Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[Brun Ugle]

There is no Setswana this coming week. That’s only every other week, unless Zenmonkey changed it again.

I’m a little surprised you don’t normally have your French lessons 100% in French. You speak French and have spoken it for a while now. You even gave a presentation in French. What do you need crutches for?! I just had my first ever German tutoring session this week and it was the first time I’ve ever spoken German (except for a 2-3 minute conversation with Dave last year and a few brief exchanges in stores) and we spoke entirely in German. Throw away your crutches! Maybe I should make the same bet with you that you made with me, except in your case the challenge would be to do your French sessions entirely in French.

[rdearman]

There is no Setswana this coming week. That’s only every other week, unless Zenmonkey changed it again.

I’m a little surprised you don’t normally have your French lessons 100% in French. You speak French and have spoken it for a while now. You even gave a presentation in French. What do you need crutches for?! I just had my first ever German tutoring session this week and it was the first time I’ve ever spoken German (except for a 2-3 minute conversation with Dave last year and a few brief exchanges in stores) and we spoke entirely in German. Throw away your crutches! Maybe I should make the same bet with you that you made with me, except in your case the challenge would be to do your French sessions entirely in French.

I do have them in 100% French. But normally if I don't know a word they might give me the equivalent in English. But in this case she would have to describe the thing in French until i understand. Which isn't too hard for nouns but for grammatical concepts it is a challenge for me and the tutor!

[rdearman]

12+hrs a week speaking?? Holy smokes. Looks like the Gathering really inspired you! That's awesome and very encouraging to read.

Well my math is a bit wonky. It is actually more like 7 to 9 hours in my target languages since LE are 30 minutes each. But pro LE tip for you, find someone whose level is below yours and the default language will become your target language.

[rdearman]

OK another week has passed and I simply cannot remember all the conversations I've had this week. But most of them were in Italian. I think, because I simply can't be arsed to lookup on my calendar the following:

• 1 Mandarin Lesson (老师 was busy one day)
• 3 lessons in Italian, and 3 language exchanges
• 2 Language Exchanges in French (and another one for tomorrow morning early)

I have meet a guy who is Italian but speaks English. I don't bother to say learning because he is easily a C2 and in fact I didn't detect any accent at all for the first few minutes of our conversation. I actually though he was taking the piss. I have been looking at accent reduction techniques and this piqued my interest. I have a LE scheduled with him on Monday and he's going to explain what he's been doing. Admittedly he has solely focused on English for 15 years, but he is pretty bloody good.

Since I've become very interested in accent reduction I'm looking forward to speaking to him Monday. Some people say you aren't "reducing your accent" but rather trying to acquire a new one. I've been asking about what natives think of my accent when they hear me speak in French or Italian. Interestingly, it seems when I speak in French I have a heavy American accent, but when I speak in Italian they all think I speak with a British accent. I have no idea why this would be different for the two languages. But anyway, I want to try to get rid of both the American and the British from my 2 languages.

I cannot remember why I didn't have a French lesson, or maybe I did, I seriously cannot remember. I'm doing 1-2 hours per day in either FR or IT. I have no idea if this is helping, but I guess it will eventually. My new Italian friend (Mr Perfect English) is determined to rid me of "French corruption" of my Italian. This isn't an accent problem, but French words sneaking into my mouth and coming out, or vapour locking my brain so the Italian cannot get past the French word.

I have been doing a lot of chorusing in French using the WorkAudioBook program and just setting some French content (single sentence) on repeat and listening and chorusing with it until I can say it exactly (or near as damn it) the same as the speaker. I'm hoping this will help me. I'm planning on doing more of the same with Italian.

I should be doing Kwiziq for French grammar but only managed 20 lessons this week. So really need to up my game there.

Not done a lot with Setswana, other than listen to some Peace Corp sentences on Anki. Which means that Von Peterhof will once again make me look like a dunce at this group learning experience.

EDIT: Typos & bad grammar.

[rdearman]

Another week been and gone with lots of language exchanges and lessons. A few LE's didn't happen for various reasons on the other side, but I have tried to be very diligent in my attendance and not miss anything which I'd scheduled. There was one Chinese lesson which neither of us could do, however we've rescheduled for tomorrow. So in summary.

• 2 Mandarin lessons (if tomorrow is successful)
• 5 French lessons or LE's
• 5 Italian lessons or LE's
• 1 Setswana group call.

Not bad. I've also managed to complete a half dozen tests on Kwiziq for French.

For FR &IT I believe that I'm becoming more proficient at speaking, but I'm not sure that my listening comprehension is improving. I had a very difficult lesson today with a French lady who speaks very fast and was determined not to give me a break. She would repeat but not slow down. It was also difficult to ask about words I didn't know because it was mostly during long monologues she did that I had questions. But I always pick the cheapest people in order to stretch my money, and so they aren't professional teachers, just native speakers. So I take what I can get and avoid returning if I struggle too badly. To be fair, once my brain kicked into French mode after about 20 minutes it became easier.

I had 3 hours of French today, and didn't feel like my eyes were bleeding with the brain effort, so perhaps I am improving.

Not much to report with Italian. I need to practice more, but it seems easier for me, even if I struggle confusing FR and IT words. on occasion.

Great lesson with Dandelion MA (another forum member) who is helping me with Mandarin. She even made me some hand written pronunciation guidelines and is working with me on the tones and sounds. Very helpful. She is also a brilliant and patent person. 谢谢。

I've not done much studying. Still doing Anki cards and I try to keep going with HelloChinese app but really that is about it.

More conversations planned for next week. I'm trying to keep weekends free, but one of my long-standing LE Partners can only do weekends, so I fit her in always. Not much else to tell. Just talk talk talk.

I am hoping to fit in more reading and TV. We'll see.

[rdearman]

Cool, I have tentatively booked 10 language exchanges (6 Italian, 4 French) and 3 lessons (2 Mandarin, 1 French) next week. I decided to hold off a little on the iTalki lessons since I've burned through about half my money, and I have a ton of LE offers from people who I have been speaking with over the last few weeks. I will probably use the iTalki teachers when I need more explanations or more assistance. At the moment I'm only looking for speaking practice, so LE's are sufficient and people give me just as many corrections as iTalki tutors, just that I only get 1/2 hour instead of a full hour.

[rdearman]

Well have to report that more than half of my LE's (language exchanges) have gone bust. For some strange reason there were lots of problems with communications, dates, computers, you name it. I have happy to report that I was not the cause of any of these failures. I have done my utmost to make sure that I was available at the time of each LE or lesson. That in itself wasn't easy since life kept interfering mostly in the form of my children who wanted to book "Dad's taxi".

I thought it would be a good time to do a little review of the month. This month I've done a lot of LE's and a lot of iTalki lessons. In the last 30 days I've done 10 lessons on iTalki and more than double that number of LE's. To be honest I'm not sure if it is really helping, although it does seem that I speak more fluidly. My lesson today was with a French lady who has lived in Italian for 30+ years and we spent the lesson flipping back and forth between French and Italian. She praised my Italian and critiqued the French. My Italian is better, which is a little odd because I think my vocabulary is actually less in Italian. However, I did spend a lot more time making it "active" than French.

My long-term french LE Partner, who I speak to on weekends is really great. However, there was a period of about 2 years where we didn't speak, she was moving back to France and looking for a job and I was busy. Over the last 2 months we have been speaking more. Last weekend she told me that she's seen a vast improvement in my French since we first started speaking. I don't struggle to find the words as often. My pronunciation is better, but not perfect. I speak faster with more flow and confidence. So this is really good news. This isn't just because of the LE & lesson binge that I have been on, it is because of all the work I've been doing with watching TV and reading in French. But the creation of more active vocabulary from speaking certainly hasn't gone amiss.

Certainly my comprehension has improved a lot since last month. Especially in French but then I was already pretty good at understanding people speaking in Italian. I find it easier to understand someone talking to me in French than listening to a podcast or watching TV. I don't know if that is just me or everyone experiences that.

My personal thoughts on this month long speaking binge is that I think I can see improvement but it is slow going. I should review my corrections more, and I need to invest more time in pronunciation practice and accent reduction. I'm told my accent isn't really super strong or a barrier to communication. I do find myself dreading the language exchanges especially the first one with a new person, but once I get going they always turn out ok, so my dread is less simply because I have done them so many times. The first time is now becoming easier since I am always doing an introduction and hence using an island which I already know. It is now becoming more difficult with some people with whom I've done multiple LE with. So we then have to do things like describe pictures, or invent stores or talk about local events. So will I'm more comfortable speaking with a familiar person, the topics invariably become more difficult.

I notice that a lot of LE don't happen if the first one fails. Basically if the person doesn't show up for the first one, they will not show for subsequent ones either. I have noticed men cancel more than women. In fact I have a 90% failure rate with men. I have no idea why, although perhaps men have less motivation to speak to other men. Regardless I have had more success booking LE with women and having them keep the booking.

Trying to do LE on the spur of the moment is also a complete was of time. It is much better to book a time slot in advance for everyone. Hence why I was booking meetings a week in advance with people. Some people are very keen to learn and are highly motivated. My repeat LE Partners are all learning English for a reason and with a deadline, typically work related. So motivation is a factor. In this case I'm the odd one out since I'm not learning for a work related reason, not do I have a deadline. I've got a self imposed rule to not miss a meeting, but this is just to keep me from blowing it off.

I am having a fantastic time working with Dandilion Ma on chinese. It is actually really fun and she makes a great effort to teach me. She is actually much better than a number of the iTalki teachers whom I'm paying and I try to help her as much as possible with English.

I am not sure if I'm going to keep going with all these language exchanges, since it can be stressful and difficult to organise. Mostly the problem is of course interference from life and obligations. I'm also not sure where to go with this "method" if you can call it that. I'm not actually doing anything with the corrections I'm getting or the extra vocabulary which people are writing out in the chat window. I do try to take on board the corrections and remember them but I am not putting them into Anki decks or anything like that.

Another problem I've encountered with all of these sessions is Skype. What a crap program. It has recently begun to do stupid things like stop transmitting the text chat, then dumps all the text to the chat window when you hang up. Or frozen audio or frozen video. I really do not understand how this has become the defacto standard everyone uses. For my longer term partners we switched to either Google hangouts or Facebook messenger.

Doing all these LE and lessons has made other things suffer. I've not read all the Italian books which I had planned and I'm way behind on the SC for Italian reading. I have been reading, but I'm a bad boy and it has all been in English so no points there. I haven't been writing like I should be, in English. or any other language for that matter. THerefore I'm not sure if all this talking is actually helping me in the long run or hindering me. I don't know if I should scale back and mix in a lot more stuff, or just press on and activate as many words as possible in conversation.

Tomorrow is a free day with nothing scheduled since everyone for tomorrow bailed on me. So time to do a little reflection? Or time to start booking up next week?

[zenmonkey]

To be honest I'm not sure if it is really helping

WHAT?
(manage your expectations and negative feedback)
because...

although it does seem that I speak more fluidly.

Last weekend she told me that she's seen a vast improvement in my French since we first started speaking. I don't struggle to find the words as often. My pronunciation is better, but not perfect. I speak faster with more flow and confidence. So this is really good news.

Certainly my comprehension has improved a lot since last month. Especially in French. I find it easier to understand someone talking to me in French than listening to a podcast or watching TV.

My personal thoughts on this month long speaking binge is that I think I can see improvement but it is slow going.

You are doing great! I'm impressed.

[rdearman]

You are doing great! I'm impressed.

Well, don't be too impressed. Of course the problem, as always, is that it is difficult to track progress over a long period. I mean it is difficult to track your own progress because over a long period of time it seems like nothing has changed. It is difficult to come up with an analogy of what I mean but I suspect most people understand intuitively that a person isn't best placed to see progress since as the participant you can't really judge your progress as well as an outside observer. Also there isn't any evidence of progress which you can observe internally.

I have the feeling that I speak slightly better with more "flowing speech" but this could simply be my impression. It does help that someone external to myself has observed progress, but there isn't any way to measure this progress.

The comparison of my French abilities to my skill in Italian jell with my own sence that I'm better at Italian. However, this appears slightly contradictory. My vocabulary in French is higher I think, I can read French much easier than Italian with a lot fewer unknowns.

[Brun Ugle]

I don’t think a larger vocabulary necessarily correlates well with higher fluency. Sometimes it’s easier when you don’t know so many words. I find sometimes after I’ve learned new vocabulary or grammar that my ability seems to decline. It seems as if knowing a lot of ways to say something leads to all those different words trying to come out of my mouth at once and they get stuck like the Three Stooges trying to get through a door. If I only know one way to say something, my brain doesn’t have to make any choices.

Also, Zenmonkey is right, as usual. You should listen to him. You’re better than you think. How bad can you be if you gave a presentation in French? And both Zenmonkey and his daughter said your French was pretty good. I asked.

Maybe your problem is that you don’t know what it’s like to know a foreign language. There is no magical moment when it feels like another native language. It always feels a little awkward and intimidating. You just learn to live with that. After a while, you probably won’t notice the feeling in most situations, until something draws your attention to it. Even after 18 years in Norway, I still feel this way with Norwegian and if I haven’t used much Norwegian for a few weeks (like now), it gets very rusty and I feel like I’m back at intermediate level again.