garyb wrote:I've gone back and forth on the dilemma of easy versus enjoyable input since it's quite hard to find material that ticks both boxes. I think it's always going to be a compromise, especially with a "smaller" language like Italian. You're unlikely to consistently find stuff at the same level as what's available in English, and as rdearman hinted at, many of the most appreciated modern books, films, and series have a lot of dialect so aren't a good choice for learners. Even in other languages, the best stuff is often the most challenging and isn't exactly suited to comprehensible input except for very advanced learners.
You’re right. It helps to know that I'm not the only one struggling to find material that hits the sweet spot of being both enjoyable and easy. I had no trouble finding tons of books that I wanted to read in Polish so I think that it’s hard to accept that finding Italian books I want to read is so difficult. But it is what it is.
I'm specifically looking for books that:1) are modern, use colloquial language (not literary language) and have some dialogue
2) aren’t super challenging - no more than 1 or 2 unknown words/idioms/expressions per page
3) are interesting
I just have to accept that finding books with all 3 requirements are impossible (at least for me right now). I think I just have to continue reading books I don’t like/care about and wouldn’t choose otherwise (and will likely be mostly translations) as long as they fit requirement #1.
However, I think translations from French tend to be better than translations from English, so I’ll take a look at Carmody’s recommendation thread for some book ideas in French and see if any of them have been translated to Italian.
I feel confident that if I’m able to continue my current reading strategy, which so far seems to be working wonders (knock on wood) in terms of learning the new vocabulary I’m coming across, I will be able to transition to books that would be too frustrating at my current level but are a little more interesting. That will probably still take quite a while but at least it now feels possible.
Nogon wrote:[Have you ever considered/tried parallel reading?
Yes, I did a lot of parallel reading when I first started reading a few years ago. I’d get an Italian version and an English version of a book, read a page in English and then that same page in Italian. Then I’d read a chapter in English, and the same chapter in Italian. I’ve also read a few books in Italian while listening to the English audiobook, which I enjoyed a lot. I think it’s a great strategy and I highly recommend it, but at this point I think I’ve improved with parallel reading as much as I’m going to and I really just need to beef up my vocabulary and make my brain practice reading (and speaking) until it gets better at it.
Maengin wrote:Thank you for talking about this. I have read your old logs and enjoyed reading about your method with listening and reading to Polish. I didn't realize you listen to the texts for several months. Did you schedule your repeat listenings or was it random? I'm experimenting with intensive listening to text as a beginner but planned to stop listening to each text after a month of several study sessions. Maybe should base it on how well I can understand the text after month and if not well, repeat the cycle.
Hi Maengin - With Polish, I’d read/listen intensively to very short podcasts/beginner stories that had text. Once I felt confident I knew what all/most of the words meant and what all the sentences meant, I’d put that audio on a playlist. Then, any time I was doing something like washing dishes or driving I’d listen extensively to the playlist. I’d put about 20 audio tracks per playlist and I’d keep relistening to them (at first in order and then just randomly).
If I couldn’t remember what something meant (which didn’t happen often), I’d make a mental note to look it up again once I was done with washing dishes. This didn’t happen too often, but the act of remembering which audio track and sentence the unknown word was in and then looking it up again really helped me to remember the word so I never had to do this more than once for any word.
It didn't matter if I zoned out occasionally while listening to these playlists because I knew them so well. When I was aware that my attention was wandering, I could just resume listening to the audio track no matter where it was an still understand what was being said. With extensive listening of new material the minute someone zones out it can take a long time to recover and figure out what people are saying and why once they regain focus.
I also did something similar for Italian - I’d intensively listen to Italian podcasts (from Italiano Automatico or Podcast Italiano), look up all unknowns, and then put them on a playlist to listen to extensively. The repeated listenings made a huge difference in my listening comprehension. I also did this with some Polish and Italian YT videos and TV shows - I’d relisten and rewatch particular ones multiple times, each time looking up more new words until I could finally watch the whole thing without looking up anything. I’m convinced that listening extensively to something that I already worked with intensively is the reason my listening comprehension improved as quickly as it did.
I can still remember sentences and whole stories from the Polish stories I used to listen to repeatedly years ago. I think I ended up listening to many of them about 100 times (I’m not exaggerating!) In my opinion, repetition is one of the most effective strategies in language learning but I get the feeling that many people don’t want to do it because they consider it boring.
I wish I would have applied what worked so well for me with listening (repetition) to reading
but at least I'm doing it now.
Still more work to do, but it's nice to be able to see some improvement in the complexity of what I can say.