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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 5980 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes  Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 57 of 206 25 December 2008 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
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Finished the first CD (of 2) of the Michel Thomas Language Builder. It's still very good, but I have a concern with my general approach...
It occurred to me that at this point, I am "involved" or about to be involved in this audio course, my reader, my old "how to learn Italian" book, and my grammar book. This is way too much. It's like "wanderlust" on a small scale. The problem is that I always hated the idea of "wanderlust". At the risk of annoying any readers, I always thought that "wanderlust" was just a self-indulgent way of saying "near complete lack of discipline". I understand the enthusiasm; hell, enthusiasm is what got me spread too thin right now! But it's analogous to eating lots of ice cream. There is initial enthusiasm and excitement, but shortly thereafter you crash and feel worse than you did before the ice cream binge. In language-learning terms, "wanderlust", whether across languages or across materials when learning one language, usually leads to not completing the materials in a timely fashion. This in turn leads to discouragement. In my case, I need to find some sort of appropriate balance between rigor and flexibility... And I just realized that I erred strongly on the "flexibility" side. Thankfully, this is easily remediable! :) In theory, I should finish this audio program and then focus on the backlog of texts that I am dealing with. In practice, nuh-uh. Even though I'm on winter break, I'm doing lots of schoolwork, which translates to lots of reading. Some reading is okay, but not a huge amount. Also, I'm a big fan of being involved in exactly one audio (or audio / video) and one written method of learning at a given time. I find that this allows me some flexibility in that I can focus on one medium if I get sick of the other. At the same time, restricting myself to one per "type" forces me to finish what I start, which is very important to me. So audio-wise, I will finish MT foundation course and then re-do it once. After that, MT Advanced course. As far as written work is concerned: finish the reader. I don't need to go over it again, but I need to be able to get through all of the underlined vocabulary in one sitting before moving on. I will then re-do that "how to learn Italian" thing, and then I will move on to the grammar book. I fly back to Chicago on the 10th; I would like to have finished the reader and textbook before heading back. I have no immediate goals with respect to the audio. 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 58 of 206 26 December 2008 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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Re-did the first CD of the MT Language Builder, and got up to page 90 of my reader. Not bad!
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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 59 of 206 29 December 2008 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
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Since last time:
Finished listening to the MT Language Builder twice, so it's "done", as far as I'm concerned. It was very nice to go through, and while I think that the Foundation Course has no more use for me at all, I may want to revisit this one again at some point in the future. I also did a little more reading with my Reader, but I don't have it with me, so I can't say exactly how much. Next update, maybe... 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 60 of 206 30 December 2008 at 11:31pm | IP Logged |
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Did the first five tracks of Michel Thomas Advanced, CD#1.
Also, I am now up to page 122 in my reader... and I need to make some decisions here. Ideally, I wanted to have finished my reader and have reviewed my "how to learn Italian" book before heading to Chicago on the 10th. That probably cannot happen. The thing is, I don't want to bring either book home with me. So first thing's first: I'll get through the reader as I've done, re-reading everything twice and making note of new vocabulary. Then there will be a number of things that would be nice to do, namely 1)review the marked vocabulary in the reader 2)go over my textbook 3)review vocabulary in my textbook Since I'm going to be working on my vocabulary when I get back to Chicago, I am going to skip 1) and 3). My mentality will be one in which I am just reviewing and "getting back into the language". In that respect, I'm really satisfied with my progress. I'm pretty sure I'll have a good bit of audio work done as well by the time I head home. As with the reading, I go over all the audio (at least) twice. 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 61 of 206 30 December 2008 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
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You know, this would be a nice time to talk about my language goals for the upcoming year...
There are two languages that I want to work on / work with for the upcoming year: Italian and German. ITALIAN: I will work on this exclusively until I "finish it", which I will try to do by June 1st. By "finish" I mean that I want to be able to: -watch RAI News broadcasts and understand quite well -have finished my vocabulary book and mastered 95% of it, with the other 5% being words that I did not bother with (due to their irrelevance) and the odd word that I can't recall -be able to read an academic political theory article in the language without needing to go to the dictionary more than a couple of times If I succeed in doing this, I will conduct day-to-day activities (mainly reading) in Italian in order to develop my abilities further GERMAN: My goal for the year is... well, difficult to say in terms of ability. Reading newspaper articles without having to resort too often to dictionaries would be fantastic, but I will be studying German for 6 1/2 months, starting mid-June. In terms of time, I would like to dedicate at *least* 175 hours to it before 2010, including 90 hours worth of Pimlseur (each tape at least twice). I will formulate more specific goals once I (re)start my German studies I'm VERY excited for 2009!!! This is the year that I get to call myself trilingual (!!! HOLY CRAP! :)) by my relatively high standards and that I become functional in a fourth language. 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 62 of 206 02 January 2009 at 12:03pm | IP Logged |
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First off, props to everyone for updating their logs! I was pleasantly surprised to see that this thread already fell to midway down page #2 of this subforum... If you are reading this and do not have a log, I strongly suggest that you start one. It does not need to be fancy, and you don't need to impress anyone. Just something about having a dedicated language learning log that you know others can see... I don't know what it is, but it seems to work.
In terms of updates, I'm up to page 132 on my reader and will do more later today. I had a thought earlier today. When I try to do something, I noticed that I follow this general pattern: 1-initial excitement and enthusiasm 2-attempts to formulate a plan and apply it 3-modify and improve the plan 4-live by the plan Obviously, I'm big on planning and structure; I really think that a lot of "creativity" with respect to how we use our time is actually laziness and avoidance of necessary work. At the same time, there is a danger in going too far in the other direction. You (I) don't just want to end up "punching the clock". Don't get me wrong: The clock punching technique will work as long as we put in honest effort during the allotted time. It's just that a dedication to working an hour a day (or whatever) doesn't mean that we can't work longer than that on a given day. I think the distinction is important. If I say "I will study for an hour a day, six days a week", it means that I'm making a promise to myself. That is nothing to sneeze at. If I manage to fulfill the promise, then I quite rightly feel proud and my belief in myself increases. If I don't, then I must face the fact that I am unreliable and that my word does not mean very much. So to me, systems are tied into very personal and existentially important concerns. Of course things come up, but that's why flexibility should be built into the system; part of keeping your word to yourself involves having the wisdom to make promises that you can keep. But all in all, those types of promises are serious business. Or, as a rapper would say, bidness. So what motivates any extra work that can be done? If I (or you) focus too hard on promises, one of two things is likely to happen: 1)you will try to fulfill your promises and stop there 2)you will fulfill your promises and then make tougher promises in order to motivate yourself to getting more work done Both these approaches are problematic. In the case of the former, you end up selling yourself short in terms of the amount of work you put in. And yet I believe that it's better to succumb to 1) rather than to 2). The problem with 2) is that language learning becomes a never-ending serious of serious and stressful tasks; promises start seeming arbitrary when they come up too often and when fulfilling one promise just means creating more difficult promises. Learning begins to feel like a treadmill, the fun gets sucked out and stress levels increase. The solution is to tap into that sense of enthusiasm. Fulfill the promises to yourself; it's what is most important for your pride and for ensuring that you *will* make progress no matter what. Once you have clearly done what you promised to yourself, I suggest switching gears completely and having any further work done with and out of joy and enthusiasm. The second that you start getting stressed out or feel trapped, stop the work immediately. Of course you can feel joy and enthusiasm when doing what you are "supposed" to do, and so much the better if you can manage it. It's just that no matter how much joy you feel, you are still going to be aware that this is something that you *have* to do. It's that feeling of "need" that is unnecessary and counterproductive when going the extra mile. 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 63 of 206 04 January 2009 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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Finished the reader.
The last section was comprised of three selections from various Italian novels... I only read those once. Some thoughts: remembering that my goal over the break was to re-familiarize myself with the language, this has been a resounding success. I watched some Italian television and am already understanding more than I did a few weeks ago. Still, reading these snippets of novels made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do, especially with respect to vocabulary. There's no way around it; I just don't understand many of the words. Ok, so now a bit more focus on the audio, but the main thing is to review my textbook before next Saturday. 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 64 of 206 05 January 2009 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
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Since last time:
Went through about 30 pages of Barron's Italian: The Easy Way. Since I want it done by Friday at the latest and the book is about 300 pages, I need to get cranky on this. I also finished the first CD of Michel Thomas Advanced and started re-listening to it. It looks like this set of CDs is almost strictly focused on grammar. I have no problem with this; there is very little filler on this CD, and very of the wasted time in the beginner CDs (i.e.: when the novices would stumble around looking for the proper word). So far it's just been verbs tenses: present, simple future, conditional and imperfect. Hopefully the 3 other CDs will have more than just the rest of the verb tenses, but like I said, as long as the filler is kept to a minimum, I am happy. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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