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Advice for someone struggling with L2? | ||
Tags: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| pagare Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3540 days ago 16 posts - 15 votes Studies: English | Message 17 of 24 09 January 2015 at 4:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Update: doing my best with assimil and the other programs I mentioned. I have a question. How long does it
take to fully understand most television shows? It seems like by the time I think about what the words mean they are so far ahead I am LOST? Also how do I stop translating in my head and "think" in L2? They said Italian isn't a hard language for a native English speak but I am definitely having difficulties speaking and listening! Reading and writing aren't so bad if I have TIME to work out the solution :( any respond will be greatly appreciated. I just feel like I'm all a mess with studying or talking on Skype or watching tv etc. sorry for the rant guys. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5024 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 18 of 24 09 January 2015 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Unfortunately it is just practice. However, I would recommend you find a couple of TV Shows that you like which has a couple of seasons to watch and watch those all the way through. It helps to know the characters and the speech patterns of the actors. TV is best for this because films can be all over the place and you only get 90 minutes of exposure, where you can get a couple of hundred hours with a long running series like Carabineri, or Tutti Pazzi per Amore. You might also like to try doing subs2srs for a film which has Italian & English sub-titles. This will let you break down the sentences and although you still hear them at native speed they are broken into chunks. Practice, practice, practice. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6370 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 24 09 January 2015 at 10:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The "translating in my head" problem is usually caused by too little audio input, in my experience. Get a few hundred hours of TV series under your belt. I recommend getting dubbed shows rather than native ones, if you can. The dubbed shows are much easier to understand. Once you can watch them and parse the language without issues, proceed to native shows and movies.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 24 09 January 2015 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I've met a fair few Italians who didn't want to help me learn... but I seem to have a talent for attracting the worst native speakers ;). I second the recommendation for a tutor or language exchange if being able to speak is a priority for you. Getting input, studying grammar etc. also help with speaking, but you have to get used to the real thing sooner or later. Finding a tutor is a hell of a lot easier than finding a serious, reliable and compatible language exchange partner, but of course it costs money. I've also found conversation groups useful, but I wouldn't pay for them, because if you're going to spend money you'd be better off spending it on a tutor. In my city there's a company that charges £7 for a 1-hour session with one native tutor and several learners. Which is a bit of a joke when you can find one-to-one lessons on iTalki for less than that and you don't even need to leave the house. Free meetup groups can be worthwhile however; I always say they're not perfect but they're much better than nothing. I agree with the other posts that you just need to keep up the effort. Understanding well takes a while, and speaking well takes even longer, but if you keep going you'll eventually get there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3887 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 21 of 24 09 January 2015 at 11:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Forever. At least that's what it seems like. It depends a lot on your level of understanding of the language in itself (such as reading), because if you only know 70% of the words, for example, having perfect listening comprehension of those words isn't going to make you "fully understand" most TV shows. Additionally, you probably need hundreds of hours of watching. Personally, with French I went from "understanding most things when I focus hard, but missing a few words here and there" to "I'm not even making an effort to listen, and I understand pretty much perfectly" with 110 hours of listening over a couple of weeks this autumn/winter. But, I was already reading your average novel with >99% comprehension and able to have fluent, albeit not at all elegant, conversations about anything.
Practise! Don't just practise listening, but practise getting out of your head while listening. In the beginning, it's okay if you feel like "Oh, I know that word... but what does it mean?" Just don't follow your initial instinct to figure it out. That's when you stop listening and get lost. You might also want to try some subs2srs, if you have that option. That way, you can watch a TV series one phrase at a time and practice listening, without it getting away from you. Here's what it looks like in action, when I use it for Italian. You don't have to have the subtitles there if you don't want to, of course. I put it there, but I don't look at it unless I feel like I missed something while listening. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4797 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 22 of 24 09 January 2015 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It varies among speakers but both my romance languages took about one season of a tv
series (a standard season of 12-22 episodes of 45-60 minutes) to progress significantly from "more or less follows the story, thanks to all the context and visual clues" to "understands without much of a trouble, leaves out just details", with the exception of really hard shows, those took some more getting used to. My French had already been already quite good when I started while my Spanish had been really really low (with some bonus from French, which is however not that visible at the beginnings of listening) and it worked for both of them. As others said, take a series and stick to it. If you give up after ten minutes or you try to take 5 minutes per day for weeks, it's going to be useless. From my experience, it is the best to do a few intensive afternoons at first and devour 4 or 5 episodes in a row and after that a more reasonable pace. Take something you are very likely to enjoy for the content, perhaps something you already know in English. Just keep watching in order to force your brain catch up and not try to translate anymore. :-) L2 sound + L2 subtitles can work at the begining as well but there will come a moment you just have to take the leap of faith. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| pagare Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3540 days ago 16 posts - 15 votes Studies: English | Message 23 of 24 09 January 2015 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks for the replies guys, what are subs2srs? How do you know you put in 110 hours? Do you time it? What material? Television. Would something like all my assimil lessons for 110 hours do a great deal. I'm Not afraid to work I just want to feel like I'm making any progress. It seems Like I never really remember anything I learn until I drill it so deep in my head. But I can remember distinctive details about so many things I don't care about at all.... Edited by pagare on 10 January 2015 at 12:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3887 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 24 of 24 10 January 2015 at 10:06am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
subs2srs is a software that creates flashcards like the ones you saw in my video, with sound, pictures, and text. I use them with a TV series to work my way through every line of dialogue until I understand it, and then I can watch an entire episode without missing much. Think of it as really intense listening practice. Instead of watching a TV show and getting lost all the time, you listen to only a little bit at a time. And with a srs (spaced repetition system) programme the software shows you lines you have trouble understanding more frequently than lines you understand well (as in: a line you have trouble with might show up again tomorrow, but a line you understand perfectly won't show up for another 5 days). emk on this forum has a great tutorial.
I don't know that it took all 110 hours for the full improvement, but I know that I put in 110 hours and that's the result I had. I know it's 110 hours because each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is roughly 16-17 hours, except for the first season which is roughly half of that, and I watched all 7 seasons in French.
Yep! In my case I chose something that I knew like the back of my hand already. I don't always do that. I love lots of French original series without subtitles. In this case, though, I wanted something that was effortless to watch even when I usually had to listen very intensively to keep up and that's why it ended up being Buffy. Knowing the series so well already, I didn't have to be wide awake and alert while watching, which meant that I could spend 100-110 hours I would otherwise be too tired for French. That way, when my brain was shouting "no more!" at whatever novel I was reading in French at the time, but I still wasn't sleepy enough to go to bed, I'd watch an episode or three instead of spending that time lazying about on the web. And that's how I find the time to put in that many hours.
That depends on your level. Are you having trouble keeping up with your Assimil lessons? If you can't keep up with Assimil, obviously, practising more will help. 110 hours is probably overkill, though. That's doing the entire course again, possibly twice. If you already understand your Assimil lessons fairly well, you're much better served by more native-speed and native-style audio. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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