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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 1 of 182 31 August 2009 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Index
Page 01 - Review: Online courses Livemocha.com Italian Page 01 - Review: Audio course Michel Thomas Italian Page 04 - Review: Audio course Pimsleur Italian Page 08 - Milestone: 200 hours Page 12 - Milestone: First intelligible magazine article Page 13 - Online language test Page 13 - Milestone: 3 months Page 15 - Milestone: 400 hours Page 17 - Review: Textbook La Lingua Italiana Per Stranieri Page 18 - Review: LIS Textbook (process and pictures) Page 19 - Grammar summary: Congiuntivo imperfetto e trapassato Page 22 - Conclusion: Italian language tests Page 23 - 6 Months, Conclusion: Process Well then. Like the highly inspirational Liz I wanted to "do something" before starting to log anything. The terror of the blank page and all that. It's been 2-3 weeks now since I started with Italian. My main goal is not so much to learn Italian, but above all to learn how to learn a foreign language. I have a couple of other languages that are actually higher priority, so with Italian I want to have a positive experience and restore some of the hope I once had in the idea that learning a language can happen with some degree of expediency, awareness of progress, and understanding of the process itself. To that end, I have been tracking my hours and so far I have to say it has helped to measure what I have done and given me an idea of how quickly I might be able to do what. To date I've spent 58 hours, which, if memory serves, is equivalent to 5 months of French back in junior high. Along the way, I've done lots of meta-thinking and fortunately the inner dialog has died down a little over time as I've been able to clarify my plans for Italian. I find that tracking hours also gives me patience, otherwise I would have quit Pimsleur by the third lesson. Background I've had passive exposure to Italian for something like 10 years. I've never tried learn it. My interest in Italian and Italy came about as a result of my interest in calcio, which is ongoing. I've been to Italy a few times and it's a delight. For vacation, at least. I can't see myself living there - for a Scandinavian the culture shock is considerable. In any event, I'm used to Italian, but not understanding it much. Iversen described his active listening method where you listen very carefully for words and syllables. That is pretty much what I tend to do with an unfamiliar language. It seems the me the first step towards understanding is being able to distinguish words. I could probably pass basic tests for reading aloud and pronunciation, but I wouldn't be able to write anything more than a phrase I may remember from somewhere. Goal My goal with Italian is fluency. That's a concrete goal and I don't really see the point of aiming for less. However, I don't care that it might take a long time. I'm not setting any deadlines, because those fill me with anxiety. Back in February-March I knew I was going to be in France over the summer and I thought I should brush up to be functional. I didn't even know how to go about it. Instead, from what I've learned from this forum and elsewhere in the last few weeks it seems to me it should be possible to be intermediate-ish within a year. That is to say being able to read texts and having simple conversations in writing. I'm not going to stress about speech, it's always been my weakest point with languages. From the insight I've gleamed from various sources I've extracted two main conclusions: 1. It's crucial to work on language every day. 2. Use more than one piece of material at the same time. Materials, methods and plans The very first thing I did was an Italian course on Livemocha. That wasn't a big success, and that's when I began reading and researching this topic seriously. I started with Pimsleur (much on the strength of Francois's recommendation) and Michel Thomas in parallel. I'm now into Pimsleur II and almost done with Michel altogether. I feel like Michel has given me a whole lot and Pimsleur not very much, but I'm trying to muster the patience to finish it. At least then I'll know if it's worth doing for another language. I've also started using Anki for flash cards. I've never been the type to stress about vocabulary, but the software is so well done that I felt I owed it to the guy to at least try it. :) So far I have mixed feelings about it. It helps me learn words that sound something like their meaning, but it's not doing much for those that don't. Perhaps I should be typing in a phrase rather than just the word itself. Once I finish Michel I plan to start on Assimil. I'm not sure how to do it yet, because everyone seems to use it a different way. I might try Arguelles shadowing, or maybe some other way of moving the lessons through various stages simultaneously to keep it interesting. In any event the consensus seems to be that the content in Assimil is well chosen and worthwhile. Down the line, I plan to return to grammar once I'm done with Pimsleur. Maybe do Iversen's green sheets. I also have La lingua Italiana per stranieri coming in if the Italian post office can figure it out. It may seem like I'm stressing about grammar, but I've spent 10 years looking up singular words and never understood full sentences, so it'd be nice to get that working for me. Once I feel more comfortable with Italian, and I think I'll know if and when that happens, I might try Liz's roundtrip translation. Finally, if and when I achieve that cozy intermediate-ish level I don't foresee any problems in getting to be fluent. At least that part of language learning I know how to do. It might take long, but I'll enjoy it. Edited by numerodix on 18 February 2010 at 10:05pm 4 persons have 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 2 of 182 31 August 2009 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Review: Livemocha.com Italian
"Italian 101" is the first (and only, to date) course I've done in its entirety. I had sampled some of these courses in the past, but once I got excited about learning Italian I did this one in a day and a half. For anyone who's seen these the conclusions are pretty self evident. The courses are not very good. They are translated literally from language to language. In Italian I was under the mistaken impression that the present tense is "sto facendo". That is because this is literally "I am doing". This tense exists in Italian, but it's not the one you actually want to use most of the time. The courses also suffer from a lack of cohesion. You learn a bunch of vocabulary in the lesson and then you're asked to complete some exercise that requires vocab that hasn't been taught. This is pretty amateurish. The writing drills are mostly just bad. The instruction tends to be a single sentence and doesn't really tell you what is intended. In the 102 series the first writing exercise requires basic writing comprehension ("Describe a vacation you're taking"), which isn't taught either in 102 up to that point, or in 101. :/ Probably the strong point of Livemocha is that you get feedback on your reading. It told me that I had figured out how to pronounce most syllables in Italian, which wasn't a big surprise. In general, it would seem that Livemocha has underestimated the effort it takes to give a decent course, and their reliance on volunteer translators without any kind of big picture thinking for each language separately hasn't paid off. 2 persons have 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 3 of 182 31 August 2009 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Review: Michel Thomas Italian
I discovered Michel Thomas a short while ago and I'm surprised at how much flak he's received on this forum. I did the Foundation (8 cds), then the review (2 cds), the Builder (2 cds), now the Advanced course (4 cds, I've done 3 so far). I have to say it's the very best instruction in grammar I've ever seen. Since I don't know Italian I can't judge how much is covered (out of "everything"), but I can tell you these tenses are, fully: vado - I go sto andando - I'm going sono andato - I have gone/I went andavo - I used to go (not fully yet, perhaps by the end) andrei - I would go andrò - I will go sarò andato - I will have gone sarei andato - I would have gone avrei potuto/dovuto andare - I could have/should have gone và! - Go! (not fully yet, probably by the end) You'll forgive me that I don't know about any of the technicalities of grammar so if I misstated something it's out of ignorance. Now, I've done a cd per day from the beginning. I found out that listening to them at my desk doesn't work well, I get distracted. So now I take a long walk instead and that works well. It is a bit disheartening to realize that a cd doesn't take an hour but up to two hours with all the times I stop the tape to think of an answer. But if you flip that around basically I've spent another hour actively thinking in Italian. So how much do you retain? A lot, I think. As per the instructions I haven't done anything on paper. I have occasionally stopped the tape to think about conjugations or done this at some other time, but sporadically. And yet I do remember all this relatively well for the time I've been exposed to it. I suppose you could do this yourself going over a grammar book systematically, but he does try to expose and explain patterns as much as possible, such as "the future tense used to be infinitive+have" so if you remember that then it's easy to derive "parlai" from "parlare+hai". Now to the most common objection: no native speakers. Well, I don't know if the people who are saying this realize or not, but that is the whole point. This is a course aimed at English speakers and it stars a couple of Anglos who make the kinds of mistakes in pronounciation and grammar than Anglos typically make. Their mistakes are authentic. If instead you had a couple of natives answering every question correctly they would be redundant. Moreover, every so often when they miss the answer Michel returns to the basic rule and explains it again, so that you get it ingrained. Michel's own pronounciation isn't impeccable, but it *is* correct. It's no worse than his English, which is fine. One thing that does fall by the wayside is pronouns. He doens't explain them at all, and he neglects to correct them all too often and pronounces them ambiguously himself sometimes. Moreover, the woman cannot say "le" without saying "laye". But this is a small matter that can be rectified on another occasion. Think of it as a lesson in tolerance. :) One important lesson I've learned from this course is not to rush myself with grammar. A central tenet of the course is that you stop the tape whenever there's a question and think out the answer (rather than having pauses on the tape). This is important, because you don't have a deadline looming over you and get anxious about doing it on time (like with all audio courses that have a pause included on the tape). When I do Pimsleur I also pause the tape if I don't have enough time, rather than get frustrated about missing my window. (And then having to repeat the lesson, because I didn't do well enough.) It turns out that when I relax and take my time, I usually get it right. I totally agree with him that learning comes (at least comes much quicker) from thinking, not repetition. UPDATE: A word about the Vocabulary course. This is the course you're supposed to do at the very end and it teaches you more verbs and expressions. I don't like it much. Instead of Michel, there's an American woman with a terrible accent who's teaching it. But that's not even the main problem. It's that the course is set up very differently. With Michel he would spend all the time asking you questions, with some explanations given as a matter of exception. In the Vocabulary course, on the other hand, the woman will say "the word for receive in Italian is ricevere" and then gives you a sentence to say. But instead of letting you say it she keeps on blabbing for so long that by the time it's time for me to say the sentence "ricevere" has been flushed from my short term memory and I can't say it. What's worse, her blabbing in English is the main content on the tape, so the amount of practice you get out of this is very little compared to the other tapes, and I felt like I learned almost nothing from it. And it was boring. Edited by numerodix on 05 September 2009 at 12:09pm 6 persons have 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 4 of 182 02 September 2009 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I finished Michel Thomas yesterday and I was doing fine until the imperative (which is a freak show) and the subjunctive (which I don't understand at all). But I don't think I'm going to sweat it at the moment. I have learned a ton of tenses that I need to practice a lot to make them mine.
I have to say those two things aside Italian grammar is relatively orderly and painless from what I've seen. The absence of personal pronouns ([Io] voglio) is a big plus, as is the option to hook objects onto infinitives (può farlo). It cleans up a sentence a lot. Not to mention you don't have the two pronged negation (ne pas) of French, so there's a lot to like here. I've also gotten used to the "non me lo dai" word order, which surprisingly can be tolerated. At least the two objects are always kept together. And you don't have to change word order (avez-vous) for questions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 5 of 182 02 September 2009 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I went through the Spanish and French Michel Thomas courses and both of those courses did a pretty bad job of discussing the subjunctive (I still don't have any idea how or when to use the subjunctive in French). Like you said, I wouldn't sweat it for now, I'd just set it aside 'til I ran across it in another course that explained it more thoroughly.
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 6 of 182 03 September 2009 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
But a sort of "double negation" sometimes occurs.... a rough e.g. "non c'è niente qui" (there is nothing here) 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 7 of 182 03 September 2009 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
What's worse is they keep bringing it up quite a lot in the Vocabulary course. Oh well. I received "Lingua Italiana per stranieri" and I was rather disappointed that it was a classic textbook format, the kind I've seen time and again in classroom use. I'm not sure what I expected, but I suppose something more theoretical and less exercise based. I haven't looked at it carefully yet, because I have other fish to fry. But if it turns out to be lacking I'll pick up some grammar reference. In the meantime I've started Assimil. The instructions that come with it are rather economical and I've probably learned more about how to use the program on vendor websites than from their own instructions. In any event, I've thought about how to use Assimil and I plan to do this (mostly inspired by Liz): === Day One === 1. Listen to the lesson once without opening the book. 2. Do a dictation. The lessons (at least the first ones) are so easy that I can do this no problem. I still don't know syntax much, so most mistakes are incorrect prepositions/articles. 3. Check dictation against the Italian text in the book and do a correction with a red pen. 4. Read the translation in the book and all the notes in the lesson. === Day Three === 5. Translate my dictation into English without using the book. 6. Contrast my own translation with the one in the book and see if there's anything that went missing. === Day Five === 7. Translate my English version into Italian. 8. Contrast with original text in the book and do a correction with a red pen. Shockingly paper based for my standards, but I figured I've barely used paper in the last 5-10 years so I've saved up enough trees to permit this. :) And I'm still plugging along with Pimsleur. It's not very exciting, but it gives me a chance to practice what I learned with Michel Thomas. 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 8 of 182 03 September 2009 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, that's true, but it's more of an exception unlike the persistent ne-pas. It's also that way in Polish so my brain can handle it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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