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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 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 137 of 167 08 October 2012 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Last week was quite input-heavy - a nice way of saying I didn't get much chance to speak. Language Café was a bit of a bust this time round, mostly due to the presence of my other favourite language meetup character, the guy who insists on turning the conversation back to English every time it starts to move to French, even though he speaks French fairly well.
Italiano I re-watched Caterina va in città, again with Italian subs - still trying to get the hang of the Roman accents. Also saw the first half of Le Notti del Terrore, an infamously bad zombie movie (fun, but not very dialogue-heavy), as well as some Youtube documentaries. Yesterday I met the Roman guy, but my hangover and lack of sleep from the previous night of partying decided to kick in just in time for the meeting and so I was struggling. My pronunciation was particularly bad - as I keep saying, it's the thing I have most difficulty with in terms of actual language learning, and I need to make a conscious effort to do it properly otherwise it just goes to crap. And yesterday I was finding it difficult to make an effort for anything. People always say that alcohol improves your language skills; they're obviously not taking the day after into account. Italian Super Challenge Films: 27 done, 73 to go. Speaking hours: 34 done, 66 to go. Français I re-watched L'Appartement; that film makes so much more sense the second time round. It's still a strange one but it's very well made. Started watching De Vrais Mensonges, which I'll admit isn't the manliest film ever but it's the sort of light-hearted comedy that can be good for conversational language. In terms of speaking, aside from the few brief exchanges at the Café, I had a Skype chat with the usual guy. I felt that it went fairly well although as always my pronunciation was quite inconsistent; but often the difference between bad pronunciation and OK pronunciation is simply slowing down and spending a moment thinking about trying to "say it like a French person would". I read an article on Fluent in 3 Months about solving specific problems, and one of the headings is "If you can solve your biggest problem within a week, then do almost nothing BUT that". I should probably spend a week just focusing on that, maybe with a tutor if I can find one of the rare ones who actually has a good knowledge of pronunciation, but I don't think I'll have enough time to spend a week on that until perhaps December. Until then I'll try to keep up the practice, but I'm worried that by doing stuff like shadowing I'm just reinforcing bad habits. I'll hopefully make it to French meetup this week, but there's the usual Wednesday evening problems of having different things on in different parts of town. I'll try though. Since they're only every two weeks, if I miss one it feels like ages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 138 of 167 09 October 2012 at 11:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have been losing further man points by listening to Radio Kiss Kiss Italia, a radio station which pretty much plays 80s-style Italian power ballads all day. It's the only station I've found so far on which both the speech and the music are almost 100% Italian - every other station plays mostly English-language music, which becomes an annoying interruption when you're trying to soak up lots of Italian.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 139 of 167 11 October 2012 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I forgot, I also watched La Doppia Ora at the weekend, so:
Italian Super Challenge Films: 28 done, 72 to go. Speaking hours: 34 done, 66 to go. No subtitles, and I understood most of it but a couple of conversations were tricky, in particular the rather important one in the car park near the end. There were four French people at the meetup last night, an unusually high number for which I was obviously grateful. There were even a couple of them at the Café on Monday as well. My pronunciation was bad at times but better than usual at times, or at least it seemed that way - I seem to be seeing an improvement when I focus on it and try to make an effort, whereas if I don't think about it and just speak "naturally" then it's far worse. Hopefully if I keep making this effort it'll eventually become habit, but I know it won't be quick or easy. In particular, when I get into a proper conversation with someone, I tend to focus on the conversation itself and completely stop thinking about the pronunciation, which then all goes out the window. Similar effect when I'm tired. I've tried recording myself a bit and from careful listening I think there's still some low-hanging fruit that I can work on eliminating, like inconsistent intonation, mixed up vowel sounds, and sometimes pronouncing an extraneous nasal consonant after a nasal vowel (e.g., [bõnʒuR] instead of [bõʒuR]) - all things that I know how to do correctly so I just need to practice. I also find that my general voice improves when I spend time with French people, particularly other guys, as I naturally start imitating their voice; unfortunately I only seem to get this effect in real life, not from films or radio or even Skype. That said though, I've been doing a ton of listening recently, mostly listening to the radio while at work, and I think it's giving me a better idea of what I'm aiming for in terms of intonation and accent. There was one French woman who asked me to repeat myself a fair few times; not sure if that was due to bad pronunciation or just not speaking loudly and clearly enough. Either way, it's important feedback. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 140 of 167 15 October 2012 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Italiano
I don't want to speak too soon but I seem to have maybe found two consistent Italian exchange partners - met with them both for the third time this weekend. First exchanges I've done which have lasted beyond two meetings, which seems to be the threshold. One of them even brought his girlfriend along as she was visiting for a week, so I got two native Italian speakers for the price of one. I've also had a few Skype chats with a guy from Sardinia; his style seems to be short but frequent 10-20 minute conversations and he seems to prepare ideas for things to talk about, which is useful. A theoretical benefit of Skype is that you can have a quick chat when both of you happen to be at home on the computer anyway, as opposed to having to set aside a time to meet in a café. I seem to be making slow but steady progress in Italian at the moment: I'm noticing more fluid sentences and fewer pauses and hesitations, although my ability varies as much as you'd expect. I also made it to the conversation group, but one of the tutors was off so it was just one big group of six or seven people, mostly at a relatively low level. The tutor was decent but I got the feeling that his teaching style was far more adapted to smaller groups, not that I think any teaching style is particularly suited to a group of six or seven non-advanced learners of course, and he tended to spend a bit too much time talking and explaining things which one could easily learn from a book. I'm still at the level where any exposure to real-life spoken Italian is beneficial, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but it was still grudgingly that I handed over my money at the end. These sort of group conversation sessions really depend on there being a small number of people - any more than perhaps three learners and it just becomes inefficient for everyone involved. I think that was just a one-off and if I go again there should be an advanced group, but I'm not sure if I can keep going because I often have band practice that evening. Italian Super Challenge Films: 28 done, 72 to go. Speaking hours: 37 done, 63 to go. Français Sadly my recent success with finding Italian exchanges hasn't been duplicated for French and I'm yet to find somebody who's interested. Between the one faithful Skype partner who I speak to once every week or two, the reasonably frequent meetups, and self-study, I'm keeping up, but more practice opportunities, particularly with native speakers, definitely wouldn't go amiss. I do find that if I keep up the effort then these opportunities do turn up from time to time. I got a message on Italki from a Frenchwoman who was interested in doing an exchange and was an actual French teacher. Seemed too good to be true, and since she hasn't replied to me since then, it probably is. Finished watching De Vrais Mensonges. Bad, bad film. I should've been put off by it being labelled a "romantic comedy", but I was still expecting the usual European cinema semi-realistic treatment of love and relationships rather than the Anglophone-style fantasy nonsense that I found. Still, it was practice, and a couple of bits did make me laugh. Quite easy to understand without subtitles, although the fast conversations require paying attention. Edited by garyb on 15 October 2012 at 12:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 141 of 167 16 October 2012 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Still trying to rack up the hours...
Italian Super Challenge Films: 28 done, 72 to go. Speaking hours: 38 done, 62 to go. Another busy Monday night, this time I went to Italian meetup then to the Café. At the former there was a woman who I think was from Sicily and was quite difficult to understand. I'm sure that all of the syllables were there, but she spoke at such an unbelievable speed that some of them only lasted a split second and you had to pay attention to make them all out and process them. It's a contrast compared to, say, Romans, who speak relatively fast but cut bits off words. I'm still not sure if she tops the Viterbese girl for difficulty of understanding but she's definitely up there. In all honesty, 95% of the Italians I meet are very easy to understand, but the other 5% can be a real challenge. In terms of pronunciation, recently I've been thinking more about and paying more attention to the ways that native speakers use their breath when they're pronouncing certain syllables, particularly stressed ones. I'm beginning to understand why people say that speaking Italian is like singing: native-like intonation involves controlling your breath and your voice from your diaphragm much like singers do. For example, in the phrase "parlo Italiano", there's a big "push" from the diaphragm for the stressed syllables (pa, lia) and smaller ones for the "i" and the "ta" at the start of the second word. This all came to me when I was trying to figure out why that particular phrase sounded so much "more Italian" when the Roman guy said it than when I said it, and realised it's because of the ways he was controlling his breath for each syllable while I was essentially saying it all with one "push". That's been a bit of an epiphany for me and I'm trying to apply it to my speech. Like most pronunciation issues, you won't find much about it in a book or from a teacher, you have to figure it out yourself. I swear, in a few years time I'll have all this stuff figured out and I should write a "phonetics they never taught you" book. Either that or it'll feel easy to me then and I'll forget I ever had difficulties and I'll start telling other people to just "listen and imitate"... A music teacher wouldn't get very far telling someone who had barely touched a piano before to "just listen to what I played and repeat it", yet most language instruction seems to work on that basis. While that breath control stuff obviously applies mostly to Italian, I do think it also has relevance to French and even English; improving my speaking voice in my own language does of course interest me, for things like public speaking and projecting my voice in noisy environments. I got some decent French conversation in at the language café; I was definitely taken by surprise when I arrived to discover a huge crowd at the French section, dotted with native speakers. The sheer inconsistency of that evening still never fails to amaze me. On the way home I heard two groups of people speaking Italian. I think they're starting to take over the city in the same way that Spanish people have, and it's great! Maybe in a year or two I'll start meeting Italians at almost every bar and party, like I do with Spaniards. I can hope... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 142 of 167 19 October 2012 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had a brief Skype chat in Italian the other day, which went quite well, even when my partner decided to thrown in some random philosophical questions. He seemed to finally accept the fact that I'm not a beginner, I don't need everything explained, and I can get by fairly well. The usual compliments on my ability followed - Italians really are impressed by a foreigner who can manage a couple of mostly-correct sentences. Obviously my standards for myself are much higher, but a reminder of the progress I've made / ego boost is always nice!
In the last few weeks I've definitely noticed that both of my languages are becoming a bit more consistent. I suspect that the less you worry about the ups and downs, the less severe they are - getting worked up about them just seems to amplify them, especially the downs. That aside, I think Anki has been a big help, as well as a lot of recent radio listening - lots of exposure combined with frequent practice of pieces of language that I've decided I want to learn. Another benefit of Anki is that keeping it well-fed with new cards forces me to do more intensive reading and listening so I can pick out sentences to study. I don't know why it took me so long to start using Anki again; it's definitely one thing that was missing from my studies for a long time. I think that my progress in French the first half of this year was slower than I hoped because I was relying too much on conversation and not doing enough active studying; while lack of opportunity was and still is certainly a problem, I now think that simply conversing a lot just isn't enough, even at an advanced level. Take Emk for example - having a French-speaking wife means he has conversation opportunities that many of us could only dream of, yet he still does a ton of other studying on top of that to expand his knowledge and work on weak points. Also, being overly dependent on conversation means being overly dependent on other people for your own progress, which was causing me a lot of frustration, as I'm sure anyone reading this noticed :). More French pronunciation improvement efforts: I'm considering picking up a copy of La prononciation française pour de vrai, a DVD series focused on improving French pronunciation. It has a few good reviews but doesn't seem to be particularly well known; by all accounts it's pretty comprehensive and has exercises for improving particular things that English speakers tend to have problems with, so it could hopefully help me polish things up a bit and fill in a few gaps. It costs £30 which isn't too bad if it's as good as it sounds, so I'll probably take the plunge. I also saw a Youtube video on an aspect of French pronunciation that is rarely noticed but makes your speaking a bit more "French" - leaving a small breath after words instead of completely terminating it. It makes sense when you watch it. Edited by garyb on 19 October 2012 at 1:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5210 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 143 of 167 19 October 2012 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
That looks like it might be useful for me too, Garyb. It does seem a bit expensive, but I notice that her website says that
Now, mind you, it doesn't specify exactly how much of the sales price goes towards this, but still... ----- Thanks for your post - I'm always impressed by your steady work and log posting; such a contrast to my own haphazard and erratic efforts! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 144 of 167 22 October 2012 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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songlines: I decided to go for it and order it the other day, so I should hopefully receive it soon. I'll write my thoughts on it here and probably post a full review when I finish it. I never thought that I'd get excited over what seems like a relatively dry several hour long lecture series on phonetics, but the thought that it could help me finally get my pronunciation from mostly-understandable to good, and so get pronunciation "out of the way" so I can focus on the more fun stuff, is making me quite look forward to it. Of course, like all learning products, it's more likely to be a guide that points me in the right direction than some sort of magic pill.
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