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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 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 153 of 167 12 November 2012 at 1:26pm | IP Logged |
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I was busy yet again so I didn't get a whole lot done at the weekend. But what I did get done was good.
I gave Verbling a try. It does what it says, although I don't think I went on it at an ideal time: it was Friday evening, when most French and Italian people were probably having their dinner or out with their friends. Personally I had done more than my share of going out and drinking during the week so I was quite happy to have a quiet Friday night in. Like many language exchange sites, it seemed to have a lot of Arab users - obviously great if you're learning Arabic, but a lot speak French well too, and I spoke to one guy from Morocco who had spent some years in Italy and spoke the language well. I also got the expected technical problems, particularly people's microphones working badly or not at all and low audio quality due to the connections, but all that is quite normal if you're used to Skype exchanges. On the subject of Skype exchanges, I also did a couple of them, with a Parisian (who had the very typical "middle class Paris" accent) and a Roman (who spoke more slowly and clearly than any other Roman I've ever met). Both went well and I was again surprised by my own ability in Italian, with my only weakness being, as usual, pronunciation. Which I'll get to. I think I woke up my flatmate by talking loudly in Italian, which is probably a sign that I'm doing it right. I used to live with an Italian girl, and whenever she spoke to her family on Skype, everyone knew about it. My current French pronunciation plan is obviously to firstly finish the DVD, and then I'm hoping to do some work with recording, focused listening, and imitation to try to implement what I've learned. The idea of doing a few lessons with a tutor who's an expert in pronunciation is also something I'm still considering, since feedback from someone who knows their stuff would be helpful, so it could be something to look into for my time off work next month. I'd also like to do some similar work for Italian; maybe there are some hidden gems out there like the French DVD. I've talked before about the idea of recording my Skype conversations, or at least parts of them, in order to hear how I sound during a spontaneous conversation. I've not done it much though, between conversations being scarce and just plain forgetting. I recorded a couple of minutes of my French conversation the other day and listened back. Overall I thought it wasn't bad, far less painful to listen to than the last time I tried it a few months ago, but it revealed some rhythm and intonation mistakes that I had been quite unaware of at the time. When I, say, pronounce a vowel incorrectly, I usually notice straight away, but even when I'm quite convinced that I'm pronouncing a phrase with good rhythm and intonation, the microphone often tells me otherwise. The problems are mostly uneven syllables - some sound less "fully pronounced" than others, subtly enough that I'm unaware of it when I'm speaking, but the recording tells all. Damn English-speaking habits. Some thoughts on pronunciation: I think recording comes under a similar category to shadowing and Pimsleur-style repetition as far as pronunciation work goes: it's only useful if you already know exactly what you're aiming for, and it allows you to practise and train it. Otherwise it's at best useless, at worst counter-productive. Or in other words, such methods don't teach pronunciation, they just permit you to exercise what you already know and to try to get your own pronunciation closer to your "mental model" of correct pronunciation; therefore, having an accurate "mental model" is key, and that's where resources like the DVD and phonetics study come in. The "mental model" is also important for listening: you need to know what to listen for or you won't hear it, unless you have the gift of a "good ear", that is, the ability to build an accurate model from listening alone. Otherwise I suppose that listening is actually like the recording and shadowing etc. in that it mostly reinforces your existing model as opposed to building or changing it. For example, if you're unaware of the difference between "u" and "ou", a lot of listening isn't going to necessarily make you aware; however once you do learn the difference, you'll suddenly start to notice it when you listen, and more listening will reinforce it in your mind. I may have done pronunciation in the most inefficient way imaginable up to now, but hey, at least I seem to be learning from it! I guess working with a good tutor is the ideal here - they give you the opportunity to practise, and then they give you feedback specifically targeted at improving the flaws in your mental model, then you practise again, and so on. Which makes it all the more sad that many tutors don't know jack shit about pronunciation and think that pronunciation mistakes are just an unfixable foreign accent. Italian Super Challenge Films: 33 done, 67 to go. Speaking hours: 45 done, 55 to go. Thanks to Diario di una Studentessa Matta I discovered Futurama in Italian. It's fun and it's quite challenging at points. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 154 of 167 15 November 2012 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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Fun video, with my four favourite languages. I'd say my comprehension was about 100% of the English (I'd hope!), French, and Italian, 90% of the Spanish, and 20% of the Russian. The French and Italian are as I'd expect considering I've been learning them for long enough and listening comprehension tends to be one of my strong points; the Spanish is a mixture between the similarities with the languages I know, a good amount passive exposure in my social life, and a few hours reading about verbs about two and a half years ago; and I did a few months of Russian in my 2010 TAC and the basic words seem to have stuck at least in passive knowledge, although I'm still surprised I recognised so much.
It really highlights a couple things that I tend to talk about in relation to language learning: the difference between passive and active capabilities to the point of practically being two different skill-sets, and the fact that getting to the point of understanding most things is easy but going from understanding most things to understanding everything is a hell of a lot more work. Also, while they speak pretty fast at some points, they don't sacrifice clarity so the speed's not really an issue. The Spanish and Russian that I didn't understand was purely due to me not knowing the words they were saying, as opposed to not hearing them. And lastly, I'm of course massively impressed by their accents, particularly Susanna's. I know just how hard it is to speak French like she does. Maybe she's onto something with her "language is music" thing. I've finished chapter 2 of the French pronunciation DVD now, which is about the vowel sounds. It was mostly revision for me but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There were a few things that contradicted what I've learnt before. My book (The Sounds Of French) says that [ə] (a pronounced "e muet") is the same as an [œ], but the DVD says it's usually the same as an [ø]. Come to think of it, I think I've heard plenty speakers who do each, and I'll continue to pay attention to see if that is indeed the case. The stuff on [e] and [ɛ] is a bit mixed up, and she'll often say one thing then play an excerpt that directly contradicts it. I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce "était" as [ɛtɛ], I usually hear [ete] and occasionally [etɛ], but like many things, now that I've been made aware of it I might suddenly start hearing it everywhere. Also she makes a point of how French people tend to move their mouths more than English people, and she indeed does when she speaks French, but my friend from Paris and other French people always say that their mouth doesn't move very much when they speak. Overall though, all these points are mostly just variations among individual speakers and are the least of my worries as far as improving my pronunciation goes. Prosody, intonation, and voice are the big issues so no point in being distracted by small and insignificant stuff that I generally already get right. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 155 of 167 15 November 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged |
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The pronunciation of -ait at the end of a word is also dependent on dialect. I say étè
(the standard, and I believe this is what is said in Belgium), but you will hear été just as often. Edited by tarvos on 15 November 2012 at 3:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 156 of 167 19 November 2012 at 2:08pm | IP Logged |
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Indeed... Apparently Québecois are also more strict about pronouncing -ais/-ait as [ɛ],
for example. I'm afraid that for this week it's another "I spent most of the weekend partying and I haven't spoken French for more than a week" update. I did manage an Italian exchange at least, which didn't go too badly, and I'm hoping to make it to a couple of French meetups this week and maybe try some more Verbling too. Bit of film and TV: more Italian Futurama, which I'm certainly enjoying as there's a ton of good vocabulary and expressions and it's challenging to understand without being impossible, and some of the French film Caché, also quite challenging. I might start watching a series in French as well, as that might be more useful than my current random hodge-podge of films and online content. I'll probably go for emk's favourite, Buffy: the combination of good dubbing, available transcripts, lots of useful conversational language, and apparently quite a high difficulty level seems hard to beat given my goals to fill in gaps in my conversational knowledge, and you can never do enough listening comprehension work. And I remember it being an enjoyable enough series from what I saw of it years ago. My main priorities are still obviously speaking and pronunciation though, and given my limited time I probably won't get through more than an episode or two per week, especially if I watch them "intensively" and pause to put sentences in Anki. Italian Super Challenge Films: 34 done, 66 to go. Speaking hours: 46 done, 54 to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 157 of 167 22 November 2012 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
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I made it to both the French meetups. Both times I was still feeling quite tired so wasn't on top form and didn't stay too long, and at the first it was so noisy that I could barely hear what people were saying, but I did get to speak to some French people and practice is practice. I was having a lot of difficulty saying things that I'd normally find easy but that kind of thing really doesn't bother me any more, especially when I know that tiredness is a major factor. Language meetup attendance seems to be seasonal: they're a bit dead during the summer but then they really get busy towards the end of the year.
A French guy thought my accent sounded a bit Belgian. I suppose that's a step in the right direction, I'm getting warmer.... I think my weekend should be mostly free so I'll hopefully have time to do some pronunciation work: finishing the DVD and doing some reading/recording/shadowing exercises to try and train in all that I've learned. I might even fit in some Verbling too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 158 of 167 26 November 2012 at 12:15pm | IP Logged |
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Spent most of the weekend in bed, and on Sunday I was still feeling tired and not 100% healthy so I stayed in and got things done.
Français Finished the DVD. The last disc (consonants, and a mixed "pot-pourri" lesson) was again a lot of revision for me, plus some interesting stuff that mostly falls into the "80%" in Pareto Principle terms - i.e., things that aren't critical but are worth going over once you know the important "20%" stuff well. I still want to do a lot of work on accent, as well as perfecting the individual sounds, and of course voice, which as I suspected wasn't mentioned on the DVD at all so I'm still on my own with my microphone for that. I guess voice isn't an issue for the RP English speakers that the DVD seems to be aimed at; there is however a lot of mention of how French articulation is much more "tense" than English, and I think that does partly contribute to speaking more from the mouth. Overall I'm very happy with the DVD and I'll definitely be going over parts of it again, particularly the material on prosody and the native speaker recordings, and at a later point the "80% stuff" in the previous lesson that I talked about. I don't think that it (or anything else) will get my pronunciation to "native-like", but I reckon that now I finally have enough resources and knowledge to reach "good" if I put in a lot of work. I spent a bit of time on Verbling, but didn't manage to have any successful conversations. It seems to be plagued by technical problems, which is sad since it's such a great idea. Operating systems' sound libraries, Internet audio/video streaming, Flash, and Web applications are all extremely flaky technologies so it's not really surprising that when they're all combined like this there's a great number of things that can and do go wrong, and there's not much that the developers can really do to improve it. I'll keep trying though and see if I get lucky. Italiano I watched a few more Futurama episodes, and they're not getting any easier. If I wasn't already relatively familiar with the storylines I'd be struggling a lot more. I also had a couple of Skype conversations at the weekend, but only text chat, and I had a brief exchange with an Italian which went relatively well although at times I felt like I was struggling to find words that I normally don't have trouble with. Italian Super Challenge Films: 35 done, 65 to go. (I'm considering 3 episodes = 1 film) Speaking hours: 46.5 done, 53.5 to go. It's only a few weeks until the Christmas holidays. It looks like I'll have exactly three weeks off work. I might have a look to see if I can find any cheap deals to go to France or Italy for a few days, otherwise I'll just stay around here and study a bunch and try to catch up on my French pronunciation work and my Italian super challenge hours. Also it's not long until TAC 2013. Despite trying to be much more realistic and conservative with my goals this year, I still managed to completely underestimate, particularly for French. I've certainly made some decent progress in French but it sure as hell isn't a C1 yet and it sure as hell isn't going to be a C1 any time soon, especially given my lack of free time and conversation opportunity. The gap between "almost fluent" and "fluent" really is incredibly massive. My Italian goal was slightly more realistic and I'm certainly happy with my progress overall, but my knowledge still has far too many gaps to be B2. Most importantly though, I have learnt a ton more about language learning and what works for me. I think I'm going to be boring and do pretty much the same TAC next year as for this year: aiming for fluent French, good conversational Italian, and starting Spanish if/when I reach these goals. Obviously my Italian will be starting from a much higher point, but let's face it, beginner-to-intermediate is very much the easy part. But more on that when the time comes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 159 of 167 28 November 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged |
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My last couple of days have been very much French-focused. Radio and music listening (I've been enjoying the rapper Orelsan recently, he has some fun and mostly easy to understand songs mocking modern society), a bit of film (Caché, which I seem to be watching in 10-minute bursts as and when I can fit it in), reading the typical websites (VDM, Topito, Le Monde), and speaking: the Café on Monday night and I met up with a French girl last night. I'm feeling the benefit: both times when I was talking I noticed that I was relatively fluent and my pronunciation was improving. I definitely notice ups and downs even in the course of one conversation though, and especially as the night goes on and I feel more tired, I have moments where words escape me and my pronunciation reverts to old habits. Which is normal enough!
I'll never understand the people on here who're juggling four or five languages, especially at intermediate or advanced levels - I'm really feeling that I'm already spreading myself way too thin with two! I realise that other people have far more free time than I do, but even at that, I find that there's a lot of benefit from focusing on just one for a few days. Of course there's plenty other variables at work, different learning styles for one. I don't think I'll be going anywhere in my holidays... if you want to go to Italy in December for any sort of reasonable price, you need to book months in advance, and while France is slightly more viable, I'm not finding many cheap flights on dates that suit me. So I'll probably stick around here and attempt some sort of study plan, and maybe do some Italki lessons if I don't have any luck with finding exchanges. I know from experience though that my time really does seem to disappear quickly when I'm off work though and I never get as much done in any area of life as I'd like. That said though, the quite impressive amount of Italian study I got through last Christmas shows that if I have some sort of plan and goals I can get a reasonable amount of stuff done. Especially if I find a balance with going out and partying :). Edited by garyb on 28 November 2012 at 1:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5212 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 160 of 167 03 December 2012 at 11:27am | IP Logged |
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Right, November's over, I might actually have some time for studying soon. I'm hoping to get a bunch done before the next crazy busy period in March.
Français I wrote on Lang-8 for the first time in about a year and a half, after seeing it mentioned in a few threads recently. I'm still not sure exactly how much writing helps speaking, but with the fact that it forces me to think about what I'm producing and try to make sure that it's correct and the corrections, it seems like it should be useful for my goal of polishing up my active skills. Italiano I met up with an Italian on Saturday and we hung out around town for a few hours, speaking in Italian the whole time. Apart from having to work round a few gaping vocabulary holes, and the usual minor but numerous grammatical and pronunciation faults, I didn't have too much difficulty. And all these problems should improve with time and practice, as they have been doing recently. After getting over the initial difficulty of finding people to practise with earlier this year, I've been remarkably consistent recently and I think I've met with at least one Italian every week for the last couple of months. And I'm seeing the results. Italian Super Challenge Films: 36 done, 64 to go. Speaking hours: 49 done, 51 to go. While attempting some Christmas shopping yesterday, I discovered that there's a shop in my city that has quite a decent collection of French, Italian, and Spanish DVDs, and some are pretty cheap. I just about managed to resist buying myself some presents. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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