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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 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 89 of 244 29 August 2009 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Var ikke vondt ment :-) Vil bare ikke at vi skal spore helt av her! Skriv i vei, for all del - alltid stas med kommentarer... ("...en diskusjon på norsk burde egentlig finne sted i den norske tråden..." men utrolig kult at du kan norsk må jeg si!)
In Italian-related news: Meh, weird day. Too little sleep for the last couple of nights combined with a long day at uni. I'm halfway through one of the translations I had planned for today (Italian -> English), but it's late, I'm tired, and have a headache, and I don't want to associate Italian with the headache, so I'm just going to leave it here for today and do a bit more tomorrow. Again, it's really not the best idea in the world to take whole days off when I'm in the middle of a text. Just not good. My current system of splitting the different parts over 5 consecutive days seems to be fairly conducive to learning, and taking a day off in the middle of that seems to cause a bit of a problem with recall. Not the end of the world by any means but best to just stick with it once I've started a text. Not always easy to do that when I have several texts going at any one time and sometimes just need to take the day off, but at least I know it's not a good idea so I can try to avoid it. Oh, and it seems I still skip some words when I write my wordlists, ones that I can passively understand just fine but can't produce. Problem. I'll need to be more careful from now on... In non-Italian-related news: The more I think about what language I want to do next, the more I confuse myself. Right now I'm thinking Hebrew, Hungarian or Portuguese. Sigh. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 29 August 2009 at 12:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 90 of 244 29 August 2009 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Lizzern,
I tried your translation/word list method yesterday for a French story we were reading in my French class. I could understand all of the stuff at least passively, but there were several words that I could never produce actively. Well, I'm not sure. I think I am the opposite of you; "over-picky." Anyways, I really liked it. I gained a really good understanding of the story, which was good since I had a test on it today in class. And my French teacher, when she heard me mentioning to a friend that I had translated the story and was doing this method, she almost fainted. She does that. She seems to almost faint whenever she sees or hears about anything I do. Like when she gave us this verb chart (really easy) and I had finished filling it out by the time she had finished explaining what to do with it, with no errors. Or when she found out that I also spoke Spanish at a really high level. Or that I'm also studying Greek, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Japanese in addition to my scholastic advanced studies of Spanish and French. Back on topic: I like the technique and am going to continue to do it for my Spanish and French classes, where we do a lot of literature reading... And I need to find a good source to do that with Italian. I have a Harry Potter book in Portuguese and one in French coming soon, but the Italian version was much too expensive to be sent here. Oh well. - Philip 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 91 of 244 29 August 2009 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good stuff Philip. And your teacher probably doesn't see that many dedicated learners, so I'm sure you brighten her day!
The weird thing is I'm over-picky too sometimes. Sometimes I look back on my lists and find words that are just silly to include. Other times I'll include something I'm quite sure about just to test if I could produce the word from a translation only in the wordlist without further context. Sometimes it's just so that I can 'take in' the example usage more before moving on, sometimes it's because the examples are too brilliant to pass by, other times I will encounter a word I've already studied that has a slightly different meaning in this context and therefore warrants a mention in my wordlist (one of several cases where translations might fail to accurately represent the Italian word). But it seems I have more of a problem with missing a few, and only occasionally put words in my list that don't need to be there. Oh well though - things have a tendency to come up again, indeed several words that weren't high up on my hit list have showed up several times in these texts, I just hope I won't miss too many. One potential problem is that the ones I do miss might be more important than the ones I include, ones that I can understand just fine but might actually need to actively recall in a situation - I guess the words that are most important come up more often than the less important ones, and so I'm more likely to understand them well enough to not include them. If that makes sense... I'm not sure from your post if you translate in both directions, but anyway I've found it works way better than just translating into a familiar language so thought I'd mention it. For Italian you can try texts from Personalità confusa, his posts frequently have me literally laughing out loud (which is not an easy feat - I'm more of a giggler normally), and in terms of vocabulary he doesn't hold back. After a bit of digging I can usually find a text that has enough new words for me to use it. And you should totally read his stuff anyway even if you never use it for wordlist work - very entertaining, and relatable. Also I just ordered a dual language book on famous opera arias yesterday, so depending on how they look and how good the translations are I might consider using those for wordlists and use their translation instead of writing my own, which might help counter the problem with writing things from memory more than I'm comfortable with. But opera arias probably don't use the most advanced/fancy/new vocabulary, so I might already know it all... Combined win-fail I guess. But there are tons of dual language books out there that I could use for this, if I get desperate for texts I don't have to translate myself but can check against an Italian original. They're all in my ever-growing Amazon basket, so we'll see what happens. I wasn't even planning on buying one this time but needed something to fill up an order and it was cheap enough, so we'll see how I like it. Also ordered idioms dictionaries (plural, and more so than is probably good for me) the other day, which should get here sometime next week, so I'd be surprised if I have any trouble finding things from now on. Anyway, I'm behind with my texts. By more than I like. I'll finish up the texts that are currently going over the weekend, which was the plan anyway, overall it doesn't matter if I'm a day or two late. Just did the first part of the wordlist for another text, I've found this part of the wordlist to be seriously helpful when it comes to learning the various forms of words - I usually write the infinitives etc in the first column and then the word in the example sentence as it came up, so when I see irregular verb forms and whatnot then I get to see both in one go. I rarely have any trouble coming up with the right form of the word when I write my Italian text on day 4, so it looks like that part of it is working well. Watched a loooong interview yesterday, and the comments people had written below the video, and I was quite pleased to find I could follow most things, as long as I knew the vocabulary. Understanding normal or fast speech doesn't seem too problematic at this point, and I know I said that a while back too, but things have improved since then (thanks in large part to Iversen's advice on how to listen). And I've noticed that at this point there are an awful lot of words that I understand as if they were my own language, I barely even register that they're in Italian, I don't analyse anything in my head while listening and it doesn't feel like I'm straining. So I guess that's something to be happy about. Sometimes (read: fairly often still) there are words I don't know, but that's fine, I'm gradually patching up those holes in my vocabulary that need to be taken care of, and sorting out the grammar that's still kinda hazy. On an unrelated note, I've read some posts on this forum recently where people have described language learning as hard work, a hard slog of grammar drills and painful vocabulary cramming, etc, etc. So what I'm wondering is, all that hard work that I'm supposed to have to do, when's that stuff coming up? I must be missing something, because so far it's been a joy :-) I don't know how I'd do it if it wasn't enjoyable, honestly... Current word count (see page 6): 2320 unique words, based on 12 texts. Again, my word count increased by almost 200, but I put just over 40 words in my wordlist, so it's still incorporating words I knew from before. This one and three more texts to go until I start reviewing my wordlist. If anyone has any good ideas for how to check my recall, now would be the time to let me know... Liz Edited by Lizzern on 30 August 2009 at 1:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 92 of 244 29 August 2009 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wrapped up the text I was supposed to finish yesterday (and finished the first translation of the other) and there were more corrections to make than for my previous texts. My vocabulary recall was better than I thought it would be, which was surprising, but the whole writing-from-memory thing wasn't a problem, and that's how most of the mistakes happened. Who knows, maybe it's a good thing... Maybe I should experiment with leaving the whole thing alone for a few days either before or after day 3 (the day when I finish up my wordlist by translating from English to Italian, before trying to translate the text back based on my translation). I might try that later, but not until I've finished the texts I have left on my list, because I want to get to the reviewing stage as soon as possible so that I can have a reasonable degree of certainty that the just-over-3000 words I'll have in my word count by then, are more or less words I could produce when needed. I might focus on other things for a short while after I finish with these texts before I start doing more, because I don't want to overload myself with vocabulary (and risk forgetting things) and because other things could use some work too. I might finish up the Assimil active phase as part of my reviewing, which shouldn't be problematic except for the occasional forgotten word. It would certainly be good to have that out of the way, and I'm sure it would be a good reminder of a few things that I've probably forgotten by now.
Liz 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 93 of 244 29 August 2009 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, I started from the beginning and made it all the way to the end, where is my cookie?
Bueno. Now I have some notes. :) 1. "Iversen's reading method". Would you forgive me if I asked you what that is all about? The man is a posting machine that puts you to shame (and that speaks volumes ;), so I'd probably need a week to read his 165 pages. 2. Your translation gig. I was going to ask about this but I picked up some answers from your posts underway, so I think I get how you do it. I also made a note of it because I've read elsewhere that roundtrip translation is supposed to be a good method. At first I was confused: wouldn't you just rewrite the Italian from memory? From what I understand the whole point is that you do it over time so that you have time to forget in between and so it's a good exercise. Part of me is still skeptical, however. Suppose I take a text right now that contains grammar I haven't learned yet, how am I going to reproduce it from English? With what? I can look up words, sure, but grammar constructs? How would I know to write "ho parlato" and how would I know that "non me lo ha detto" goes in that word order? Especially since it's been say 4 days since I saw the Italian original. I don't get that.. Also, do I understand correctly that you write out the Italian text by hand? I know I'm lazy, but does that not bore you? 3. The wordlist thing. When you say that you collect vocabulary and you keep a count, does that mean you know these words to the point that they would come to mind when forming a sentence spontaneously? Maybe I'm just slow but that seems unlikely to me to learn 200 a day. Personally I would not (a person who has no experience with what you language olympians are doing - just to make that clear) bother with words that I don't think will be useful to me in the near future, either because they're too obscure or too advanced for my present level. If I'm not gonna use them soon, they won't keep, that's my feeling. 4. Did you do Assimil as written on the box? I've just obtained the Italian one and there seems to be a consensus that it's very useful content. But everyone seems to be using it in a different way, so I'm researching for methods at the moment. Is Assimil what you started out with from ground zero? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 94 of 244 29 August 2009 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
We get a cookie!? Can I have one too? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5578 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 95 of 244 30 August 2009 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||
"En diskusjon på norsk burde egengtlig finne sted ..." MEN "...da en diskusjon på norsk egentlig burde finne sted ..." Edited by Lingua on 30 August 2009 at 12:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 96 of 244 30 August 2009 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Cookies for everybody! At this point I kinda figure my log's too long and my writing too dense for anyone to attempt to read it whole... So well done eh :-) (Iversen's been writing that log for almost a year I believe and I've been at it for just under a month and a half, so let's not underestimate my ability to rant, waffle and babble in the lengthiest of ways. I may still catch up with him.)
In response to Numerodix: 1. Iversen's reading method, I take it you mean 'listening' method? I don't recall referring to anything other than his wordlist method and advice on listening in this log, anyway those are the things I've used for inspiration. He's talked about wordlists here and how to listen here (that thread is filled with good stuff and is worth reading whole - and there's a list of links to his best stuff on page 11). I've adapted the wordlist method to suit me by incorporating sample sentences and using it with texts only, that's just how I prefer to do it to preserve the context as much as possible in my actual wordlist work (partly because I'm not sure I'd be able to do it otherwise - yet anyway). What I've done to practice listening is to just spend some time listening for every individual sound I'm hearing, without worrying about meaning. I might try to notice the beginning and end of words. I've used both books from Librivox and stuff from Youtube to do this, and it's been hugely helpful. 2. I like the term 'roundtrip translation' :-) And yes, writing from memory is one of the things I've touched on in this log, it's becoming a problem, seemingly because the more I do this the more I'm able to remember rather lengthy chunks of text word for word, some people have said it doesn't matter and that I shouldn't worry about it, and I half-agree, but I might try leaving a bit of time between the different stages to counteract the memory effect. Understanding the grammar in the text is important, otherwise it would be futile. Sometimes I will pick up bits of grammar from doing this, but note that I didn't do this at all until I was over 3 months into my study of Italian, at which point I had finished the passive phase of Assimil and listened to many many hours of spoken and sung Italian as well as doing lots of reading. It would be pretty pointless, and probably really discouraging, to use that technique in a language where I didn't at the very least have the basics down. It's a vocabulary tool more than anything, and it's taught me a lot about syntax, but I wouldn't have been able to learn those things if I hadn't already learned the basic framework (vocabulary and grammar). If I'm unsure about a grammar point but want to carry on with the text I'm doing, then I will either try to look things up (in your example you might look up syntax as it relates to direct/indirect object) or do a literal translation into English. But once we know certain points of grammar - which we probably should instead of using texts beyond our level (I've never tried it in the initial stages) - then the fact that the words go in that order (in your specific example) will need no explaining, believe me you will get to a point where you just know that it's like that and then you just do it, without needing to reason through it or search for the answer at all, it'll be just as natural as grammatical forms in your own language. So then when we encounter a structure like that and need to produce it for the text then it won't even seem like an issue and we can focus on the more advanced things we're using the text for. If someone tried this when they were really new to the grammar of the language I imagine it would just be a right mess of things they didn't understand and would probably confuse them further. I write both texts by hand, yes - by choice, not by necessity, obviously. For four reasons: The first is that I'm too fast a typer to really need to register anything while I write and would be prone to making mistakes for that reason alone - I'm less inclined to write things out incorrectly if I write them by hand (though I'm perfectly capable of that too). The second is that I want to actually practice writing it because I do have some degree of belief in how actually writing something down by hand has some advantages over typing things up and I'm quite a visual learner so why not. The third is that if I was typing I might be tempted to go back over things and change them, so actually correcting mistakes as I go rather than leaving them in all their glory - can't do that in writing. The fourth is that I want to be able to see my corrections visually, writing corrections over what I wrote in a darker pen seems to work well for me (and I can keep them around to look at whenever). Lastly (ok that's five reasons) I could always do with a little less time in front of the computer, I spend enough time here already. I'm sometimes acutely aware of how much longer it takes than typing up the equivalent, but it's just what I've chosen and I'm going to stick to it. 3. I'll start doing some reviewing in a couple of weeks time and we'll see then if I actually have a decent ability to produce the words I've put in my wordlist, but so far it's been very promising. I do test myself a bit - I know more or less the kinds of vocabulary I've been over in my texts, so if I come across one of these objects or concepts I might see if I can come up with the word in Italian, and most of the time I can. It's not going to be perfect - I'm not using the word count as a tool to know exactly how many words are flawlessly cemented in my brain, and I'll probably lose some of them, and some will remain in passive vocabulary only. But on the whole I'm very optimistic about it - though of course I will need to review them, and hopefully repeat exposure from real sources will help me to a more stable understanding and recall. And the word count is in large part a tool that I use to have a rough estimate of how things are going, not least because I can see it increase, which I've touched on before - I need tangible signs of progress and this is me giving myself one because I find it worthwhile to do so. I like watching the number go up. Makes me feel like I'm doing something :-) Also one of the things I've mentioned a couple of times about this method of counting is that for each new text it isn't a perfect measure of how many new items I've learned, in fact it's very far from perfect. In my first text the word count included a great deal of words that I already knew, and it still does. If I do a new text and I put 40 items in my wordlist (which is what's happened with the last 2 texts) my word count might still go up by 200 words, because with every new text there might be words I already knew that haven't been included in the word count thus far - they just never came up in the specific texts I've used. For every time I do this I'm one step closer to a realistic value - in the beginning there were a great deal of words (hundreds, possibly thousands, I don't know) that weren't included in the word count at all, but I already knew them, so a word I've known from very early on might have only been incorporated into the word count with one of my most recent texts. I don't learn 200 new words with each text I do - I might learn 40 or 60, and then the rest of the difference in the total word count from one text to the next are words that I already knew from elsewhere. Regarding usefulness, there are arguments for and against trying to learn words that don't immediately seem like the type we're likely to need, but I'm aiming for native-level fluency here and in quite a short time frame (aim for the stars, then if you miss...) so I will need to learn these things, so I might as well deal with them when they come up in a text, unless they're really weird things that I can feel pretty confident I can get away with only recognizing (e.g. calligraphy vocabulary, which came up recently). I want to learn it all, so I might be learning some words that shouldn't really be high priority for a relative newbie, but that's ok, I'll iron out the kinks as I go along. If I learn words that aren't immediately useful then I'm ok with that, they came up for a reason and it can't hurt - and I don't really feel qualified to tell what's important and what isn't, there have been some surprises already. 4. Yes, I started with Assimil when I knew nothing at all, and no, I don't do it exactly as they describe it. What I do is more or less this: Go over the lesson text, reading the notes as I go along, and at some point during my first run-through of the passive phase I'll listen to the audio, either before, meanwhile, or after going through the lesson in the book. Skip the fill-in-the-blanks exercises in the first round. Then I'll do that until I reach a review lesson. Read that, including the recommended notes from previous lessons. Then go over the previous 6 lessons again with the audio and the book at the same time, stopping at the notes and reading them, trying to make sure I can understand things more or less, as well as doing the fill-in-the-blanks exercises. Then read the review lesson again. Then move on to the next chunk. I'm behind on the active phase but I type those lessons up (because they're going to go in my word count when I'm done with the book) and then go over them afterwards correcting my mistakes. Experiment with how you want to do it, everyone does it differently and every has their own preferred way, you just need to find it. Gee, that turned out longer than planned... Surprise! Lingua: Yes, that's right :-) Norwegian word order can be a little weird sometimes... Liz Edited by Lizzern on 30 August 2009 at 12:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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