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Italian - struggling with basics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| bobby1413 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4196 days ago 32 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 7 13 October 2013 at 6:48pm | IP Logged |
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I started learning Italian earlier in the year. I started with Rosetta Stone but
quickly got very bored and so started Assimil - much better. I read Italian news articles, made up sentences, listened to radio, listened to Michel Thomas, etc... In July I visited Florence and managed to speak a fair amount of basic Italian - mostly phrases I remembered, but I understood a little of some peoples responses - they actually replied mostly in English which was annoying. ------------------------------------ Anyway, I've not done any for about 2 months and I'm re-studying the language, and thankfully haven't forgotten much at all. However, I'm struggling with even the basics. I'm learning verbs from a verb book and doing Assimil - on lesson 15. Listening is impossible before reading the text but I do it anyway. The exercises I basically NEVER know the answers to. I recognise a lot of the words - I'm good at that. But structuring a sentence with the smaller words like gli, dei, della, i, etc... I just don't get. Is this normal? I just feel like I'm making limited progress 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 2 of 7 13 October 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
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Doesn't sound super strange for Assimil, I'd say just stick with it. If you haven't already, I would do a search for the "Assimil Dutch Instructions" which gives a formula for how to do an assimil lesson, and then you can modify that as you like. I add a round of shadowing and then blind shadowing, myself (which can be very difficult in fast spoken Italian lessons to start, but the effort is useful). If you're having to much trouble, take your time and do a lesson over, but don't dwell on it if it seems tough and keep moving. You don't have to get 100% right away, just most of it.
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| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4336 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 7 20 October 2013 at 11:03am | IP Logged |
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Sorry about the off-topic post I just made, apparently the forum is not letting me make new threads and is instead re-directing them to whatever topic is on top in the forum category.
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| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5333 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 7 20 October 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Bobby, I know it's really frustrating when learning your first foreign language and progress seems non-existant, but the best single piece of advice is to persevere.
Make sure you do a lesson of Assimil everyday. Don't worry about not understanding hardly anything in a new lesson the first time - it's the same for me, and I think everyone. The aim of the lesson is to be able to understand what has been said by the end. As Geoffw suggested, I'll briefly recap the "Assimil Dutch instructions", which gives a good formula to follow when doing a lesson. For the passive wave: 1. Listen to the dialogue without text (book closed). 2. Listen to the dialogue while simultaneously reading the Italian. 3. Listen to the dialogue while simultaneously reading the English translation. 4. Turn off the audio and read carefully the Italian text comparing it to the English to figure out all the translations. Read the lesson notes as you go. 5. Listen to the audio while simultaneously reading the Italian aloud (this is called shadowing). Do this twice. 6. Do the exercises. 7. Listen to the dialogue book closed (no text). With Assimil, at first it does feel like the language is just washing over you, and it seems as if you're not really retaining anything, but, little by little, it does sink in. By the time you get to lesson 50 and have to start the active wave (beginning again from lesson 1) you will realize how much you've learned. Listening is a pain, but your skills will develop with time as long as you keep listening to the language, dialogues, film, radio etc. Generally, if you can't understand what is being said you have one of two problems: 1. You "know" all the words but can't pick them out of a fast native sentence, or 2. You don't know enough of the words used to understand. Since you are in the beginning stages of learning Italian, I would have thought you fell into the second category of problem. In which case, you just need to continue learning. Basically, don't worry about not getting everything now, keep going and you will make progress. Trust us ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bobby1413 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4196 days ago 32 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 7 20 October 2013 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Scorpicus - that's very very helpful and encouraging.
I'm starting to try to listen/watch Italian TV for a little bit per day as well. I also follow a lot of people on Twitter who are Italian so often translate little bits and pieces to try to learn more. The main issue is listening. I can read and understand some of the text as I know a fair few words. But when someone is speaking, they could say maybe 100 words, and I would probably understand about 2 or 3, it's like another language. But like you said, I suppose I'm just beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bobby1413 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4196 days ago 32 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 7 20 October 2013 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
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Do you think it's worth me doing a language course in college maybe?
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| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5333 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 7 20 October 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged |
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Basically, with listening you have to train your ear. Of course, this is difficult when you turn on the radio and can't understand a thing of what is being said. Unfortunately, listening to incomprehensible babble without any transcript won't help at all.
The trick really is to find something which uses simpler language (and preferably has a corresponding transcript). Textbooks like Assimil filter the language artificially for a learner, but it just isn't the same as native stuff. For me, as a child of the 90s, I get hold of a bunch of Disney movies in the language I'm trying to learn. They're ideal: the films are aimed at children so the language is easier; after watching them on loop as a kid, I already know what most of the dialogue is supposed to be; and heck I quite like watching animation even when I don't understand a damn thing. If you don't want to get back in touch with your inner-child, then I know Rai (Italy's national TV network) made a TV series aimed at foreigners learning Italian. You can watch the episodes on Rai's website here, and I believe each episode has a downloadable transcript - really essential to know what you're listening to. From the simpler stuff you can then work up to adult movies with accurate Italian subtitles, if you can find them (check out Subscene and Open Subtitles). Movies originally in Italian are much more likely to have accurate subs then movies dubbed into Italian. As for a course, naturally any extra time spent learning the language will help you, although you could probably learn the basics of the language faster on your own. A lot of people here on the forum find classroom courses extremely tedious, but if you have access to a course at college it can't do any harm. Edited by Scorpicus on 20 October 2013 at 9:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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