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I am feeling a little bit burned out: tired, bored, lack of interest. So I am taking a week off to cool the brain from Italian work.

Stopped - 1 week break
-Stopped Asimil
-Grammattica Essenziale.

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I began reading in Italian. My first book is Short Stories in Italian by Olly Richards. I am adding all unknown words into an Anki Deck. I think that reading/Anki is a good combo. I don't know maybe 4-5 words per pages. It is a very easy book and... indeed Spanish helps a lot with reading. Therein the danger.

Side note: Began watching 2 hours of French Serial/days.

I just bought and received Prego: Una invitation to italian. Chung mentioned the book in one of his posts. I am grateful.

It seems a pretty good book to complement Assimil. It has a slow pace for a 6 months journey into Basic Italian.
I like the vocabulary and the grammar. I could dump all the vocabulary into Anki for an active deck and be happy.

I feel that I might have overextended myself with Italian. As a matter of fact -what a fancy expression out of character!- I need to slow down to avoid boredom and hurting my French skills. Currently, I watch daily French news + 2 episodes of dubbed French serial. I am having fun watching how french opens itself without any pressure. I am learning a lot about France and their people... Hey... French demographic is really interesting... not at all como la americana.

So I have been considering to focus only in Assimil + Verbs + Vocabulary+Reading till I finish Assimil. Afterward, I could take grammar + listening focus.

Who knows....!

Today I reached lesson 50 of Assimil Il Italiano. It takes 1 hour every day just to work with Assimil. Adding Anki, it is another 1.5 hr. So I am giving already 2.5 hours to Italian. I am supposed starting 2nd wave, but I will not do it. I have no need to activate this language. I will just keep going. I discovered that French and Italian can fully occupy my time during this pandemic. I have no psychic energy to deal with Polish, so I placed it in my greenhouse between the lettuces and the kales. I will review A2 level –which is enough to speak to my in-laws- prior to my next trip to Poland after the Pandemic.

Anki Status – Mature cards in both directions
• Vocabulary: 554
• Verbs: 335 - I target 500 verbs by early summer
• Assimil fragments/Sentences: 402

I began to study participles, as well as present, imperfecto, and passato prossimo.

I delayed grammar till concluding Assimil. I cannot forget that this is a hobby! No need to push insanely to get it done overnight. It will stay with me the rest of my life.

I have learned 450 words in 44 days. That is about 10 words/days. Considering that Italian is a romance language, I should be able to start reading comfortable after finishing Assimil. I could now but I am not willing to allocate more time to Italian, and spring arrives soon with the Vegetable garden asking for attention.

I began gathering reading and video resources. I learned yesterday that Netflix/VPN will be good for films dubbed in Italian.
Oddly, last night I had a dream where I was speaking Italian sentences. I never did when I worked in Polish or French. You figure.

Italian skill objectives
Reading: Native fiction books
Listening: TV + films
Speaking: B1

Status
Assimil El Italiano: lesson 78

Anki – Mature cards both directions
• Vocabulary: 1568
• Assimil fragments/Sentences: 638. I stopped adding to this pack.
• Read: 0 . This will gather all unknown words from the thousands of books I will surely read.

Books read
Stories per ridere – A2/B1 It was a lot of fun
Storied di due minuti – A1/A2 Boring but useful
All unknown cards into a birectional deck. As of today, all unknown will go into a unidirectional deck. I think I have enough active vocabulary to communicate my wishes at B1 level.

Since I am trying to replicate –as possible- my French learning steps, I started using lingq. My approach is to listen, then find unknown words, listen again and dumped unknown into an Anki deck. So far so good. I am working to increase my listening Italian vocabulary. I will probably stop when the known word count reaches 25k. It is now 2295.

Upon Assimil conclusion, I will be adding a daily dubbed serial episode as well as using these books to replace one hours of concentrated study:

Italian Demystified – Marcel Danesi
Each chapter has oral practice exercises that I will used for my accustomed reading aloud repetitions.

New Italian Grammar in practice – Susanna Nocchi - Short explanations followed by exercises. I choose this book because it is for English speakers. I am a little worry of Spanish/French creating troppo interference.

I have not studied yet seriously Italian grammar. I will be doing the exercises and taking very brief note. I do not intent to make a grammar deck. I will let reading and listenng to take care of grammar rules.

I feel a little burned out with Italian. Time for a short break. I paused Assimil for a week.

I am finding very interesting as well as pleasurable that I do not translate when I listen or read Italian/French -Of course, I don't do it for the English language. That is something to reflect on. Actually, translation would become really tricky: Into which language, English/Spanish? I have no idea. I just don't; I just perceived L2/L3 to .... Understanding. I feel that I will have a much higher Italian listening skills than for French because Italian similarity to my native Spanish. I'd bet I might be due to my heavy listening emphasis. One day, when I return to review Polish, I will look further into this topic.

You're a bit further on with this by now, but I just wanted to comment on the piano/plano thing. I was also nonplussed at first when I saw that word, but then quickly realised a pattern from words like piazza/plaza/place, pianta/planta/plante. And based on that interesting contribution from RPG about pl and ll being from the same source I now see the relation between: piangere/llorar/pleurer.

Of course that 'pattern' doesn't apply across the board, but it encompasses quite a lot. I'm still useless at Spanish right now, so this post may come back to haunt me.

Since you're not planning to activate Italian (it's a wise decision) and is interested in passive skills, I cannot recommend this enough:
https://archive.org/details/LitalianoSe ... 7/mode/2up

Personaly, instead of 1,5 Anki, I would read and reread L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura - it contains 5k words! For a native Spanish speaker with French, it should be a breeze. (I wouldn't waste too much time on the first lessons)

They also have Introduzione alla letteratura italiana in the same series. You can read it after L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura

einzelne wrote:Since you're not planning to activate Italian (it's a wise decision) and is interested in passive skills, I cannot recommend this enough:
https://archive.org/details/LitalianoSe ... 7/mode/2up

Personaly, instead of 1,5 Anki, I would read and reread L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura - it contains 5k words! For a native Spanish speaker with French, it should be a breeze. (I wouldn't waste too much time on the first lessons)

I hate rereading... I never do... I just keep going into other books... There are millions of books waiting to be devoured!
Why do you say that there is a better alternative to Anki? I find it a great companion to extensive reading.

einzelne wrote:They also have Introduzione alla letteratura italiana in the same series. You can read it after L'italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura

why do you recommend this text? Are they pleasurable and will they keep the attention of someone ready to jump into detective and fantasy novels?

I will be finishing Assimil within 2 weeks and move into Grammar + TedTalks + Reading.
About 2 hours dedicated to Italian.

lusan wrote:I hate rereading... I never do... I just keep going into other books... There are millions of books waiting to be devoured!
Why do you say that there is a better alternative to Anki? I find it a great companion to extensive reading.

May be it's because I hate Anki:) and prefer other modes of reviewing.
I guess I wasn't explicit enough. By rereading I didn't mean rereading all chapters N times. It would be an overkill. Rather, just flipping through the text and reviewing the new words/expression which I underline. I prefer to come across a word several contexts, rather thatn review the same expression on my flashcard. I find it more effective for long term retention. And in case of high-frequency words I never use flashcards or word lists.

I like this book. Basically, it's a graded reader with a storyline (nothing special but I prefer to learn languages by reading coherent stories - it stimulates the actual reading experience), and it volume: 5k words — I'm not aware of a single textbook, graded reader which has such a vast vocabulary, and the pace is very good - about 30 new words per chapter. So basically, the review system is integrated in the reader itself. It brings you to a very solid level. Basically, the second volume is a collection of unadapted original stories.

I think, with your background you could easily finish it in a couple of months.

einzelne wrote:
I like this book. Basically, it's a graded reader with a storyline (nothing special but I prefer to learn languages by reading coherent stories - it stimulates the actual reading experience), and it volume: 5k words — I'm not aware of a single textbook, graded reader which has such a vast vocabulary, and the pace is very good - about 30 new words per chapter. So basically, the review system is integrated in the reader itself. It brings you to a very solid level. Basically, the second volume is a collection of unadapted original stories.

I think, with your background you could easily finish it in a couple of months.

Thanks. I will look further into those books though I saw all the interweaved pronunciations. It was scary!. I love also stories that's why I read all HP volumes in French. I just don't want to do it in Italian. I prefer non-electronic books but it seems that these books are very expensive in Italian. So I will have to move my Italian reading into kindle.

Grazie di nuovo!

Interweaved pronunciations are only for the first 20 chapters! I think with your background + Assimil course (which one btw? With Ease) you can skip them, if they scare you that much:) Just check the lists of new words for these 20 chapters. They are listed in the end of each chapter on the margins.