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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 97 of 167 03 July 2012 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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The Italian meetup was good last night. Again the level was quite high and I was the
least advanced speaker by a long way, but on the other hand the conversation wasn't particularly fast-paced and there were only three other people so I got plenty chance to speak. Observations: - I make a lot of small mistakes with gender and verb endings and so on. This was the case with my French for a while and like most things it really just improved with practice. - I still often have trouble remembering verb forms, especially all these pesky irregular ones where the stem changes. Again, improves with practice. - After about an hour I felt quite mentally tired and so wasn't as talkative. I guess this is normal for a language that one isn't yet very used to speaking. - My rolled Rs are inconsistent - sometimes I do them well but sometimes they just don't really roll and they come out like English approximant Rs. This is something I should isolate and practise as it's quite important. - The two Italians there were from the South, whereas I'm more used to hearing people from the North. I get the impression that people from the North speak the language slightly more correctly and elegantly (or in other words, closer to the standard that's taught in books). For example there were a few times when someone used the imperfect indicative when I'm quite sure they should have used the subjunctive ("se era" instead of "se fosse" etc.); I suppose we do the same thing in English, as we often say "if it was" instead of "if it were". I found that there's a language exchange group in the CouchSurfing group for my city, so I put up an ad for a French or Italian exchange there. Again I'm not getting my hopes up but it's worth a shot! Also it's time to update the Super Challenge: Films: 8 done, 92 to go. Speaking hours: 7 done, 93 to go. Still not much, which is reassuring when I think about how good I should be once I've done all 100 of each! 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 98 of 167 06 July 2012 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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After waiting for a few days I've had a few more replies for language exchanges for
French and Italian, and I met with an Italian girl yesterday. Despite her English being far, far better than my Italian, she seemed willing to help me practise. Also tried to meet a Frenchwoman but she cancelled at the last minute one day, rearranged for the next day, then didn't show up, so I can probably forget about her. A French guy responded to my ad with enthusiasm but then never got back to me when I emailed to arrange a time. No big surprises there - I think most of us here have found out by now that potential language exchange partners are some of the most unreliable people you'll ever meet - although it's still a pain since I'm pretty busy and I'm making sacrifices to find the time to meet these people. I'm a bit less busy today it seems so I should be able to deal with the other responses sitting in my inbox. The Great Intermediate Plateau seems to have very much begun for my Italian - the stage where you can converse reasonably well half the time but the other half of the time you just can't figure out how the hell to say what you're trying to say and can't seem to dig out the words and expressions you need from the depths of your passive knowledge. But similarly to what I've said before, I've already been there with French so I know how it is and I'm not losing hope. Just need to keep up the conversing and the studying, and if the speed at which I got through the beginner stage is anything to go by, it shouldn't be too long until I see progress. But then again the beginner-to- intermediate stage really is the easy part. On the subject of French, I was at the Meetup on Wednesday and I was still noticing a big improvement compared to before I went to France: these ten days seem to have worked their magic. People are often asking me if I've spent time living in France, which can only be a good thing. However, my trip and reading some articles on Fluent French Now have made me aware of some of the gaps in my knowledge, particularly the typical exchanges between a customer and a shopkeeper and other day-to-day things which I've simply never had to learn because I've never lived in France. I think my voice is also improving, but I haven't had any feedback either way yet and I'm sure there's still plenty work to be done there. I tend to do the "from the mouth" thing naturally when I speak Italian so I've been trying to make my French voice more like my Italian voice. And in general... I seem to once again be feeling stressed and burnt out from trying to do too many things at once. Work's been crazy since I got back from holiday, social life isn't letting up, all the searching for language exchanges is difficult and time- consuming, and I've been trying to be more consistent with music practice. Still yet to find that balance. Italian Super Challenge Films: 8 done, 92 to go. Speaking hours: 7.5 done, 92.5 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 99 of 167 07 July 2012 at 7:19am | IP Logged | ||
That's great news about the improvement in your French; congrats! I myself had been reading the recent (July 3rd) post in Speak French Fluently (or "Fluent French Now"; the blog banner has one name, the website address another), on "Basic patterns of conversational French for shopping", and had just recommended it to Jeffers, who was asking for pre-trip advice. It's a good article, isn't it? (Now, if only they had audio too..) 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 100 of 167 09 July 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm referring to - while the language used is pretty basic in itself, and I'd have no trouble understanding such a dialogue, I'm often unsure of the right phrase to use for the right situation, to "follow the script". It's a great website as it seems to be aimed straight at people like me who know the language quite well but still need to tighten up their conversation and day-to-day usage, and them constantly making the point to focus on learning the basics well is a good reminder. 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 101 of 167 09 July 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Italiano
Per la prima volta, comincio a sentirmi davvero frustrato dall'italiano ; fino ad ora imparare la lingua è stato quasi senza problema e senza sforzo, però adesso ho l'impressione che la lingua è diventata all'imprevisto difficilissimo. Spesso non riesco a dire una sola frase senza sbagliare, e so bene che ci vuole la pratica ma non trovo l'opportunità di praticare, neanche dopo aver provato a trovare degli scambi su Skype e nella mia città ; ho provato a incontrare un'altra Italiana al week-end ma non siamo riusciti (sabato è resa conto che aveva già un impegno, e domenica non ha trovato il luogo...), e i miei contatti su Skype non sembrano mai essere disponibile contemporaneamente a me. E per di più, perfino il mio libro comincia a essere difficile, e ci sono un bel numero di parole francesi che non conosco (peccato che non ci sia una versione inglese del libro). Ma io sapevo tutto il tempo che ad un certo momento le cose sarebbero così, e questo vuol dire semplicemente che sono arrivato al livello intermedio come l'ho detto nel messaggio scorso. Français Hier soir j'ai regardé une moitié du film "Paris, je t'aime", mais à part ça, pas grand chose après mercredi ; j'ai eu les mêmes problèmes qu'avec l'italien, les gens peu fiables et pas d'heures qui conviennent pour parler sur Skype. Mais je vais rencontrer quelqu'un ce soir pour faire une échange. On verra... English Rant How difficult is it to arrange and agree to a time and a place and then to turn up at that place at that time? More difficult than most people can manage, apparently. This goes for Skype meetings too. 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 102 of 167 12 July 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Monday's French exchange went very well, I felt like I was speaking better than ever
although I think my pronunciation/voice was inconsistent at times. Certainly a better use of my Monday evening time than the Language Café. I'm running out of interesting things to write about my French; basically I keep practising and it keeps improving. Also my general conversation skills are still improving which makes things easier - finding things to talk about with somebody for over an hour often isn't particularly difficult, especially if they're reasonably talkative too, and I've got on very well with all of the people who have actually come to meet me for exchanges so far. Yet another last minute cancellation from the second Italian girl; I'm not sure whether she's messing me around or she really is just completely disorganised, but in any case she doesn't seem very serious about doing an exchange despite her initial enthusiasm. Might give her one more chance, and if that doesn't work then I'll forget about her. The first one, however, has pulled off an absolutely sterling performance - agreed to and turned up to two meetings in a row! She said that, while my vocabulary isn't huge yet I seem to know and use the basics quite well and I seem to take care to not make mistakes, which is good feedback as using the basics well and accurately is what I'm aiming for at the moment. I'm slowly getting more used to actually speaking the language, so I just need to keep getting the practice. I'm also supposed to be speaking to someone from Bari on Skype this evening, which could be interesting as I don't think I've heard someone from that area before. The people of the region seem to have decided that spoken Italian doesn't have enough awkward and confusing verb tenses already and so they need to throw in another to add to the fun - they often use the passato remoto, normally reserved only for writing and storytelling, to talk about what they did last weekend. Again, though, I'm not waiting with baited breath for them to actually come online and be free. Italian Super Challenge Films: 9 done, 91 to go. Speaking hours: 8 done, 92 to go. 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 103 of 167 17 July 2012 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Today I'm too lazy to update in French and Italian, so it'll just be English. I'll try
to do TL updates later on in the week. Italiano Italian seems to have become my main focus in the last couple of weeks - I've been quite consistent with Assimil, and the search for conversation partners continues. I've got a fair few Italian contacts on Skype, and I've had a few brief chats, but overall it seems that they're rarely online at the same time as me. I often feel like I'm the odd one out among my friends because I work regular full-time hours, and with my Skype contacts it's much the same. During the week they often don't even sign on until 11pm (midnight in Italy) which is around the time I start to think about going to bed, and during the day at the weekend, when I generally have the most free time, Skype is a ghost town, as is SharedTalk and all the rest. I suppose since most young Italians can't find a job, they end up staying up late and sleeping in late, then they spend the weekend with friends and family. If I were learning Chinese or something then I'd expect schedule differences to be a problem, but I didn't anticipate that it would be the case with a country that's only an hour ahead of us... I'm still not losing hope though, I'm sure the opportunity is out there and I just need to find it. I know there's lots of Italian speakers in my city, I just need to figure out how to connect with them. I made it to the Italian meetup yesterday night, which was interesting. There were more people than usual, 7 or 8, so at the start of the evening the more-advanced-speakers- dominating-the-conversation phenomenon was in full effect, but later on it split into smaller conversations and I got to speak more. At the start of the evening I was speaking badly and making a ton of mistakes, but as it went on and I got more comfortable and more used to speaking the language, my speaking improved a lot. Yet another argument for learning one language to a decent level before starting another - keeping up motivation. The intermediate plateau is bad enough in one language, I'd hate to be on it for two at once, whereas after going through it and beating it once I feel far more confident that I can do it again. I have plenty cause to feel negative about my Italian - my struggling and my mistakes at the start of a conversation, the sheer amount of things you have to think about when you're forming a sentence (which verb form, which article, which adjective form for the gender and number of the noun, etc.) and knowing that it's going to take a while for all that to become automatic, the frustration with trying to find practice opportunities, the lack of time to study, and the overwhelming amount of the language and its subtleties that I've still to master - but none of that matters when I remember that I've already gone through it all and succeeded with French. Last night I was thinking that, as I learn Italian, I feel like I'm watching the my process of learning French again but in fast- forward. I'm sure that even in the few hours last night I made some notable progress. So I'm feeling a bit more positive now. Italian Super Challenge Films: 10 done, 90 to go. Speaking hours: 11 done, 89 to go. Français With all that work on Italian, my French is being neglected slightly. I was supposed to meet someone for a French exchange but they cancelled - several hours in advance and with a good reason, so no problem. I'll make up for it tomorrow - I'm meeting someone else (another non-native speaker though, so I'm not sure how useful it'll be but we'll see) and then going to the French meetup. I guess I've had more motivation for Italian than for French because my French is already quite good while I want to improve my Italian a lot. But my French still isn't quite fluent yet, and at this stage I really need to keep up the efforts to make the push through to that level. Annoyance of the day This should become a regular feature. For today: when someone who's otherwise fairly fluent immediately uses the English word/expression for something when they can't remember the TL one, instead of making the modicum of effort required to remember it, explain around it, or ask someone. Good luck with that strategy when you're in Italy and your interlocutors don't know English! 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 104 of 167 19 July 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Plenty French practice as expected in the last couple of days, but all with other non-
native speakers. I can't complain too much, as all conversation practice is good, but at the same time, at my level I get far more benefit from speaking to people who speak better than me. These days that pretty much just means native speakers - I don't like to boast but... I'm getting quite good and I rarely meet non-native speakers who speak better than me. With the big exception of accent of course - I always cite the example of all the people I've met who've spent a year or two in France and use a limited vocabulary with plenty basic mistakes but in an almost perfect accent. Anyway I don't think I am really boasting, as I still feel like I have an absolute ton to learn, I still make mistakes, and I could often express myself more elegantly. I might be good compared to others, but not compared to my own standards ;). And the old advice goes that if you want to get good at something you should spend time with people who're better at it than you are. On the subject of accent, my latest crazy accent-improvement idea is trying to set something up on my computer where I can hear myself speak while shadowing or on Skype - this means routing the sound of my microphone to my speakers or headphones. I'm still trying to experiment to find the best configuration - if I route everything to the speakers I unsurprisingly get a bunch of feedback, if I route everything to the headphones it's difficult to hear both my voice and the other audio, and if I route the audio to the speakers and my voice to one earpiece of my headphones I hear everything well but I get a strange doubling effect on the audio due to the speakers feeding back into the microphone. Having everything in headphones should be the best solution but I'll need to experiment with levels. Anyway my idea is that I'll get the feedback of hearing my voice as I speak and be able to work on and correct my accent in real time. I'm not sure how well exactly it'll work - it might just give my already overloaded mind yet another thing to concentrate on and make things more difficult for me, and it'll certainly be strange at first to hear myself as I speak, but I'll try it for a wee while and see if I get used to it. No responses from language exchange partners this week, even the ones I've already met. If anyone's looking to grow a thicker skin and learn to take things less personally, I heartily recommend a search for language exchange partners. Tomorrow I'll be going to a dinner where there will probably be a few Italian speakers, so if the stars (or rather, the seating arrangements) align the right way I might be able to get some practice. Not getting my hopes up but we'll see. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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