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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 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 206 04 August 2008 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Weirdness!
Due to sickness and insanity of living conditions, I barely studied this past week, and all of my studying has been vocabulary. I probably needed the break, though... I've been seeing a marked improvement in comprehension of Italian television (I watch the live feed off http://www.rainews24.it). I've basically hit a new level. My reading is also very good, and consists of daily RSS feeds from the foreign section of La Repubblica.. I don't read all the articles, and it is still tiring to do so, but it's going quite well. I'm a bit torn as to what to do regarding my studies... Unfortunately, I left my copy of Michel Thomas Advanced back in Montreal. Vocabulary is a no-brainer, but I find that when I only do vocabulary, I get much less confident in my abilities. Reading and listening to news is good, but it would be nice to get something more participatory. I would normally get an exercise book from my school bookstore, but it is not open yet. Complicating matters is that as of a few days ago, I have a tremendous amount of material that I need to read for school. Ok, so for now I'll keep doing vocabulary, and listen to / read some news when I'm at my office at school. When the bookstore re-opens, I'll evaluate. Two or three weeks of doing mostly vocabulary won't kill me. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 206 10 August 2008 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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My posts here have been sporadic, and it's time to change that. From now on, I'm going to post every day to detail what I've done since my last post, even if it's "nothing".
Today's post starts with what I've done today: half an hour of vocabulary on the train on my way to school. I'd like to finish the chapter tonight, but we'll see... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| manpped Groupie United States Joined 5753 days ago 55 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Sign Language | Message 27 of 206 10 August 2008 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow! Your journal is really inspiring: so many pains! So much effort! At the same time, you still cheat and do lazy things. ;) I sympathize.
You'll be giving a pompous, multilingual speech in no time. I really enjoyed your entry about the perception of your "fitness" level in language learning. I know very few bilingual folks. (The few I do know are hardcore polyglots.) This MB motivates me, true, but it also makes me feel woefully inadequate at times. I mean, I'm still effectively unilingual. Woe. I also understand how school can get in the way of "fun studies." I'm trying to find a way to combine my language reps with an Honor's Project; who knows if my professor will buy it! Good luck with your own schooling! Out of curiosity, have you been using any materials that have been translated into Italian (dubs, Italian Harry Potter, etc.)? Maybe that would help you pick up new vocabulary. You'd have the gist of missing words. :) Also--and I may have just missed this--what have you done differently in learning Italian that you didn't do in learning French? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 206 11 August 2008 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
With respect to feeling great or inadequate when comparing ourselves to people who speak multiple languages, I have a belief (which I don't always apply) that it's best to always deal with someone slightly worse than you, as well as someone slightly better than you. To re-use the exercise analogy, I find that it's idea when I'm helping someone who is not as advanced as me, as well as am being helped by someone just a bit better. Comparing myself to an Olympian, on the other hand, does me no good. The reason is that I can't really see the road that would take me there. But when someone is a little better, my mind thinks "Hey, I could do that too. Why not?" Obviously, I'm not going to choose or discard friends based on their language abilities, but it means that I make a concerted effort to not compare myself to people like my ex. I may think of her and her abilities once in a while for inspiration / admiration sake, but for the most part it actually takes away my desire to work hard today. I wish you luck on your school stuff too! Hopefully you'll be able to strike a great balance that includes language learning and good schoolwork. :) I didn't read any adapted texts... Truth be told, I'm one of the weird guys that doesn't mind studying wordlists, and who can recall words and use them in context pretty well. I get bored with reading if I don't understand most of the words, more bored than I would be if I just spent time memorizing lists. The main concern here is that I don't want to totally lose my ability to formulate sentences while I'm expanding my vocabulary. Finally, regarding my French: in Quebec, there is a law called Bill 101 which states, among other things, that you must do your schooling up to and including high school in French, unless you can prove that one of your parents was educated in English in Canada. Neither of my parents were educated in English, and they're from Egypt, so I had to do my schooling completely in French. Arguments about liberty aside, I am very grateful for the existence of this law. --- As far as my work is concerned, I did another half-hour of vocabulary; good progress. I also watched half an hour of a documentary on a trial in WWII-era Italy. Scary stuff, but I'm getting better and better at understanding tv. Progress is never fast enough... but the me of a month ago would have been pleased with this level of comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Meltdown Newbie United States Joined 5753 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 29 of 206 12 August 2008 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Could you perhaps give the name of the documentary you watched? I've been looking for nice Italian historical documentaries. Your journal has really inspired me to begin Italian actively. I am considering purchasing Mastering Italian vocabulary. I would assume that you think it's a worthwhile book? Good luck with your continued studies of Italian. I'll be following your progress. Edited by Meltdown on 12 August 2008 at 1:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 206 12 August 2008 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I go here to look at Italian documentaries: http://www.lastoriasiamonoi.rai.it/ They are all historical, but RAI would probably have other ones as well. I can't seem to find the precise one I saw yesterday, though. It wasn't any more impressive than the other ones, though. Finally, Mastering Italian Vocabulary is the right book for me, so take that as a qualified recommendation. I like the fact that it's divided into "basic" and "advanced" words, allowing me to focus on the basic ones for now. I'll return to the book much later for the advanced stuff, once I do more grammar work. I say that it's right for me, but that's because I have satisfied all of these conditions: -I've totally done a basic "How to learn Italian" book, including memorizing the 700-800 words in that glossary -I've done a lot of audio training (Pimsleur and Michel Thomas Basic), so I'm comfortable creating sentences -I've done some reading in Italian, helping me practice recognizing sentence structures -I actively enjoy memorizing wordlists. It's a quantifiable challenge for me; I get to see progress in terms of chapters completed. What's more, I do not like learning vocabulary by reading. Lots of people feel exactly the opposite. If that's the case, I would not recommend the book But in my case, it's exactly what I needed. :) So I guess it's all about thinking through how you enjoy learning, what's realistic for you, and where you're at in your studies. One of the things that I'm most proud of is not starting to study the vocabulary in this book until I was totally done with my Barrons basic textbook. Flitting from book to book is a killer; not only do I not get much out of it, but I quickly feel down about the fact that I never actually finish anything. We're all guilty of doing this stuff, and surely some people learn best that way. But not me. ------------- Good progress! My bus ride to and from school is about 40 minutes; I spent a half hour last night and another half hour this morning studying vocabulary. The upcoming chapter is one of the duller ones (Work and the workplace), filled with very unfamiliar words, so I'm anticipating some tough slogging ahead. I also just finished watching another half hour of a WWII documentary, this one on the effects of the Hiroshima bomb. Yikes. It's bad. Very, very, very bad. It's interesting that I would not have been reminded of how bad it was if I were not studying Italian... It's a very beautiful thing when something you use instrumentally turns out to be very valuable in its own right. I don't know how consistent I'll end up being with my studying, but I'm still pulling for an hour a day. The one thing that is non-negotiable is my posting here every day. Or at least 6 days a week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 206 15 August 2008 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Did not post for the past couple of days because of lack of internet access. I'm trying to get it sorted out.
I did a bit of vocabulary (like an hour) and watched another half-hour worth of video. I'm exhausted, so that's the end of this post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 206 16 August 2008 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just finished reading some news and watching some video.. a bit less than a half-hour's worth of both combined. It was a day to write-off; my lack of studying is starting to show. I'm knee-deep in half-assembled furniture at home and behind on my school work, so I'm not chastising myself... but it still sucks.
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