NeonQwerty’s Italian and German thread (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

NeonQwerty’s Italian and German thread
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neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 129 of 206 05 July 2009 at 8:02pm \| IP Logged
	Today is review day, wherein I go over all the vocabulary I learned over the past week. Normally review entails looking at the English word and then trying to remember the Italian translation. Today I started off by doing the opposite. I looked at the Italian word and tried to remember what it meant in English. I was surprised at how poorly I did; I thought that my recall in that direction would be much better. Interestingly, my recall in the other, normal direction (from Italian to English) was much better than I had expected, even controlling for the fact that I had already gone over the words once. What this means in concrete terms is that once I've superficially learned the words in my vocabulary book, I'll need to make sure to practice reviewing in both directions. I get the feeling that once the book is over, review will comprise all of the following: -looking at Italian words and trying to remember English equivalents -looking at English words and trying to remember Italian equivalents -make a note of words that I "miss" in one direction or another -practice writing X number of sentences using the missed Italian words The last point will be especially useful, both in terms of learning vocabulary and practicing verb conjugations. All that is in the intermediate future, though, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Still, it's nice to know that there is a plan once I'm done with this step. :-) In any event, I was able to go over the words once in the Italian -> English way and twice in the English -> Italian way during my two hours. I might do some reading or TV watching later today, but no promises. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 130 of 206 07 July 2009 at 3:24am \| IP Logged
	Vocab for 75 minutes, TV for 30, reading for 15 The vocabulary is the most difficult part, but also by far the most helpful. My reading and TV watching comprehension is increasing a lot, and that's just because I actually understand the words being used. What a concept! 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 131 of 206 07 July 2009 at 4:18am \| IP Logged
	Addendum: You know what's awesome? Watching Mission Impossible 3 after writing your last blog entry, finding out that there is a scene that takes place in Rome and the Vatican, and then understanding absolutely everything! :D That was a tremendous motivation boost! 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 132 of 206 07 July 2009 at 8:27pm \| IP Logged
	One hour vocab today, in which I did well over 100 words. I listened to two podcasts, totaling an hour between them. So I'm done for the day, with the usual caveat that I might do more work (but I doubt it). Tomorrow I may focus especially on vocabulary; I'd like to get through the 170 words necessary for me to finish the chapter. It's probably going to cut into my second hour of study, but I'm fine with that. ----- Some notes on what I'm doing, and the materials involved... To those who have not wadded through all my blog entries, I'm currently working with a book called "Mastering Italian Vocabulary". The format of the book is such that it divided words by themes, and further subdivides the words as "basic" or "advanced". The broad plan was/is to go through the basic words, achieve some elementary level of mastery, and then do the same with the advanced words. I am currently working with the advanced words. I am nonetheless tailoring this plan in a few ways. First, there are some words that I just plain crossed out. I don't need to know terms for financial transactions that I will never use or hear about. Further, the last two chapters deal with words whose purpose is not to designate a thing or activity, but rather to aid in sentence construction (i.e.: prepositions and the like), as well as a few scattered verbs that don't seem to fit a unifying theme. I am mostly ignoring these chapters; for now, I'm going to assume that these words will be best learned contextually. Anyway, once all the "studyiable" words are done, I'll consistently go over the book, probably at the rate of a few hundred words a day, to refresh my memory and really drill it home. Will my fine-tuning leave me with big holes in my vocabulary? No, I don't think so. I will likely make a personal list of words that I come across and that are not in the book (I will only be getting ~5000 words via this book) and study those independently of the book. What's more, I have another vocabulary book in Montreal (where I'm going in a few weeks), and I may end up using it in order to shore up deficiencies with this book. And on that topic, while I provisionally recommended this book in a previous post, I would downgrade my assessment after working with this book further. The deficiencies I see with the book are: 1-too much repetition of words in various chapters. As long as the words are in the index, there is no need to have the same word come up multiple times 2-formatting problems; sometimes the English and Italian words are not lined up properly. This is an editing problem, and while it doesn't happen so much as to really annoy you, it happens often enough for me to wonder how they let it happen 3-the lack of specification as to the nature of a word. This is a big problem for me. The book's format puts the Italian word on the left hand side of a page, and the English equivalent on the right. The most obvious way to study is to look at a certain number of words, then cover up one columns (usually the Italian one) and try to remember the word. The problem is that when you come across an English word like "grant", it's sometimes difficult to remember if the word refers to the verb "to grant" or to the noun "a grant". They occasionally provide sufficient information for you to know ("grant, to), but more often then not this information is not present. It would have taken very little to specify the grammatical status of any ambiguous (and possibly unambiguous, too) words. It may seem trite, but it gets annoying Anyway, so if my previous mention of the book implied that I gave it four stars, I hereby reduce its ranking to three. It's not a bad book, and the fact that I'm getting better at the language is a testament to its pedagogical strengths, but it nonetheless could have been improved quite a bit. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 133 of 206 08 July 2009 at 11:33pm \| IP Logged
	Today I did vocabulary for 75 minutes, getting to the point I was hoping to get to. I also watched TV / read for 60 minutes. Go me. I felt really on the ball today; there are good days and there are bad days, and today was definitely a good day in terms of comprehension. I don't make too much of my bad days, so I won't feel especially impressed with myself today. Still, it's a really great feeling to understand (and not merely guess) newscasts. Although I still have a lot to do, I'm getting really excited about starting up with German again. That probably won't happen until August at the earliest, though. One final point: I'm starting to see that pretty soon, my policy of not actively writing and speaking Italian will cross the line from "smart study plan" to "procrastination and fear of looking foolish", so I'm keeping an eye out for it. Once I'm done with this vocabulary book and my grammar book, I'll need to either get on a study plan that's more focused on active use or accept that I won't feel confident writing or speaking in Italian for the intermediate future. At this point I honestly don't know what I'll decide. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 134 of 206 09 July 2009 at 8:14pm \| IP Logged
	Yesterday evening I did some more TV watching; nothing serious, but every bit helps. Today I watched TV for 15 minutes and spent 105 minutes studying vocabulary. I'm going to be bust later on during the day, so I almost certainly will not be doing any more studying today. 1 person has voted this message useful
Lumulo Triglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6164 days ago 27 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Mandarin	Message 135 of 206 09 July 2009 at 10:32pm \| IP Logged
	My haphazard approach to acquiring Italian vocabulary has driven me to latch on to your method;you mentioned that the book you are using is entitled "Mastering Italian Vocabulary"- are you refering to the book by Barrons, or "Mastering Italian Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach" by Luciana Feinler-Torriani? 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 136 of 206 10 July 2009 at 6:17pm \| IP Logged
	Hi Lumulo! Actually, both books you mention seem to be the same one! Specifically, my book is published by Barrons's, and is called "Mastering Italian Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach, 2nd Edition", by Luciana Feinler-Torriani and Gunter H. Klemm. The ISBN is 0-7641-2395-5 . I wish you the best of luck in your studies, and I hope to hear of your progress... --- So yesterday I lied. I didn't mean to, but pretty much immediately after writing my post, I listened to the first CD (out of 5) of Michel Thomas' vocabulary builder. It was good and helpful. As far as today is concerned, I have a very nasty hangover now and a date tonight, so I'm taking the day off, probably. I'll thank myself on my next study session when my book is not covered in vomit. 1 person has voted this message useful

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neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 129 of 206 05 July 2009 at 8:02pm \| IP Logged
	Today is review day, wherein I go over all the vocabulary I learned over the past week. Normally review entails looking at the English word and then trying to remember the Italian translation. Today I started off by doing the opposite. I looked at the Italian word and tried to remember what it meant in English. I was surprised at how poorly I did; I thought that my recall in that direction would be much better. Interestingly, my recall in the other, normal direction (from Italian to English) was much better than I had expected, even controlling for the fact that I had already gone over the words once. What this means in concrete terms is that once I've superficially learned the words in my vocabulary book, I'll need to make sure to practice reviewing in both directions. I get the feeling that once the book is over, review will comprise all of the following: -looking at Italian words and trying to remember English equivalents -looking at English words and trying to remember Italian equivalents -make a note of words that I "miss" in one direction or another -practice writing X number of sentences using the missed Italian words The last point will be especially useful, both in terms of learning vocabulary and practicing verb conjugations. All that is in the intermediate future, though, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Still, it's nice to know that there is a plan once I'm done with this step. :-) In any event, I was able to go over the words once in the Italian -> English way and twice in the English -> Italian way during my two hours. I might do some reading or TV watching later today, but no promises. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 130 of 206 07 July 2009 at 3:24am \| IP Logged
	Vocab for 75 minutes, TV for 30, reading for 15 The vocabulary is the most difficult part, but also by far the most helpful. My reading and TV watching comprehension is increasing a lot, and that's just because I actually understand the words being used. What a concept! 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 131 of 206 07 July 2009 at 4:18am \| IP Logged
	Addendum: You know what's awesome? Watching Mission Impossible 3 after writing your last blog entry, finding out that there is a scene that takes place in Rome and the Vatican, and then understanding absolutely everything! :D That was a tremendous motivation boost! 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 132 of 206 07 July 2009 at 8:27pm \| IP Logged
	One hour vocab today, in which I did well over 100 words. I listened to two podcasts, totaling an hour between them. So I'm done for the day, with the usual caveat that I might do more work (but I doubt it). Tomorrow I may focus especially on vocabulary; I'd like to get through the 170 words necessary for me to finish the chapter. It's probably going to cut into my second hour of study, but I'm fine with that. ----- Some notes on what I'm doing, and the materials involved... To those who have not wadded through all my blog entries, I'm currently working with a book called "Mastering Italian Vocabulary". The format of the book is such that it divided words by themes, and further subdivides the words as "basic" or "advanced". The broad plan was/is to go through the basic words, achieve some elementary level of mastery, and then do the same with the advanced words. I am currently working with the advanced words. I am nonetheless tailoring this plan in a few ways. First, there are some words that I just plain crossed out. I don't need to know terms for financial transactions that I will never use or hear about. Further, the last two chapters deal with words whose purpose is not to designate a thing or activity, but rather to aid in sentence construction (i.e.: prepositions and the like), as well as a few scattered verbs that don't seem to fit a unifying theme. I am mostly ignoring these chapters; for now, I'm going to assume that these words will be best learned contextually. Anyway, once all the "studyiable" words are done, I'll consistently go over the book, probably at the rate of a few hundred words a day, to refresh my memory and really drill it home. Will my fine-tuning leave me with big holes in my vocabulary? No, I don't think so. I will likely make a personal list of words that I come across and that are not in the book (I will only be getting ~5000 words via this book) and study those independently of the book. What's more, I have another vocabulary book in Montreal (where I'm going in a few weeks), and I may end up using it in order to shore up deficiencies with this book. And on that topic, while I provisionally recommended this book in a previous post, I would downgrade my assessment after working with this book further. The deficiencies I see with the book are: 1-too much repetition of words in various chapters. As long as the words are in the index, there is no need to have the same word come up multiple times 2-formatting problems; sometimes the English and Italian words are not lined up properly. This is an editing problem, and while it doesn't happen so much as to really annoy you, it happens often enough for me to wonder how they let it happen 3-the lack of specification as to the nature of a word. This is a big problem for me. The book's format puts the Italian word on the left hand side of a page, and the English equivalent on the right. The most obvious way to study is to look at a certain number of words, then cover up one columns (usually the Italian one) and try to remember the word. The problem is that when you come across an English word like "grant", it's sometimes difficult to remember if the word refers to the verb "to grant" or to the noun "a grant". They occasionally provide sufficient information for you to know ("grant, to), but more often then not this information is not present. It would have taken very little to specify the grammatical status of any ambiguous (and possibly unambiguous, too) words. It may seem trite, but it gets annoying Anyway, so if my previous mention of the book implied that I gave it four stars, I hereby reduce its ranking to three. It's not a bad book, and the fact that I'm getting better at the language is a testament to its pedagogical strengths, but it nonetheless could have been improved quite a bit. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 133 of 206 08 July 2009 at 11:33pm \| IP Logged
	Today I did vocabulary for 75 minutes, getting to the point I was hoping to get to. I also watched TV / read for 60 minutes. Go me. I felt really on the ball today; there are good days and there are bad days, and today was definitely a good day in terms of comprehension. I don't make too much of my bad days, so I won't feel especially impressed with myself today. Still, it's a really great feeling to understand (and not merely guess) newscasts. Although I still have a lot to do, I'm getting really excited about starting up with German again. That probably won't happen until August at the earliest, though. One final point: I'm starting to see that pretty soon, my policy of not actively writing and speaking Italian will cross the line from "smart study plan" to "procrastination and fear of looking foolish", so I'm keeping an eye out for it. Once I'm done with this vocabulary book and my grammar book, I'll need to either get on a study plan that's more focused on active use or accept that I won't feel confident writing or speaking in Italian for the intermediate future. At this point I honestly don't know what I'll decide. 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 134 of 206 09 July 2009 at 8:14pm \| IP Logged
	Yesterday evening I did some more TV watching; nothing serious, but every bit helps. Today I watched TV for 15 minutes and spent 105 minutes studying vocabulary. I'm going to be bust later on during the day, so I almost certainly will not be doing any more studying today. 1 person has voted this message useful
Lumulo Triglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6164 days ago 27 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Mandarin	Message 135 of 206 09 July 2009 at 10:32pm \| IP Logged
	My haphazard approach to acquiring Italian vocabulary has driven me to latch on to your method;you mentioned that the book you are using is entitled "Mastering Italian Vocabulary"- are you refering to the book by Barrons, or "Mastering Italian Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach" by Luciana Feinler-Torriani? 1 person has voted this message useful
neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5973 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French, English Studies: Spanish	Message 136 of 206 10 July 2009 at 6:17pm \| IP Logged
	Hi Lumulo! Actually, both books you mention seem to be the same one! Specifically, my book is published by Barrons's, and is called "Mastering Italian Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach, 2nd Edition", by Luciana Feinler-Torriani and Gunter H. Klemm. The ISBN is 0-7641-2395-5 . I wish you the best of luck in your studies, and I hope to hear of your progress... --- So yesterday I lied. I didn't mean to, but pretty much immediately after writing my post, I listened to the first CD (out of 5) of Michel Thomas' vocabulary builder. It was good and helpful. As far as today is concerned, I have a very nasty hangover now and a date tonight, so I'm taking the day off, probably. I'll thank myself on my next study session when my book is not covered in vomit. 1 person has voted this message useful