Carpe Coffeam

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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 13, 2022 10:42 pm

My 3rd German class today. This time, I really really liked the preparation, I am a bit surer with yet another bit of grammar, there were some more writing tasks, and so on. The teacher was good, we squeezed value out of the exercises, even though they were centered around "baking" as the main topic. I guess you can imagine how excited I must have been. :-D And how on earth was I supposed to really practice plusquamperfekt on baking related vocabulary??? But overall, it was good, I like the speaking heavy grammar heavy approach. I was told my grammar was good (but I had to correct myself so many times during that hour :-D )and my vocab too. Well, this teacher doesn't know I am supposed to be full B2 already (twice). And I hold myself to even higher standards :-D

So far, three classes. All of them individual, which was great. Three different teachers. One excellent, two normal ones. The first one was my favourite, perhaps I'll be lucky to have her tomorrow.

I am finally feeling really at home in the resources. Erkundungen B2 is a bit denser book, than I am used to these days, and it is good! If only it wasn't so green (inside! Not just the cover), I don't like the colour and find it off putting :-D Speexx is very good, even though by far not perfect. And the "videos" are funny and I am not sure whether it was the creators intention to make them funny in exactly this way (they visually look like a parody on the old German tv shows people were always making fun of).
............
Now I've been putting a bit more time into German than Italian, I need to balance that back again :-)
.............

A sad resource news: Memrise is really going to hell. After various other changes throughout the years, they are making yet another change in the "we don't care about users and their preferences of features" and "we no longer want to be Memrise" kind. They are removing the Mems. We all know they are gonna remove the user made stuff one day anyways and leave just the trash official courses with sloppy content, mistakes (or in some cases at least misleading stuff for the newbies trying to use Memrise as a real course and not just SRS), and very stupid videos. A funny detail: I've just seen a member complain on the forums, that it might not be a good idea to teach "Shut up" and especially so early in the official Russian 1 course. They are right :-D

The last straw was the official explanation by a community support staff ale_c:

mems have been an important tool for your learning and a core part of the Memrise history, however they are difficult and expensive to keep supporting within the new learning experience we’re building, and they’re no longer providing the right pedagogical value in their form.

The first part is totally legit. They don't want mems, there are some expenses etc. That is ok. But what the hell is it about the pedagogical value? I still remember some mems from the first time I started learning German! For example that picture of Brücke made of bricks!!! What is giving that value instead? The very stupid generic videos in the official courses? Certainly not. Mems were remembering worthy.

As we speak, the team are hard at work building and improving features that support our pedagogical principles, to help you: (1) Learn words and sentences, (2) Immerse you in videos and audio experiences, and (3) Communicate with fellow humans with no fear of making mistakes.

This is pure bullshit, as usual. The way it is worded, the stupid clichés and empty phrases...

1.yes, memrise has been a tool to help learn words and perhaps sentences (but it's always been bad with sentences, the official courses just prove that). removing mems doesn't improve that. Even people not using them much (I lately) are gaining nothing, while a large part of the community is losing something.

2.video and audioexperiences. Who has been asking for that? Not the users, who had made Memrise what it is. Who have been supporting it since the early years, who have created courses for free (so that Memrise could get money for features used to use them even more efficiently), and been marketing it online and offline. Memrise really wants to become just another shitty "not a language course" course of low quality and boring videos. Sad.

3."Communicate with fellow humans with no fear of making mistakes". We've heard this a million times and it doesn't seem any less like just a phrase here. Yep, the vocab drilling is a tool be more confident in communication. But this sounds as if Memrise wanted to delete itself and become Italki2, or a therapy tool for mistake anxiety :-D
........

And even worse: it looks like the Memrise to Anki addon is not working anymore. Memrise changed something, perhaps on purpose, and you can no longer just save the courses easily, based on lots of community posts. It sucks. Anyone knows about any functioning and easy to use addon? I would like to move some courses, at least the one I've made.

So, I stopped paying. I have wasted money as I had no time for Memrise since I got my new job. But still, I wasn't that upset about it. Until I realized that Memrise is going on the list of stuff I used to like, but should abandon, as it is more frustrating than helpful. Just like Duolingo, which turned from fun basic practice to stupid waste of time designed to be as slow and inefficient as possible to make you see more ads. Or perhaps Speakly, where I love the content but the website's bugs and slowliness are just a torture (I might return there though). Or yet others.

I now need to either find a functioning addon, or at least manually save at least the course made by me. Many hours of not too fun work to look forward to.

This is why Anki is so beloved. It looks dry, it can burn you out, it is not as cool looking as many others. But you have 100% control over your content. Nobody is ever gonna just remove a part of your decks, or your used images, or anything.

I really regret having failed to develop a real Anki addiction on multiple opportunities!
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lusan
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby lusan » Wed Sep 14, 2022 2:04 am

Cavesa wrote:
This is why Anki is so beloved. It looks dry, it can burn you out, it is not as cool looking as many others. But you have 100% control over your content. Nobody is ever gonna just remove a part of your decks, or your used images, or anything.

Yeah!!! ... and it works!
Cavesa wrote:I really regret having failed to develop a real Anki addiction on multiple opportunities!

It is never too late.
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Xenops
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Xenops » Wed Sep 14, 2022 11:33 pm

Cavesa wrote:........

And even worse: it looks like the Memrise to Anki addon is not working anymore. Memrise changed something, perhaps on purpose, and you can no longer just save the courses easily, based on lots of community posts. It sucks. Anyone knows about any functioning and easy to use addon? I would like to move some courses, at least the one I've made.


I did some investigation on the Memrise community forum, and there is an add-on to extract the vocabulary into a CSV file--which I have successfully used. Currently I'm investigating if it's possible to download the audio--even if it's one giant dump of files, it beats having to look for them on Forvo or something.

https://community.memrise.com/t/memrise2anki-replacement/77107/9
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TopDog_IK
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby TopDog_IK » Thu Sep 15, 2022 1:14 am

Cavesa wrote:A sad resource news: Memrise is really going to hell. After various other changes throughout the years, they are making yet another change in the "we don't care about users and their preferences of features" and "we no longer want to be Memrise" kind. They are removing the Mems. We all know they are gonna remove the user made stuff one day anyways and leave just the trash official courses with sloppy content, mistakes (or in some cases at least misleading stuff for the newbies trying to use Memrise as a real course and not just SRS), and very stupid videos.


Such a joke! Memrise used to be really awesome a couple years ago when I used it. I loved the mems. The "executives" at Memrise have been shooting themselves in the foot, repeatedly. What a waste.
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 20, 2022 10:48 pm

Thanks for the tips on the replacement of Memrise. I'll have a look at all that after my return home.
..........
6WC:I am rather proud of myself. Of course I had hoped for more, but 30 hours 47 minutes of Italian are a good result for someone in my situation. And 13 hours of German in the second half. Not that bad.

I think the 6WC is one of the best things to have come out of this forum!!!
.......
Now everything is a bit postponed till the marriage and slightly after. Honeymoon wil be hopefully in Italy. A short one, true. But Even a few days would be wonderful for us.
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 27, 2022 8:22 am

We did it! We got married a few days ago! It was a wonderful day, one of the best in my life. I got married to a wonderful man, and we were accompanied by family and friends, the weather was probably the best we could have asked for, the party was great, and our witnesses organised some great fun. The speeches were very touching, we felt very much loved. We had even prepared our first dance and it went well! (He neither broke his back nor dropped me on the ground during the lifting moments :-D ).

So, back to the language forum: How do you know you, as a language nerd, are marrying the right person? :-D
-when he finds you learning vocab on your phone, he just asks "which language?"
-when he comments on the european language day "oh, it must be very lively on your forum today!" with just a bit of a laughter
-when he supportively moves the boxes with your langauge books from a home to a home without complaining
-when he looks at you confidently, whenever your languages are randomly used in real life around or in a tv show, and expects a translation. Usually, he gets it. (I had to disappoint him with Elvish and Klingon though).
-and he doesn't ever criticise your "wasting of time" on languages :-) he just worries about the workload.
...................

Slowly back to the languages: Yesterday, I got through quite a lot of Speexx German (the A2 review and vocab). My Italian is being neglected, I'll change that very soon.

A job interview this evening. I need to get into the right spirit and in French. Wish me luck!
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Le Baron
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Le Baron » Tue Sep 27, 2022 9:10 am

Congratulations!
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Wed Oct 05, 2022 6:07 pm

Thank you all!

We spent a few days of honeymood in Italy, Genova. It was wonderful. Well, we didn't get to swim in the see (the hottest day actually turned out to be rather cold, but we still got to drink wine by the sea and enjoy it), but we had so many great experiences together! The biggest aquarium in Europe!!! We just couldn't agree on which animal we liked the best. Three very nice galleries (true, my husband (omg I really can say and write that! Still not used to it!) is not that much of an old art enthusiast, and these galleries are a bit less awesome than the usual "italian standard" :-D but they were still a good experience and still a lot of beauty to enjoy!). The museum of the sea, with awesome ship replicas, a very good exposition (don't let the beginning discourage you. It is a bit sad that the lack of light spoilt that part. But it went better and better, up to the floor about emi/immigration, that gives an excellent insight into how it has worked. What did the italian immigrants a hundred or more years ago have to face, in order to follow their dreams. I find that very inspiring, my own path is very easy and comfortable, compared to theirs). A nice hotel with great breakfasts (more about that later). Walks in the beautiful town (but with some less nice corners, where we suddenly felt a bit less safe). Several bookstores. Yes, my husband managed to tolerate that :-D

A few language learning relevant bits:

-Yes, I was able to do everything needed in Italian. It is not great Italian, but actively, I am like a very very good A2/B1 learner, passively much better.

-Yes, there were some moments of someone not understanding me, or the opposite. But mostly related to using masks or to the content of the exchange. Such as a shop assistant in a bookstore not understanding what I want, which most bookstore shop assistants (in general bookstores) would not understand in the same way.

-Lying not to speak any English saves time and energy. It is a bit sad, I don't like lying in general, but it really really helps. It saves me any long and uninteresting explanations, it perfectly circumvents the reflex "a couple speaking in a non-Italian language=I speak my very bad English to them", and it really helps. And it is also much more efficient in communication, than trying to decypher very bad English just out of politeness. Yes, not everyone's English sucks, but in most cases it does. And in 100% cases, it is worse than the person's native language.

-The bookstores: I was rather disappointed. Rather small for such a city. I got several fantasy/scifi books by Italian authors nonetheless! I am so looking forward to them! But my quest to actually get my hands on a few internal medicine books, so that I could really have a look inside and pick something to study from, that was a complete failure. There might have been one specialised shop, I stupidly didn't visit it in the opening hours

-The breakfast=the main opportunity to see speakers of various languages. Oh, and the food was so good! The most interesting crowd (really a large group!) were speakers of a Sign Language. I assumed the Italian Sign Language. A much quieter crowd, than the one old man just playing random youtube videos very loudly on his phone there, sure :-D. But still, not as quiet as people may expect. The Sign Languages, on top of all the other "mysteries" around them, have a specific non verbal part. I would have to learn one, to start distinguishing normal hand gestures from speaking. It is also interesting to notice how differently the speakers position themselves in conversation (to see each other. Even between tables 8 metres away), or how they need to get attention etc. But also how do they sound. For example, laughter of a person without the experience of how laughing "should" sound, who has never felt self-conscious about it, and who doesn't realize how loud or quiet they are. It was a bit unusual at first. Or one or two people were sort of half-vocalising while signing, or perhaps also letting someone read lips. I am not sure I'll ever get to learning a sign language. Yes, I feel I should, as a doctor. But with my moving around Europe, it would be hard to pick one. But in general, people should learn them much more often.

And now I look as if I had spied on them! No! I hadn't!!!

There were also natives of other languages. Funny, one guy asked whether we were French. Not sure when he heard me accidentally using it. A most curious couple were people using normal Italian together, but French with the Italian staff :-D No clue why.

Nooooow, back to studying. I am already back at work. It was very harsh to come back and remember a bit of medicine :-D We've also been understaffed this week. It was bad.

Onwards to German, I just did some vocab and a bit of Speexx during the last week, need to prepare for my class. This expensive way to force me to do "homework" is good for me :-D
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Fri Oct 07, 2022 12:04 pm

One more note to my Italian: I feel I am not too good at Italian, not just because I compare it with my French. But for now, a lot of Italian using tires me in a way the advanced languages don't. It's a huge sign of how much I need to improve. And I have one last week to decide what CELI do I want to take. B2 or C1?

As to German: Yesterday was my 5th tutored lesson. So far, 5 out of 5 were individual, which really helps swallow the price tag. And the school is really doing maximum to make the plannings work. And the second time with the best teacher they've got! She is good, finds actually fun and useful examples, and is great to talk to. But I really need to keep improving fast.

11 to go, till the end of their B2 curriculum. I need to find out how will my C1 path be organised. I will have ended their curriculum in like two months, it should be clear by then.

Erkundungen is a good book, even though I haven't used much for example the audio yet. The paper book proves to be the freest medium. I am working it mostly in the suggested order, so various exercises from various lessons for each tutoring session.

The Speex software is good, I am now going through the B2.2 (my current level) and A2 (reviwing). But the speech recognition part is simply funny, as always. It's a great thing it is there. I like to compare my recording with the native audio. But the judging system is horrible, and proves how the terms "correct" "wrong" "easy" "hard" are relative. It accepted my totally Italian "Qualle" pronunciation :-D (I forgot what language I was learning for a moment). It refused my normal pronunciation of letter "c" and even "i". It accepted stuttering in a long sentence as totally correct. It didn't accept a sentence I knew I said just like the native audio. It forces me to basically speak slower, and it is better to wait a second or two after the start of the recording. It's weird. But ok.

The rest of the exercises is really good, I like the contents, even though a serious update is overdue.

I am thinking of preparing a Goethe C1 next year. And what a suprise: I like learning German. I still don't like the language much, or the culture. But I like my success, I like the progress I've made, I like working towards a huge career advantage. I never thought I'd get to this point of enjoying learning it.
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Cavesa
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Re: Carpe Coffeam

Postby Cavesa » Fri Oct 07, 2022 4:03 pm

Aaaaand I fucked up. No better word. I missed the CELI inscription date.

Options:
A:give it up. Focus just on German
B:sign up for PLIDA, which is like a week later (nope, not CILS, I am working on that date).

Consequences:
A:losing opportunities for job hunting. It is really stressing me out that I still have nothing for next year. Yeah, focusing on German sounds like a good idea, but I still speak it much worse than Italian, out of the two C1 exam preparedness, the Italian one is more realistic.
B:I risk failing, as I am extremely behind my learning plan.

I am really annoyed with myself right now.
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