Mike's Italian log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sat Aug 28, 2021 9:45 pm

background: I'm going to go to Italy in summer 2022 and wanted to learn some basic Italian before I go. I've been to Italy before, and about 7 years ago I did the Pimsleur Italian course thru level 3 as well as Michel Thomas. I posted a question about what I can expect to learn in roughly a year and my initial plan of study in this thread: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 7&p=190767

I'm creating this log to track my progress and thoughts about the process. So far I've completed the 1st course from Pimsleur and also the Paul Noble Italian. I did the Noble course to get a different (but similar) take compared to Michel Thomas. I'm going to do the Michel Thomas course next to hopefully reinforce the ideas. So up the past month and a half I've done about 40 hours study, not a lot, but better than none I suppose. I also started Anki a week or two ago with a list of 400 words including audio for the Italian I found on the ankiweb site.

I was having trouble remembering the words I was trying to learn when they were new with Anki and asked about it on the forum. What I've ended up doing is modifying the schedule to have shorter delays that the standard ones in Anki while learning and then use it 3 or 4 times a day. I find I'm remembering the words much better now.

As for thoughts, I think having done the Pimsleur course before has helped when repeating it. Much has been forgotten but some sentences and phrases did stick. Another thought is I need to avoid the distraction of looking for other/better resources. As a native English speaker it is far easier to read blogs and websites about learning languages than to actually do it! Endlessly distracting and fun to read, the time I spend reading about learning would better be spent working with what I have even if it is imperfect.
5 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Mon Sep 06, 2021 1:04 am

I finished the Paul Noble course, continue with the Anki vocabulary work, and continue with the Pimsleur course. I started the Michel Thomas Italian course which is similar to the Paul Noble course. I think I like the Thomas course slightly more than Noble. The pronunciation is better on the Noble course, but he over-prompts for answers and practically gives it away. Without trying to retrieve I don't think the learning is as deep. Also the Thomas course feels more like a conversation and the 2 students are (so far) pretty decent, compared to the Thomas French where one was a dunce and was a bit frustrating to listen to.

The Pimsleur course has gotten more difficult for me now that I'm on the 2nd set of lessons, Italian 2. I know the words and I can usually come up with the correct conjugation of the verb just by thinking of what I need to say; I'm not running thru conjugation tables in my head. Where I'm having problems is with pronouns, and especially with sentences where the order changes from English. For example they will prompt with "We can take a taxi there" but in Italian the word "ci" needs to go at the very front of the sentence "ci possiamo prendere un taxi". I guess I must be rapidly translating the sentence word-for-word instead of grabbing the thought and expressing it in Italian. I'm not sure how to change that, maybe it comes with more practice. I think I'm going to need to start doing each lesson 2x.
7 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sat Sep 11, 2021 10:38 pm

I've continued with Pimsleur, although I missed 2 days for Labor day weekend. I'm now on lesson 12 of the 2nd set. I'm a bit of a visual learner, sometimes it's hard for me to understand exactly what I heard until I see it in writing. Turns out google translate is the perfect tool. I pause the playback of Pimsleur just before the sentence I'm not clear about, then enable google translate and the Italian sentence is put into text. Just like magic! I don't need the translation, the Pimsleur course already gave it to me, but seeing the words spelled out in Italian is helpful especially when the word is unclear to me (eg. are they saying "di" or "da")

I've continued with Anki and that's going ok. I modified the learning schedule a lot. For new words I'm using "1 3 8 12 30 60". I find the extra repetitions compared to the stock settings are helping me remember the words better. I guess my memory decays faster than the stock model anticipates, but with more reps I'm still learning the words which in the end is what matters.

I've done a bit more on Michel Thomas, I'm up to the start of the 3rd lesson. The learners in this course often respond faster than I can so I need to hit pause before they give the answer. It's a recording, and I feel dissed by it ;-)
3 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:51 pm

continuing with Michel Thomas. It has become noticeable harder and a bit discouraging. I like his conversational style, but am feeling a bit overwhelmed. He explains the rules, but just hearing them once or twice isn't enough to make the distinctions stick. For example when to use la vs le. As the rules build up they become harder to recall and apply quickly.
5 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:37 am

Not a lot of progress this week. I went on a trip out of town and thought I'd get a few hours of Michel Thomas and Pimsleur in during the drive there and back. Yay Mike! But it turns out driving a car takes concentration and I didn't feel like I was paying enough attention to the audio to really have anything sink in. That was with both programs.
4 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:34 pm

after putting Italian aside for over a year when my trip was cancelled, I started back again two weeks or so ago. I'm using Michel Thomas and Pimsleur to start, once I've gotten some basics down I plan to start with Assimil in a few weeks, and then perhaps Glossika. I'm trying to spend 1.5 to 2 hours per day.

I did the Pimsleur course several years ago so it feels in some sense familiar, although there is plenty I've forgotten. I'm doing 2 or more lessons per day. Pimsleur is based on somewhat of a SRS approach and there is plenty of spaced practice within a lesson but I've noticed that some things don't seem to come back in subsequent lessons (or at least I haven't run into them again yet). I'm up to lesson 24 of Pimsleur 1A/B.

For Michel Thomas I've found I need to go a lot slower than Pimsleur. Maybe the students are much better than me, or maybe they had longer pauses and they were trimmed out of the CD. I did Michel Thomas in my car commuting to work several years ago so I couldn't pause and think of answers, but now I'm doing it on my desk and I find I need the time to think and so am hitting pause. I'm up thru disk 4. Each 1 hour disk is taking about 2 hours to do; they seem to have a lot more info and explanation density than Pimsleur. Fortunately Michel Thomas has a pdf available that isn't a transcript but has many of the sentences from the course, so I'm putting sentences I want to work on into anki as well as some of the language rules (using cloze for those). After building up some cards (or are they notes?) I just started using anki for review a few days ago and am glad I did since things I thought I knew I was a bit shaky on. Makes me wonder how well I'd really recall the stuff from Pimsleur.

edit: I saw on the MT website they say "You will learn at your own pace, pausing and repeating where necessary, and complete the course in about 20-30 hours."
6 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Feb 05, 2023 9:25 pm

I'm towards the end of disk 8 of MT Foundation Italian. It is the last disk before the review disks. For Pimsleur I'm on lesson 26 of the 1st 30 lessons, so I've been spending most time on MT because I want to get thru it and start the Teaching Company Italian course (from my library on Kanopy) and also Assimil. I've been putting many of the sentences from MT into anki but I'm still slow on recalling them. Several times in the lessons MT admonishes the students not to guess, not to go "by ear", but to take their time and think it out. So what he's teaching seems to be not fluency but understanding of the language. I'm hoping to eventually be able to speak at a pace that isn't torture for the other person but I'm thinking that comes with more massed practice using Assimil and perhaps Glossika. I'm hoping that by using MT first I can figure out what's going on in various sentences I will learn, more than having them be just a jumble of sounds uttered to mean one particular thought.

Pimsleur feels quite different, it's like SRS on steroids where a small number of phrases are repeated over a 30 minute lesson until hopefully they've sunk into longer term memory. Pimsleur is short for the most part on grammar explanations, so MT seems to make a good complement.
3 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Feb 12, 2023 8:34 pm

Finished Pimsleur Italian 1 and starting on 2. Also decided to do the Michel Thomas intermediate course. He sounds older or more tired in the intermediate course.

I set up many sentences from MT in anki and was doing ok in the forward direction (English to Italian) which is the way he teaches the lessons. Not fluent, though; I often need to think it thru just like the students do in the lessons, instead of being able to easily produce the sentence. And I really struggled in the reverse direction (I set up cards in both directions in anki).

Disappointed in how it was going I set up cards with just the conjugated modal verbs MT uses (potere/volere/dovere) in both directions and spent two or three days doing terrible on those too. Part of the process, I suppose, is discovering what works and what doesn't. I realized that I was learning the verbs as independent facts and because they are so similar (eg. a shared root sound and then an ending) I was confusing them. And I was missing a sense of the conjugation pattern. So I used the conjugations from Reverso for imperfetto, futuro semplice, presente condizionale, presente and used Excel to create nice tables on one page for all three verbs. MT only teaches the forms for io/Lui/noi and not all of these for each modal verb, but I figured I might as well learn all six. I color-coded the endings to make them really stand out, now at a glance I can see the pattern. I've been drilling with the spreadsheet and also used Anki Image Occlusion Enhanced to enter each verb (this tool lets you quickly block off portions of a diagram). I'm also using Reverso to say each word aloud on my computer to make sure I pronounce it something close to correct. So far I've been learning two of the four tenses.

I've also started with the Great Courses Italian course "Learning Italian: Step by Step and Region by Region" and am up to the 3rd chapter. The first two went quickly but I figure from now forward I'll need 5-10 hours per chapter to learn them. This course is more like being in a class. I'm also thinking about starting Assimil in the next month or so since my trip is in about 200 days and it takes 150 days to do the Assimil course if done following the directions.

I signed up for Glossika (free for seven days) to see what it was like and I'm disappointed. It claims to be based around a SRS approach but there doesn't seem to really be any testing which is a key part of a SRS system. There is no way to "fail" a phrase to tell Glossika you haven't learned it. During review there is dictation practice where you need to type in what you hear and I guess they could grade that, but at no time do they prompt you in Italian and ask you what it means or ask you to produce the phrase given an English prompt.
4 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:43 pm

  • Pimsleur thru set 2 disk 8
  • Michel Thomas Intermediate thru 1-4
  • Great Courses Italian starting chapter 4

I had been frustrated that I was not learning a few tenses very well and created a thread https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... p?p=222186 After reading the replies I decided to make flashcards for those tenses for the verb volere. I started by learning one tense at a time, testing myself multiple times per day and shuffling the cards regularly so I wouldn't be learning them in order. Eventually I was able to put all three tenses together and while I'm still not where I want to be (instant recognition and production) I am getting better. It's a funny thing, for me at least, that learning the endings as abstractions (eg. -evo, -evi, -eva, -evamo, etc) doesn't work very well but if I learn them with a verb such as volere (eg. volevo, volevi, etc) I find I can easily apply them to similar verbs potere and dovere. Knowing vorevano, for example, I can effortlessly produce potevano even though I haven't practiced potere conjugations. I had noticed this before with Pimsleur where they teach a few conjugated verbs in Italian I such as "parliamo" and I was able to quickly produce the same ending with other -are verbs.

The Great Courses has become more challenging. It is supposed to cover the same as a first-year Italian course in college. The first three chapters were simple, primarily definite and indefinite articles, but now it is on -are verbs and not only are we expected to learn the conjugations and about two dozen -are verbs, there are also another dozen or so idiomatic expressions to learn such as "fare una domanda". I haven't watched the lesson video yet (they recommend reading the chapter prior to watching) but I'm estimating it will take 5-10 hours per chapter. In a real in-person class there would be probably 3 hours/wk in class and perhaps another 5+ hours of studying. So I'm looking at 100+ hours on this course.

Still I think it's worthwhile. Some people may have more of a language "gift" and working just with audio they can somehow internalize the rules. I don't do so good at that. Pimsleur gives few grammatical explanations and so to me things can seem arbitrary if not random. For example using an article "il" or "la" in sentences, sometimes it seems they're used and sometimes not, but I don't have a good feeling for why or what I should do when producing novel sentences (eg' actually speaking with someone).

My trip is in about 200 days. As an ambitious goal if I do 2 hours/day that would be 400 hours of study by then. So far I've been spending 1 to 1.5 hours or so per day although if I add in the time to rehearse and create anki cards it might be a bit more. As a committment device I've told a few friends I'm studying Italian so now I won't be able to just silently quit.
6 x

miket12
Yellow Belt
Posts: 62
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:28 pm
Languages: English (N), Italian (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17198
x 174

Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Feb 26, 2023 9:28 pm

  • Pimsleur thru set 2 disk 12
  • Michel Thomas Intermediate thru 1-7
  • Great Courses Italian working on chapter 5
Continuing to practice with the flashcard deck of modal verb conjugations and am gradually getting better at them. Many I know well enough that I don't even need to flip the card to check. Anki is taking more time since I have more to review in addition to the new cards. Pimsleur has become more challenging and I might need to start doing each lesson twice. Also the Great Courses difficulty has ramped up. I'm on a chapter with -ere and -ire verbs and there are many more irregular verbs in these compared to -are that need to be memorized.

I read on the forum about someone who has a whiteboard where they write their day's plan and then have the fun of checking off items as they do them. I like the idea and ordered a whiteboard.

edit: I'm slowly piecing together things that work for me. With the flashcard deck above, I realized that SRS programs like Anki show you the stuff you're learning repeatedly and then stuff you've learned at increasing intervals. So instead of running thru the entire deck several times a day I set aside the cards I've having trouble with and just work on those several times a day, then do the whole deck once a day. This has shortened my review time a lot.
4 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: vonPeterhof and 2 guests