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The 1-year challenge: Italian | ||
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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 33 of 244 31 July 2009 at 5:41pm | IP Logged |
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This thread goes like a roller-coaster!
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 34 of 244 31 July 2009 at 8:36pm | IP Logged |
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I don't have any advice or suggestions either, but your log is very entertaining! When I read the Italian messages I tried to find words I recognize from Spanish. When I read your first post I wished I'd had a more detailed plan when I started my log. Hope you have fun learning Italian. Edited by mick33 on 04 September 2009 at 6:10am 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 35 of 244 01 August 2009 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks guys :-)
Well I've had a look around the forum looking for people's advice on how to speed up vocabulary acquisition, I haven't had much time to read that extensively though, because of general busy-ness levels, and considering that I'm looking for ways to save time, not spend it looking for ways to save it... I've read some of the advice by Iversen and others, and have come up with a way of adapting it that I'd like to try out, combining his advice with what I feel has worked well for me so far and might work well when combined into something resembling a structure. I'm hoping it'll be effective, and that I can still enjoy it - a pretty basic requirement. Drills and rote learnings are really not my thing, I've had some very bad experiences with wordlists in the past, which is why I'm initially skeptical, but even Iversen himself said in one of his post that he had wasted time earlier in his life doing wordlists incorrectly because nobody had taught him how. Maybe the same thing is true for me. I'm not quite ready to try the full-on wordlist method just yet, which is why I'm going to try a variant of it, to ease myself into it a bit. So yesterday I went out and got a hold of some paper and bought coloured pens (which came in a CD cover. Weird) to get started experimenting. Because of my less than positive memories of using wordlists in language classes, I have a fair bit of resistance to overcome here. I also have a certain knack for losing bits of paper or forgetting to check important things I've written down, so I've kinda stopped considering paper as something useful unless it's neatly organised... I recently had to write a set of notes for something because I realized I just couldn't do without, and a friend of mine laughed and said "this is the first time I've seen you write!" I suspect my wordlists will soon be neatly numbered and in order, just like my uni notes. There's a long (24 pages!) thread on super-fast vocabulary learning techniques, which I have yet to read in its entirety, but I might skim through it all sometime when I have the time. Some good advice though, even just on the first few pages. There's an explanation of Iversen's wordlist method in his old log here, I haven't read it all but he explains things very thoroughly on pages 4 and 5. Since I'm truly terrible at paraphrasing (no, really) I'm not going to rewrite everything he's said here - just go read his own description :-) The grammar notes I may sometimes do as part of adapting the wordlist method to idioms and sentences (see below) are partly inspired by Antelope's second post in his/her (?) Italian log, so we'll see how that goes. I'm going to revise things as I go, so this is just a starting point to try this out. Anywho, without further ado, I present to you: The Iversen Method - Colonial Edition. Here's how it'll look: 1st column: the Italian word or expression on the far left, possibly with an example of its use in a sentence (or the relevant part of a sentence, if it's a long one). For words that have an exact enough equivalent meaning in English, I'll use a sentence if its use is idiomatic or otherwise interesting. I will get my sentences from the things that interest me. I will in the very near future need to focus my learning on the areas that are most relevant to me, but I'll also continue with my usual input (music, Personalità confusa, interviews, reading up on things, some interesting books, etc.) and then take my examples from both kinds of sources when I stumble upon something good that I could use... Which I often do, but since I'm not a note-taking person I don't always write them down anywhere. 2nd column: the translation (into English, Norwegian, Spanish, or whatever fits it most closely) or explanation that is most accurate for that specific use of the word while still brief, based on looking up the word and if necessary reading a couple more sample sentences to get a feel for what it means. 3rd column: the Italian word again. If I used a sample sentence, then the word I'm learning is left blank, and the sentence is written left of the word (so the 'solution' is on the far right), so I can choose whether to consider the word in the context I saw it, or try to figure it out from the explanation in the 2nd column, which will vary from word to word. I may have several entries for different meanings or uses of the same word, or related words, which will go on the same (long) wordlist (though not necessarily in the same 5-7). I might end up using the fill-in-the-blanks option mostly for these types of words, where translation might be inadequate or there are different uses for the same word - though I suspect that preserving the context will be of more use to me than learning words only. If anything in the sentence needs explaining I'll make room for a small grammar note below the entry where I dissect the sentence in detail (Antelope-style). I might try to translate the sample sentence for the 2nd column if I feel like it, so that I can practice output of grammatically correct sentences, with a reference right below in case something stumps me or I make a mistake. It would certainly help me notice syntax issues more closely, so I might use the method for the whole thing to actually produce something complete from just the translation into a whole sentence. So that's the general idea. I will revise the method as I go along, if something doesn't work or could work better or whatever. I'm happy to ditch one way of doing things to try to find something better. This way I can hopefully make sure I learn things that I may have otherwise forgotten too easily (it happens!), it also means idioms will fit the method, as I can use that as a 'word' and then have the sample sentence work with that just as well as it would work with any other word. I know this is going to take way more space than 3 simple columns, but I'd like to try it out, see if it works... If anyone has any suggestions about how to improve it, you know the drill :-) Liz Edited by Lizzern on 01 August 2009 at 3:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| densou Senior Member Italy foto.webalice.it/denRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6134 days ago 120 posts - 121 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 36 of 244 01 August 2009 at 5:58pm | IP Logged |
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mmhhh, easier done than said ?
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| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 244 01 August 2009 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
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Hahaha! ;D
Very interesting log Liz, I'm curious about the Italian language myself so I'm watching your progress closely. ;) Let us know how the method works, aye? ^^ 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 38 of 244 02 August 2009 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
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Did some reading today, out of interest and to hunt for words to try out the wordlist thing on. Also listened to some Dante and some interviews on youtube... Which is just excellent for listening practice because it's entirely unfiltered. Again, the issue is vocabulary, but a lot of things just make sense now, without me having to think things over, which is nice.
Anyway, first impressions after trying the wordlist method yesterday and today... I kinda like it. (Gasp! *pinch*) It's useful, because I get to have a go at learning the things that have come up in a way that's more likely to make them stick - I've had the tendency to be the kind of person who would look things up again and again as many times as I needed to (this would mean maybe twice for most words, maybe 5 tops occasionally for things that were trickier to get my head around) but I so don't have time for anything even remotely slow. So I feel like it's helping me to, I don't know, taste the words more effectively the first time they come up. We'll see if this has dramatic effects on my recall, I suspect it will. Anywho. What I've done is write down everything that I wanted to use the method for, i.e. everything that I didn't quite feel stable about, and of course just the regular new words I hadn't seen before. I wrote them down in the left-hand column, looking them up as I went along, as well as writing down the context (as brief as I could make it) for most words, and googling for sample sentences in the cases where that didn't quite work. Then gave it a good 10 count (read: went and did unrelated things for hours), then took the lists out and went through some, looking everything up again and writing down the translation in the 2nd column. I liked having a bit of time away from it before doing this, it allowed me to double-check my understanding as well as remind myself of the context in which I saw it in the first place. I'm going to continue with the sample usage beside the word I'm learning - I just like having it there, and sometimes I'd write down several and it seemed like it made a difference. Then tried to produce the word from the English word only - which was significantly more difficult for some words. Others (many if not most) seemed to come to me easily. The words I found difficult were simply ones I had never seen before today, I'll review these and possibly put them into another wordlist to do the same thing to them again until they stick. It did help to force my brain to try to produce them though, even though it did so unsuccessfully with some words. But I do believe that if we try, then when we check we're much more likely to remember what we find out than if we just give up and check straight away and then move on with our day. Anyway, still need to do some more experimenting to find a way that works for me, then get it up to a pretty intense rate of learning, because of the time factor in all this. Loving the added incentive to learn :-) Liz Edited by Lizzern on 02 August 2009 at 10:16pm 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 39 of 244 02 August 2009 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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On a random note, I totally need to get an Italian-Norwegian dictionary. I bet in some ways the Norwegian equivalents make a lot more sense than their equivalent English attempts at explaining the same things, I know that happened a few times with Spanish and with a couple of words today. Really shouldn't go out and buy any more books at this stage (already have serious baggage weight issues for my trip back home and will have to mail myself at least 10 kilos) but I'll probably get one once I'm back home again. T minus 14 days!
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 40 of 244 02 August 2009 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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Just a few remarks the use of wordlists.
Point 1) Many people say that they have problems remembering words they learn in isolation (by wordlists or flashcards/anki). If that's the case for you then use the method to memorize words you already have met while reading. To memorize words directly out of a dictionary you have to be fascinated with words and with the connexions between them, otherwise it won't work. Point 2: When I wrote that I had wasted good time on bad wordlists I was referring to to usual two-column lists of words with translations, memorized one pair at a time (as in almost all textbooks). Then I developed the three-column method (with memorizing of groups of 5-7 pairs and translation both ways in the same process). However the repetition round is extremely important, and I continually 'forgot' it. So the last version of the method has the three-column* wordlist(s) to the left and corresponding two-column** systems to the right for the repetition roound, and because I now can see what I have left to do teh chances are much better that I actually get it done. * Target - base - target ** Base - target I hope you find some way of adapting this technique to your own way of leaning Edited by Iversen on 02 August 2009 at 11:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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