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NeonQwerty’s Italian and German thread | ||
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| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 145 of 206 20 July 2009 at 2:24am | IP Logged |
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Today I re-did the pre-verb chunk of my vocab book, and listened to some more Michel Thomas vocab. I might do some more of either later tonight.
The rest of this (long, but what else is new? :-D) post will deal with the website that Lizzern recommended. --- Hi Lizzern, First of all, thanks for your encouragement. We're obviously on different sides of the pedagogical spectrum, and that's a very good thing! Your comments ensure that I won't blindly stay in the same learning trough. If I decide to stay in the trough, at least it will be a conscious decision! In a sense, I think that we agree more than meets the eye; the reason I'm blitzing through this formal material is to be able to mostly use informal material when it comes to Italian learning. Rather than explain my motivations for doing so in this paragraph, I thought that it would be neat to take a few quotes from the website you recommended and comment on them. Then I'll make some general comments. I'll italicizethe quotes. Avanti! "You shouldn’t be thinking of grammar rules as you try to speak any more than you should be crunching Schroedinger equations as you speed down the highway. Grammar rules are best kept to as demonstrative knowledge" I agree that there is no sense to learning grammar rules for their own sake. I call myself bilingual, but in truth I feel verrrrry slightly more comfortable in English, which is the language my parents usually spoke at home. I was educated in French, and the interesting thing is that while I feel verrrrrry slightly less competent in French, I know vastly more about French grammar than English grammar. But I think ending the conversation here would be misleading... The reason that peope like me study grammar rules are twofold. First, it makes pattern recognition much easier. Take a unilingual English speaker and make him/her listen to French... I suspect that it will be a heck of a long time before they figure out what's going on with the subjunctive tense. Maybe other people learn grammar rules differently, but when I learn them, it makes the logic of the language clearer to me, which allows me to use the language more confidently without thinking of the specific rules. It's very much like mnemonics; it seems that creating an explicit association to remember a word is a very clunky process, but it ultimately is not. Let's take an example. In Italian, the verb for turn on / light (as in light a match) is "accendere". I had trouble remembering it, so I thought that the flame of a match "ascends" (which sort of sounds like "accen..") and remembered it that way. The first few times I wanted to say it, I needed to think "Okay, what does a flame do? It goes up... it ascends. ACCENDERE!". Laughable! But the thing is that after a few times, the whole visualization thing just went away and I was left with the immediate association of "to light / turn on = accendere" in the same way that I think that "allumer = to turn on" in French. To me, grammar rules operate the same way. They are very clunky the first time they are mentally invoked, but with enough practice, the intermediary thought process goes away and you're left with a very quick immediate association. The second reason people like me explicitely study grammar is that in many books, grammar rules are immediately followed by exercises that relate to that rule. Again, taking the subjunctive: this tense occurs regularly, but nonetheless haphazardly. By studying grammatical rules followed up by exercises, you get to really imprint the use of the rule at the moment when the rule is freshest in your mind. The benefit of this is something that came up again and again as I was reading that website: the desire to save time "Yes, even if you had no systematic method, if you were to spend the next 18-24 months, 24 hours a day, surrounded by one language to the absolute and total exclusion of all other languages, I am almost certain that it would be impossible for you to come out without fluency. [...] Of course, you may have school to go to, maybe a job. You can make small exceptions. But your school doesn’t run 24 hours a day, does it? You do sleep at night, right? Leave the Japanese on all night. You have class, right? Listen to Japanese in class if you can get away with it (i.e. if it won’t damage your learning experience). If not, listen to Japanese while you do your homework. You take lunchbreaks, don’t you? Listen to Japanese. You walk or drive or otherwise commute places, don’t you? Listen to Japanese while doing it. [...] Remember that silence thing? Silence has left the building. Every moment of your life needs to be soaked in the sweet water of Japanese listening. I had Japanese playing even when I went out into the mountains behind Momoko’s house to watch the sunset." I don't know what kind of lifestyle this person has, but I take issue with this for at least the following reasons: 1-The "no silence" thing worries me a lot. I think that I and many other people have a deep-seated need for silent time. Maybe I am a 28 year old dinosaur, but I think that constantly being exposed to noise of any kind, without much repose, would make my life significantly worse 2-Listening to (Language X) in class will in fact harm my learning experience. Hegel is tough. John Rawls is no joke. To all non-prodigies (and the author doesn't believe in prodigies ;-)), trying to get the foggiest impression of what hardcore political philosophers are talking about is a very time-consuming, energy-draining, and daunting task. In other words - and I do not say this to toot my own horn - it's very, very intellectually challenging and draining. A good number of my classmates have literally been reduced to tears. Worse yet, for every hour of class, I need to do at least three hours of intense academic work at home. Having(Language X) in the background will either be distracting as all hell or be unnoticed. Which brings me to... 3-The author repeatedly says that exposure to the language, including nocturnal exposure, is the key to understanding it. This isn't my field of research, but I have not really found anything other than usually dubious anecdotes that support this claim. If anyone can point me to something that does support the claim that exposure to a language such that the exposure can easily be ignored (remember, I'm wrestling with Hegel!), I'd honestly be happy to recant 4-Even if the author's method does work, it may very well be extremely inefficient. This goes back to my point about grammatical rules. I'm sure that if we listen to Italian often enough, we'll get the hang of the subjunctive tense... but why do it that way if we can just study the tense and drill it? The author seems to claim that doing so would be useless - a claim I addressed earlier - or that doing so is so painful that people just won't bother doing it. Now, this last point is interesting, but if that amounts to the main reason why we should not study "painfully" at times, then it only applies to those who cannot or will not subject themselves to that pain. People such as myself either have a high pain tolerance or are able to derive some sort of enjoyment from the difficult task. This may seem odd given my previous post, but I don't see it as being very different from a typical post that you may read a fitness enthusiast who says that "I'm exhausted from the temporary increase in effort that I've been putting forth! I need to take some time off to recover." If I can push the analogy much further than I have a right to, I'd add that intense bouts of effort followed by periods of rest seems to be the optimal way of achieving positive body composition changes. (reading up on HIIT - high intensity interval training - would be good if you're interested in this very non-related topic) The notion that brains work more efficiently when adopting a hard work / rest / hard work cycle may or may not be quite right, but it seems just as intuitively plausible as the notion that constant low-level exposure is the best way to go The last really critical thing that I will say about the website, and this will help segue into a broader discussion of what the upshot of all this will be for me, is that there is something a bit disingenuous going on with the "loads of enjoyable practice" line and the constant referencing of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was not just exposed to basketball a lot, nor did he just play a lot of basketball. He drilled. And drilled, and drilled, and drilled. Although one lay-up is fun, I imagine that after doing hundreds and thousands of lay-ups every day, it can turn into a tedious and mentally draining grind at times. The point that I'm trying to make is that while the author is not saying that it's all going to be smiles all the time, he (she?) is really downplaying the amount of tedious drilling that athletes do to get really good. It really seems to me that the analog of doing lots of lay-ups is doing lots of exercises in which you need to (again) use the subjunctive tense properly. But this brings me to my broader discussion... What the website did convince me to do is to work with Anki, and in this respect the author of the website is in fact advocating a "drilling" method. As I mentioned way near the beginning of this mercifully ending post, I'm going to do more "natural" work with Italian for at least the next intermediate while. I think that writing unfamiliar words / phrases that I come across as I read online in Anki will be really helpful; when I look over my vocab book, I'll put the problem words in there as well. I'll also try to make my online enviornment as Italian as possible, get my news only from Italian sources and listen to a greater proportion of Italian music. All that works for me, and I think that it will be a good, healthy and productive way of going about my Italian studies. This post has been quite critical towards the website, and in that sense it doesn't fully reflect how I feel about it. It's an interesting and very entertaining read, and if I'm critical, it's at least in part because I worry that the charismatic author makes a persuasive case. I nonetheless feel that there is something to be said for the use of a more disciplined and targeted approach. I don't think that it's for everyone, but I can honestly say that my ability in Italian seems to go up quite drastically when I happen to put in lots of intense and concerted study. Correlation does not equal causation and all, but it feels like it's working... Working at least well enough to give me a solid base upon which I can grasp authentic content relatively easily. Ok, that's it for this time. You can all wake up now! EDIT: I forgot to mention that I did not read the entire site, although I read pretty big chunks of it. If the site's author touches on my concerns... mea culpa! Edited by neonqwerty on 20 July 2009 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5726 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 146 of 206 20 July 2009 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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Some good points there mate. I don't agree with everything he says but I'm taking principles of it and using it rather than follow it as law :-) I do genuinely believe in the value of input, in large part because when I was 16 I started an international school and was considered fluent in English by then, and got some very positive comments about my accent, but all I'd ever done besides regular mandatory classes was watch TV and listen to music and it made a HUGE difference.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't study grammar, I do think that has its place too, so that we grasp what natives intuitively know and use correctly all the time, that isn't so natural to us. However, I wouldn't sit down with a grammar book and start on page 1 and work my way through - that's what I have a problem with because it doesn't suit me at all (yes I have tried doing exactly that, studying a grammar book from cover to cover, in order). I use my grammar books as reference guides that I take out when I need them, so I'll let myself try to grasp the material (at least most of it) until I feel like I'm at a stage where I can understand most things, except... Whatever. Something about the subjunctive I'm not quite sure about. It could be anything. Then I'll read up on that point, and possibly read the whole chapter on the subjunctive while I'm at it. Does that make sense? I only have issues with cover-to-cover study, I know it works for some people but for me it just... sucks. I'm admittedly biased against drills, because I've had some bad experiences with it, so I know it would make me get tired of the language, so I'm just saying... Totally agree about the silence thing. And I don't normally have music playing while I'm studying, although sometimes I do because I've found it to be helpful occasionally. Although I'm not wrestling political science... I wouldn't have Italian on at night either, not only because I'm unconvinced that it works, but because it's sleep for god's sake, it's rest and should be peaceful if anything, not filled with talk. Interesting that you mention high intensity interval training - my medical school has quite an intensive focus on HIIT research so we've already been duly instructed in the results of their studies (which are actually pretty awesome). They were pretty much the first to ever try it on heart failure patients, for example, with excellent results. Interesting stuff, though I'm not sure I could bring myself to do it... All I'm really saying is that I think more 'fun stuff' would do you good. Music and stuff like that. Cause you sound like you're in the process of burning out, and I'd hate to see you lose interest in such a beautiful language! At this stage, I don't think focusing on input only for a while would harm you, so you could give yourself a rest from the intensive study, a well-deserved break I'd say :-) Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 147 of 206 30 July 2009 at 3:26am | IP Logged |
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Heyo!
Obviously, it's been a little while, so a bunch of things: -I'm back in Montreal, and things have been just chaotic. I've been doing a good amount of reading and TV watching in Italian. I've also started using Anki; I have about 200 words implemented in it. I'd like to review daily and add at least 20 words per day -trying to structure things at this point is not going to happen. My total study time is at least 3 hours a day, six days a week... a lot of it is going towards math -thanks again to Lizzern for the support and the comments... You've made some really great points, and it would just be pride for me to ignore them. Lately I've been pretty much forced to do "fun" stuff because I don't have the structured time to use my strict approach... and I think it's been really helpful. At any rate, I'm really enjoying myself. Incidentally, HIIT for heart patients? Wow! It makes sense, but I don't know if I'd have the nerve to suggest it... I guess I'm more conservative about it than I thought! It's really cool that you know a good deal about it! -in a sense, my clinging to "drill, drill, drill!" is equal parts rhetoric for the sake of argument (which I find fun :)) and cop-out. I've learned over time that liking one approach or not is oftentimes about letting oneself adopt that mindset, and it's not that hard to change your mindset if you make a commitment to being flexible. Sometimes it's good not to bend, but at other times not bending is a sign of cowardice or laziness. Hmmmm... this is a philosophical paragraph that probably has no business being in this blog :D -After 2 1/2 hours of study today, I got really discouraged... math will do that to you; it's really tough until it's really easy. Anyway, on a whim I went for a walk and listened to the first lesson of Pimsleur German... and I had a wonderful time with it. After a discouraging 150 minutes in which any gain was hard-fought, it was nice to have 30 minutes in which the same effort brought about clear and immediate results. There is a point of diminishing returns in the practice of any skill, including languages, so it was nice to go back to a situation in which a little effort went a long way -I didn't finish the grammar book, not the MT vocab course. But I will in due time. :) -I don't know how rigorous I'll be at updating this blog, since my Italian study may end up being undocumented. I'll try, though. My German study will be rigorously documented, though! :-) On that note... German, Pimlseur 01-01 Time: 30 mins Total time: 30 mins 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 148 of 206 01 August 2009 at 4:01am | IP Logged |
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First, a bit of sucking up:
I can honestly say that this is the most positive yet substantive forum that I've ever seen. Granted, I have not participated in very many threads, but it's really heartening to go to an active forum where people aren't cyber-yelling at each other. End of sucking up. Since last time... Italian, True to my word, I didn't really record what I did. I entered more words in Anki and reviewed a few times. I also got an Italian newspaper and started going through it. I forgot how relatively easy newspapers are! I was blowing through it, while I still need to look up quite a few words in the more literary book that I'm going through. German, Since last time, I did... Pimlseur 01-02 (twice) : ~40 mins Pimlseur 01-03 ~30 mins Pimlseur 01-04 (twice) ~60 mins Time: 170 mintes Total time: 200 minutes I'm really loving this German thing, The fact that doing it encourages me to go on 20-30 minute walks certainly doesn't hurt :) Edited by neonqwerty on 03 August 2009 at 5:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 149 of 206 03 August 2009 at 5:16am | IP Logged |
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Since last time...
Italian: Reviewed some Anki and did some reading. I really like the Anki; hopefully the amount of space between repetitions is appropriate. German: Did units 5 and 6. They were easy, since they covered stuff that I saw last year in class Formally, Pimsleur 01-05: 25 minutes Pimsleur 01-06: 25 minutes Time: 50 mintes Total time: 250 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 150 of 206 04 August 2009 at 10:04pm | IP Logged |
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Italian,
Read some more, and listened to about an hour's worth of children's fables. If anyone is interested, I got them from this general podcast repository: http://italian.podcast.com/ Go to "Personal and storytelling" on the right-hand side. I've also been doing my Ankis in short bursts, and so far I can recommend it. German Since last time, I re-did Pimsleur 06 and did Pimlseur 07 once. Pimsleur 05: 25 mintutes Pimsleur 07: 22.5 minutes Time: 47.5 minutes Total time: 297.5 minutes 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 151 of 206 11 August 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hmmm.. I am not a good blogger these days! :)
But the funny thing is that while I'm not finding the time or motivation to blog, I'm doing quite a bit as far as learning is concerned! Since last time... Italian: Backing off with the Italian study has been very helpful. I actually spend quite a bit of time with the language, mostly reading and listening to some music. I still do my Ankis every day (from English to Italian), and every day I add 20 new words. So far it's leisurely, but I suppose that just makes it all the more Italian. ;) I'm not setting any date-related goals for Italian. I'll keep doing what I'm doing as long as I'm enjoying it German, I'm also really enjoying my German studies, even though they're the polar opposite of what I'm doing for Italian. I'm still just doing Pimlseur. Namely: Pimsleur 08: 23.5 minutes Pimsleur 09: 27.5 minutes Pimsleur 10: 24.5 minutes Pimsleur 11: 25 minutes Pimsleur 12 (twice): 45 minutes Time: 145.5 minutes Total time: 443 minutes (Note that I don't do the reading exercises) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 152 of 206 18 August 2009 at 2:58am | IP Logged |
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Italian,
Same as always, with an added bonus. A few days ago I was feeling a bit down, so I went to the library and decided to write what was on my mind. Somehow I was getting a lot of thoughts in Italian, so I decided to write it out in Italian... and I was surprised at how well I (think) I wrote. There were a few hesitations, a few word substitutions when I couldn't find the mot juste, and I'm sure a few spelling errors, but I really think that I communicated my points clearly and without resorting to overly simplistic formulations. Yay! German, Things are going relatively well. I noticed that the German lessons seem to be significantly shorter than the Pimsleur Italian ones.. maybe it's my imagination, but that's the only disappointment that I have with them. Pimsleur 13: 25 minutes Pimsleur 14: 25 minutes Pimsleur 15: 23 minutes Pimsleur 16 (twice): 44 minutes Pimsleur 17: 20.5 minutes Pimsleur 18: 23.5 minutes Pimsleur 19 (twice): 41 minutes Time: 202 minutes Total time: 645 minutes Total time: 1 person has voted this message useful |
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