Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

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StringerBell
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Italian
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Re: Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

Postby StringerBell » Wed Sep 21, 2022 5:44 pm

I recently came across a sentence in my novel that I found a little confusing. I could tell what it meant from context (and if I were extensively reading, I would have moved on and not learned yet another really common construction). Hopefully I explain this right without making mistakes because it is one of the most confusing things I’ve ever encountered in Italian :shock: and I’m still trying to come to grips with it.

The sentence was:

Puoi fare a meno di incassare l’assegno (You won't cash the check)

The reason I was confused was that I know that “non poter fare a meno di + infinitive” means that you can’t help but do something…. Which means that you DID it.

Ex: I couldn’t help but think about it > which means that I did think about it

But in the case of the sentence from my novel, it seemed clear that the person speaking was saying that the recipient of the check WOULDN’T do something (not cash the check). So WTH? Was it a construction that could mean both to do something and not do something?

Turns out, there are 2 idioms that are almost identical but mean opposite things.

The only difference is one tiny, little word:
-the idiom that means you DID the action is negative (“non” is in front of the verb)
Non posso fare a meno di pensarci > I can't help but think about it.

-the idiom that means you DIDN’T do the action isn’t negative
Puoi fare a meno di incassare l’assegno > you won't cash the check

This is pretty bonkers. Everytime I feel like I have a good handle on Italian something like this pops up. I don’t know how I’m going to get a handle on this new idiom but I got confirmation that it’s actually fairly common so I’m going to have to deal with it somehow. Maybe I’ll write it a million times, Bart Simpson style.
6 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

Postby StringerBell » Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:55 pm

StringerBell wrote:CURRENT EXPERIMENT:
Step 1: Intensive Reading - read 5 pages, look up unknown words, idioms, confusing grammar
Step 2: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 3: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 4: Extensive Reading - every time I read 50 pages, go back and reread the last 50 pages
Step 5: Extensive Reading - when I finish the book, reread the whole book from start to finish


I've finished step 4 for the whole 296 page crappy crime thriller book and I'm now ready to begin step 5. For this, I'll be reading while listening to the audiobook.

Somewhere around page 180 or 200 reading got noticeably easier. I suddenly realized that I was looking up very few words (often fewer than 1 per page). I have never had the experience of any book feeling noticeably easier before, not even the trashy ones. Using my current strategy I was recognizing even when a word repeated just one time after 100+ pages. That NEVER happened before.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I feel like I've totally mastered this book. I can read any paragraph, sentence, or word and know exactly what it means. I can recall a large percentage of the new words I came across in the book just by thinking about particular scenes, I can define most of the new words when I encounter them in isolation, and for the few words that I don't recognize in isolation (seeing the word out of context), I 100% know what they mean when I read them in the context of the sentence they appeared in. There was not a single word I didn't remember during step 3 or 4. I don't know how - or if - this vocabulary knowledge will carry over to other books but it's already a result that is so vastly superior to what I was experiencing with the extensive reading I was previously doing.

Repetition isn't exciting or sexy but you know what? It works.

If the goal is to improve vocabulary and comprehension without resorting to the annoyance and time suck of making and studying flash cards, this strategy is fantastic. I really can't praise it enough. It doesn't require me to read book after book after book with a hazy understanding that relies on assumptions and never feels like it's leading to any kind of improvement. If other people like lots of ambiguity and guessing and assuming and skipping what they don't know, that's great for them, but it just doesn't work for me.

I am thrilled to have finally found something that does work for me. I deeply regret that I stuck with the extensive reading strategy that so many others seem to be using since in my experience it was a colossal waste of time and energy. I genuinely feel like I improved significantly more rereading this one book than I did extensively reading the previous 10 books. It goes to show that just because other people do something a certain way it doesn't necessary mean that it's the right way or the only way.
11 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
Brown Belt
Posts: 1035
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:30 am
Languages: English (n)
Italian
x 3289

Re: Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

Postby StringerBell » Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:44 pm

CURRENT EXPERIMENT:
Step 1: Intensive Reading - read 5 pages, look up unknown words, idioms, confusing grammar
Step 2: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 3: Extensive Reading - reread those same 5 pages
Step 4: Extensive Reading - every time I read 50 pages, go back and reread the last 50 pages
Step 5: Extensive Reading - when I finish the book, reread the whole book from start to finish


I finished step 5 today. I was originally thinking it would take me no more than a week but I had a neurological attack that totally derailed my timeframe for getting this part done. I'm better now and overall it still only took about 2 weeks so that's not too bad.

Noticings after having completed step 5:

I had excellent vocabulary recognition for the entire book. It wasn't 100% but it was pretty darn close. Considering I started this book months ago, that's a pretty impressive result. On average, for the first 200 pages there were about 20 words that I either didn't remember or couldn't immediate refigure out again from context (1 word per 10 pages). The last 100 pages averaged fewer words that I didn't remember (closer to 5). This may be due to the fact that I haven't read the first part of the book in months while the last part of the book was read just a couple of weeks ago, but I also had fewer unknown words total for the last 100 pages of the book so that could also be a factor. There were ~25 new vocabulary words total in the whole book that I didn't remember.

Time for some math:

300 page book
-I had an average of 2 unknown words/expressions per page (in the beginning of the book it was more like 3/4 words per page but toward the end it was 0/1 word per page)
-600 unknown words/expressions per book
-there were only 25 words I didn't remember during step 5
600-25 = 575 words/expressions learned
96% retension rate of new words learned passively through repeated reading

I think that's an incredible result for not having made or studied flashcards. You could probably argue that I probably spent an equal amount of time during the rereading processing as I would have spent making and studying flashcards but somehow it doesn't subjectively feel like an equal amount of time. Maybe because I really hate making and studying flashcards.

There were a significant number of words that I had forgotten about but then instantly remembered as soon as I saw them again. It was almost like meeting an old friend. So my recall for these new words is probably not as good as it was weeks/months ago but my recognition was still extremely good.

So now that I've finished step 5, what's next? Good question. I'd really like to repeat this process with another book, but I'd also like to continue rereading this current book a few more times to avoid forgetting what I've learned in case I don't have occasion to run into those words/expressions in the near future. Every time I read this book I'm more critical of how crappy it is so I can't say that I enjoy it, but the feeling of being able to read with ease is extremely refreshing and the writing is really colloquial and therefore conversationally applicable. This is supported by how often I hear new words/expressions from the book in other sources. I'm not sure how many more times I can stomach rereading it but I have a feeling that keeping it on rotation at least a few more times would probably be really useful.

Should I return to this book before or after I finish the next one? I don't know. I'm considering going back and forth between this current one and a new one rather than just focusing on a new book and then returning to this book afterward. It has the potential to get messy and disorganized but maybe that's ok.
7 x
Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts


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