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dandt’s Italian Quest | ||
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| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4623 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 25 of 32 08 March 2015 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I actually started this log by talking about how anxious I am about my upcoming Italian lesson and how I was
considering cancelling. I was convinced to do that, but instead have rescheduled for later in the week. I'm still very anxious about it, but at least I will have plenty of time to mentally prepare. Until then, I'm going to try to speak as much as possible as that is one of the things that I am nervous about doing with a teacher. I am a perfectionist and hate to make mistakes, so this really is difficult for me. Today: I did a little bit of Linguaphone. I haven't been doing as the narrator/instructor suggests and have not really been reviewing and replaying things as the program progresses. I want to start doing that because I feel like there was a real jump in difficulty between CD 4 and CD 5. There are certainly things that I have been forgetting/not learning along the way. Directions, for example, is something I listened to, and followed along on, but made no attempt to really learn. It isn't something that particularly interested me. If I were planning on travelling to Italy in the next year or two I would certainly try, but I know that I won't be travelling any time soon. I know how to ask for directions, I know left and right, and near and far, but that's about it. The same went for a bit of the obvious touristy type segments early on, like the hotel things. A lot of what I remember from it are things that have been repeated ad nauseum. I think the focus on tourist-friendly vocabulary is why I prefer Michel Thomas, though I find myself listening to Linguaphone more. Duolingo was done as well, obviously. I covered conjunctions and prepositions today. I had some technological issues which meant I couldn't do the speaking exercises today. Hopefully I can get it to work tomorrow morning. I did my Anki review and new cards. I like the audio cards, and I think I'll increase my daily new cards and try to make some more cards in the next few days. I wrote something that was fairly long for me today. 88 words, easily my record. As I have not posted my lang8 profile yet, it can be found here. I managed to miss the news this morning, and won't be able to see it tomorrow as I have early classes. I've set a reminder on my phone for Tuesday morning so that I remember to watch it. The only thing that I haven't done that I want to do is assimil, but I will be doing that before I go to bed tonight. I'm trying to do assimil every day, but find it difficult to remember. that's not to say that I don't enjoy it, but remembering to do it every day and having to do it every day is something I find tedious. 2 persons have 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 26 of 32 09 March 2015 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
In my experience, the only way to get past this is to move forward, get past the anxiety-inducing event, and pick apart the anxiety that remains afterwards. I have some, let's call them serious and leave it at that, anxieties about the impression that I make in "real life". Even with the worst of it behind me, those anxieties come into play when speaking a language I feel less than masterful in. I can't even count the sleepless tearful nights, during my first year in France, before I got even better at dealing with it, that I spent going over French conversations in my head, making myself feel worse, until I finally manage to rationalise my way out of the downward spiral. And this is what I learnt: preparation makes you feel better, but it only makes me feel better while I'm preparing. It doesn't lessen the anxiety during conversation. It doesn't lessen the anxieties after the fact. The inner perfectionist doesn't end up not finding something to latch on to. Preparation mostly just delays the inevitable. Mind you, I am all for preparation. Prepare some phrases on a piece of paper before making a phone call. Look up the necessary words before talking to the plumber. But you don't need to prepare for a week for a phone call, for example. You're not going to be that much better and most of that time is spent appeasing anxiety that would already have passed if you didn't keep "preparing". But that's me, and your mileage may vary. 4 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 27 of 32 11 March 2015 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
think my decision came down to the fact that I would end up getting home ridiculously late more than any perceived lack of preparation. In the end, I haven't ended up focusing on speaking; I just haven't had the time. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not as nervous about it. I'll go over some phrases before my lesson tomorrow, but at the end of the day, it really isn't worth the effort. On Monday, I had a 5 hour break between classes at uni and decided to go through the Italian section of the languages library. I found some good resources, though they are quite old as Italian is now taught through another university (which is why I didn't study it in the first place, if I'm being completely honest). There are, however, some good dual texts and graded readers, and I spent quite a while reading. While reading, I managed to identify some of the things I covered when I was studying grammar on the weekend. For example, the word 'braccione' was in one of the readings, and there was a note for it down the bottom. The note was "braccione: grosse braccia", and it then explained the grammatical side of things. That was something that really made me feel great, because I could see my learning is sticking. One of the extracts I read was called 'La Causa dell''infelicita umana', or 'The Cause of Human Unhappiness'. I really liked reading this extract. It was fairly easy and quite repetitive, but also interesting. "Oh, come sarei felice se avessi quella provincia!" would then become "Oh, come sarei felice se avessi quella villa!", "Oh, come sarei felice se avessi quel bambino!" and so on. The story was short, which was good as well. I had to reread a few things, but I defintely understood a lot, if not most, of it the first time. That was a big confidence boost. In terms of learning, I have noticed that I'm having more trouble forming sentences and producing than I was last week. The only thing that I can think of that I am doing differently is that I haven't really used Michel Thomas at all, but have used a lot of Linguaphone. It seems, at least for me, that Linguaphone is too passive and that Michel Thomas gets me thinking more, rather than parroting. I'm not completely sure that it is the reason, but I used Michel Thomas tapes for 15 minutes earlier just to see, and I seem to be able to form sentences a bit better than before. I think I really need to work less from linguaphone now and use Michel Thomas more. It's just a theory at this point, and I think it is just how I interact with the programs. One other thing I found interesting is that I'm finding myself thinking certain phrases in Italian in response to things. For example, my friend said something about how she does her class notes a certain way, and I started typing "Non è possibile per me cosi" in reply. One thing I tried last night was an app I found on my ipad. Busuu is the app, and it had lots of language learning options. It had drills that were also pretty fun, and I thought it might be a good tool to add. One of the things that I do like is that it was broken down into levels that correspond to the CEFR levels. I liked that it gives a basic idea of what levels certain vocabulary roughly corresponds to. I don't know how good it is, and it definitely has similarities to things I'm using already, like duolingo, so I doubt I will continue to use it, but I can see that it could be a useful tool to add. 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 28 of 32 12 March 2015 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So I just had my first Italian lesson with a tutor from iTalki. It was good, and I was nervous for no
reason. I really do have trouble talking about some things that are very basic, probably because I had no interest in learning those things, so I couldn't tell her where I was from, but I could say that I am Australian. It's funny what things I was able to produce in speaking with her that I was not expecting to be able to say, and I don't think she was expecting, mainly from things I had picked up from either native materials or using so many different learning materials. It really made me realise how little I have focused on things that are very basic, but very important. I definitely think that I will have more lessons. If nothing else, doing this lesson freed me a little from my speaking anxieties. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 32 12 March 2015 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good to hear the lesson went well! I've only taken Skype lessons at a more advanced level, not near the start, so it's interesting to see the thoughts of someone doing them early on. I think speaking early on is a good way to discover what the important gaps in your knowledge are, that wouldn't be apparent just from courses, and of course to get over the anxiety as you say and get used to speaking the language. It's always nice when you find yourself using expressions that you picked up somewhere and didn't realise you knew!
I see what you mean about covering the basics. I've seen beginners understand "di dove sei?" ("where are you from?") yet get thrown for a loop by "da dove vieni?" ("where do you come from?") or vice versa. Even for basic small-talk questions, there are different ways of phrasing them, so hearing a slightly different version of the one you learnt from your book can be confusing. Someone asking where you live might use "vivere" or might use "abitare", and if they ask how long you've been living there, "da quanto tempo..." can become just "da quanto..." or change to "da quanto è che...". But don't worry, you pick them up quickly enough. 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 30 of 32 12 March 2015 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think some of it is definitely that, but some of it is that Ive avoided a lot of materials that have all of that type
of stuff. I find it boring and it isn't really useful for me right now. I knew greetings, asking some basic questions etc just from being around the language my whole life. I'm not going to Italy any time soon, and I can get conversation practice with family without having to say a lot of those things, so I rationalised that it wasn't necessary. It actually surprises me how easy it has been to avoid it. I have been using lots of materials, and only one (Teach Yourself Beginners Italian) has had those sorts of things. I wouldn't have even chosen it for myself, but we had it at home from when my dad decided to teach us his language (it lasted about two weeks). I just stopped using that book because it is just so boring. I think I may have been concerned that, if I studied that stuff that is so dry and boring, I may lose interest in studying Italian. It won't happen now, as I've seen lots of progress and I have a pretty good understanding of lots of other things to do with the language, so I might sit down with that book on the weekend and drill that stuff in. Something I've noticed is that I can say a lot by just taking a moment to think a little because sometimes I just need to think of a different way to say what I want. I can't think of anything right now, but last night had my head swimming in possibilities. 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 31 of 32 07 April 2015 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ugh, I missed the posts on this page (although I've seen a quote in kujichagulia's log :))
I so understand it about native materials vs basic boring stuff. I generally don't bother either. Finnish and Croatian are the only languages where this kind of stuff is/was exciting to me. Have you come across the Radio Arlecchino podcast, btw? It covers most of the grammar and relatively advanced vocab (so don't worry about learning everything in one go!) Also, do you know about the team challenge, which is to read/listen/watch some content created by a person who's not a straight white cisgender male? You're already reading The Hunger Games, which was written by a woman :-) It would be great if you shared some impressions! (although you started before the challenge, so officially you'd need to find some other content - maybe a short video, song, or poem. whatever works for you!) Good luck with your learning :) 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 32 of 32 22 June 2016 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am the worst at coming on here consistently.
Anyway, my learning is coming along quite nicely. I took a big giant break for around eight months last year for the most part. I spoke bits and pieces with my grandparents, and watched things here and there, but as a whole I did nothing. I have been going to weekly classes for the last few months and that has helped immensely with speaking. We have a nice little group and start each class off by having little Italian conversations and I have no qualms speaking now at all which is great because speaking has always been my biggest challenge. I've also just been promoted into the next level which is great. A big problem that I have always had is not burning out and balancing language learning with non-language studies, and having the weekly class has been really great because I'm not burning out. I haven't been doing much independent work other than just reviewing class stuff a few times a week but I now have a few weeks with nothing else to do, so I will be doubling down for the next month. I mainly plan to consolidate all the work from the last few months of classes and working on reading and listening. I'm trying to come up with a realistic plan to work from. One big exciting thing is that I am going to italy again in August! It's a very small trip (2 weeks!) but I'll be spending a lot of time with family and in a small village, so I believe I can get lots of speaking practice done. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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