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Gary’s TAC 2012 - The Romantics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5009 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 73 of 167 01 May 2012 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Language Café. I can't stay away from that place. Probably because of the excitement of
never knowing what to expect there. I've had fun evenings, productive evenings, unproductive but interesting evenings, evenings that felt like a complete waste of time, and even evenings where I unintentionally rubbed people the wrong way and got upset over it. There have now been several times when I've said to myself that I'm never going back, only to find myself unable to resist as I walk past it the very next week. I went last night, usual story that I was passing by anyway and thought I'd go in in the hope that the stars were aligned the right way for there to be people to speak French with. No such luck - there were a couple of the regulars having a 25%-French- 75%-English conversation about religion in history and other such subjects to which I have absolutely nothing to contribute, and that was it. So I just joined the Spanish table, as the Spanish people are usually friendly and up practising their English, and there were a couple of familiar faces there. It turned out that the stars were in an even more unlikely configuration, leading to several Italian speakers being there, and soon enough I got speaking to them in Italian. It took me a couple of minutes to get going and get used to speaking the language, but once I got into it I found myself expressing myself quite easily for the most part. I must've been conversing in Italian for a good hour at least, and apparently I made very few mistakes and didn't get any verbs wrong. It was a fairly normal conversation about life, work, interests, travel, the usual stuff, but still, it was my first proper long conversation in the language and the Italians were quite amazed by my ability considering I've only been learning it for five months. And so was I - I had no idea that I was anywhere near capable of conversing with a native speaker for an hour, so I very much surprised myself! So, long story short, I enjoyed a good bit of ego stroking for the rest of the night, with people asking me what my "secret" is and saying that I must be "good with languages". My "secret" is of course made quite clear on my log - spending years learning French very frustratingly and inefficiently and applying the lessons learnt to the similar language of Italian, and I'm now "good with languages" because learning one has taught me how to learn others. I know it's very much comparing apples to oranges but it's still hard to believe that my Italian is much better after five months of self-teaching than my French was after five years at school. Needless to say there are still huge gaps in my knowledge when it comes to vocabulary, verb forms (for some reason I struggle to remember imperfect forms even though they're common and quite regular), and expressions, and I'm sure I'd get quite lost quite quickly in more complicated conversations. Still though, as I say I've pleasantly surprised myself and impressed some Italians, so I'm pretty happy with this progress. Super Challenge Technically that hour of speaking was before midnight of the 1st, but... let's not let a one hour difference ruin my glory now; I think it's a very fitting start to the Challenge so I'm counting it anyway. Hell, it was past midnight in Italian time. Only 99 more to go! Since I hate Twitter and the SC twitter bot doesn't seem to support my strange unofficial permutation of the challenge, I'll just be keeping track of it here. Films: 0 done, 100 to go. Speaking hours: 1 done, 99 to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4707 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 74 of 167 01 May 2012 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, Gary, that sounds great. Congratulations!
I'm still waiting for such a breakthrough with my French though my coffee break chat abilities with my colleagues are somewhat okay by now and I recognised lately that I can read much faster than I could in January... Anyway, I'll keep my fingers crossed for your Super Challenge. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5009 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 75 of 167 02 May 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks! It was indeed a breakthrough, I discovered that my active knowledge is much
better than I believed. It seems like the combination of Luca's Assimil method (or simply just the fact that I made a proper effort to concentrate on the active wave and write down all the translations) with self-talk exercises really helped "activate" what I was learning, the shadowing taught me to produce it fluidly and quickly, and my early focus on getting pronunciation right means that I have one less thing to think about when I'm speaking. I'd say that my study method that I devised at the start of the log has been a success so far! The one thing is that I didn't do nearly as much actual conversing near the start as I had hoped, partly due to lack of opportunity and partly due to lack of confidence. I'm unsure whether that would have boosted my results even further, or if establishing a good base before starting to converse a lot was the right thing to do, but in any case I think that doing a lot of "active" work from early on was an excellent idea. I'm certainly happy that I'm getting closer to finding what methods really work for me. This success, and the fact that my daily routine won't seem the same without some Assimil, has inspired me to work through Using French again, using Luca's "full circle" method to try to get more of it into my active knowledge. A flick through it confirmed that there's some good stuff in there and I hardly remember any of it, and I think it could help plug a few gaps in my French and help me express myself a bit more elegantly. Of course I'll skip over the historic and literary lessons and focus on the conversational ones. This is mostly an experiment really as I'm still wondering if there are diminishing returns from this method for more advanced and idiomatic material, but reading a blog entry on Fluent French Now (a new blog aimed at advanced learners that I found out about in the Links and Internet Resources forum which looks like it could have a lot of potential) about how comparing English and French texts that express things using very different idioms can be a good way to learn to express yourself better in French made me think that maybe it could be more useful than I thought. If I'm happy with the results then I may well get a copy of Perfectionnement Italien and do the same with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4691 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 76 of 167 03 May 2012 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, you've inspired me to take the plunge and sign up for a French Meet-Up. I have a
feeling that it'll be awkward for me at first; hopefully I'll settle in with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5009 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 77 of 167 07 May 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
Good stuff, how did it go? Your log in turn inspired me to do some more travelling, although I've no idea when I'll be able to fit it in... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4691 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 78 of 167 07 May 2012 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||
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They don't seem to meet regularly - I'm still waiting to for the next event to be posted.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5009 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 79 of 167 07 May 2012 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Français
French film night on Friday (La grande vadrouille), with the usual conversation after the film. For the first time ever, someone complimented my French accent! The complement was from a beginner, so I'll take it with a rather large pinch of salt, but still it's the first time anyone's ever said anything positive about my accent, so my work to improve it must be having some results. Anyway we had some funny slightly-drunk conversation about the music festival I'm going to. It made me think that while I may make mistakes, I may struggle to find words sometimes and not always express myself well, and my accent may still need work, I can quite easily laugh and joke along with native speakers without getting lost or feeling outside of the conversation, which is great and the bad parts should keep improving with practice. Apart from that I've started working through Using French as I said I would, and I had some free time yesterday so I chatted a bit on Skype and watched a film: Case Départ. Italiano + Super Challenge No more real conversation but I've definitely done at least an hour of shadowing and speaking practice in the last few days, and tonight I'm going to the Language Café again and hopefully the Italians will be back. If not, there's also an Italian meetup going on so I could bail and go to that instead if the Language Café isn't going well. I'm choosing the language café first over the Italian meetup because if the last Italian meetup is anything to go by then I probably wouldn't get much chance to actually speak, and I'd also like a chance to practice French too. Shame they have to be on the same evening. Yesterday I watched some episodes of L'italiano in Famiglia, a bit of Youtube stuff, and half an episode of Commissario Montalbano (with subtitles; I'm not attempting a crime series without subtitles just yet!) which I think counts as one film in total. Each episode of Montalbano is about 1 hour 45 mins so that's film length. Films: 1 done, 99 to go. Speaking hours: 2 done, 98 to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5011 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 80 of 167 08 May 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
Congratulations, Garyb. And looking over your log for the past year, the details of your other "secret" - just steady, dogged, hard work - is evident too. - Inspiring stuff! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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