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TAC 2011 - Team Ì - Italian - magictom123 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 33 of 53 10 May 2011 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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Right, it's been way too long since I wrote here so I think it's time for a quick
update. I am still studying Italian. Over the course of a month I, my wife and then my children were all ill (a lot of people we know were also ill) and despite watching a lot of Italian TV, I feel I have only been maintaining my level rather than improving on it. After the disappointment of letting Assimil slip due to being ill I have not had the motivation to pick it up again for the last couple of weeks. However, now a few things have changed. Firstly, as I've previously said, I am a fan of cycling and so it is a huge motivation for me to continue with my studies now that the Tour of Italy has just started and is on TV everyday for the next few weeks. Secondly, following the advice on fi3m I have bought a notebook and have began to write down words that I struggle to think of or simply don't know whilst having an interior monologue throughout the day. This has been beneficial as it is narrowing my focus down to words I need to know rather than worrying about all the useless words I don't know. Finally, there is one more reason to return to a more dedicated study routine: my son! He is only 2.5 years old but is speaking pretty well in English now. When possible, I try to let him watch cartoons, play with him and say a few words to him in Italian. Last night, I was sat watching a football game on the TV, with my son in his high chair, when all of a sudden, he sang the first few lines of the Postman Pat theme tune...in Italian! He sang: 'Ecco qua, il postino pat, e con lui c'e' il suo gatto Jess' completely out of the blue. I was amazed as up until this point he would only sing the last word of each line...'paaaaat, jesssss' etc. Seeing progress in my son has inspired me to get back to things myself. From today onwards I plan to recommence with Assimil. Recently I bought a grammar textbook to back up Assimil but so far I've only skimmed through it. I'm not sure how to continue with Asismil so any suggestions would be most welcome. If anyone here would like to speak on skype I would be happy to get involved. I will be watching a lot of Italian TV due to the cycling and this has improved my listening comprehension tenfold. Right, enough waffle for now...it's good to be back here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5486 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 34 of 53 12 May 2011 at 3:59am | IP Logged |
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I'm glad that you and your family are feeling better now, and that you're back to your
regular routine! It's also exciting to hear about your son speaking Italian! I'd be interested in speaking with you on Skype some time, although right now I'm not sure if I have the time. Week days are literally full from dawn until late in the evening, which leaves only the weekend, and with the time zone difference it would be hard to organise something. Although, a Saturday or Sunday before then may work. Nonetheless, perhaps sometime in early June when things will slow down for me. I'm going to Italy (and the UK) in June too, so I've been making sure to fit in two hours of Italian every day until then. I hope your new found motivation keeps you studying hard! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 35 of 53 16 May 2011 at 12:01pm | IP Logged |
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@Canada Of course I'd be interested in chatting with you on skype. There does seem to
be some obstacles to overcome such as free time and the time difference so I will leave it up to you to just mention whenever your free in future and we can see if we can work something out. I have continued watching the Giro on TV this week. It has been on for hours each day and I watch a good chunk of it. This means that as far as the program goes, I understand the vast majority of what is being said. It's hard to put a number on exactly how much but I would say definitely over 80% if it. It's interesting to find that whilst following the cycling commentary has now become relatively easy, all I need to do to bring myself down to earth is to switch over to something like RAI news, where I understand a fair bit less, probably due to the different topics covered and unfamiliar vocabulary. Anyway, I'll keep this short as there is nothing major to report and in the meantime I'll keep plugging on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 36 of 53 07 June 2011 at 9:50am | IP Logged |
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This morning I have been chatting [EDIT: only typing unfortunately] for about an hour
completely in Italian with my online Italian friend Gabriele. It has been a while since we have spoken but I am happy that understand virtually everything he says. There are some idioms that I don't always understand and a few new words and expression here and there that I haven't encountered before but it is really motivational to have such a conversation. I know I have been pretty lazy recently in updating this log but I hope to get back to things now. I have been consistently absorbing Italian in the time I haven't written here. I have found the audio to the New French version of Assimil Italian and so in my free time I have been listening to that for practise. It seems nearly every day there is cycling on the RAI sports channels and I watch a lot of it. This has definitely helped my listening comprehension. I am going through a period of high motivation and so I want to capitalise on it. Regarding Assimil, I feel I need to complete the book without breaking the chain, and so since I had to stop when I was ill, I am going to restart from the beginning. I know it will be easy for a while but hopefully really reinforcing the material will make a lot of the structures become second nature. My biggest short term goal is to find opportunities in order to practise speaking as although I feel good about what I could potential say and discuss, this is obviously quite different from actually doing it. Edited by magictom123 on 07 June 2011 at 9:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 37 of 53 13 June 2011 at 8:18am | IP Logged |
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Another update:
I have restarted Assimil and today is lesson 7 - the first review day. Of course these first lessons now appear incredibly simple to me. I am just happy to be in a regular routine again and here's hoping that there's not some illness lurking around the corner and I can get all the way through the book this time. A few days ago I downloaded and completed a Dialang test for Italian. It classified me as being at B1 level. I would say this is fairly accurate for where I am at this moment in time. The most interesting language development of the week has been that I had to do a factory reset on my satellite box and in doing so found some new, great channels I didn't know I had previously. These new channels from Mediaset show plenty of dubbed films, American/English TV series and popular Italian shows. I will update further later as I have to go now... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 38 of 53 14 June 2011 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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I now feel that at more than any time before I have an interesting workload (if you can
call it that, it's much more fun than that word implies) that I can maintain and start to make some significant steps in Italian. I will briefly go through the materials and activities I am currently working on for Italian: Assimil - well, that's hardly a surprise is it... Harry Potter books - I found pdfs of the HP books which I was going to use for an L-R experiment. I ust don't have the free block of silent time at home needed to do that at the moment so instead I decided I would read through the HP books using the highlight tool in acrobat reader to mark unknown words, which leads me to... ANKI - I have never liked the idea of flashcards. I would like to learn things naturally and in context but seeing as I live in a place where no one speaks Italian, I have realised this is necessary in order to expand my vocab beyond that contained in Assimil etc. It is also useful as I have the mobile app and can use it for a few minutes at a time when I am waiting around in various situations. Youtube (for music) - I am listening to a lot of Italian music at the moment. Mainly by a fella called Paolo Meneguzzi. Normally, in English, I wouldn't dream of listening to this kind of music but seeing as there are a load of karaoke style video's on youtube with the lyrics to the songs, it is incredibily helpful, and if I'm honest, I quite like the music. Satellite TV - After discovering more channels as I wrote in another post, I can now watch much more interesting programs, which includes films on TV. For example, 2 episodes of 'The Simpsons' are on every weekday. I have been taping them and watching them a few times over when I can. In fact, I haven't watched any English TV at all for a few days now. Cantieri d'italia - it's a series designed to help people learn in Italian, and it's totally in Italian. There is a website where you can watch all the episodes plus they are shown on TV a few times a week. There's probably a couple of other things that I do that I can't remember right now whilst I sit here and write this. Anyway, as you can see, I am now doing quite a wide variety of things now. I plan to work like this for the forseeable future and include more speaking where I can. I use sharedtalk quite a bit but don't really get to practise my spoken Italian (other than with myself at home). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 39 of 53 16 June 2011 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
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I have been on a day out today with my family but I managed to use ANKI in between
shopping. Back at home I've completed lesson 10 of Assimil. I wrote down all the unknown words I came across from the few pages of Harry Potter I've read today. I've watched a bit of cycling in Italian this afternoon and an hour or so of 'Chi vuol essere milionario' I think that's enough for one day! EDIT: I forgot to add, I listened to a few Italian songs on Youtube early this morning as well. That is really enough for today! Edited by magictom123 on 16 June 2011 at 10:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5584 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 40 of 53 18 June 2011 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
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I have been toying with the idea of sitting an exam to gain some recognition of my
level of Italian. The main thing stopping me is ££££. I have done a bit of research and I have found that there is an exam centre not far from where I live that does the official Italian CEFR exams. I looked a little while back but I believe the next wave of exams are in November and the price was £75 I believe. Depending on how things go I may do either the B2 or C1 exam. I don't think there is a long registration period required so I can leave that up to the last minute. More than likely I would sit the B2 exam but you never know. I think I really need some sort of definite end goal to focus my efforts on. The pressure of knowing the exam is coming will spur me on further into grafting away at Italian. Last night I finished reading the first chapter of Harry Potter in Italian. I have highlighted a lot of unknown words and put them into anki (I have been doing this page by page over a few days), which I have been reviewing frequently. I have managed to sync the desktop version with my ankidroid app. Later on last night I read through the first chapter of HP in English. I now plan at sometime today to read through the Italian version again and get a better feel of it. I also watched 'Chi vuol essere milionario' again last night, as well as a bit of other Italian TV. I am currently listening to Italian music on youtube as I write this out. I can now sing along to such songs as 'In nome dell'amore', 'Ho bisogno d'amore' and 'Non capivo che l'amavo' as well as a few others. There's another stage of the Tour of Switzerland on today and I will watch that with Italian commentary. Edited by magictom123 on 18 June 2011 at 11:38am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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