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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ccaesar Triglot Groupie Denmark Joined 3794 days ago 84 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English, German Studies: Italian | Message 17 of 32 13 February 2015 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It sounds like you have it all planned and are making a lot of progress well done -- I
now think that I ought to organise things a bit more :P I think it's a good idea to do various things so you do not have to "force" yourself into doing "it". I personally try to do an assimil lesson as often as possible (I read it, hear it, the next day I re-do it, briefly, and then do the next lesson. Try to speak with Italians, if you happen to find an Italian section on a forum or something you might be able to get in touch with some, or look for a tandem partner it's really a big help in your language learning process! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4623 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 18 of 32 20 February 2015 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I definitely find speaking to be helpful. I spent quite a bit of time speaking with my nonna and nonno in Italian over
the weekend when I stayed with them. We watched the Italian channel for something like 6 hours then discussed it, so it was really great to get some practice. I've kind of slacked off this week. I'm currently waiting a cyclone to pass through, so I just haven't been in the mood to do any work on Italian, even today (the day it shall hit) when we're just waiting around at home with no work. My big road trip is set to be early this week, which is good as it means I can really get a lot of study done in the process. I'll be on the road all day and hope to listen to various native and learning materials the entire time. We'll see how it goes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 19 of 32 04 March 2015 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Just repeating my post that went away:
One hour a day is still a lot. I recommend you to consider the idea of mini-habits. The most important thing in language learning is what you do when you don't feel like studying. If you do go for a large chunk like 30-60 min, at least don't worry about making up for "missed" days. Just continue. You may also like the consistency thread. It's not been in use for a few months but I've been thinking of starting a new one again. If it takes you a week to read 10 pages, that's not massive exposure :/ But see reading strategies and don't worry about the words you "should have looked up" :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4623 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 20 of 32 04 March 2015 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just to post what I have saved and summarise what I wrote.
I've been noticing progress lately, which is really great. Things are starting to click, and I can really see improvement. My learning isn't consistent, but it's still going, which I suppose is good. I've been working with Linguaphone and Michel Thomas a lot, mainly because using the audio tools are easy right now. I've also been trying to write something small at least once a day for corrections on lang-8 and am finding that useful. I'm not sure if it is writing itself that is useful more so than the corrections, and I suspect that it may be at this point. Also, it seems I am now solidly an A1 after doing a few online quizzes. I'm not great at talking about myself, which is one of the things apparently you can do by A1, but I haven't really studied much of that stuff, so that doesn't worry me.
Grazie Mille. I really do need to work on smaller amounts. I have long commutes this year and need to be able to utilise it better without worrying about missing my stop or bus transfer. My difficulty is, being a full time student, studying on something for even an hour a day does not seem like much and it is easy to feel like I need to be studying more, but I'm slowly realising that learning a language is not the same as studying the law, or maths, or politics and the other things I study. I would definitely join if there was a new consistency challenge. I'm trying to do ~some~ Italian every day.
Aww thank you! Okay so I really do like duolingo though I can't compare it to much else. I like drills (oh why there is no full FSI Italian Course!) and wish they had explanations, but I think it is great for q free site. My friend has done some of German with her younger sister (they have to do it for school) and liked it, but it is interesting to know that the languages have differing quality. I had a three week streak going but broke it around a week ago and need to get into it all again. As for Assimil, I'm not really sure how great the Italian one is. I'm sure it is good. I Was postponing it as I read that one gets more from it with some knowledge already, but also because I was time poor when beginning. I might actually start it again now that I have a little more time. I didn't really use it much when I was studying French as I felt I didn't get much out of it, so it is good to hear how others use it. I had actually forgotten that I have it in my arsenal now, so I might give it a go when I get home from classes today. As for Buffy, I'm probably not the best person to talk about the Italian version. I've seen only a few episodes, but eyðimörk has used it quite a lot. Their log is "Italian the lazy way" (I am on mobile right now, so checking is difficult). I like the dub, though perhaps I just like Buffy no matter what. I may have posted a link to the Italian dub of Buffy somewhere in this log. I know that I used language learning as an excuse to watch Buffy again when I was working on French, though I used the subtitles too much. --- eyðimörk wrote a bit about the dub and said that it's a great dub though the subtitles usually correlate to the English rather than the Italian, which I was pleased to hear as I had issues with my subs not lining up and was glad to see that it was across the whole series, not just the subs that I had found online. Edited by dandt on 04 March 2015 at 10:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 21 of 32 06 March 2015 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is what was said about the dub:
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| suzukaze Triglot Senior Member Italy bit.ly/1bGm459 Joined 4601 days ago 186 posts - 254 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Spanish Studies: German, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 22 of 32 06 March 2015 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Too bad my post was lost, I'll try to see if I can restore it :/
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| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4623 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 23 of 32 07 March 2015 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've been meaning to do it for a while, but some mishaps with the internet connection and my quest
to avoid doing actual study (for university, not Italian) led to me finally getting around to making an audio deck for anki. I've been going through my Glossika recordings and picked a few dozen sentences to turn into cards. The cards I've done seem to be really good, and I should make some more in the next few days. I think that just making the cards was a really useful learning strategy. I'm also trying to do some duolingo today as I got slack with doing it regularly. I have so much review to do, though I know that I haven't really lost much progress in terms of forgetting things, as I tested into the same level when I started a new account to see if I could remedy the time zone issue (i couldn't). That was really reassuring. I also spent quite a long time today working through my grammar book. I have been neglecting it lately, and while I know that I am picking up things without doing too much formal grammar study, I really do feel like it is important to take a structured approach to learning grammar as well. I've actually now (finally) finished the first 'chapter' of the grammar book which focused on nouns. Best thing is that I only made a few mistakes in the entire section, and those mistakes were pretty much all in the articles, and that's the section I'm moving onto now. Finally, a big thanks to Cavesa for encouraging me to give Assimil another try. Not only am I finding it to be much better than I had remembered/expected, but it's also easy enough to do each day. Edited by dandt on 07 March 2015 at 6:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4623 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 24 of 32 07 March 2015 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Look at me, spamming my log (again). I swear it is for good reasons. I've spent most of today studying Italian. I should have been doing my readings for my next week of classes, but I didn't feel like sitting at my
desk all day. Instead, I sat on my bed learning all day. As said above, I made my flashcards and have queued them all up. I only covered a few cards today, and decided to start with only 5 or so per day to begin, mainly because I only made 40 (it felt like so many more) and I doubt I'll get a chance to make more before next weekend. I may make some more tomorrow, depending on other plans. I just picked sentences that I thought were useful for me or ones that had interesting/complicated grammar. I want to try to make cards more often whenever I come across useful vocabulary or sentences. I then spent such a long time working on grammar. I really feel like I'm making strides with it, and actually found myself being able to identify where various diminutive, pejorative and augmentative nouns were used when I was reading afterwards. I didn't really memorise anything in the grammar book, even the various rules, but rather focused on the drills. As I see it, I can easily look into the book for reference where necessary. I'm not sure if that was the right approach to take. I really didn't mind sitting and doing the drills and working through the book for a long time today. I thought it was a good way to do it and I really did feel like I was building on the knowledge. I think that sitting down and knocking out a heap of grammar work, whether it be once or twice a week, is a good way for me to work. I'm going to try and do some reviews throughout the week, but I honestly do think that I might just work on my grammar on weekends. As I improve and get further along in everything else, perhaps I'll find that I want to increase that. I've mentioned a few times that I've been trying to write every day. I did some more writing today and it seems to be my longest little bit of writing that I've put on lang-8 (at 58 words!). Everything I write is pretty small, but I'm finding it is easier for me to make myself write something every day if I know I can just put something small up for corrections. I signed up for the Output challenge, and I really need to be writing more if I have any hope of completing it. I've decided that I am going to try to write a minimum of 80 words each day for the next week, even if it means writing a little in the morning and a little at night. Having worked on Michel Thomas a lot, I know that I can produce sentences, at least verbally, so I just have to work on doing the same thing with writing. I know that I can do it, though I just need to spend some time doing it. I spent time doing all my review on Duolingo as well. That took much longer than expected, but I finally managed to get on top of it all. It really shows how it's important to keep reviewing. Another thing I did was to take an extended Italian quiz. I scored 0.74/5, which is pretty bad but I know there were questions I could easily have answered when I was regularly reviewing Duolingo, so I don't really mind that I got a pretty bad score. The whole point of taking it was to see how much I improve over time. I'm hoping to try the quiz again in a fortnight. I did some reading too and I used some of the reading strategies suggested earlier. I'm still in the first chapter of my book but I suspect I will finish that chapter tonight. The book is definitely above my level and probably isn't the best book to read as a beginner, but I was so surprised to find it in Italian on the ibooks store that I bought it on impulse. I grabbed a few samples of some other 'young adult' books I've read in the past few years as well, so I might give them ago if Hunger Games continues to be difficult. I should just read Harry Potter, but I don't want to just yet. As anyone reading my log will have gleaned, I'm using a lot of audio-based materials. The main reason is that it means I can easily learn while commuting. I spend at least 2 hours on the bus most days, sometimes up to 4 hours, so listening to Michel Thomas or Linguaphone seems like a good use of my time. While the bus means I can't actually speak, I do tend to 'whisper'. I vocalise as much as possible when at home. When I can sit on the bus, I read or use duolingo (at least I plan to use duolingo), but when I don't have a seat, which is a lot of the time, it just makes more sense to listen, at least for me. Another reason I am using primarily audio based programs is that, as a law student, I spend a lot of time learning from books. While I have no problem doing so, and I am well suited to it, I find that I need to strongly differentiate learning languages from my university studies. I feel as though not doing so is why I took so long to make so little progress with french and why I feel my learning eventually fizzled out, despite having perfect opportunities to continue learning. Other than my grammar book, pretty much all my learning is very much not associated with books. Even with my grammar, I'm not going over it and working through drills nearly as regularly as I should. It's taken me over a month to get through only the first section, and it is not because it is difficult, but because I just find myself craving learning that isn't 'book based'. If I'm using books, it's too similar to my uni work, and I find myself prioritising everything else over language precisely because 'it doesn't matter' (at least for assessment) and is 'just' for fun. Finally, I've booked a 30 minute lesson on iTalki for monday night. I'm not exactly sure that I want to do it now because I feel like I make so many stupid mistakes and I have difficulties remembering under pressure, but decided that I'm better off doing it now than waiting for when I feel like I'm 'good enough'. My goals for the week are just to be fairly consistent. I want to try to watch the Italian news most days as it's on at a time that works well for me.I want to make sure I continue to write most days and that I keep up with assimil. Basically, I want to do at least something every day. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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