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Italian One Week Experiment | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7138 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 1 of 11 24 December 2007 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
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I will conduct a little experiment this week to see how much Italian I can learn in 7 days. My main sources will be Michel Thomas courses, Katerinov's book, lingq and italian websites or podcasts for genuine material.
I have listened to the first 3 CDs of the Michel Thomas Italian course about six months ago, but I don't really remember anything. I'm pretty much a raw beginner in Italian. I have an upper intermediate knowledge in French and Spanish. I just hope that I won't get interference when I'm trying to learn Italian. I know I should probably wait until I am fairly advanced in the other languages I'm studying until I begin a new one but I'm curious now how much I can learn by studying very intensely over a short period of time. The Michel Thomas Courses should give a good foundation to build upon then I will use lingq to shadow, and build vocabulary. I plan on studying 8 to 10 hours per day. It really depends on how long I can sit listening to lessons...without getting distracted. Well, my goal is to have a B1 Level proficiency in Italian after one week. I think this is a reasonable goal. This will be the last time I have a week free for awhile a to concentrate on one language intensively to conduct an experiment like this. Here is my plan (tentative): Day 1: CD1-6 (maybe even 1-8) Day 2: CD 7, 8, then Advanced CD 1, 2 Day 3: Adv 3, 4, Vocab 1, 2, Day 4: Vocab 3, 4,5 Day 5: Review, Practice grammar/writing Katerinov book, Lingq.com Day 6 & 7: Shadow dialogues, learn new vocab and idioms, read, lingq.com 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| magic9man2 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6572 days ago 149 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 2 of 11 25 December 2007 at 3:02am | IP Logged |
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Gl with that. After these 7 days I'll bet you won't want to quit Italian.
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| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6397 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 3 of 11 25 December 2007 at 11:18am | IP Logged |
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Then go to an authentic Italian restaurant, just to have a chat with the waiters - I bet their reactions will encourage you to study some more! :)
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| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7138 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 4 of 11 27 December 2007 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
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Day 1: Listened to CD's 1-6 of Michel Thomas Italian. Each CD takes me about 1.5 hours complete. One of them I managed to complete in about an hour.
This is the first time I have learned a language starting with a Michel Thomas course. When I listened to his courses in the other languages I had already completed Pimsleur or learned somewhere else. Anyway, despite its main flaw of not having native speakers I think it is a good introduction to a language as he teaches the building blocks of the language. I ordered Assimil Italian in anticipation of continuing my Italian studies after this 7 day experiment is over. Perhaps I can spend 30 minutes a day on the Assimil Italian with Ease course. I hope I can keep French, Spanish and Italian separate in my mind. I studied 8.5 hours and managed to stay focused and concentrated until the last 20 minutes of CD6. I listened to the first three CD's consecutively this morning, 1 this afternoon and then 2 more after 8:30pm this evening. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7138 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 5 of 11 28 December 2007 at 12:13am | IP Logged |
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Day 2:
Completed CD7 and 8 from the Foundation Course and CD1 and 2 from the Advanced course. I noticed that the students do not make so many mistakes in the advanced course. There are words and conjugations that he asks for in the first two CD's of the Advanced Italian course that were not mentioned in the Foundation course. The Advanced CD's move at a much quicker pace and there is very little time to press the pause button before the students on the CD give their response... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| philolingua Diglot Newbie United States philoarchaeologist.c Joined 6119 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 11 28 December 2007 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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Throw in Pimsleur if you can, it's the best. I'm using it for Italian right now and I'm amazed at how much I've learned-- and I only do one lesson a day, so I'm sure that eight hours of practice would do a lot for you.
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| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7138 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 7 of 11 30 December 2007 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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Day 3: Finished Italian Advanced Course. And first two CD's from the Vocabulary course. Total time spent on Italian 6.5 hours.
Day 4: Vocab Course 3, 4 and half of 5. I spent 4.5 hours on it today and was speaking/practicing Spanish for about an hour and noticed that I forgot how to say basic things in Spanish since I was working so much in Itailan :S Day 5: Well, I have only worked on it 1.5 hours today (started the last Vocab CD and did it again) and I still don't feel confident. I find the vocabulary courses much more difficult and they are harder to listen to for long periods of time. I think I'll have to review them again a couple times. Pimsleur is great and it is what got me interested in learning languages on my own. But now I feel it is too slow and I can learn more in 30 minutes with Assiml than doing a Pimsleur lesson. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cadomniel Groupie Canada senseandsanity.com Joined 7138 days ago 88 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Esperanto, French, Italian | Message 8 of 11 03 January 2008 at 12:49pm | IP Logged |
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Well, I've finished the Italian Experiment a couple days ago but didn't update this because of the forum shutdown. I didn't learn as much I would have like to as I have been ill the past few days and couldn't concentrate for several hours in a row. However, I still managed to study just over 6 hours the last two days.
I found that the Vocabulary courses are a bit more difficult and I have poor retention of all the words and expressions. I repeated the Vocab course twice, and still feel as if I could benefit from doing it yet again. In total I spent over 32 hours studying Italian this week. This is probably the most I've ever studied a language during a week. Even during my French Immersion classes in Quebec I was not actively studying vocabulary and grammar for that many hours... This experiment has been useful for me to find out more about my own individual learning style. More importantly, I now know my own capacity for amount of hours I can study one language, or at least doing the same thing during the day. This is important because I will have 4-5 hours of free time per day over the next few months and I want to focus on gaining proficiency in Spanish and French. I am a more visual learner and I think for phonetic languages such as Italian being able to see the words would have helped retain the information. I will continue to 'dabble' with Italian using Assimil and maybe mangolanguages.com site. But I won't spend more than 30 minutes a day with Italian since the priority right now is on Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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