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Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 9:32 pm
by rdearman
Well my log was buried way back on page 5 so I can tell it has been awhile since I did an update. I've not spend anytime "learning" any languages. I've spent a lot of time watching some Italian TV shows mostly "Camionisti In Trattoria". As usual I've been given some amazingly good advice in my log, which I more or less ignored immediately. I haven't been intensively watching, but rather just watching one episode, then repeating it. On the odd occasion I might look up a word but mostly I just try to pick out the words I know and figure out what is going on. Am I improving, well.... kinda, sorta... but really it is too early to tell. I've not really done much French, other than a couple of short YouTube stations I'm subscribed to who might put out a new video once a week or so.

Tonight I did two back-to-back language exchanges in French, and it wasn't too awful. But I have noticed that I talk to much! When we're speaking English I tend to listen and correct, but I also talk a little to keep the conversation going and to let them practice English comprehension. But I talk to much when it is my turn for French and if I want to learn to understand I need to do more of that. But I've very relaxed about the whole language learning thing at the moment because by necessity it has taken a bit of a back burner to other things. I'm still doing these exchanges simply because they want to keep going and they are "regulars", so cultivation of some regulars will keep you talking even when you're not really in the mood. :) I was accepted for a speech at the gathering and it will be about the 500+ language exchanges I did in the last quarter of 2018 and what I gained from the experiance.

I haven't done any study with any books and even my maths books have tailed off to nothing. Mainly this is because by the time I get back to the hotel I just want to veg out in front of the TV. So that is what I'm doing. With luck it might pay off eventually.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 11:20 pm
by rdearman
Absolutely nothing to report. I haven't done any studying for weeks. I simply watch some Italian TV in the hotel, and that is literally it. This week I didn't even manage to do any language exchanges. I've deliberately tried to cut back and there are really only 2-3 people I speak to on a regular basis. SO I'm doing about 16 hours per week of Italian TV. I've stopped reading my Italian books, so I'll fail the SC again this time I suspect. On occasion it annoys me that I'm not doing more, but honestly I'm to tired to do anything most nights other than sit and veg-out in front of the TV. Fridays I have a long drive home, and I just listen to music.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:34 pm
by rdearman
I had an interesting experiance tonight. I was watching an episode of Rocco Schiavone (Italian Detective Series) and I actually forgot I was watching it in Italian. I was about halfway through the episode, and suddenly it occured to me that I hadn't been translating the dialogue but just listening to it. Unfortunatly that experiance only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt good.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2019 6:13 am
by Brun Ugle
rdearman wrote:I had an interesting experiance tonight. I was watching an episode of Rocco Schiavone (Italian Detective Series) and I actually forgot I was watching it in Italian. I was about halfway through the episode, and suddenly it occured to me that I hadn't been translating the dialogue but just listening to it. Unfortunatly that experiance only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt good.

You’ve been translating all this time?! No wonder you say you struggle with listening. I would suggest you take advantage of this occurrence and do a lot of extensive listening without subs or other crutches over the next few weeks. Binge as much as possible. Hopefully, you will achieve a breakthrough with you listening. At first it will be only short bursts like you describe because every time you start to just understand automatically, you brain will say, “Look! I’m doing it!” and you will lose the flow. But if you just keep going and ignore your brain, eventually it will happen more often and for longer periods and soon you will be just listening without ever translating at all.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2019 6:41 am
by Iversen
Long ago I coined the expression "listening like a bloodhound". It means that you don't deliberately try to listen for the meaning, but just listen for the syllables and words and phrases. If you know them then the meaning will automatically po up in your head, maybe as a a translation, but hopefully as the feeling you would have had if all the items were in your own language. If there is something you don't understand then just let it pass by - trying to guess the meaning on the fly will just prevent you from listening to and understanding the following passage.

Sooner or later you will know so much of the language that the isolated islets will merge, leaving just a few holes - and THEN, but not before it is worth bothering about the things you don't understand while you listen. Or in other words: let your inner comprehension automaton work as well as it can on the basis you have got. Trying to force it to work on knowledge you haven't got yet is like trying to drive a car with one or more missing wheels.

And what then about the kind of exercise where you listen again and again, looking unknown words up along the way etc. etc. Well, that's another case. Here the goal is to identify unknown elements in order to fill out some holes. Getting the total meaning (or 'getting the gist' as it is commonly expressed, which just is one step above "I don't understand this") may be a welcome side effect, but the real purpose of this exercise is to acquire more knowledge, which will aid you in doing the bloodhound exercise.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:32 pm
by rdearman
Well as per normal I haven’t been doing much actual study time. However, I continue to watch various series in Italian and I believe it is doing me some good, although that is still unproven. I continue to have a reduced amount of language exchanges with people. In the main I speak with one French lady and one Italian lady. Mainly because they are very persistent in booking time with me to speak. I’ve also discovered by talking to them that they are doing 3-7 language exchanges per week. Which means they are doing 12-28 conversations per month. 3-7 exchanges are what I was doing at my peak per day. They report the same problem as me, which is when you taper off even for a little while the old brain starts to shed what it doesn’t use on a regular basis.

So, while I have been at my new job the rust is building up on my speaking skills, and I probably need to do something to address this.
I have moved on to another series called Rocco Shiavone which is a detective series based on a set of books by an Italian author. The TV series is brilliant, so I went to Amazon and got a couple of the books for my Kindle and I’ve started to read what I thought was the first one, but in fact was the second book. Anyway, the books are much more detailed (as you would expect) but because I have already seen the TV show I have no trouble following along with the book. The TV show follows the plot of the books very closely.

Otherwise not a lot happening. I’m all signed up for the gathering, got accommodation and flights, so I’m all ready to go. Looking at the list of speeches it does seem to be heavily slanted toward beginners, which is one of the reasons I suspect that Iversen didn’t get through. I’ve said before I really don’t understand this configuration of talks since I rarely see anyone there without at least 3 languages on their badge, so they really aren’t the target audience for a beginner how-to.

Luckily, I’m not trying to illuminate or educate my audience but rather just talk about my experiences with language exchanges. But if anyone is going, please make sure to find me and say hello.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:05 am
by lingua
I've read the first four Schiavone books and watched the first two episodes of season 1. I bought DVDs and they are poor quality, unfortunately. Maybe because I read the books first I found the TV series lacking in details. I think the books are fantastic so it's nice to hear that someone else is also enjoying them.

But, you really need to read the books in order. While the first two are stand alone once you get to the third one it is somewhat incomplete and the fourth has followup of the third plus a new case. I just started the fifth book and it is the same in that it's following up with a murder that took place in the third book and it will reveal all regarding Rocco's wife.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 9:52 am
by rdearman
Yes, I stopped reading the second book and went back and got the first one so I am now reading them in order. It is a bit disappointing that he hasn't made every book stand-alone. But I understand that the author wants to have an overarching story arc.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2019 8:59 pm
by rdearman
Another boring post about all the study I haven't done. Look away now if you don't want to see all this rambling and moaning repeated.

I've seriously not done any work with languages for a long time now, and I really don't see myself doing any more work in the immediate future. I'm going to the gathering but not really holding out much hope of showing any improvement in any language that I've listed myself as studying. In fact, I'm positive that both vonPeterhof and Zenmonkey have surpassed me in Setswana. But hey, I'm the "typhoid Mary" of languages, I'm just a carrier and don't seem to get infected myself.

Last week I needed to write some Italian, just a couple of short lines and it was horrible. I can't spell for toffee in Italian, so even though I could have said the couple of paragraphs I needed to write, it was impossible to write without the help of word reference and google. This doesn't really bother me that much, but it does make me think I should fix the problem. And it doesn't bother me enough to make me want to invest hours and hours learning Italian spelling or working with PenPals.

I do listen to at least 2 hours of Italian for 4 nights each week. Most nights it is normally 3-4 hours. So in the last 6 weeks I've listened to at least 48 hours of Italian. My comprehension seems to be improving (I think) but seriously 48 hours isn't that much when you figure in the same timespan I received at least 288 hours of exposure to English. So six times the amount of English as Italian, and French only got a couple of hours tossed in from the side on the odd occasion.

I have picked up some reading time in Italian because of starting to read the Rocco Schiavone books. But I'm only about 15% of the way through one book. Reading in Italian is a much more difficult thing for me than French. But this is because you get good at what you do more often, and I've read a lot more French than Italian. Reading only happens for about a 1/2 hour on the days where I get a bit of extra time at lunch to read, or when I'm sitting in the hotel waiting for food at night. I've also got a couple of books in English I need to complete and they are competing for time.

Last week I tried a little of the intensive listening for a short segment of one of the shows in order to try and boost comprehension. The main issue here is that I'm lazy and I really don't want to spend a lot of time doing this sort of stuff. So I just watch, and the sometimes I re-watch a show. Each re-watching seems to bring some more understanding. So I have no idea if what I'm doing is actually helping me.

I remember s_allard complaining about how people could say they understand x% of a show since it wasn't like a book where you could underline unknown words and then do the maths. Still in my arbitrary study of one, I think the percentage of Italian I'm understanding has increased by about 1-2% over previously. Which a back-of-the-fag-packet calculation means I should understand 100% of the Italian TV's after only another 294 weeks. About 5 and half years more. Nice. AJATT once said something about doing 10,000 hours of listening. Which might help me, although at this rate it will take 16 years. Camionisti in Trattoria has just started season 3, so I should have some more to watch soon. :)

My plans for the rest of this year is to do the above with a couple of LE's mixed in each week. I should do clozemaster and all the rest, but seriously cannot bring myself to do any actual study for any period of time. Mine are not the habits you should emulate if you're wanting to actually learn something.

Re: Rdearman 2016/17/18/19 [Remember if we get caught, I'm deaf and you don't speak English]

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2019 8:45 pm
by rdearman
I am getting worse at French, and I never really was very good. Tonight my French friend and I tried to challenge ourselves. I was tasked with describing how an airplane flies in French. So... Just a few of the words I didn't know:
  • Airflow
  • Wing
  • Aileron (Which it turns out is a French word)
  • Climb
  • Lift
  • Flaps
  • Fuselage
  • Landing gear
  • Pitch, Roll, Yaw
  • Rudder
  • Thrust

She wants another challenge next time, and decided we'd both explain a recipe. Which is where I have a slightly unfair advantage since I like watching food shows and have subscribed to a couple of them in French on YouTube. So I can cheat.

So if you're looking for a challenge, or just want to see how crap you really are at language exchanges try some of these.

  1. Explain how an airplane flies
  2. Describe how a mechanical pencil works
  3. Explain how your brain commands your body to walk, how the muscles contract, etc.
  4. Describe the similarity between Cars and Cows, or Dogs and Doughnuts, or Friends and Furniture.
  5. Explain the rules of a game of rock-paper-scissors
  6. Explain why the moon doesn't crash into the earth.
  7. Describe how to deep sea fish
  8. Explain the respiratory system.
  9. Explain how magnets work.
  10. Describe how a turbine generates electricity?
  11. Explain the principles of a lever.
  12. Explain how and why carbon dating works
  13. Explain why a "factoid" isn't actually a fact.