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NeonQwerty’s Italian and German thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 206 26 June 2008 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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EDIT: THIS WAS MY OLD Italian THREAD, BUT I'VE DECIDED TO MERGE MY OLD German THREAD INTO THIS ONE. SO FROM NOW ON, THIS THREAD WILL DOCUMENT MY Italian AND German STUDIES. IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN SEEING MY ORIGINAL German THREAD, GO HERE:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=11772 --------------------- I'm going to use this journal to document my study of Italian. Since the beginning of 2008, I've completed Barrons' "Italian: The Easy Way" and all three levels of Pimsleur. I've been going through a lot of emotional ups and downs relating to my language learning as of late... and I think that the rest of you jerks have a lot to do with it! Of course I mean that facetiously, but when starting to study the language, I bought into the hype that Italian would be a cakewalk since I'm already fluent in French. The truth is that it is not, which brings me to the essential point of this blog: to maintain a positive thread in which I can document my work while not indulging in melancholic self-talk. Regarding my prior knowledge of French: while of course it is a plus, there is one specific negative about it, namely the fact that I can often glean what a word means without actually learning it. When I come across a word that I don't know, there's no problem; I look it up, try to remember it, and move on. I often come across words that I never learned but whose meaning I can intuit when seeing it in context. That's great for immediate understanding of a text, but not so great when it comes to actually learning the word in order to use it actively. Ok, enough background. What am I doing in terms of self-study? After finishing the aforementioned leaning materials, I decided (1)I am at a beginning intermediate (or advanced beginner) level, and (2) that my vocabulary is especially weak. I got "Mastering Italian Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach", divided into a "basic" section and "advanced" section to remedy that problem, and have been working through it with pretty good success so far. I also bought "Easy Italian Reader", although that was more of an impulse buy; I'm not sure how it will fit into my study program right now. Finally, I need to review my grammar lessons (and eventually expand them to learn more verb tenses, etc) and get much more practice dealing with original texts. So I can divide my learning into two levels: Level 1: -Basic vocabulary study -Reinforce grammar rules by going through grammar book again -Go through "real" material (in my case Italian Wikipedia entries), highlight words I don't know, look them up, make list. Before reading a new article, I'll read the three preceding days' texts in order to promote retention. No flashcards for now. Level 2: (nebulous for now, but here's the tentative outline) -Advanced vocabulary study -Buy and go through more advanced grammar drilling book (probably two books; one for verbs and one for grammar proper) -Keep on going through material, hoping against hope that by this point I will be able to follow RAI news online I can spend an hour a day studying for now. I initially wanted to just blast through the vocabulary, but here's the problem: I'm studying for a standardized exam that will be coming up in august, and it's requiring a lot of, you guessed it, word memorization. After drilling word lists for three hours, my brain just can't handle excessive Italian drilling. Solution: half an hour a day of vocabulary training, and half an hour of reading authentic material. I still have my full hour to do today, so let's get cracking! Edited by neonqwerty on 14 July 2009 at 6:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 206 26 June 2008 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Amazingly, I already cheated! Rather than do the 30 minutes of vocabulary and 30 minutes of reading / looking up words, I spent an hour doing the latter. My excuse: I spent a good part of the day drilling for my [non-linguistic] exam and didn't feel like drilling more words. Plus the reading material was very interesting and I really got into it.
I don't regret it; I really did work hard during the hour, and have started up an independent list of the words I looked up. I figure that once that list gets to 100, it will take precedence over my "normal" vocabulary and I will learn it cold. The good news is that since I looked up with words in the context of a text, I have a ready-made example sentence to refer to when studying them. My vocabulary book has a few example sentences, but most of the words are just in a list. A caveat: while I don't regret my "cheating" today, I am aware that it is in fact cheating. Most things that I've succeeded at were successes due in no small part to my mastering the little basics. Learning via reading is great and essential, but in my case it is equally essential that I just drill, drill, drill what needs to be drilled, drilled, drilled. I don't seem to mind doing so as much as most, so I'm not worried... But I do think that lots of people short change themselves in all aspects of learning when they wholeheartedly buy into the idea that drilling is outmoded and outdated. For people such as myself, there is no learning if there is no drilling. Maybe I drill differently... I get the feeling that lots of people look at the English (or whatever) word, look at the foreign word, then go to the next word, etc. That would never work, and that's a very poor way of drilling. Drilling involves using mnemonics, trying to "feel" the word that you're trying to learn, trying to just learn bits and pieces of it at a time, etc. Drilling works for me because it's actively engaging. But a duck is a duck, drilling is drilling, and it's never quite as fun as reading a text that has an actual point. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 206 28 June 2008 at 8:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Tedious entry time.
Yesterday I didn't enter anything because I finished studying immediately before going to sleep. I've heard that sleeping after you study helps retention... While that may be the case, that has nothing to do with why I did so yesterday. Yesterday's late-night studying was purely the result of very bad time management. :) Anyway, I cheated again, but in reverse. I just studied wordlists during two half-hour blocks. There are 24 chapters in my book... I'm working on my fifth, which will hopefully be done today. So far I know all about my identity, the parts of my body, health, history / religion / philosophy, and politics / government. I am not following the book's order as far as chapters are concerned. Pragmatically, it's because I want to be able to read newspaper articles more effectively, and these articles are much more likely to talk about a politician's corruption than how we feel when we go to a picnic. Second, I'm a political theory student, so this philosophy and politics business is just much more fun for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 206 29 June 2008 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Long post!
Yesterday: vocabulary for half an hour, nixed evening study to go exercise. Too bleah for studying. Today: FANTASTIC! I did an hour an a half. The first half hour I really wasn't in the mood for tedium, so I decided to take a reader that I had bought a while ago and pick up where I left off, deliberately not looking up new words. I really just wanted to have a low-pressure session with a relatively easy text. Well, the vocab study that I've done since the last time I picked up that book has really paid off. I used to have to have to read with one hand and hold a translation dictionary with the other. This time was much, much easier. It was very, very encouraging. It is a simple book, but I can't wait until I get to the point where instead of "going through a book as a part of my study program", I am just reading a book and enjoying it for its own sake. As for the other hour, Sunday is always massive review day. I don't bother trying to learn any new words. I just go through everything that I've learned so far in the book. If I know the translation from English to Italian, fantastic, I move on. If not, I mark it. Afterwards, I study all the marked words. Then throughout the week, I periodically review the marked words. What's more, before trying to learn new words, I always go over the last 20-30 words I learned the day before. Constant revision may seem tedious, but it works really well for me. It's also simultaneously gratifying and humbling... inevitably these review sessions involve me being surprised and ecstatic at the fact that I easily remember some words, as well as me letting out a good-natured "D'oh!" when I realize that I forgot a word that I thought I knew cold. Even these "D'oh"s aren't so bad, though... I don't take it hard, and I'm actually grateful to know early on that I don't know some of the things that I had assumed that I knew. By the way, if anyone reading this is studying English, please hit yourself over the head so that you forget you ever read the previous sentence. It was awful. ;) Anyway, things are nice. Tomorrow I get to start my chapter on business and economics. Woo...hoo? But seriously, the book thing really got me very happy. I can't wait until I get the same feeling when looking at RAI news broadcasts. That will be a while, though... On the topic with the "sudden improvement" that I felt when reading my book: language learning really does seem to be analogous to a fitness regimen. First, there is no real fixed endpoint. Sure, you can set goals for yourself, but they are always sort of arbitrary. Just as you will never get to a point where you will say "I perfectly fluent", you will also never say "I am in perfect shape". It's not even healthy (or sensical) to think in those terms. Second, I have been exercising for a long time, and one of the most important things that I impress upon people who ask for my advice is that results are not immediate and that there is a weird lag time before you see results. Even worse, the length of this lag time is not consistent, and at times you can't tell the difference between lagging and stagnation. I think that this cuts to the heart of a lot of the angst we feel as language learners. It takes a while and lots of repetition for a concept to sink in, and there's no way of knowing whether or not I'm using my time optimally. To continue the exercise example, I suppose it's a matter of trying out new things for yourself while giving the new methods enough time to really give them a chance, and to always be flexible, that is to say open to new ideas. The huge amount of contradictory information out there on "the best method" can often lead to paralysis and a constant shifting of methods without giving any one method a real chance to succeed... but the sad thing is that any one method is better that this constant shifting. Someone on a mediocre exercise program is lightyears ahead of someone who doesn't exercise at all. Eventually the person will likely wise up and find a better program. Third and related to the point that closed the preceding paragraph, lots of people spend way more time looking up exercise-related information than actually exercise. This is far and away the best site that I have found on language learning, but sites such as this are a double-edged sword. Depending on where you are at mentally, it can either be a huge boost of excitement and adrenaline, or a mechanism to avoid work by reading about languages instead of studying them. My opinion on this is pretty straightforward. I think that a lot of people (present company included) browse these sites because at the moment, they are not excited about studying the language. Sometimes the sites inspire. Fantastic! Other times they cause us to dream without inspiring us to do any work. In those cases, we should just face up to the fact that we just don't feel like learning the language, at least not right now. We want to know the language, we want to feel a feeling of accomplishment, but we don't feel like doing the work to get there. That's okay, but let's just recognize it for what it is: a fun, self-indulgent fantasy... one that is very human and understandable, but harmful when it leads us into a spiral of guilt or delusion. Language learning, like exercise, is a choice that should be made freely. We are not bad people if we don't go to the gym, just slightly fatter people. :) And we are not bad people if, for now, we just don't feel like actually learning another language. We're just less multilingual. People will still like us just fine, and it doesn't brand you as an evil failure. Rather than get a neurotic tunnel-vision, best to call up a friend, get some ice cream, and remember that it's not a big deal if you can't run a marathon or speak six languages right now. Still, for now, I am a very enthusiastic man! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 206 30 June 2008 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tough slogging today.
I woke up and almost immediately started working on my Italian vocabulary. It was okay, but today I got to learn all about farming. Weeee. No offense to any farmers reading this, but learning the word for "hay" is not high on my priority list. The good news is that a lot of the words are very, very similar to French terms, so between my disinterest and the inherent facility of the words, I'm learning them at about an average rate. I just finished reading / translating text that I got online. More Wikipedia stuff, as well as part of an Italian anarchist webpage. I did it, and I'm glad I did it, but it really felt like an exercise in frustration. Lots of words that have a ton of possible meanings, weird turns of phrase, etc. Oh well. Lesson learned: tomorrow I'll read newspaper articles. Those are generally clear, and if they're anything like North American newspaper articles, not difficult at all to understand. Surely there must be an article somewhere lamenting Spain's win of the Eurocup... ;) So one hour down, a few hundred more to go! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 206 01 July 2008 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Woohoo, it's not long past noon and I've done my hour of work and then some.
After my run, went through my vocabulary words. It's progressing at a steady clip, and I was buoyed by the fact that today's words were slightly more interesting that the painful "farming / agriculture" experience. Instead of Wikipedia or sketchy websites, I did my reading today by getting articles from RAI News. Doing so was a much, much better idea. As expected, the writing style is mercifully direct. There were still plenty of words that I needed to look up, but that's okay; it felt fair. That may be a weird way of putting it, but I found that in other texts, even if I knew the definition of the words, it was difficult to piece together what the author was talking about. Today, once I found out what the words meant, the passages were crystal clear. I also watched some live RAI news for 15 minutes or so, but I don't count that as work. I can't promise that I won't study some more later tonight. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Felipe Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5827 days ago 451 posts - 501 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Italian, Dutch, Catalan | Message 7 of 206 01 July 2008 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I am "finished" with Italian I want to study French, so I am interested to see how your studies go. I admire your dedication and hope the best for your progress.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 206 02 July 2008 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Today was one of those punch-clock days. I did my 30 minutes of vocabulary, and I did 30 minutes of reading. I've been having some trouble sleeping, so I was exhausted. Consequently, my work wasn't really flowing all that well. I'm glad I did it, though. After all, it's easy to work when you really feel like it; the really challenge is doing it as well as possible when you'd really rather not. I'm worried about tomorrow; I have plans that will take up a big part of my day. I think that tomorrow may end up being a day off. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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