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

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby rdearman » Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:40 am

IronMike wrote:
rdearman wrote:Recently I've been considering packing in language learning. I don't really get a lot of pleasure out of it, and there isn't much utility in it for me either. But then again doing rust programming and electronics isn't particularly useful to me at the moment either.

When I get like this, besides "packing in" the learning part of it, I shift to just pleasurable reading in the L2, whichever one I'm not currently annoyed at. And then I spend lots of times on other projects (I am a scanner, after all, right Jeff!). This lasts as long as four or five months, but most times less. Probably because the work-required language test is annual, and that language proficiency pay keeps me studying!

Well, recently I posted a bunch of videos on my YT channel about the electronics stuff I've been doing during the lockdown. This was mainly an exercise in public accountability. I've had similar feelings about that stuff, so I figured people invested enough time in wading through those videos would want to see a final result. So it has made me more motivated to get stuff working.

I don't really have anything like that for languages, although the language exchanges do make me keep in touch with the languages. I got burned out on the super challenge. I need to think of something that will motivate me to study, or read.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby smallwhite » Mon Mar 22, 2021 3:50 am

> But for French, Italian or Korean I don't have a feedback system or error messages to help me learn.

The Spreadsheet, Anki, Memrise, Clozemaster, KwizIQ all give instant feedback word by word or sentence by sentence. Yet fuzzy spelling and grammar still compile in real life. Isn’t this better?
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby rdearman » Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:13 am

smallwhite wrote:> But for French, Italian or Korean I don't have a feedback system or error messages to help me learn.

The Spreadsheet, Anki, Memrise, Clozemaster, KwizIQ all give instant feedback word by word or sentence by sentence. Yet fuzzy spelling and grammar still compile in real life. Isn’t this better?

Not really the same. That would be more like downloading some source code someone else has written and running it through a compiler. You haven't really learned anything. Those things are "pre-made" like using someone else's source code. Working with a compiler to write your own program would be more like writing a book in French while an editor sits beside you correcting every sentence you create.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby smallwhite » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:06 pm

rdearman wrote:
smallwhite wrote:> But for French, Italian or Korean I don't have a feedback system or error messages to help me learn.

The Spreadsheet, Anki, Memrise, Clozemaster, KwizIQ all give instant feedback word by word or sentence by sentence. Yet fuzzy spelling and grammar still compile in real life. Isn’t this better?

Not really the same. That would be more like downloading some source code someone else has written and running it through a compiler. You haven't really learned anything. Those things are "pre-made" like using someone else's source code. Working with a compiler to write your own program would be more like writing a book in French while an editor sits beside you correcting every sentence you create.

Are your current shortcomings (goal minus current) book-level or sentence-level or word-level?
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby rdearman » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:14 pm

A mixture of all of them.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby smallwhite » Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:56 am

rdearman wrote:A mixture of all of them.

Then you can benefit from any level’s tools, which is good.

We talk about people who read the user manual first vs those who just go ahead with the gadget. That’s like studying textbooks and grammar rules first vs speaking early expecting correction AND testing early (with Anki or Dialang) expecting to learn from mistakes. So you’re the latter.

You can be fussy and expect nothing less than a real person to correct you real-time, or you can do what other members have suggested that give immediate feedback - using Google Translate back and forth, doing bi-directional translation, and just about any app that scores you.

If you think textbooks and apps are not YOUR words, then you can translate your own forum posts. Compare your own translation into French to that done by GT.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby rdearman » Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:24 pm

For a few reasons I won't go into I will be having four days by myself, and I've decided to complete an immersion program. While ago there was a deal on all the Inspector Montalbano books in Italian. So I have all of these books but haven't read any of them. In addition, I have all the TV shows available to me on the BBC. So I have decided over the course of the four days to try and do everything in Italian. I'm going to try and read all of these books and watch all the films. There is no way that I am actually going to complete this because even if I stayed up and didn't sleep for the entire four days there would be too much material to watch and read.

However, I think a massive input immersion session would do me a world of good. And I'll find out next week when I have my conversation with my regular Italian partner. I told her about this plan this morning, and she is going to tell me if there is any improvement after this massive immersion session.

So this is reading and listening but in order to include writing and speaking I'm going to do a transcription of a couple of episodes of a TV series in Italian and I plan to talk to myself in Italian for the entire time. So just a bit of fun but we'll see how it goes.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby Daniele » Tue Apr 06, 2021 9:19 pm

Be aware that Montalbano books are written in a kind of made up Sicilian. Camilleri manages to make it surprisingly understandable to most Italians, but it still might be challenging for a northern one. TV movies are mostly standard Italian. Both books and movies are very good in my opinion.
If you still want to try, here is a small online Camilleri-dictionary :D http://www.vigata.org/dizionario/camill ... aggio.html

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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby lingua » Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:14 pm

I have read the first Camilleri book (La forma d'acqua) in Italian and found it easier than I was expecting since I had also read that it was difficult for Italians. However, I reread the English version at the same time, listened to the audio book and watched the same episode all at the same time. My sporadic Sicilian studies might've help with the dialect as well.
Last edited by lingua on Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19/20/21 [One good deed is better than a thousand good intentions]

Postby rdearman » Tue Apr 06, 2021 10:16 pm

Daniele wrote:Be aware that Montalbano books are written in a kind of made up Sicilian. Camilleri manages to make it surprisingly understandable to most Italians, but it still might be challenging for a northern one. TV movies are mostly standard Italian. Both books and movies are very good in my opinion.
If you still want to try, here is a small online Camilleri-dictionary :D http://www.vigata.org/dizionario/camill ... aggio.html

Daniele

Grazie Mille! Yeah I have worked out that most of the words that can't be found in the dictionary are Sicilian. :lol:
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