So far, I seem to be making no mistakes at all with verb tenses when during my conversations. I specifically asked to have these mistakes pointed out but my LEP assured me there wasn't even 1 to correct. Yet somehow my writing is full of them! I think the problem is specifically when I try to recount stories; when I'm just chitchatting about an article I read or whatever I did that week the verb tenses don't seem to be much of an issue. But when I have to narrate a detailed series of events, that's when I get into some trouble.
I just learned "fare colpo su di..." to talk about impressing someone (romantically). That's a tough one to work into a conversation organically so I've just been using it in sentences in my head. And I learned the word "siccità" (drought) which came up during my LE today. That one is going to take a little practice. It's weird how some words are super easy to remember and others don't want to stick! I remember several new words from articles that I read just once yesterday without even trying, but siccità just doesn't want to happen. Maybe by writing about it here I'll finally be able to recall it.
We've been doing LE video calls through Signal (which is connected both on my computer and phone). I highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for a more secure way to send messages or do video calls. When we want to send notes/corrections to each other, we just send them as a message through Signal so I can always look at my phone to remind myself of new words that came up during the call. So far, I'm liking this a lot more than what I used to do, which was taking notes on actual paper that would then get immediately lost.
In preparation for today's LE, I read a few articles from the magazine Focus (they're available online) like this one describing how brutal life was for working kids during the Industrial Revolution in 19th century England. I also read a Focus article about World Toilet Day. I've found that since I work from home and don't really go out much these days, talking about what I did that week takes about 2 seconds so it's good to have some interesting articles to use as a springboard for discussion.
lusan wrote:Sorry, but I think people care if they want to speak well. Otherwise...
I think you might have misunderstood what I meant. I don't mean that nobody else should care, only that I don't want to care if I make some stupid little mistakes using the wrong past tense. In the past when I would get really frustrated that I was making these mistakes it led to me hating Italian and language learning, in general. That's the reason I stopped for 2 years. I'm prone to performance anxiety and I grew up in an environment where making mistakes (or doing anything imperfectly) was not tolerated so focusing too much on my mistakes just causes my brain to shut down in protest, it doesn't lead to improvements.
The truth is I don't have to learn Italian. I'm doing it because I want to communicate with people who don't speak English. They appreciate that I'm putting in so much work and they couldn't care less if I use the wrong past tense because they still know exactly what I mean. If they don't care, I shouldn't either. If at some point I can narrate lengthy stories consistently using all the correct tenses, that will be awesome. In the meantime, I'm not going to stress about it. Not to go off on a tangent, but alcohol is credited with helping people to loosen up and speak foreign languages better precisely because it allows them to not care about making mistakes. So I can't claim credit for this philosophy of not caring, it's already well-established!