Mike's Italian log

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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Apr 30, 2023 7:16 pm

continuing to work thru Pimsleur Italian 2B. Some lessons go easier than others, I have the most trouble when the direct object such as "it" or "there" moves to the very front of the sentence in Italian. I haven't done any work with Anki this week so that is going to be a mountain to climb to get caught up again
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Mon May 15, 2023 3:19 am

finished lesson 29 of Pimsleur Italian 2. Also finished chapter 9 in the Great Courses Italian series. In retrospect I haven't spent anywhere near as much time as I planned on Italian over the past several months, a bit disappointed by that compared to what some people are the forum are doing.
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun May 21, 2023 7:50 pm

finished lesson 5 of Pimsleur Italian 3. Aldo progressing slowly thru the Teaching Company course, up to lesson 12. And am doing the free trial of Glossika, not that impressed with it. People speak highly of Glossika but since they show the English and say the Italian I don't feel like it's testing recall that well. Pimsleur forces you to try to recall a phrase but Glossika is saying the Italian out loud and I either listen or have to type what I hear depending on the form of the drill. But then after using the lesson if I ask myself to recall the Italian for a phrase I've learned I find that for the most part I cant. I wonder why people like Glossika so much, I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or it just gets better with time?
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Thu May 25, 2023 8:46 pm

making progress mostly with Pimsleur and also working thru the Teaching Company series. I'm on Pimsleur 3 lesson 9 and they have a dialogue at the start. They've gotten longer then in earlier lessons and are apparently at normal speed. I find that I can't get more than the gist of what they're saying. If I listen to a sentence at a time using Audacity I can understand it but it looks like understanding native speech even for words and phrases I've supposedly learned is difficult. I'm trying to remedy this a bit by doing the intro dialogue a sentence at a time, then a few sentences at a time, then the whole dialogue. I hope this is a good approach. Advice from people who have made it thru Pimsleur is welcomed.
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fromaalborg1
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby fromaalborg1 » Thu May 25, 2023 8:53 pm

miket12 wrote:making progress mostly with Pimsleur and also working thru the Teaching Company series. I'm on Pimsleur 3 lesson 9 and they have a dialogue at the start. They've gotten longer then in earlier lessons and are apparently at normal speed. I find that I can't get more than the gist of what they're saying. If I listen to a sentence at a time using Audacity I can understand it but it looks like understanding native speech even for words and phrases I've supposedly learned is difficult. I'm trying to remedy this a bit by doing the intro dialogue a sentence at a time, then a few sentences at a time, then the whole dialogue. I hope this is a good approach. Advice from people who have made it thru Pimsleur is welcomed.


I'm doing French 2, and I had to realize that it is necessary for me to listen to each lesson twice. First it felt like failure, but then; acceptance :)
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Jun 18, 2023 9:39 pm

continuing with Pimsleur 3, finished lesson 17. I'm finding that I need to do many lessons twice but I do much better on the second pass thru the lesson.

I found "Professor Dave Explains" on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... NOJ2H6zh3a and have found it helpful for review, at least the first lessons that I'm watching.

My trip is in about 2.5 months and at this point I have to confess I'm almost afraid to use Italian on the trip even though I can say a few things because I feel like I'm unlikely to understand anything but the simplest reply spoken slowly.
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby rdearman » Mon Jun 19, 2023 8:47 am

Depending on where you go it and who you speak to it should not be a problem. Most younger people get a lot of English via the education system in Italy and most will know some English, although like you they may be hesitant to use it. In the larger cities most people are used to tourists. Every Italian I ever met was always willing to help improve my Italian, and a genuinely pleased to have someone learning Italian. You'll be fine.
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Sun Jun 25, 2023 11:46 pm

continuing with Pimsleur 3, am on lesson 21. I'm finding that I need to do each lesson twice. Also finishing up the Teaching Company Italian course with 3 out of 24 lessons left to go. I have just been watching the videos which explain aspects of grammar, I haven't been using the workbook lately although I plan on going back to it eventually.
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miket12
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby miket12 » Fri Jul 07, 2023 5:30 pm

continuing with Pimsleur 3, on lesson 25. I need to do each lesson twice these days.

Overall I like Pimsleur but one thing I find disappointing is the lack of grammar explanations when a sentence or two in English might make a new structure clear. I know (or think I do) that the Pimsleur ideal is that you absorb grammar structures by learning sentences but I find some of the changes in grammar opaque and perplexing. Here is an example: in the course they taught the sentence "my niece has finished her studies" as "mia nipote ha terminato i suoi studi". Fine, terminare is conjugated in the passato prossimo. Then in a later lesson they teach the sentence "The church was built more than 400 years ago" as "la chiesa è stata costruita più di 400 anni fa". Huh? Why isn't costruire conjugated the same way? I'm still not really clear about why the 2nd sentence conjugates essere in the passato prossimo instead.
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Re: Mike's Italian log

Postby Iversen » Sat Jul 08, 2023 2:22 pm

active termination of studies, passive construction of churches.. that's why. Assimil could have told you that in Italian, and you would have understood the explanation.
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