to the lack of confidence! I reckon I've also developed some negative associations with Italian: I associate it with all these people who used to be my friends but no longer seem to want to know me, so even the positive experience of speaking it almost every day during the summer with them has taken on a negative side. Maybe I just need a break from the language, like I had from French. Taking a few months off seemed to help me lose the bad associations I had with it. Maybe it's time to focus more on Spanish and get that to the conversational level that I hoped to have reached by now. E mi sono sfogato. EDIT: And I forgot the usual media part. French: Started reading La possibilité d'une île by Michel Houellebecq. Apparently a controversial modern author; so far I've not decided whether I like it or not. Quite an easy read so far, the language is fairly simple and unpretentious. I finally watched Casse-tête chinois (second sequel to my favourite film, L'auberge espagnole). Italian: Still reading Fango, and I watched the film based on the first story, L'ultimo capodanno. As usual, the book is far better, but the film is still good fun. Also watched a classic comedy, Pane e cioccolata, and a drama, Il capitale umano. Started La mia classe, about a class of immigrants learning Italian. The guy seems like a great teacher! Spanish: Started watching Crimen ferpecto; Guillermo Toledo was recommended for Spanish comedy in another thread so I'm keen to see a few films he's in. Edited by garyb on 03 November 2014 at 12:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 122 of 138 07 November 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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To try and remain positive about Italian, I've decided to try to do another "push" on active skills, using methods that don't require conversation opportunities. It's a bit of an experiment; I've done similar things before, particularly with self-talk, and found them useful. So the plan is to do most or all of these daily:
- Self-talk: speak about what's on my mind; speak about something that happened to me in the last day, speak about an article or piece of news I've come across in the last day and my thoughts on it. Basically, simulating things that come up in conversation and that I know I find difficult. - Grammar study. I'm currently following the plan in Paul McKenna's "I can make you sleep", which includes getting up half an hour earlier than normal, so I'm putting that extra time in the morning to good use. "Italian grammar drills" is a good book (if a bit haphazard, seemingly teaching very basic and more advanced things at the same time), it seems to be filling in a lot of gaps in the same way "Grammaire progressive" did for my French. - More Anki, using cards from the grammar study as well as other sources. I've increased the new cards per day a bit for Italian. - A bit more pronunciation again, as I'm seeing the bad habits return once again despite all the work I did a few months ago. No serious work, just a bit of recording to stay aware of any mistakes creeping back. Despite my complaints, I do generally get to speak at least once every two weeks, which should be enough to gauge how well it's working. As for Spanish, I'm still not happy with my progress. I'm not sure if I'm even making progress any more: my recent conversations haven't been any better than those of a few months ago, and I've not had time to do intensive work on listening (or anything else for that matter). I think it's time to just admit that three languages are too many. Even two is really pushing it, and realistically you have to go through phases of focusing on one or the other. Ideally I'd like to get more fluent in Italian, hence the active skills push, which I think I'll continue until the end of the year. Then it might be time to decide whether it's worth continuing work on Italian and keeping Spanish on the back-burner, or shelving Italian for a while and putting some effort into activating Spanish. As usual it'll probably depend on social opportunities as much as anything else. For social purposes my Italian is "good enough", while my Spanish isn't very useful. Would it be more useful in, say, a year's time to have great Italian, or to have good-enough Italian and Spanish? I can't predict the future so I have no idea. I suppose languages are like any investment in that respect. Things change so there's not really any point in making long-term plans, but then again improvement takes so long that short-term planning based on the current situation doesn't make much sense either. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 123 of 138 09 November 2014 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's getting colder and colder, Winter is Coming and we should Brace Ourselves and not
give in to those moods too much. I totally agree it can become harder to actually use the language. With my horrible yet usable Spanish, I had not trouble speaking because I didn't expect perfection from myself. It is difficult later on, as one's expectations of themselves rise faster than the skills, in my opinion. And you have all the reasons to expect a lot from yourself when it comes to Italian, so even tiny troubles may seem larger than they really are. Natives are still just people. You haven't started to dislike English just because of a few disappointing morons, have you? :-D I've met so many unpleasant French speakers, what got me through those times was having fun with the language without other people interfering, so I believe your course of action is a great one. I am sure you will get to better times soon. And against those pessimist moods, there are things that might help. What makes those more bearable for me is a good comedy in any form (shows like the Big Bang Theory or the Red Dwarf, authors like Terry Pratchett), dance (preferably when noone can see me) or a walk in a forest (I get those too rarely). I am sure you can use some relieving strategies to fight the cold creeping inside the homes, bodies and hearts as well (some people use fighting sports like karate). Perhaps your Italian will be affected by the difference as well :-) Or some summer music. There are so many awesome Italian songs! Edited by Cavesa on 09 November 2014 at 12:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sarnek Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4216 days ago 308 posts - 414 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 124 of 138 09 November 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find it strange to believe Italians switch to English so promptly. Even if your
Italian were really, really, reeeeeally bad, they'd continue talking to you in Italian. At least, that's what I can tell from experience. Probably those Italians are trying to learn English and thus want to use it as much as possible? Idk... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 125 of 138 10 November 2014 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cavesa: thanks for the reassuring post :) To be honest I've just had a shitty few months, some sort of vicious circle of bad sleep, stress, and social life not going well. I think that's the cause of the negative mood and why relatively insignificant things are bothering me more than they normally would. I'm quite sure I'm past the worst though, recently I've been feeling more energetic again. The current negative associations with Italian are just temporary and I still love the language!
Good ideas about improving mood! Music has been a big one recently, I've been practising much more and going to lots of concerts. And spending time with friends... real friends that is. I also enjoy time in nature but don't get enough of it. Sarnek: Yes, I should be clear that most of my experiences with Italians are with ones who live in my city and are learning English. In Italy things are a bit different: outside of Rome at least I mostly found that people happily spoke Italian with me. I also think that part of it is that it's unusual for English speakers to know any Italian beyond the basics, so it can be hard to convince them that I actually speak it. Or perhaps there's the old chestnut of them thinking they're being helpful by switching to English, or as you say they're just keen to practise their English with a native speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 126 of 138 13 November 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Listening and subtitles
There's a French film festival on right now, and last night I went to see Avis de mistral. It's a cheesy but very well-done comedy, and between colloquial Parisian conversation and Southern accents it was challenging at times. It had English subtitles, and there are a few sentences that I don't think I would have understood without subs. It was a good reminder of two things: - My listening comprehension is good, but it could still be better! Once you reach the point of understanding almost everything, you can get lazy. Recently I've become quite bad with French and Italian films, often not paying full attention because I simply don't need to in order to follow the story. I'm sure that makes me miss out on details that would help me improve as well as full enjoyment of the story. That's one good thing about going to the cinema rather than watching at home on the computer: no distractions. - Subtitles (L1 or L2) can be useful at any level. Some people seem quite against them, at least beyond beginner level, but that tends to be the same sort of "native materials only" masochists who like to make things difficult for themselves (cf. the Cheating and Consolidating thread). I definitely think watching without subtitles is beneficial and should be done a lot, but I also think using them can be beneficial, in different ways, even at an advanced level. L1 subs can be helpful for seeing how idiomatic expressions have been translated, for example; no subs helps with "raw" comprehension and force you to focus purely on the sounds, but L2 subs can help improve your ability with speech that is otherwise hard to decipher even if you know the words. Putting all this together... Like the rest of you I've been following emk's subs2srs experiment and the native video thread; in the latter, I came across the idea of combining two subtitle files to make a single bilingual file. Simple idea yet I had never thought of it. My normal process for improving listening comprehension, which I'm doing in Spanish, is using TL subs and pausing to look up unknown words and expressions. Using bilingual subs would help me do much the same thing in a more efficient way, having the translation already there on-screen. I'll give it a try when I have some time. Quite possibly for my more advanced languages as well as for Spanish. Making cards with subs2srs seems like overkill for my needs, but I have a lot of time off work next month so I might be tempted to experiment with it. Maybe it could help squeeze out a bit more listening ability, and the way it can, to paraphrase emk, "burn phrases into your brain, including intonation" sounds like it could even be helpful for active skills. So if I find the time between my other projects and experiments it could be worth a try. Edited by garyb on 13 November 2014 at 5:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5237 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 127 of 138 13 November 2014 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've recently used the subs2srs to do the first couple of episodes of Hero Corp with French & English subtitles on cards like EMK is doing with Spanish. I find it very useful. If I don't understand the phrase (these people talk fast!) I can show myself the phrase in French & English and just keep hitting the audio repeat button until it really is burned in.
I like these cards more than my vocabulary cards where I have just 10K most frequent words which I do. The vocabulary cards help a lot with the reading portion of my super challenge task, and the sub-title cards are definitely helping with the audio. It is early days, but I do recommend having a go at it. For Italian, I have a copy of Mediterraneo which I might do the same thing for. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 128 of 138 13 November 2014 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Cool stuff. I am warming more towards the subs2srs idea now. I like my music comparisons, so I suppose the idea is like specifically practising the difficult parts of a piece rather than just repeatedly playing the whole thing through. Once you've got the easy parts you can put them aside (delete the cards) and spend some time working on the hard parts, after which you can do the whole thing well. Hero Corp might be a good choice. I've seen an episode of it and I remember it being quite colloquial and a bit tough to understand. For Italian I have some modern comedy/drama stuff in mind that has a lot of conversation and is fun and re-watchable (L'ultimo bacio, Notte prima degli esami... maybe Tutta la vita davanti but I've not checked how good the subs are) and emk already asked for and got Spanish suggestions. I'm not going to have any time to experiment with this until around mid-December, so for now it's just something that sounds like a nice idea! Edited by garyb on 13 November 2014 at 6:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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