Mike's Italian log

[miket12]

still working on Great Courses Italian chapter 5. I have to admit I was a bit discouraged this past week. This chapter alone introduces more than 30 verbs to learn, some of which I have a bit of difficulty pronouncing like scegliere. I've started using AwesomeTTS to add sound to Anki cards with words like this. This chapter also has 10 irregular verbs among those 30 or so, although there does seem to be patterns in the irregularity. For example I've noticed that the 1st-person singular in most cases, such as scelgo, turns into the 3rd-person plural such as scelgono by simply adding -no.

edit: this has also been a learning experience. Although looking at the work I needed to do for chapter 5 it seemed overwhelming, once I actually started and did 30 minutes or so daily I was able to finish the chapter and am now using flashcards and Anki to make sure I remember the new vocabulary and irregular conjugations.

[miket12]

Finished Great Courses Italian chapter 6, so 1/4th the way thru the course which is supposed to cover the same material as a college 1st-year class. I like the comprehensive coverage it has. Pimsleur has been good to use for speaking but it offers few grammar explanations and since it's audio-only I now realize that at times I've mis-heard a word they were using in a sentence, missing how they conjugated or pluralized it for example. I've counted the verbs we've been expected to learn in the Great Courses and it's about 90 so far, many more than have been taught in Pimsleur thru the middle of Italian II. It's funny how some verbs just stick but others I struggle to remember like scegliere. I've been using Anki for the vocabulary from this course.

I've also been reading thru a grammar book, "Basic Italian - A Grammar and Workbook" by Peyronel & Higgins. I find it a good complement to the course and useful since it has lots of example sentences in English and Italian. I had purchased a few years ago "English Grammar for Students of Italian" by Adorni & Primorac and had started to read it but found it too brief and not explaining some facets well. Since I haven't finished "Basic Italian" maybe as I go along it won't be as useful as I hope, but so far I'm happy with it. I've been covering up either the English or Italian example sentences (they are side-by-side) and trying to produce the hidden sentence for practice.

I'm not a linguist or anything, but I like the concept of a practice sheet where you have sample sentences with a blank or two and you need to put in the correct word. The Great Courses has some of this. Right now I'd like to drill on just conjugating the verbs I have been learning, including some irregular verbs, so I cobbled together a Python program that randomly picks one of those verbs and a person (eg. 2nd-person plural) and then I see if I get it right. The program can do it either by prompts with text-on-screen or by using text-to-voice.

I've done a bit more Pimsleur but need to get back to doing it daily. It does seem that about halfway thru Pimsleur II the pauses have at times become shorter in which I have to produce the correct sentence, and also the sentences seem to have become longer. In Pimsleur 1 I was getting almost all the responses correct, now not so good although still over the 80% correct they say means go on to the next lesson.
I do think at some point I may need to start doing them twice though. Also next week I think I'll start with Assimil.

[miket12]

slowly working thru Pimsleur, finished lesson 15 of Italian II. Also working thru the Teaching Company course, finishing up lesson 7 out of 24. Started Assimil and am up to the 3rd dialogue. Also wrote a Python script to practice getting the article and adjective right for possessive adjectives (eg. il mio, le mie, etc) and the same for questo/quello

[miket12]

haven't done too much since my previous post. Turns out letting a few days go by with Anki means you have 200 cards waiting.

I decided to go back 8 lessons in Pimleur II, so I'm redoing lesson 10. It's a bit perplexing, I can do this lesson with maybe 95% accuracy but with lesson 18 I'm getting maybe 20% right and struggle to come up with an answer before they give the correct answer. The sentences they're prompting by lesson 18 are a bit longer, they've introduced the past tense, and it seems to me the pauses are shorter. As I came up to lesson 18 I was making more and more mistakes so I've decided to backtrack and learn them better. Having not learned a second language before I hope this isn't a marker that I've gone as far as I am able. Pimsleur is very different than the Michel Thomas tapes where he urged time and again to take your time, think it thru, pause the lesson and come up with your answer and then proceed.

Any advice or comments are welcome

[tastyonions]

Don’t feel bad about having to backtrack. I’m redoing a few weeks’ worth of Assimil Greek lessons because I felt like I didn’t understand them well enough the first time through, and I’ve done quite a bit of learning other languages. :-)

[iguanamon]

...I decided to go back 8 lessons in Pimleur II, so I'm redoing lesson 10. It's a bit perplexing, I can do this lesson with maybe 95% accuracy but with lesson 18 I'm getting maybe 20% right and struggle to come up with an answer before they give the correct answer. The sentences they're prompting by lesson 18 are a bit longer, they've introduced the past tense, and it seems to me the pauses are shorter. As I came up to lesson 18 I was making more and more mistakes so I've decided to backtrack and learn them better. Having not learned a second language before I hope this isn't a marker that I've gone as far as I am able. Pimsleur is very different than the Michel Thomas tapes where he urged time and again to take your time, think it thru, pause the lesson and come up with your answer and then proceed. ...

Don't worry, Lesson 18 of Volume 2 of Pimsleur Italian isn't as far as you can go. There's no shame in repeating it several times until you get it. The thing about Pimsleur and the pause button is that the course is intended to be used without it. I know it's tempting, especially when a lesson is hard to grasp. What Pimsleur does for a learner is to help with listening, production to a certain extent because you have to answer, and you have a time pressure to answer within the pause provided. All of this helps to develop "automaticity" in understanding and thinking in the language- which is the point of Pimsleur.

If you are using Assimil alongside Pimsleur, you may have gotten a bit ahead of yourself. You may want to put Pimsleur on hold for a bit and get some more of your textbook in, then restart Pimsleur. Assimil will complement Pimsleur well. It may explain the theme of your Pimsleur lesson a little bit better, but it may be a while before Assimil gets to that particular troublesome spot for you.

You can also consult the web; the forum; and an Italian grammar to get more background on what this lesson wants to teach you. What is this lesson about?

[miket12]

What is this lesson about?

I don't know if I'd say there is an overall theme to lesson 18 but it has sentences like "I worked in Milan for CitiBank for several years", "My son also worked in Milan", "Sometimes they come with their friends from Ravenna and sometimes without them."

Compared to lesson 10 it's now using the past tense, and more adjectives/pronouns compared to the somewhat simpler sentences just a few lessons back. If I stop and think about it I can get the sentence right, but I was nowhere near being able to produce at speed. For example with the phrase "my son" if I think it thru (son is "figlio", singular family member so no article, masculine singular object so "mio" and not "mia/miei/mie", hence "mio figlio") but I can't do this at the speed needed to answer Pimsleur.

I redid lesson 10 yesterday and breezed thru it, hopefully as I get back to lesson 18 I'll do better.

[iguanamon]

...I redid lesson 10 yesterday and breezed thru it, hopefully as I get back to lesson 18 I'll do better.

I think you will do better as well. Sometimes, it's possible that we can get a little too comfortable with a course because we have been breezing through it until a lesson comes up that has a jump in complexity level. I think you are doing the right thing by going back and reviewing the prior lessons. Just make sure you're focused whilst doing them. Eventually you will see these patterns again in Assimil or somewhere else. A grammar book can help too.

[miket12]

Having gone back a few lessons in Pimsleur I am able to reply in the time given and it feels much more comfortable. I'll keep watch as I go forward to make sure it stays this way and perhaps repeat any lessons if I start to see a drop-off. I'm well behind on Anki after taking time off with still hundreds of cards to go thru. I have to say, too, that I'm a bit doubtful on the Anki intervals. At first it's 1 day, 2 days, a week, but when it gets into the much longer periods like 2.4 months I'm a bit dubious that I'll still recall those words.

Edit: so I redid lesson 14 and I now realize I've hit the part where my ability to quickly produce the desired sentence falls off. At the end of the lesson they have sentences like "Can you give this letter to him?" and in Italian the object goes to the start of the sentence so is is "Gli può dare questa lettera." I guess I need more practice.

[miket12]

got past the sticking point of lesson 18 and am now up to Pimsleur II lesson 20. I'm not doing perfectly but by redoing a few lessons I was able to get 90% or better of my responses correct. Also continuing to read my grammar book. I haven't been working with the Teaching Company course so I need to get back to that.

Incidentally I've noticed I can produce some sentences thinking just in Italian, more or less. For example I'm driving to the store and I say to myself "Vado al mercato adesso. Ho bisogno di comprare alcune cose." But I'm doing it by just thinking of what I want to say in Italian. Sometimes when I look up the sentences I produce they're wrong (for example the past participle of prendere is preso and not prenduto because prendere is irregular so "ho preso") but still I feel like I'm making some progress.