Eternal Sunshine of the Italian Mind

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StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Thu Dec 16, 2021 12:32 am

So I officially started my two challenges 2 days ago on Dec 13. I was originally planning to start Jan 1 to make it a 2022 challenge, but then I realized it would make sense to start earlier and make use of the extra holiday time I have right now, since my job follows the university calendar. I'm aiming to complete a reading SC within one year, but really I just want to see how much I can read within a year and having this challenge is a good way to motivate me to read rather than wasting time doing nonsense.

So far, I've been recording myself reading aloud a chapter of a book about how to learn English (in Italian) each day, which takes a little more than 30 minutes. If I can keep up this rate (doubtful) I should be done in less than 2 months. I noticed that if I switch to silent reading immediately after reading aloud, I read in my head much louder and with more emphasis.

The book I'm reading silently is one I've read in English twice and in Italian intensively once a couple years ago, so I'm very familiar with the story. I was expecting it to be a slog, but it's surprisingly easy to read. There are not really many unknown words (1-4 per page, sometimes none) and most of them I can easily figure out from context. Sometimes several pages go by and I forget I'm reading in Italian. I don't know if this is because my reading has actually improved or if it's just because I'm so familiar with the story that my brain doesn't have to struggle much to make meaning out of what I'm reading (<probably mostly this). I suspect that when I switch over to a book I've never read it will be a slog again. For now, I'm enjoying it.

I'm contemplating adding a 3rd challenge: writing something every day. I have a feeling I'm not going to end up doing this because I really don't want to feel forced to write if I don't want to on a certain day; that's a great way to make me hate writing. But I'm having a hard time motivating myself so I'm not doing as much writing as I'd like. I'm really on the fence about this one.

I'd really like to come up with some kind of fun challenge involving reading book, movie, product & restaurant reviews. I'm not sure how to turn that into a challenge. In the past I did a "read 500 articles" challenge which was extremely useful. Should it be as simple as "read 500 reviews"? That feels kind of boring. I'd like to do something a little more creative (or at least more interactive). Maybe I could write responses to the reviews I read? I don't know. If anyone has an idea, please let me know!
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jackb
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby jackb » Thu Dec 16, 2021 5:51 pm

You could try to write a review/summary of each book you read. It's kind of a mix of the review and reading challenge. That way it won't feel like a chore and its based on you reading pace.
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StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Mon Dec 20, 2021 3:55 am

Week 1: Dec 13-19

So far, the reading challenge is going well. I've been reading 6% of my current book each day which theoretically should be equal to 14 pages per day. The percentages on kindle tend to be a little wonky but it's better than nothing. I'm currently 42% through my first book. I've also recorded myself reading aloud 1 chapter per day of "L'Inglese Spontaneo".

When I come across a sentence I like because it uses a more complex verb tense or congiuntivo or just something that I know I'd struggle to say on my own, I try to repeat it 10x or 20x before continuing on. Then later in the day I see if I can recall any of them. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. There was one from today that I remember: Temo che tu abbia messo Gale in imbarazzo. (I'm afraid that you made Gale feel embarassed.) Hopefully, I remembered that correctly.

I bought 2 books in Italian:
1) La tentazione di essere felici da Lorenzo Marone
2) Venuto al mondo da Margaret Mazzantini

I'm looking forward to the 2nd one; from a quick glance it seems to be narrated in present tense. It's a 568 page book but based on the few pages I skimmed the writing seems relatively easy to understand so I'm not feeling too intimidated. I took out the English version (translated title is: Twice Born) from the library on my kindle just in case it ends up being more complex than I'm expecting and I need to consult a parallel text.

I was looking up info on online Italian Book Clubs which is something that I didn't realize existed until yesterday and checked out the books they had on their reading list to see if there was anything interesting I could try. Venuto al mondo caught my attention. Even though it's a love story (which is generally not my thing) and seems to have some other themes that are also not my thing, it partially takes place during the war in Sarajevo which did pique my curiosity. It is supposedly a best-seller in Italy.

jackb wrote:You could try to write a review/summary of each book you read.


I like this idea; I can read through book reviews to gather vocabulary and expressions that I'll want to use and then write a review of each book once I'm done.
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Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Wed Dec 22, 2021 4:45 pm

I've been practicing all week with variations of non vedo perché ci debba/debbano essere... among other sentences and I actually had occasion to use it organically yesterday with my LEP and I totally blew it! I meant to say: Non vedo perché ci debbano essere così tanti problemi technici. (I don't see why there have to be so many technical problems) when we were trying to troubleshoot a technical problem and I somehow completely left out "ci debbano essere" from the sentence - oh man! :oops: I guess I just got too excited to finally use one of my "impressive" sentences in the wild. :lol:

Anyway, I'm still trying to repeat interesting words and sentences which is slowing down my reading considerably but I think it's helping me in the long run to remember things a lot better. I've given up on Anki again. Not intentionally - I reinstalled the OS on my computer so I wiped whatever I had saved in Anki without realizing it until afterward. Maybe it's for the best. That familiar flashcard dread was already starting to build even though I didn't really have that many cards created it so I think Anki and I are really just not meant to be. I'm sure I'll come back to it in the future at some point since I keep not learning my lesson!

So instead I'm just spending a little extra time on new words when I come across them in my book. For example, today I came across the word annusare (to sniff) in reference to bomb-sniffing dogs, so I repeated the sentence from the book a few times and then I tried making up my own slightly different sentences using the word. I'm pretty confident that I know annusare now, no flashcards needed! I figure the extra time I'm taking during reading time to help myself remember these words/phrases is time I would have spent later on getting frustrated with Anki cards.
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Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Sun Dec 26, 2021 4:43 pm

Week 2: 12/20-12/26

Speaking:

-3 LEs this week for a total of 3 hours of speaking in Italian - with 2 LPs I do 1 hour Italian, 1 hour English, with the 3rd one I speak only in Italian while he speaks only in English. This doesn’t include whatever Italian I say around the house or with in-laws during video calls, though this week that hasn’t been a ton.

-Recorded myself reading another hour of Inglese Spontaneo this week, for a total of 3.5 hours recorded.

Reading:

Book #1 (234 actual pages) finished: Molto Forte, Incredibilmente Vicino (translation of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer)

My goal with reading is mainly to improve speaking indirectly. I’m hoping that reading will help me to improve verb conjugations, grammar structure, and some colloquial expressions. For that reason, I’m focusing on books that are written in diary style, or memoir style, often have first person narration, and in general mimic the way people actually speak as close as possible. Unfortunately, this means I’ll be reading a lot of crap that I don’t even remotely like but every now and then I’ll still get to read something good. This book is something good.

It’s narrated in first person by a 9 year old boy named Oskar who is struggling to deal with the death of his father (who was in one of the twin towers on 9/11). He finds a key inside an envelope with the word “Black” written on it when he accidentally breaks a vase on his father’s top closet shelf. He is determined to solve the mystery of what this key unlocks as a way to feel closer to his deceased father (who was always creating puzzles and challenges for him while he was alive). Oskar decides to visit everyone in the NYC phone book with the last name Black to see what they might know about the key. Since Black is a very common last name, there are more than 200 people on the list.

As the key-search adventure unfolds, we learn about the traumatic story of his grandparents through letters they write to Oskar (though presumably he’s never seen any of these letters). They go into detail describing how they lost everything and everyone they loved when their town was bombed to hell at the end of WW2. This trauma eventually led the grandfather to leaving the grandmother before his son was born because he was terrified of losing someone else that he loved. It's essentially a book about how various people do - or don't - deal with unbearable trauma.

From a language-learning standpoint this book is ideal; the first-person narration from a 9 year old means that it’s written in a very accessible way, using expressions and vocabulary that closely mimics how people actually speak in real life. Since there are plenty of interactions with adults there are also plenty of opportunities to be exposed to more challenging vocabulary.

I think I’m on to something with re-reading.

I’ve read this book twice before in English and once intensively in Italian ~2-3 years ago. This time around I was surprised at how easy the reading experience was. There were definitely words that I didn’t know, though no more than a couple per kindle page and often I could go several pages with no unknown words at all. This is an ideal level for me; it allows me to actually learn those new words rather than get overwhelmed at how many there are.

After each reading session, I’d try to remember the new words I’d encountered without looking at anything. I can recall quite a few of them even now and also remember the context they were used. I also started using some of them in conversation as a way to spice up what I'm saying and make sure that I understand them properly.

But the real benefit in reading something with this few unknown words is that I could easily pay close attention to the grammar (with a concentration on verb tenses). I found myself often making note of sentences that used congiuntivo (subjunctive) and trying to figure out why it was being used since there’s a huge list of things that can trigger congiuntivo. I even started using some of these constructions, myself, in the past 2 weeks. For example, I’m now formulating a lot of sentences with: Se avessi saputo che… (If I had known that…) I still have a long way to go before I can use more complex verb tenses effortlessly but I’m definitely branching out more and more which feels exciting.

The narrator also tends to use “mettersi a” as a way to say that he started doing something instead of using “iniziare” or “cominciare”. So I’ve started peppering this into conversations occasionally, too.

The other benefit of re-reading is the undeniable boost in morale. I could easily have read this whole book without consulting a dictionary at all and not lost more than a few handfuls of inconsequential words. (I did look up most words that I could figure out from context anyway because I just prefer doing that.) It was a great feeling and it allowed me to get immersed in the story, and actually feel like I was reading, not just struggling along with a hazy idea of what was happening while missing out on all the details.

In the next days I’m going to try to write a detailed review of the book in Italian.
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Season 4 Lucifer Italian transcripts I created: https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wik ... ranscripts

StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Tue Dec 28, 2021 1:56 pm

I decided to scrap my reading aloud challenge.

1) Reading aloud really hurts my throat. My glands swell up after even just 15 minutes. I frequently have this issue when talking a lot in general but reading aloud seems to trigger this issue almost immediately. I don't know if I'm reading in a way that's stressing my throat more than necessary or if it's just my weird body doing nonsense like usual (my suspicion).

2) I realized that I actually can't really pay attention to what I'm reading if I'm reading it aloud. The only thing I can seem to focus on is my pronunciation and cadence.

So I'm back to reading in my head or subvocalizing.

I'm more than halfway through my L'Inglese spontaneo book. I started it 2 weeks ago so it's not like I made that progress in just 2 days, but I still expect to finish it in the next 2-3 days. It's an easy read with a new word every few pages or so. I'm trying to read it slower than I could so that I'm paying more attention to verb tenses and grammar and how things are phrased (and the occasional new word). It feels nice to have something else "easy" to read while still exposing me to some new words. As easy as it is, it led me down a mini rabbit hole when I realized that there is a word/group of similar words that often cause me confusion. When I see it/them, I can easily figure out what it means from context but without context I'm lost. When this kind of thing happens usually it's because one word has many different meanings, but sometimes it's because there are a few words that are spelled similarly and only differ by a letter or two but my brain has lumped them together as one word.

I finally cleared up the confused when I saw two examples of this kind of word within the same paragraph in this book and I was able to easily compare their meanings in context and determined that they actually are different words. I asked my husband about them and together we generated a list of the various words/meanings that were confusingly similar. I probably didn't even get them all, but so far here's what I got:

Impiegare = how long it takes to do something
Quanto hai impiegato? > How long did it take you?

Impiegato/a = an employee (noun)
Un impiegato statale = a public employee

Impegnarsi = to make an effort to do something, to commit to do something
Oggi mi impegnerò a riordinare la casa > Today I’m committed to tidying up the house.

Impegnato/a = busy (adj)
Oggi sono impegnata > Today I’m busy.

Impegnativo/a/i/e = challenging
scegli contenuti più impegnativi > choose more challenging content

Piegare = to bend, fold
Ho piegato il mio ginocchio > I bent my knee.

I'm going to have to study these and practice using them because seeing them all listed out still feels super confusing and I'm not quite sure how to keep them untangled. The only one I've got down so far is Piegare = to bend
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garyb
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby garyb » Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:03 pm

StringerBell wrote:1) Reading aloud really hurts my throat. My glands swell up after even just 15 minutes. I frequently have this issue when talking a lot in general but reading aloud seems to trigger this issue almost immediately. I don't know if I'm reading in a way that's stressing my throat more than necessary or if it's just my weird body doing nonsense like usual (my suspicion).

I'm just picking up on this point, because I have the same problem and have had it for years. I often get sore throats from a lot of speaking and also from singing, especially if I'm going for more demanding pieces or high notes. Things got worse for me this year as I got more into public speaking at Toastmasters, became more vocal at work, and a couple of months ago I signed up for a course on metal vocals (growling/screaming) and ended up straining my voice with that. Then I caught a cold, which made the sore throat worse, but the original cause was clearly voice use rather than infection. Even now it's still hurting, although it's improved over the last month.

I've done quite a lot of research and it seems that it's most likely caused by poor vocal technique in which I'm straining more than needed, as you suggest, which comes under what's called "muscle tension dysphonia": voice problems and/or pain related to excessive tension when using the voice. Apparently if your voice is healthy and your technique is good then you should never really feel pain or strain it. Maybe reading aloud is causing particular strain if you're making a lot of effort to pronounce and enunciate well, on top of trying to take in the text. I've learnt from playing guitar as well as singing that when you're concentrating hard on something, or doing something new and difficult, you can end up tensing your body in all sorts of ways, often without being aware of it, and that in turn makes your technique worse and can cause pain. However another possibility that is semi-common among singers especially is acid reflux, including "silent reflux" where you don't feel the typical heartburn symptoms but stomach acid goes up to the throat during sleep and causes inflammation.

Unfortunately at least where I am it can be very difficult and/or expensive to get a doctor to take these things seriously and be referred to a specialist. I've been trying for a while now and am having to jump through a lot of hoops, including taking medicine for acid reflux ("just to rule out that possibility") which my body hasn't reacted to well. But what seems to have got my pain under control in the last month has been resting my voice more in general (and avoiding too much time in noisy environments etc.) and doing various exercises on breathing technique and vocal use that I mostly got from Dr. YouTube. I'm happy to talk more about these if you're interested.
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StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Wed Dec 29, 2021 1:20 pm

garyb wrote:I'm happy to talk more about these if you're interested.


You are the first person who knows what I'm talking about! I would absolutely love to talk about this more. I'll send you a PM :)
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StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:48 pm

What was that I said about being done with Anki? Yeah... I'm using again. :lol:

In my defense, I'm coming across an overwhelming amount of new vocabulary and phrases now that I'm reading like a maniac so I dowloaded Anki again. I fiddled with the settings so that it only shows me 5 new words per day and no more than 50 total reviews, so I'm hoping to keep review time short and sweet. I've said that before so we'll see if this time I can fend off the frustration.

I finished two books this week that I'll discuss in my weekly wrap up post in a few days.

I've been having a really difficult time motivating myself to get back into writing in Italian. I think part of the problem is that I'm too motivated to read due to my challenge so it's hard to do anything else. I think I might need some kind of daily writing challenge, after all.

I've been mulling over what that could look like and I think I've finally got an answer: I'm going to do a variation of the 365 challenge and the Output challenge: I'm going to write for 10 minutes every day in Italian. If I want to continue writing, I can, but the goal is to do at least 10 minutes. I won't worry about grammar or vocabulary; the focus will be speed. It's essentially WriteStreak but the only difference is that I won't post what I've written online or seek out corrections. After the 10 min is up, I'll look over what I've written and revise it/correct mistakes that I catch, myself. Some days I might skip this step if I'm just not in the mood. I'm curious to see the results of consistent daily writing practice.
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StringerBell
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Re: è un po che non ci vediamo

Postby StringerBell » Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:34 am

A word about page counts…

Finding an accurate page count is next to impossible, so for ebooks I’ve decided to just use what Amazon lists as the print length and round down to the nearest ten to account for titles pages, table of contents, dedications, etc… With physical books, I’m determining the real page count, myself, with all of the fake pages subtracted. I’m also consolidating the partial pages so that 2 half pages = 1 page. I know I don’t need to be such a stickler but it feels a little more legit to do it this way. I am reading other things like articles and book reviews in Italian here and there, so I figure that will make up for any excess pages in my page count that aren’t real pages in the ebooks.

Biting off more than I can chew…

I calculated that to read 10,000 pages in 1 year I’d need to average 27.4 pages/day. This past week I’ve been reading 30-40+ pages/day (and today I ended up reading all day and knocking off 150 pages), so if I could keep up my current reading pace minus what I did today, I’d definitely be able to do that. I don’t want to ratchet up my goal to something unattainable and then get disappointed if I can’t reach it, so I’m going to keep my 5,000 pages target for a while until I see what kind of pace is actually sustainable for me for the whole year. However, by cycling between more challenging books and then easier YA novels (or rereading), I think 27.4 pages/day is doable. I’m looking up all unknown words so far. Yes, it’s tedious.

So far, so good…

I started the new year with my 10 minute Write Streak challenge. So far it’s only day 2 of that but it’s going well. Writing for 10 minutes is a refreshingly easy way to get in the habit of daily writing and it feels less onerous than keeping track of words written, which I was counting manually in the past. The trick is to knock off the writing before any reading so I can’t forget about it, since I think there’s a good chance of that happening.

***********************
Reading Challenge Week 3: Dec 27 - Jan 2

Books finished this week:

2) Cosmetica del nemico - Amélie Nothomb (60 pages)

This was a book that was recommended by my Italian friend. Judging from the author’s name and the French name of the main character, I believe it was originally written in French and translated into Italian. I don’t think there is an English version. The entire book is a dialogue between 2 people in an airport. The first character, Jérôme, is attempting to read a book when the second character, Textor, starts talking to him and won’t stop no matter how much Jérôme insults him or tells him to leave him alone. Textor starts out saying some ridiculous stuff that is actually quite funny but he very quickly starts bringing up some pretty disturbing things. There is a surprise ending. I can’t give more details without spoilers so I’ll leave it at that.

I think I was averaging about 4-5 unknown words per page, especially in the beginning. Sometimes it felt like I was looking up a lot of words which was a bit tedious, sometimes it really flowed and I didn’t need to look up much, if anything. The characters talk to each other using the formal way (dare del Lei) so I occasionally had a hard time figuring out if they were directly talking to the other person or talking about a 3rd person who featured prominently in the discussion. However, the dialogue was a fantastic vehicle for learning a lot of new expressions, insults, and general colloquial vocabulary which I really appreciated. Even with the look-ups it was a relatively quick read and I finished it in 2 days.


3) L’Inglese Spontaneo - AJ Hoge (160 pages)

I bought this ebook for $3 just hoping for an easy read on a well-known topic (how to learn a language) and it did not disappoint in that regard. AJ is the creator of Effortless English, a program I first heard about through one of Mr. Real Polish’s podcasts where he explained his history attempting to learn English. AJ focuses a lot on how to have a positive mindset and improve fluency. While there wasn’t anything really new to me, in one of the last chapters he suggests free writing for 10 minutes every day which eventually led me to decide to do that this year as one of my challenges. He also discusses embedding your TL into the dead moments throughout the day and the power of reading. He is a big supporter of reading “easy” books as a way to reinforce grammar naturally rather than struggling through books that are too challenging. He promotes trying to push yourself to read one more page than the previous day to slowly work on increasing how much you read.

The book was written in a very informal, conversational style, and while it was a very easy, quick read, I still averaged a new word every few pages. It’s a mix of advice and anecdotes. My main complaint is that it felt like one long advertisement for his program. To be fair, that’s probably what it’s intended to be so perhaps I shouldn’t criticize it for that reason. I’d compare it to Steve Kaufmann’s videos that always end up feeling like an infomercial promoting LingQ.

4) Lo Strano Caso Del Cane Ucciso a Mezzanotte - Mark Haddon (a translation of: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)

I wasn’t even planning to read this at all this week, but I ended up doing a reading marathon and I read almost 150 pages just today. I’m wiped out!

This is a YA book written from the first person perspective of a 15 year old boy with Asperger’s. The writing is fairly simple, so no flowery language. In the first ~100 pages I was probably looking up. 3-5 words per pages. Somewhere around the 100 page mark I noticed I was looking up few words; maybe 1 every 4 or 5 pages.

It starts off as sort of a “giallo” where the main character finds his neighbor’s dead dog and decided to lead an investigation to figure out who is the killer. Along the way, a 2nd mystery enters the picture and life kind of goes sideways. Even though I’m not much of a fan of YA books, I think that this one was really well done and I’ll definitely reread it again in the future.
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