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

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reineke
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby reineke » Mon May 08, 2017 1:52 pm

How did you learn Italian? I cannot get a clear picture from your log. B1 seems like a considerable improvement relative to your writing sample from January 2016.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby smallwhite » Mon May 08, 2017 2:11 pm

rdearman wrote:Also, I'd take with a grain of salt my near constant moaning about how bad I am. I have good days and bad days and I could have done better on that test with less distractions. :)

Oh, I do, just not exactly in a good/bad day sense. I believe you're not really as :( :cry: :( as you seem to convey. That's why I don't console you ;)
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Mon May 08, 2017 3:56 pm

reineke wrote:How did you learn Italian? I cannot get a clear picture from your log. B1 seems like a considerable improvement relative to your writing sample from January 2016.

Initially I tried a number of things as this was my first attempt to learn a language. I made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of time. I bought all the Michel Thomas CD's and listened to them repeatedly, but this didn't seem to get me very far. The breakthough came when I discovered a neighbour who is Italian. She has been giving me tutoring on and off for a number of years. This was the bulk of the learning. I used the textbook she provided and when we completed I read aloud a large number of books and she corrected my pronunciation and quizzed me on comprehension. During this time I was also speaking regularly to a penpal in Rome via skype. During this time my reading comprehension was never an issue, only listening. Production wasn't really a problem either.

I should note that I never really have done much output. I even failed my own Output Challenge. :cry: :oops: But I have never really cared much about writting in any language, I just want to talk to people. So if I were to do a mini-self assesment then I would have to say that in order of skill from best too worst:
  • Speaking
  • Reading
  • Listening
  • Writting

Which looking at it seems horribly skewed, but I basically concentrated on speaking to Italian people, and reading and writing were secondary. Unlike French where I've mostly be concnetrating on reading.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Tue May 09, 2017 2:38 pm

I should point out as well, that a lot of the reason for the B1 score was because of a 5-6 year break where I was paying more attention to French. Had I not gotten distracted I would have made a lot more progress. Also, I'm lazy (I think I mentioned this before) and I didn't spend enough time studying grammar, or even completing the textbooks and workbooks I bought.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue May 09, 2017 9:26 pm

rdearman wrote:I should point out as well, that a lot of the reason for the B1 score was because of a 5-6 year break where I was paying more attention to French. Had I not gotten distracted I would have made a lot more progress. Also, I'm lazy (I think I mentioned this before) and I didn't spend enough time studying grammar, or even completing the textbooks and workbooks I bought.


Have you considered changing your mindset? Trying to label yourself other than lazy? By all means be lazy and enjoy being lazy if this is what you really want, or if you feel it's not worth changing, but you could try to change things up and not be as lazy. Just a thought.

All in all I don't really see anything wrong with what you do rdearman, and you have indeed made progress it seems, but you are frustrated (mind you we nearly all become this way at times). Perhaps if you would like to make more progress you could consider changing your approach? I don't necessarily wish to debate this, just providing food for thought. However I'm almost certain you've considered this already, numerous times perhaps.

Either way, hang in there, and keep up the learning! You are making progress- you know a lot more French and Italian than before you started learning them, and it's not easy to learn a language. I sincerely do not mean to come across as a know-it-all, a mister been there done that, I just hope you can find a way to improve your situation a little or at least be ok with it, because -again- you are making progress!

I know i know, I should replace Tony Robbins, and yes many people on this forum have asked me directly if I am actually him, which I am, well basically. I mean I inhabit a different body, live in a different country and go around calling myself something else entirely different, but let's face it, I am basically him, better in fact. He stole my ideas man, but you know what, good luck to him. People who steal things deserve to have them, specially money. I love money, and I hate it....

(really think you can handle motivational talk from an insane person? We're all a little insane right, to be learning languages like we do, right?).... i'll run away now...
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Fri May 12, 2017 10:09 pm

Someone put a link in PM's log about anki and taking an Italian C2 test. He avoided reading it, but I read it all. There is a very interesting section where he compares the Italian and German C2 tests. Having never taken an actually level examination I found it extremely interesting. I was also interested in his preparation for the test, which was all done in pen. He practised writing essays and complaint letters and getting a lot of corrections by tutors.

It has given me a lot of food for thought.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby reineke » Fri May 12, 2017 11:37 pm

rdearman wrote:Someone put a link in PM's log about anki and taking an Italian C2 test. He avoided reading it, but I read it all. There is a very interesting section where he compares the Italian and German C2 tests. Having never taken an actually level examination I found it extremely interesting. I was also interested in his preparation for the test, which was all done in pen. He practised writing essays and complaint letters and getting a lot of corrections by tutors.

It has given me a lot of food for thought.


Why don't you say hi and invite the author to join the forum so that he can feed your thoughts some more...
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Thu May 25, 2017 9:55 pm

Well I haven't managed to get a lot of study time in over the last couple of weeks. I was in Poland and had to drive to Prague, so I thought I would take my Italian course CD's with me and play on the drive. Except the rental car didn't have any CD player!

I had one book with me, but it was in English. I picked up a free French book, but I'm trying to focus on Italian so I didn't read it yet. I've been working a lot and haven't had any opportunity to update my log, work on my presentation for the gathering, or do much of anything really.

I've been back for two days so I have managed some Star Trek in Italian, although Netflix has again decided to make this awkward for me and I keep having to flip around to get the sub-titles and audio back into Italian. (I think it is trying to help me)

Lots of stupid and undesirable crap happening for me at the moment, so it will be nice to bury my head in some language learning and language nerd activities over the course of the next few days. Hope to meet lots of you in Bratislava. :)

EDIT: Fixed the auto-corrected words.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri May 26, 2017 12:25 am

Hey rdearman,

I've always wanted to go to Bratislava just for some odd random reason, shame I can't make it. Bummer with the lack of CD player! For some odd reason I'm drawn to Italian lately, maybe I'll be able to get some hot tips from you down the track if I ever take it up seriously. Good luck with your talk in Bratislava and I hope things go unexpectedly smoother for you from here on!

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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Fri May 26, 2017 9:19 pm

Well finally my holiday has arrived! I'm off now until after the gathering and I'm flying over on the Monday. This should give me a little while to get my bearings and to find a good pub. (Priorities you know).

So a little reveal, I'm planning on trialing my experiment which I think I mentioned earlier in my log about seeing how much progress someone could make using ANKI & TV. With this in mind I've been corresponding with a psychology professor at the university of Bath about how to do a proper study and he's given me a ton of great advice. Enough so that it would be a valid research study. I was advised not to restrict it to a single language, e.g. French, not to a starting level. So I'll probably open it up to anyone B2 or below and any language.

The snag here is I would need to provide a lot of technical help but couldn't actually do it for anyone because of copyright restrictions. Anyway, lots to think about. I'm planning on purchasing a domain name for this experiment just so I can have an email server! But it would also allow me to post instructions and even create a bot for recording scores (like the SC bot)

The idea of the study is to see what it any improvement can be had solely using about and TV series with subtitles. It would be nice to have a section here on the forum, but don't think the moderators would let me highjack it just for my own personal curiosity. :lol:

PeterMollenburg wrote:For some odd reason I'm drawn to Italian lately, maybe I'll be able to get some hot tips from you down the track if I ever take it up seriously

Italian is a seriously cool language, and the people are really amazing. I've never not had an Italian speaker try to help me learn Italian. Most are a little surprised at first you want to learn, but then they generally flood you with help! You would struggle getting course tips from me however, since I'm not very good with them, and never really stuck any of them out to the end. :oops:

reineke wrote:Why don't you say hi and invite the author to join the forum so that he can feed your thoughts some more...

Yes, I probably should, but my thoughts have a tendency to flit about like butterflies. :) Besides, I've got so many people here already feeding my thoughts that I can barely keep up!

PeterMollenburg wrote:Have you considered changing your mindset? Trying to label yourself other than lazy? By all means be lazy and enjoy being lazy if this is what you really want, or if you feel it's not worth changing, but you could try to change things up and not be as lazy. Just a thought.


You're probably correct. I suppose one of the issues I face is that I've approached natural languages like I have done with programming languages in the past. In programming I typically had a task to do, and so I selected a language to write it in and if I didn't know the language then I learned enough of it to write the programme I needed. Now frequently I needed to write many programs in the same language, and so I naturally got very good at those. But programming languages are compact and straightforward with very little of the meandering of a natural language. I don't know where I was going with this analogy, only that typically I learn only what I need to get the job done before moving on to the next job. :)

I think I'm going to try the dialang test again for French and Italian this weekend. Less stress at the moment, and I'll have more time to actually spend on it. But then again if I want to put myself in the experiment above, I should probably wait to test myself.
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