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Gary’s TAC 2013 - PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 113 of 160 26 August 2013 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I just had my first free weekend in aaaages, so I managed to catch up on some studying. Not to mention sleep!
Films Re-watched Notte prima degli esami - Oggi (thought I might as well after re-watching the original); watched Benvenuti al sud, I vitelloni, and in French, Le péril jeune. I've also been watching some episodes of Caméra café in both languages - it's a good one for short episodes and fast colloquial language, and loads of episodes are available on YouTube. Italian Super Challenge Films: 88 done, 12 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. Speaking Not much - Skype was quiet this weekend, as were my Italian friends. I did have an English/Italian chat which went quite well but it was a bit of a crazy mixture between the two languages, so more of a practice for switching than for actual Italian conversation. I also did some pronunciation work for Italian, which seems to be giving a lot of bang for the buck at the moment: I'm seeing improvements in both accuracy and speed. In French, I conversed briefly one evening during the week, and I've done some self-talk and a bit of self-recording. I was listening to myself to try and determine if my accent is really a big part of the reason for French people's negative reactions, but I honestly didn't think it was too bad. I felt that both my prosody and my individual sounds were reasonably good and have improved a lot, although my voice still doesn't sound anything like a French person's (this "sound of voice" is going to be a project at some point sooner or later - it's like the "final frontier" for me, especially as it's something that's simply not covered in courses, by teachers, or even in phonetics books as far as I've seen, so I'll be on my own!). But there's always going to be a big difference between recording myself and speaking spontaneously in a real conversation, so there's only so much I can take away from this. I'll try to record a bit of my next Skype conversation, as it's been a while since I did that. Balance and perception of what I still need to learn These days I've moved my focus to about two-thirds Italian and one-third French. But paradoxically, although my French knowledge is much larger than my Italian knowledge, it seems that the amount I still need to learn is greater for French than for Italian. I still have about 1000 unseen Anki cards for French, while my Italian deck now has nothing new and I don't feel like I have much to add to it. I'm still working through my French grammar book and learning about lots of little subtleties, while I feel like I've mostly got Italian grammar figured out. I almost feel like I don't have much more to learn in Italian, I just need to revise and solidify what I've already learnt, while for French there's still a world of unknown language. It's strange, especially as I still find conversations that go anywhere past small-talk much easier in French than in Italian. There's a lot of possible reasons. I suspect that while my goals for both are ostensibly similar, I've perhaps subconsciously set myself a higher standard for French. And since my French is more advanced, the amount of work required to get to the "next level", relatively speaking, is much greater. And since I speak Italian a lot more, I probably have a more realistic idea of how much (or how little) I realistically need to know for the purposes of social conversation and so I'm more in touch with my real goal. But all things considered I think it's just a sign that I need to add a bit more intensive work into my Italian study. I'm sure a good advanced grammar book and find some more challenging but colloquial reading material like humour sites would remind me that I still have a lot more to learn! (EDIT: Another factor that I hadn't taken into account - the similarities and overlap between the two languages. They have a lot of vocabulary and grammar in common, so I suspect that even now a lot of my French work is also somewhat contributing to my Italian, and learning Italian grammatical particularities is more a case of learning the small ways in which they differ from the French system I already know as opposed to learning a whole new system...) Edited by garyb on 26 August 2013 at 1:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 114 of 160 27 August 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Slight milestone: I finished an Italian book for the first time (La testa degli Italiani)! Massive respect to the people who're doing the proper Super Challenge and reading a hundred of them, since it took me this long to finish just one! Although I suppose I've probably read a few books' worth of Web content by now, and the first book is always the hardest. I still have about a quarter of that semi-abandoned copy of Fight Club to get through, then I'm not sure what to move onto next. I mentioned a while ago that La coscienza di zeno appeals to me, but I'd maybe be better off sticking to more contemporary work for the moment. Recommendations welcome; someone told me about a contemporary author that's not too difficult, but I can't remember the name for the life of me.
Recent Web discovery: Insegreto.it, a site where (mostly young) people post about their secrets and embarrassing stories. It's great for colloquial language, along the lines of Vie de Merde (Vita di merda does exist but it's been pretty much dead for a while), and since people talk about events from their past, there's a lot of passato remoto use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 115 of 160 29 August 2013 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going a bit crazy with the updates this week... I suppose I'm just glad to have some time for languages again.
I had two French opportunities this week, the noisy Café and the much more calm French meetup. At the latter, my speaking really seemed to be at its peak, and after a good five or ten minutes of conversation someone even asked me which part of France I'm from. Needless to say, this wasn't a native French speaker (I doubt I'll ever fool one of them!), but it was an intermediate level learner who had a reasonable grasp of the language and had spent a month in Paris, so we're hardly talking about the typical beginner who asks if I'm French at the start of the conversation to make small-talk. So definitely a sign that I'm doing something right. Of course, I was nowhere near at that level at the Monday meetup, with the only significant difference being the noisy atmosphere. I've said all that needs to be said on how that affects ability already, but it's still frustrating that in at least half of the real opportunities I'm likely to have to use a language, it's going to be in these non-ideal situations in which my ability is massively compromised by the environment. I suppose the best way to look at it is that the higher my "absolute" ability is, the higher that reduced ability will be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 116 of 160 02 September 2013 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||
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More films: I finally got round to watching the second half of La meglio gioventù - wonderful film. And I re-watched C'è chi dice no, this time with English subtitles as no Italian ones are available. It's an incredibly difficult one to follow without subs.
Italian Super Challenge Films: 91 done, 9 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. ... on the home stretch now! Not much else at the weekend. I drank too much on Friday and that pretty much ruined the rest of it as I didn't feel up to much other than sitting watching films. I could've chatted to my Parisian friend but I just didn't feel up to it. Overall I've had a really productive year so far - the progress I've made in my languages speaks for itself - and I think my resolution to drink less has been a factor! Hangovers are a massive motivation and productivity killer. I seem to have been receiving a flood of messages from Italians on Conversation Exchange recently. I've had a few short Skype chats with people, although I can't yet tell whether any of them are serious. It's mostly people new to the site, and they generally tend to start enthusiastically and then lose interest quite quickly. It appears that I've found a good position in the "language exchange market" - more and more Italians are learning English, while not many English speakers are learning Italian, so the balance is in my favour. Even if most of them aren't serious and don't last beyond a couple of chats, there's enough of them to provide a decent turnover. So on that subject... does anyone have any advice on getting the most out of language exchanges? I'm happy to just have a chat, but some people are looking for a bit more than that and I think a bit more preparation and focus could make the whole thing more productive for everyone. I suppose the best thing is for each person to understand the other's weak points and things they want to work on, and help them work on these. For me, I'm good at small talk but not so good about serious conversations on particular subjects, so it would be a good idea to find things to discuss in depth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 117 of 160 02 September 2013 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to do proper language exchanges, it means preparing your talk somewhat
beforehand. In my view, at least. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 118 of 160 05 September 2013 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, I reckon that's the best way to do it as well. Even if you're not doing something super-structured and organised, it's good to go in with at least a few ideas of things to talk about. Otherwise there's a risk of just getting stuck in small-talk, which is less challenging and can get boring unless you happen to really connect with them and make friends. I think that's an important point especially for in-person exchanges with people who're living in the country: you need to be able to offer something that they're not already getting from their social life and job. For me, normal conversation is often the thing that I need to practise most so I'm happy to just have a little chat, but for them, they probably already do plenty of that so they want something a bit more educational. I'm just thinking aloud here, as most of my language exchange attempts haven't lasted beyond a meeting or two. Anyway, this week so far: Café and Italian meetup on Monday, so I got to practise both languages. I was still quite tired, so spoke fairly well but my pronunciation was dodgy, which seems to be my "baseline" level these days. The last couple of nights I stayed in and chilled out; wanted to go to the Couchsurfing meetup but just didn't feel up to it. So I had some Skype time - mostly text chats but a couple of voice ones too. As well as all the Italians, a couple of French speakers even contacted me. Who knows if any of these will go anywhere but we'll see. I've chatted with a few people from Rome so I've been asking them all sorts of questions about areas of the city and accommodation to help plan my trip. I feel that I'm finally starting to get close to my French goals. I can talk about most things quite easily, my speech is getting more idiomatic and grammatically correct, and even my accent is starting to pick up. Still some gaps to fill in of course that more speaking opportunities would probably fix, but if the meetups keep going well then I think I'll get there, even if a bit more slowly than I'd like. But I think by the end of the year I should be at a level that I'm quite happy with. Which isn't quite a full C1 - I currently have no need to use the language for "academic and professional purposes" so I don't see much reason to work on these aspects for the moment - but I think a lot of the way there in the areas that matter to me. As for Italian, progress is still much the same: I'm getting better and better at the basics, especially grammar and verbs, but I still sometimes get stuck and struggle to find words and expressions when I want to talk about something more particular or specialised. I've been doing more intensive input like I said I would, so the Anki deck is filling up again, and if the language exchanges work out I'll try to do more in-depth conversations as discussed in the last couple of posts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 119 of 160 09 September 2013 at 11:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Not the most productive weekend for languages, but interesting nonetheless and better than the last one!
I went to a music festival with an Italian friend and a few of her friends, two of whom were also Italian. It wasn't exactly a big practice opportunity since there was one guy who didn't speak Italian, but I got some "real life listening practice" at times when the Italians spoke to each other, and I made a few attempts to join in which weren't amazingly well received. To be honest, joining in a full-speed conversation is quite a big ask, especially in a regular social situation as opposed to the somewhat artificial comfort zone of a language meetup, and it takes a certain combination of ability and confidence. Even following the conversation is hard enough when you're outdoors or in a noisy bar. Apart from that, I did some more Skyping. A lot of my new contacts seem to be more keen to do text chat than voice; I can't complain too much as it's much better than nothing, but I'd rather speak. It does have some advantages though: it doesn't require your full attention, and since it's in writing you can look over it afterwards and copy/paste vocabulary and interesting phrases. But on a weekday evening after a day at work, the last thing I want to do is more typing. I did have a couple of voice chats though, one with my friend in Paris and one with an Italian. Recently when I speak I'm trying to think about it less and just relax and let it flow more. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. It does make me a bit more fluent and natural, but at the same time my pronunciation is weaker, I sometimes make more silly mistakes especially in Italian (I got a couple of third-person verb forms wrong, like saying "cercono" instead of "cercano", which at this stage is unforgivable...), and when I get stuck I really get stuck because I need to "switch on" again. But I suppose the whole extensive and intensive input thing also applies to output: sometimes it's good to have conversations like that where you don't think too much and just let it flow, and sometimes it's good to be very focused and attentive about what you're saying and how you're saying it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 120 of 160 09 September 2013 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | ||
This is exactly the part of French I am working on. I have had no shortage of opportunities to converse in French in the past - I don't hugely need to learn colloquial language apart from really specific slang. I can do this without thinking because immersion teaches you that. But even if you don't use French academically or for business, it's worth looking into words that make a structured discourse easier. These are also detail-level things like for example being accurate with your pronunciation (not just your phonemes, but also, for example, taking into account clarity, rate of speech, etc.) Words like d'abord, or, bien que, malgré, grâce à, etc. It helps if you know 10 ways of indicating cause in French using synonyms in the correct way (even if it's so you don't just abuse parce que and maybe car). 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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