Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, Italian, and Ancient Greek

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philomath
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:12 am

This week I ended up doing a lot of Spanish, a little bit of German, and completely neglecting French.

Spanish
23Sep21: I practiced speaking for 5 minutes before work. Later I listened to part of an episode of Radio Ambulante and watched a couple of videos from the YouTube channel Raquel Bookish. I'd never listened to Radio Ambulante before and I really liked it!

24Sep21: I listened to an episode of Radio Ambulante and an episode of Un Idioma Sin Fronteras. Then I watched an interview with Úrsula Corberó and some more YouTube videos from Raquel Bookish.

25Sep21: I had my first iTalki lesson in Spanish in almost two years! It went well. The teacher was very nice and spoke in Spanish for the entire 45 minutes. She gave me lots of corrections, which I appreciated, but sometimes it was too much. I kept making silly mistakes like messing up a noun's gender, swapping "para" and "por", and using the preterite when I should've used the imperfect. It was frustrating because most of the time I knew what was correct, but the wrong words came out anyway. So in those situations I didn't need her to explain why what I said was wrong. I definitely need to do more speaking practice. After the lesson, I made Anki flashcards based on all of the corrections that my teacher gave me.

German
22Sep21: I did Pimsleur Lesson 18.

23Sep21: I did Pimsleur Lesson 19.

General Thoughts
I think I should go back to alternating between Spanish and French. However, I wonder whether I should spend more time on each language, perhaps four weeks each? Two weeks just doesn't seem like enough time to make progress. I've already been studying Spanish for four weeks, but I'm not ready to switch to French, so I'll do an extra week this time. Therefore, I'll continue studying Spanish and German until October 3, and then I'll study French and German from October 4 to November 1.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:31 am

Spanish
26Sep21: I listened to another episode of Radio Ambulante, and then I listened to it again while reading the transcript. I wrote down a couple of words that I learned and made Anki flashcards for them later.

27Sep21: I continued reading En los zapatos de Valeria. Later, I practiced speaking by myself for 20 minutes. It was all right, but I felt like I was just rambling about random things. I should probably book another iTalki lesson or find a list of speaking topics to practice on my own. Finally, I wrote in my journal for 20 minutes. I think my writing has improved since I started keeping my journal in Spanish. It definitely isn’t as good as it used to be though.

French
28Sep21: I'm not supposed to be studying French this week... but I'm thinking of going to France this winter, so I watched a few travel videos in French. I also practiced speaking by myself for 10 minutes.

German
28Sep21: I did Pimsleur Lesson 20. I haven't been doing a lot of Pimsleur lately, so I was struggling with my pronunciation.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:52 am

This week I started to feel very discouraged by my speaking ability in my target languages. My Spanish lesson on Saturday made me wonder whether I’ll ever reach a point where I’m proud of my speaking skills. It's embarrassing to admit that I've been studying Spanish for thirteen years (albeit on and off), yet I still can't speak fluently. Then I realized I’m being ridiculous—I’ve barely practiced speaking Spanish in the past two years, so of course I’m struggling! It’s clear that I need to start doing a lot more speaking practice, not just in Spanish but in French and German as well.

I also need to work on my pronunciation. Lately I've found that when I speak Spanish, my mouth gets tired very quickly and I get rather tongue-tied. I thought that doing some Pimsleur lessons or reading out loud might help, so I tried both today. First I did Pimsleur Spanish III Lesson 1. I think it helped a little bit, but the people in the lesson spoke very slowly. Next I read an article from El País out loud. It didn't go very well; there were lots of long sentences and I had trouble saying them without stopping in the middle. At the end, I still felt very discouraged. :( I think next time I should try reading something that's closer to daily speech, rather than a news article. I'd also like to try shadowing a video from one of the YouTubers I like.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Fri Oct 01, 2021 3:31 am

September Summary







Last edited by philomath on Mon Nov 01, 2021 10:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish, French, German, and a little Ancient Greek

Postby philomath » Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:56 pm

Spanish
30Sep21: Before work, I spent 30 minutes writing in Spanish and posted it on iTalki for corrections. Later I listened to some podcasts: an episode of Hablando con científicos about life on Mars and an episode of Un idioma sin fronteras about artificial intelligence in Spanish. Finally, I did Pimsleur III Lesson 2 and recorded myself reading part of what I'd written earlier. I posted the recording on iTalki asking for advice on my pronunciation. So far, two people have replied. The first person said that my pronunciation is very good, and she recommended I try shadowing. The second person said that occasionally I mispronounced my Rs, but that overall my pronunciation is amazing. I appreciate the compliments, but I don’t I trust them... I think my pronunciation is decent, but I still struggle with some of the consonant sounds and I definitely don't speak as fast as a native speaker.

Next steps:
  • Practice speaking more often!
  • Practice some of the consonant sounds, especially, [ɣ], [ʝ], and [ɾ]. Back in 2019 when I had Spanish pronunciation lessons, I worked on those sounds and made a lot of progress. I think I just need to practice again!
  • Shadow a YouTube video.

I feel like I’m making a lot of progress in Spanish, so I’m reluctant to switch to French next week. However, I know that once I resume French I’ll be equally as invested. I think I’ll try three weeks of French and see how I feel: whether I want to switch to Spanish again or keep studying French for a few more weeks. Also, during my French weeks, I think it would be good to practice speaking Spanish once a week so I don’t completely forget everything.

Meanwhile, I need to pick up the pace with German... but I’ve been lacking motivation lately.
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Auf Wiedersehen, Deutsch!

Postby philomath » Sat Oct 02, 2021 5:03 am

I've been doing some thinking. Life is short, and it's silly of me to put German before Italian and Greek, two languages that I'm really passionate about. I'm glad I learned some basic German because I'll have more fun whenever I go to Germany, and I'll probably continue learning German someday. But for now it's time to say, "Auf Wiedersehen, Deutsch!" and follow my dream of learning Italian and Greek. The question now is: Which one first?

  • Learning Italian first makes sense because I'll probably travel to Italy sooner. Also, since I've studied other Romance languages, I should be able to learn Italian relatively quickly. Once I reach an intermediate level, I could start studying Greek.
  • However, learning Greek seems more interesting to me at the moment. It's also the harder of the two, so perhaps I should get a head start?
Okay, my logic for starting Greek first might be a little bit flawed, but I've never studied Modern Greek before and I'm so tempted to start! I think I'll do a little digging and look for some resources I want to use.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish and French

Postby philomath » Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:44 pm

03Oct21: Today I listened to an episode of the podcast Hablando con Científicos. Then I shadowed the beginning of the episode, using Audacity to break the dialogue into shorter segments. First I tried listening and repeating at the same time, wearing in-ear headphones. Next I tried listening first and repeating afterwards. I think it was a useful exercise, but it was also very tedious. I think it's worth doing again though. Next time, I might try cutting up all of the audio beforehand instead of doing one sentence at a time.

I also practiced speaking by myself for 30 minutes and wrote a little bit as well. I think I need to review the subjunctive. However, that will have to wait for a few weeks because it's time to switch to French!

Except I won’t be completely switching to French. I have Spanish language exchanges scheduled for Tuesday and Friday. I think I’ll want to do a little bit of Spanish before each one in order to prepare.

I also spent a while reading the Greek language logs on this forum, and I made a list of resources I want to use. However I’ve decided to study Italian first. I’m tentatively planning a trip to Italy in May, and it would be really fun if I had a decent level in Italian by then. I think I’ll start studying Italian in November.
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish and French

Postby philomath » Fri Oct 08, 2021 4:33 am

Spanish
05Oct21: I did not end up doing the language exchange I had planned. :( After work the last thing I wanted to do was make small talk with a stranger over Zoom. Part of the problem was that we hadn’t exchanged any messages beforehand except to schedule the exchange, so I had no idea whether we had anything in common. Maybe I’ll stick to lessons with iTalki teachers after all...

French
04Oct21: I reviewed 200 Anki flashcards and continued reading Les fiancés de l'hiver. I also practiced speaking by myself for five minutes. I didn't feel too rusty, which was nice.

05Oct21: I continued reading Les fiancés de l'hiver. I also watched some travel videos on YouTube and wrote a little bit.

06Oct21: I started listening to a podcast called Détenues during my commute.

07Oct21: I listened to more of Détenues and continued reading Les fiancés de l'hiver. I'm 10% done with the book now! I'm finding it a little bit boring at the moment... but hopefully it gets more interesting soon.

Italian
This weekend I’m going to visit my parents, and I’m looking forward to picking up the Italian books I left there. (I studied Italian a little bit from 2013–2014.) I know I have Assimil, Living Language, a grammar workbook, and maybe some other books that I don’t remember. I've decided that I'll study Italian as part of the Six Week Challenge starting in November. I can't wait!
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My Experience with Italian

Postby philomath » Fri Oct 08, 2021 2:18 pm

I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but from 2013-2018 I kept a language log on Tumblr. This morning I decided to reread all of my old posts about learning Italian and summarize them here. I actually studied Italian for a lot longer than I remembered:

End of 2013
A friend of mine wanted to learn Italian, so we both started using Duolingo.

2014
I began studying Italian more seriously. Initially, I tried a lot of different resources: Duolingo, Livemocha, Living Language, Memrise, Pimsleur, Practice Makes Perfect, Teach Yourself Complete Italian, and a textbook called Ciao! which one of my high school teachers gave me. The only resources I really stuck with were Duolingo and Pimsleur. I also listened to some music in Italian.

Eventually I realized I didn't have a very structured method for learning Italian, so I started a new routine. This consisted of doing more listening (mostly music) and using Assimil Italian with Ease and Duolingo. In addition, I did some reading using a book called Easy Italian Reader.

Five months into learning Italian, I got frustrated and announced that I was "starting over". I took a break for a month or two and then resumed. This time I did a lot more listening and watched a few movies, including Cinema Paradiso and La vita è bella. I also worked on my pronunciation, but unfortunately I didn't provide many details on how. At one point I tried Idahosa Ness's Mimic Method, and I might've tried shadowing as well. Anyway, mid-2014 I reported being very pleased with my pronunciation.

Besides listening and pronunciation practice, I also made it up to Assimil lesson 40. Then I became tired of Assimil (not enough grammar explanations) and of Italian in general. I took a break for ~4 months. When I re-restarted Italian, I stopped using Assimil and started using Living Language Italian again.

2015
In May 2015, I went on a five-week study-abroad trip to Italy (Rome and Venice). I was taking an art history course and a photography course, both taught in English, but I spoke a little bit of Italian in restaurants and stores. After my trip, I continued using Living Language. I also became obsessed with the flashcard method described in the book Fluent Forever. However, shortly afterward I decided to stop learning Italian to focus on Mandarin.

So, where does that leave me now? I barely remember anything, except for the most basic words and phrases. "Io capisco l'italiano, ma non lo parlo", "Mi piace la pizza!", etc. :lol: When I start Italian in November, I'll basically be starting from zero. However this time around, I definitely know a lot more about how to learn a language!
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Re: Amanda's 2021 Log: Spanish and French

Postby philomath » Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:33 pm

I didn't do any French this weekend because I was visiting my parents. However I picked up the following language books from my collection at their house:

  • Assimil Italian with Ease
  • Living Language Italian
  • Soluzioni: A Practical Grammar of Contemporary Italian
  • Vocabulearn Greek

I was really surprised to find Vocabulearn Greek. I must have found it at used books sale a long time ago, but I don't remember. I've never used Vocabulern but I've read about it on Ellen Jovin's language blog. It's probably not for me, but I think it would be fun to try anyway.
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