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Gary’s TAC 2012 - The Romantics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 65 of 167 18 April 2012 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||
It's called the Zen of Screaming; it's aimed at people wanting to do harsh metal vocals. I got it years ago after deciding I wanted to be a metal vocalist (something that's still on my "bucket list" but I don't see myself having the time for any time soon, still focusing on the guitar...), and when re-watching it recently I realised that this part was relevant to French. The instructor says that you should "sing as you speak", and both should come from high up in the mouth, so there's exercises designed to get you feeling your voice resonating there. She calls it "over the pencil" because if you hold a pencil along your mouth it feels as if your voice is going over it as it goes out. There are also exercises for improving the strength and flexibility of the tongue, lips, etc. which might be useful for getting your mouth around the all sounds in a foreign language, and even for pronouncing plosive sounds without aspiration which is relevant to French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 66 of 167 18 April 2012 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not too much interesting to report for this week's update. I was again passing the
Language Café on the way back from work. It was OK but I was too tired to socialise much (had gone to a gig the night before so hadn't slept much) and there was one particularly annoying person who always interrupts my French conversations in English, tells the same anecdotes every time he's there, and goes on about the good old days of the French/English exchange meetup that he used to run which in reality was a bit of a disaster. I just wasn't in the mood for it so I left, although I did get a couple of sentences in French in. I've mentioned before that I felt like I had to "warm up" to get into "French mode", and that it was hard to do when surrounded by English; if that evening is anything to go by, then it seems that I've recently become able to "warm up" far more quickly. Which is great as that was the big thing that's always messed me up on trips to France and made people think that I can barely speak the language. Italian wise, I'm seeing the light at the end of the Assimil tunnel. Should finish the passive wave right in time for the Italian friends-of-friends' visit. I am tempted by the recent release of Using Italian, even despite being underwhelmed by Using French - a temptation that I'd probably be better resisting because, given my goals, spending my limited Italian time practising speaking and watching native materials would probably be far more productive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 67 of 167 23 April 2012 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Français
A few Skype chats this week and some TV watching. And it's about time I started making some proper plans for my Paris trip since it's currently still very vague and I'm yet to book any travel and accommodation. Part of me thinks that a whole week there will be too long and I'll struggle to find things to do, especially since I don't know that many people there, and another part of me thinks it'll be too short... Italiano Looks like due to bad timing I've completely missed the Italian friends-of-friends' visit, which is a shame as apparently there were six of them and none of them spoke English very well so it would've been a great opportunity for practice. Ah well, hopefully I'll be able to find more opportunities soon. I did the last lesson of the passive wave of Assimil this morning, so in a couple of weeks I'll be finished with it completely. But not to worry, I've just signed up for the Super Challenge, or my variation thereof, in which the 100 books are replaced by 100 hours of speaking practice - conversation, self-talk, shadowing, etc., so I won't be running out of things to do! To be honest, speaking lots and watching lots of film and TV was already my exact post-Assimil plan, so the Super Challenge just quantifies it a little. Of course French is still going to be my main focus before my trip, so the serious Italian work won't really start until late June, but until then I think I have time to do at least a bit of Italian every day as I've been managing so far. A few minutes of speaking practice and a bit of film/TV most days of the week, plus some lunchtime reading and some radio listening at work, should be quite doable. The Italian meetup seems to be starting again next month, yay! As for the more immediate future, I think I'll revise Michel Thomas Advanced sometime in the next week. I'm still struggling to remember all these verb forms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 68 of 167 26 April 2012 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Still more ups and downs with French. I went to the meetup last night and my French was
pretty bad compared to other recent times. I'll put it down to a combination of: the usual ups and downs of the advanced-but-not-quite-fluent stage; tiredness due to staying up drinking until 4am the night before despite having work in the morning; making a conscious effort with the "speaking from high in the mouth" thing and my mind consequently being occupied by how I'm speaking as opposed to what I'm saying; and general lack of practice in the last couple of weeks due to having other things on my mind and my schedule. I never quite find the balance. As I said I've had quite a few Skype chats, which is great but just not enough, and I seem to have fallen off the self-talk wagon despite my talk of how great it was and how much it was helping me. Anyway I pretty much know exactly what I need to do for the next two months, so it's just a case of doing it and staying focused and on track. That is: keep working on accent, and speak every day (meetup, Skype, or self-talk). Plus the usual TV/films/radio of course, but speaking's the priority. Italian wise, I had a look at a few articles in Il Corriere della Sera, and wow... there's a huge difference between the vocabulary of Assimil, RAI Radio, and everyday conversations, and that of the newspapers. Apparently the line from Assimil, "trovo che il linguaggio dei giornalisti sia molto complicato", is correct. I'm not a big reader, but it seems like going through a few papers and books might be a far more efficient way of acquiring passive knowledge than radio and TV. Listening and reading with audiobooks or films with subtitles would probably be even better, although finding modern audiobooks and films with TL subtitles is always a challenge, which is why I practically gave up with these activities for French a while ago... In a way I'm not keen to end up with my passive knowledge being absolutely miles ahead of my active knowledge as has always been the case with my French, so I'd rather focus on speaking and "activating" what I already know, but on the other hand... It's not such a bad problem: being able to understand a whole conversation but not being able to contribute to it very elegantly is better than being able to express yourself well but then not understanding the responses and getting lost. Edited by garyb on 26 April 2012 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5207 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 69 of 167 27 April 2012 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks; and I see it's also available on Amazon.com. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4880 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian | Message 70 of 167 29 April 2012 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Like news articles in any language, the language used is far different from the standard informal conversation language in Italian. I'm sure that you already know about lingro.com, but if not, I would recommend it as an easy way to read through everything. I know that I've put quite a few words into its dictionary myself...
Also, I prefer repubblica.it in general, only because their articles tend to be longer, which helps to reinforce the new vocabulary just enough to help it stick better, vs. the short segments on corriere. Of course there are dozens of quotidiani online to choose from: http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/italy.htm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 71 of 167 30 April 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
Somehow I had never heard of lingro.com; it looks useful, kinda like Lingq but for the whole Web. I'll definitely give it a try! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 72 of 167 30 April 2012 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Français
Getting stuff done. Yesterday I had a Skype chat and then spent a while doing various solo speaking practice exercises. I shadowed a few Assimil lessons (my copy of French with Ease is getting very well worn now, the cover's about to fall off!) and recorded myself repeating the exercises. For each lesson I recorded the exercises once speaking "normally" and then a second time for which I made a special effort to be clear and articulate. I was happy with the results, there was a noticeable difference, but even the first recordings weren't bad which suggests that my habits are improving. So I seem to have finally figured out how to speak well, and now I just need to apply it to my spontaneous speech. Then again, I've said that many times before and then I always find something else that needs work. Like I said near the start of my log after my experiments with shadowing over the winter holidays, shadowing seems to help me with training habits into my speech, so I plan to do more of that as well as obviously making the effort in conversations. I'd also like to do similar exercises but sitting further away from the microphone and projecting my voice more, as that would be better practice for loud group conversations in noisy environments. I think I'll wait until I'm alone in the house for that though :). I also did some self-talk using documentaires/pid1831-c-le-meilleur-du-hier.html">Le Meilleur du Hier from CanalPlus - it's an ideal show for the exercise, with one-minute clips of some of the funny or interesting moments from the previous day's programmes, after each of which I can pause the video and explain what happened. It works well for a "broad" exercise of talking a little bit about a wide variety of subjects, whereas longer programmes are good for a "deep" exercise of talking in more detail about one subject. The Canal+ site really is a goldmine, and I hope I'll be able to find something similar in Italian once I reach a level high enough for that sort of comedy and political satire. Italiano A bit of Assimil (IT-to-EN wave finished now, and only 5 more lessons for EN-to-IT!) and some self-talk yesterday, 20 minutes mostly talking about the events of my weekend. Assimil has helped me a lot with learning vocabulary and expressions, but verb conjugation is still a weak point, just so many of the damn things to remember. I know it's almost time for the Super Challenge to start, but my intention is still very much to keep French as my main focus for the next two months, so I won't be logging any crazy hours soon. The real fun will probably start in July. But between the SC (remember that I replaced the 100 books with 100 hours of speaking) and having all but finished Assimil, I really have no more excuses for not making an effort to find conversation opportunities. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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