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Italian in one year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| stevesayskanpai Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 11 24 December 2014 at 12:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Hi all,
I want to learn Italian up to at least B2 level in one year. I think this is pretty achievable, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about it is. A few random thoughts / questions below: 1. Should I sign up for a beginner evening class? I feel like paying for a class would provide me with the motivation to definitely go! However I'm worried a beginner class would be too slow for me (I've done Michel Thomas' Italian foundation previously, and am usually quite a quick learner anyway) 2. What's the best step-by-step approach to take? What resources should I use? I actually find the variety of choices for learning a language quite paralysing, in that a) there are lots of different courses / books / apps, and b) because I'm interested in the methodology of learning a language I don't want to 'get it wrong' (which is silly, I know) My parameters are that I work full time and have limited time in evenings and maybe one day on the weekend to work on my language acquisition. Resources I've considered include: Anki (I used this for Japanese), Duolingo, other language learning apps, Pimsler, Michel Thomas, Assimil. Thanks for any advice you may have! I want to start my new language learning project in January - and this time hope I have a structured plan and the enthusiasm to follow it through! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4967 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 2 of 11 24 December 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Italian is a language close to English and abundant in resources. I advise you not to spend much time
thinking about what to do next. Gather your best resources and start doing one after the other. If you notice one textbook wasn't enough, for instance, proceed all the way to the other one. Just don't spend much time on each resource, because that will make it longer for you to reach intermediate and advanced levels, which isn't necessary given Italian's closeness and would just slow you down. I wouldn't be giving you such advice if you were learning an exotic language (Georgian, for example). Assimil is best used after your first intro, so you can do Michael Thomas or Duolingo or Teach Yourself/Colloquial-style textbook for no longer than a couple of weeks before starting Asssimil. You can continue that other resource, the point is just not to start Assimil at zero because if you have at least an idea of what is going on in the language you can make a better use of Assimil. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5063 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 11 24 December 2014 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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In addition to expugnator's excellent advice, I'll add my tuppence. You've already experienced learning one language to a level of usefulness. While signing up for a beginner class may provide "motivation", you will be proceeding at the level of the class.
If all you need is motivation, sign up for one of the TAC teams (Total Annihilation Challenge) here on the forum. Start a log and start learning. I prefer a multi-track approach to language learning. Pick a couple of good, complimentary courses (you've already done MT) like Pimsleur and Assimil or another book based course with audio. Add in some native material- songs, bilingual/parallel texts and get going. If you have computer skills, you might consider emk/sprachprofi's subs2srs and check out the link to eydimörk, Italian the easy way (subs2srs) (caveat: all three are experienced language learners). Here's the important bit- keep going! That's the rationale behind joining a TAC and starting a log. Good luck! Edited by iguanamon on 24 December 2014 at 8:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| stevesayskanpai Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 11 24 December 2014 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Thanks both! You've given me a great starting point and I'm going to read through that
linked post now iguanamon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5333 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 11 24 December 2014 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sounds like a fun project! Iguanamon's advice is excellent, as always.
I agree that you should probably skip the beginner class, unless it's one of the rare, hardcore classes like Middlebury's. Your typical class will just drag you down to the level of the class, and you can't afford that if you want to make it to B2 in a year. Almost any of the courses and applications you mention would make for a good starting point. I definitely think you should "carry over" all the things that worked for Japanese, such as Anki—these tools will go through a Romance language like a buzzsaw. I'll also chime in support of iguanamon's "multi-track" recommendation. It's not so much that I think you should do two courses—that's purely optional—but that I think you should definitely try to mix in native media as early as possible. Don't hesitate to cheat creatively, of course. Don't stress over native media, of course—for hard languages, you might need to do 30 or 50 Assimil lessons before you can decipher even the easiest native media, even with help from parallel texts. Why native media? Well, I've seen quite a few people mix native media with Assimil, and the results have generally been pretty impressive. The problem with beginner courses is that they encourage you to remain in a comfortable, simplified version of the real language, and that many people wait too long before striking out on their own. To progress quickly, you need to deal with the real, undiluted language relative early in the process. One more thought: If you want to progress quickly, you've got watch constantly for diminishing returns. For example, I made very rapid progress with Spanish listening comprehension using subs2srs, but after about 6 weeks, things were getting easy, comfortable and boring. Every day, I'd see 20 new cards, each with 3 to 5 seconds of audio, and I'd learn them quickly and easily. So over the last several days, I've been changing things aggressively: I now have 10 seconds of audio on many cards, and I've started doing some Listening/Reading, both of which are a real stretch. Benny Lewis calls this a "problem solving" approach—you identify your biggest problems, you attack them aggressively, and you try not to get stuck in a comfortable rut. Good luck with your project! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 24 December 2014 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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You've gotten some excellent advice above. If you were willing to pay for the class, then I would suggest you go ahead an pay for personalised tuition. There are a lot of great people out there who will do 1-2-1 tuition via Skype or google hangouts. This will allow you to practice output as well as getting input.
You might want to check out some of the tutors on iTalki and find one who can do the times you want. If you can afford a class, you could probably afford 2 tutor sessions per week. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4466 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 11 24 December 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Anything that provides motivation is helpful in my view. Although, as others have said, the time and money may well be better spent on tutorials via skype (or face to face).
Anything that works! Seriously, "the best is the enemy of the good enough". When I started working on Japanese I spent more time than I probably should have done amassing resources. As it turns out, there are plenty (and there are almost certainly more for Italian). So I would definitely start watching something (anything really) to begin to get a feel for the sound of the language. You'll probably need some basic grammar to get going, but almost any book will do at this stage, as long as you don't hate it. There are plenty of Italian newspapers online. I read Corriere Della Sera daily and it has a neat feature where you can click on a word and a popup appears that will take you to a sound file of that word or various dictionary definitions.
I spend about 90m most days commuting to and from work. I have various lessons on an MP3 player and that's allowed me to rack up quite a few hours of listening. There are probably plenty of other small windows of time you could fill with some form of Italian. How obsessive do you want to be? :-)
Those are all good. Memrise is neat too. As you are in the UK, a satellite dish pointed towards Hotbird plus a receiver will get you RAI1, RAI2, RAI3 plus a few other related Italian channels and several hundred other channels (many Italian, but plenty of other languages too).
がんばって！ Keep going. If TAC has taught me one thing it's that lots of people start in January but finish in March, for various reasons. So the best thing you can do for a language is to keep going (assuming more important things in life don't crop up ...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| stevesayskanpai Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 11 24 December 2014 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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ありがとう for your reply and I hope your Japanese studies are going well.
Everything you say makes sense - I guess I just have to make it happen! If I can learn Japanese I'm sure I can learn Italian - it's all about making an effort and - as you say - sticking with it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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