Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

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garyb
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Mon Nov 21, 2022 9:18 pm

Based on discussion in another thread, I should be clear that my positive thoughts on the Duo updates were entirely based on the desktop web version, not the mobile app which is still awful and probably doesn't even meet the low bar of better than nothing. I only ever use the web version so I tend to forget that the app even exists, until I get out of the house and remember that that's what almost everybody else is using. And I did have some thoughts on that too...

I was away with friends this past weekend so got very little study done, but did end up in a spontaneous Duolingo session: five people all sitting in a room doing exercises on the app. So I thought why not join in the "fun". Apparently it still doesn't let you use the keyboard for most exercises, although occasionally the option does show up... but since it's occasional, you don't notice it until it's too late because you've got used to not using it. Great UX as always!

But I still thought it was cool in a way that almost everybody in my friend group (people who mostly aren't into languages the way that I or anyone else on this forum is, although are on the nerdy side in general) uses it actively and has picked up some basics in one language or another. They're very aware that it has its flaws, it's never going to make them fluent, and they'd learn much more effectively if they combined it with other resources... But unlike us, they're not trying to efficiently learn a language to a high level; they're quite happy with very slow progress, they wouldn't be learning a language at all otherwise, and just see it as a more productive way to spend ten or fifteen minutes per day than scrolling on social media. When asked if they're learning a language, they'd reply "not really, I just do Duolingo".

Of course the cynical reader will see plenty of issues with all that. There could be much better ways to spend these ten or fifteen minutes, and Duo's market dominance and synonimity with language learning could be making these less obvious and accessible. The poor user experience and excessive gamification of the mobile app mean it's not even particularly fun as far as distractions go. It's made it harder for serious language learners like us here to be taken seriously. The developers have said bad things about certain users. I can't argue with any of that, but I also can't argue with the fact that it's turned a whole generation into language learners, even if extremely casual ones, and as I say they're quite aware of the limitations and aren't under any illusions.

It's also renewed interest in Scottish Gaelic, the most popular language choice among my friends, although again the cynics would probably argue that there were already better resources before Duo's course came out and a "bad" resource takes attention away from these and is worse than none.

I'm not going to say I'm a fan, and when I tell people I use it I'm always very quick to mention that while I find it useful I feel it's only really good for complementing other resources and that only the web version is worthwhile, in the hope that the fact that I'm onto my fifth language now might give some weight to my opinions. And, quite unfashionably for these days, I try not to see everything in black and white.

The example of my friends is obviously anecdotal and unlikely to represent all users, although I think it could be a fair representation of the type of user who is a native English speaker and learning another language out of choice rather than necessity.

Anyway, back onto my serious activities for serious language learners...

The German effort is still going strong, aside from the weekend away. I finished another Spektrum unit and watched the first two episodes of the new Babylon Berlin season, which are all I could find, and then went back to good old Tatort.

Spanish reading is ongoing. Not done much listening, as my little podcast/Youtube time has mostly been focused on German. I'm relistening to Easy German episodes again as I feel there's still a lot of mileage to get from them, especially the magazine-style ones where I don't tend to remember much of the dialogue after the first listen.

Italian has been getting some love in the form of writing and listening. I said I had lost some interest in it, but at the end of the day, it's the only language that I actually speak with people regularly which is reason enough to keep it up. Spanish might be a great asset when I'm travelling and staying in hostels, but not so much during the other 51 weeks of the year, and German still seems like a speculative investment for now in terms of speaking utility even if cultural interest alone is enough to keep me motivated. And whenever I write or speak Italian I become very aware of gaps I still have in my knowledge or the things I've forgotten, even in fairly everyday language, and every gap I fill or expression I revise is a chip away at the block. But it does sometimes feel less like a block and more like a leaky bucket where while I'm busy plugging one hole another two appear. It's hard to compensate for attrition of an advanced language when you're not immersed or putting in serious hours.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby Cavesa » Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:05 pm

Even as a usual cynical reader, I think your friends are actually using Duo right. They are playing a game and know they aren't really learning much. That's the right way to use the app. The problem are people believing the marketing and naively thinking they are really working hard on intensively learning their target language.

Btw thanks for inspiration in your log, as we have several languages in common. I will need to relearn Spanish next year.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Fri Dec 23, 2022 2:17 pm

I had the perfect plan for a winter break filled with German study. I'd finish off my certification courses during the first couple of weeks of December and then get the exam out of the way during my last week at work, leaving a nice quiet two and a half weeks for some consistent language activity and perhaps even a little relaxation.

The reality: Work got too busy so I've had to postpone the exam until mid-January. And then a colleague informed me of the existence of Advent of Code, a series of daily computer programming puzzles from the first of December until Christmas which I couldn't resist since it ties in nicely with the work-related study that I was already doing and was wanting to pick up the pace on sooner or later and the format is a bit more fun than what I was doing before: applying the skills to "real" (albeit very contrived) situations rather than just practising them in isolation.

Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to do it using one of the programming languages that I know well and use professionally, but no, I like to make my life difficult so I chose one that I hadn't used since a one-semester class in my first year of university—seventeen years ago. And much like a school or university foreign language class, it turns out that I barely scratched the surface during that time and hardly even covered the basics.

The first few puzzles were relatively easy and I got through them relatively quickly, which gave me a false sense of security and made me think that once I properly got the hang of the language again I'd fly through them and still have lots of time to spare... But no. Some have been quite tricky, it's taken over my life a bit, and I'm now a good few days behind. On top of that there are all the usual social events and organisation that happens at this time of year, and my band started practising again after a long break.

Needless to say, my German has progressed very little and the goal of finishing Spektrum A1 by the end of the year looks rather unlikely.

I am keeping up a little listening (started Babylon Berlin season 4, which seems not quite as gripping as the previous ones but still good) and Duo, although again I'm questioning my positive thoughts on the latter. Repetition is good, sure, but when the last four units all seem to have been "Talk about past jobs", "Ask for a favour", "Form plural adjectives", and "Form the accusative case", with mostly the same sentences each time and only a small ramp up in difficulty, I'm starting to understand the idea of too much of a good thing. All the more motivation to make time for real study, I suppose.

In an attempt to put a positive spin on all this, with the Advent challenge I've surprised myself with my abilities to learn quickly and dedicate a lot of time to something when it offers the right combination of enjoyment, intellectual stimulation, short- and longer-term rewards, and internal and external motivation. It has happened for languages too in the past, although I'm not sure it will again unless I suddenly find a real and urgent need for one of them, but just the fact that it's possible is quite reassuring considering that at times in the past few years I've wondered if I no longer have the focus and capacity to learn that I had when I was younger. They're there, they just need the right circumstances to come out. It's also nice to rediscover another old passion that I had neglected for years.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sun Jan 01, 2023 5:22 pm

I've found a bit more balance again in the last week. Slowing down for a few days at Christmas helped. I'm still doing the coding challenges, but I accepted that I'd never get them finished within the month and at the end of the day I'm doing them for learning, not competition so I need to take my time and keep it sustainable. In the last few days things have been a bit more relaxed and I've found some time for languages, as well as getting back into music.

Time for an end-of-year roundup?

I read the start of Cavesa's 2023 log, and even though our situations are obviously very different (my field sure isn't as competitive as medicine, and languages don't help my career prospects much, in fact they only do harm if you consider opportunity cost...) I could relate a lot to the ideas of underachievement and spreading oneself too thin.

I was a top performer at school and for most of university but after I graduated I mostly lost interest in the world of work and just wanted to play in bands, travel, party, and that's when I began to get into languages too. Then ten years later I found that interest again and realised just how far behind I was career-wise and how many opportunities I had missed not only to earn good money but also to do interesting work and perhaps even live in different places, and I've been trying to catch up since. This has taken up a lot of my time and will continue to do so.

And then doing these Advent challenges recently has been a bit of a shock and made me realise I'm nowhere near as good at the whole coding thing as I thought I was and I still have a huge amount to learn. It's a bit like learning a language for a while and thinking you're doing pretty well until you actually go out and try to speak it.

That said, I don't regret pursuing these other interests, I don't think I'll ever be a live-to-work type of person and I'm actually a bit ashamed that I came close to becoming one at some points during the pandemic, and I believe that people do things when the time is right for them.

So I think it'll continue to be a case of trying to find the right priorities and balance and making sure I keep doing things for the right reasons, whether that's work or hobbies.

In terms of my languages and where they fit into that, along with some very vague plans/ideas for 2023...

German

My main focus, although that's not saying much. Another year of very slow progress and staying quite firmly at beginner level, but I do feel that the foundation is getting ever stronger as my ability to understand and produce (albeit in an artificial context of responding to questions in learning resources) has steadily improved.

It's quite clear now that I do have a genuine interest in the language and am keen to be able to use it, which I had been unsure about at times.

For 2023: I might make a resolution to go out (or online) and actually try to speak German at some point soon, because until I do that I can only guess what my level really is and what I need to work on beyond the general "basics". It would no doubt help the motivation too. But my "basics" plan is still pretty clear; these Spektrum books and Easy German videos aren't going anywhere. Just keeping it up will be key.

Italian

Just maintenance really; I've not put any significant time into input or study, but I have spoken it with friends once a month or two. Oh yeah, and there was that trip to Italy. Based on recent conversations, I don't think my level has improved much but my confidence perhaps has, and it's at least as big an obstacle.

For 2023: probably more of the same. I'm not in a rush to return to Italy for now; many other destinations are higher on the list. But it'll continue to be my most useful language since I use it with friends, so I hope to keep giving it some of the care that it deserves in the form of input and writing.

Spanish

I've definitely managed a bit more input here, both listening and reading, and the aforementioned trip to Italy where I mostly interacted with other travellers and spoke more Spanish than Italian did give me a motivational boost. Yet again though, slow progress and little real study.

For 2023: there is a chance I'll visit Spain this year, and as I've said, Spanish is useful when travelling anywhere. And Portugal is my main travel plan, and strong Spanish will be an asset if I try to pick up some Portuguese.

Nothing to say on French. I think that "picking up French again" is now just relegated to the bucket of "maybe someday" activities until a use for it comes up or I get sick of other hobbies or I retire or something. Whenever I do hear real-life French I notice just how out of touch I am with the language these days, especially modern usage and slang.

It is a bit sad that I've lost it. It's a bit like playing piano, which is also in the "pick up again someday" bucket; last night I was at a party where a few people were playing and I couldn't remember a single piece, while in the past I could sit and play for an hour. Maybe with skills like that it's worth doing a little session on it even just a few times a year, just to keep it alive. But then that's life: there are only so many things you can do and maintain, and others have to fall by the wayside.

The rest

I do spread myself thin, and this story of very slow progress is quite the same in every other area of life.

I did say a year ago that I was still considering moving for work, so I feel an update on that is needed even if it's quite obvious that the update is that no, I've still not done it and am still not sure if I truly want to. I will say that I'm losing interest in big cities and I'm not sure if I'd consider London now. Berlin maybe, but I'd probably rather be nearer the sea. And to be fair, saying that the world situation has changed in the last year would be an understatement, and my industry isn't in the best shape at the moment. My current job is going more or less fine, and I've not done anywhere near the amount of studying and interview prep I had wanted to do this year even if the Advent thing has put me right back on track. So still no idea really, but I don't think it's something to waste too much time thinking about for now. I just need to take it a step at a time, get on with the current stuff, and enjoy the rest of life in the meantime.

It has been a good year for trying new things and doing things I had been wanting to do for years, like visiting Naples and starting to play jazz and learning to swim properly and to surf and various other things, which I think has just come from realising that time passes scarily quickly and sometimes I need to "just do it". That's also inspired lifestyle changes like drinking less and sleeping more regular hours in order to make the most of my time and energy.

However I am still struggling with the whole cycle of doing too much then getting burnt out then not feeling like doing anything, and that's something I need to try to keep on top of since it's clear that I want to do a lot this year and I'm certainly not planning on slowing down. Maybe it's a case of slow and steady: doing a bit less than I'm sometimes inclined to (which can take a lot of self-control: when I do have motivation, it can be hard for me to stop!), but keeping it sustainable and leaving room for relaxation and things that come up.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jan 01, 2023 5:39 pm

garyb wrote:Italian

Just maintenance really; I've not put any significant time into input or study, but I have spoken it with friends once a month or two. Oh yeah, and there was that trip to Italy. Based on recent conversations, I don't think my level has improved much but my confidence perhaps has, and it's at least as big an obstacle.

For 2023: probably more of the same. I'm not in a rush to return to Italy for now; many other destinations are higher on the list. But it'll continue to be my most useful language since I use it with friends so I hope to keep giving it some of the care that it deserves, in the form of input and writing.
Channel 4 have added a new Italian series, and some more episodes to Rocco Schiavone.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 09, 2023 11:59 am

The new year has honestly been a bit of a disaster so far. I had a few good productive days before and after the 1st, but as soon as I got back to work it all fell apart and I've been struggling to get back into a healthy routine and sleeping pattern again. I put that down partly to just the fact of having to get back into working life but partly from yet again getting overwhelmed and burnt out with all the things I'm trying to do and prolonging it by not dealing with it healthily. But yesterday I forced myself to get up early, get out in the morning, and then catch up on exam studying for the rest of the day, and things are feeling a bit more under control again.

I'm actually not far from the end of Spektrum A1 now: I'm halfway through unit 11 of 12. So realistically I might well finish it this month, but don't quote me on that. The fact that Duo is becoming more tedious has been a good thing for encouraging me to spend more time on Spektrum. That could also be a sign that I'm starting to outgrow Duo, which is again positive.

My approach to Spektrum so far has been pretty much working through it cover-to-cover, just skipping a small number of exercises that are for classrooms ("discuss with your partner") or don't seem valuable, but I might reconsider that for A2 and beyond. Some subjects only need so much attention: work and office vocabularly for example gets heavy attention in both Spektrum and Duo, for the obvious reason that many learners could be living and working in a German-speaking country. Work is a big enough part of my life and a common enough conversation subject to merit some of this attention, but learning to talk about the details of office tasks is hardly a priority for now.

I finished Babylon Berlin so I'm back to Tatort and Easy German, both of which I enjoy but the latter especially is best in small doses.

In Italian, I started reading Fattore 1% by Luca Mazzucchelli. It's self-help, but a friend specifically recommended it to me a couple of years ago and it seems to have solid psychological backing. So far the ideas seem very similar to Atomic Habits, of habit being much more important than motivation, which is handy since I had been thinking about rereading that anyway as I try to get back into good habits after the holidays.

In Spanish, the Murakami reading continues and I'm about two-thirds through now. My friends' book club is also reading The three body problem by Liu Cixin, which will also be in translation so I'll choose between Spanish or Italian for that if I can find it.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:31 am

Still slowly getting back into the routine, but I'm keeping up the German in spite of being busy with everything, including prep for my work exam which is tomorrow and I'm feeling quite confident about now. Once that's out of the way I'll finally be able to relax... If by "relax" I mean go straight onto the next lot of career-related studies and music learning that have been piling up. I think this is just how my life is going to be for the next few months at least. But as I say I'm keeping up with German, and I've even managed to pick up a couple of music things that I had been neglecting for a while. Time and energy are such strange things: sometimes it feels like I'm easily fitting in everything with time to spare despite being busy and others I'm struggling to do anything properly.

On my complicated relationship with DuoLingo: about a week ago the "motivational messages" came back, which they always do after a month or so after I switch them off since they have a "feature" of storing user settings in browser storage with an expiry date rather than in their own database as they should, and that just pushed me over the edge. I ragequit and didn't return for a good few days, and just worked on Spektrum. I did come crawling back a couple of days ago, but I've switched my priorities and I try to always do a bit of Spektrum and only do Duo if I have extra time to fit it in too, while before it was the opposite. It's a shame that it's so convenient for extra practice but also so frustrating at times, and I've yet to find a better alternative to do what it does.

A little trick that I'm finding really helps me to keep up the routine even during busy times, which I admit is just as obvious and unoriginal as most "life hacks" but I can't fault since it works, is to always have my resources open on my computer (since I already seem to spend most of my life on it) but minimised and running in the background to make them as easy to access as possible. Being able to open a textbook PDF or Tatort episode right at the place I left it with one single click or alt-tab, rather than having to find and open the file, removes much of the psychological resistance and friction even if it only really saves ten seconds or so, and seeing the icons in the taskbar also keeps them at the front of my mind so I don't forget them.

As I say, it's advice that comes up again and again in different places: Atomic Habits mentions making it as easy as you can to do the right things; musicians are often advised to keep their instrument out of its case, prominently displayed and ready to pick up; and I remember posts on this forum about how an upfront effort to make target-language media as accessible as possible pays dividends.

Maybe I should do that for Spanish and Italian listening too since they're much more irregular at the moment. But I suspect it's a case of "a little goes a long way" and "when everything is important nothing is important", and having all these icons would probably just stress me out, a bit like when you see a colleague's browser with forty tabs open and it just makes you anxious... I did start watching La porta rossa though, as mentioned by DaveAgain. It's not bad.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Jan 16, 2023 1:00 pm

garyb wrote:I did start watching La porta rossa though, as mentioned by DaveAgain. It's not bad.
I liked the theme music enough to look for a performance of it.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jan 16, 2023 2:27 pm

garyb wrote:A little trick that I'm finding really helps me to keep up the routine even during busy times, which I admit is just as obvious and unoriginal as most "life hacks" but I can't fault since it works, is to always have my resources open on my computer (since I already seem to spend most of my life on it) but minimised and running in the background to make them as easy to access as possible. Being able to open a textbook PDF or Tatort episode right at the place I left it with one single click or alt-tab, rather than having to find and open the file, removes much of the psychological resistance and friction even if it only really saves ten seconds or so, and seeing the icons in the taskbar also keeps them at the front of my mind so I don't forget them.

...a bit like when you see a colleague's browser with forty tabs open and it just makes you anxious...

The latter is too much like having my work cut out for me and so I avoid that. The discussion is à propos though because I was thinking about it yesterday. How much stuff, let's say videos or podcasts, are saved/bookmarked, but remain unattended to? Too often I've been looking for things to watch/listen to and it tends to be media lasting an hour or more and a fairly complicated topic, because the topic appeals to me. Yet the effort required escalates. So it's easy to say: 'okay, I'll save that for later/for the weekend and come back to it...' In truth there's clearly an unconscious avoidance mechanism which knows that if I'm going to sit through a 1 hour documentary in Spanish it's going to involve some work.

I've stopped that for the foreseeable future. I'm now choosing 30 minute TV programmes on lighter subjects. I watched one the other day about cheese making in the Basque country and another about olive oil production. On Arte or BR I sometimes watch the similar German programmes about food and drink or local crafts. Or the 15-20 minute shorts about film directors/actors. These are mangeable in length, have very varied natural dialogue and reveal a lot of vocabulary. Of course these sorts of programmes and drama have their own benefits/drawbacks. There's much less slang in the factual programmes, which is good in general, but not if you want to learn common vernacular patterns; though in drama these can also be vastly overblown to create an aura of exaggerated naturalism. So I drop in drama (films or some TV), but more sparingly than I was doing before.

I've meandered, but the point is that since doing this I don't feel as unmotivated to start and finish something. 30 minutes of a TV programme to top off other activities or to finish the evening is not a great effort.
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Re: Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, bits of French, and now German!)

Postby garyb » Sat Jan 21, 2023 12:22 pm

Le Baron wrote:The latter is too much like having my work cut out for me and so I avoid that. The discussion is à propos though because I was thinking about it yesterday. How much stuff, let's say videos or podcasts, are saved/bookmarked, but remain unattended to? Too often I've been looking for things to watch/listen to and it tends to be media lasting an hour or more and a fairly complicated topic, because the topic appeals to me. Yet the effort required escalates. So it's easy to say: 'okay, I'll save that for later/for the weekend and come back to it...' In truth there's clearly an unconscious avoidance mechanism which knows that if I'm going to sit through a 1 hour documentary in Spanish it's going to involve some work.

I've stopped that for the foreseeable future. I'm now choosing 30 minute TV programmes on lighter subjects. I watched one the other day about cheese making in the Basque country and another about olive oil production. On Arte or BR I sometimes watch the similar German programmes about food and drink or local crafts. Or the 15-20 minute shorts about film directors/actors. These are mangeable in length, have very varied natural dialogue and reveal a lot of vocabulary. Of course these sorts of programmes and drama have their own benefits/drawbacks. There's much less slang in the factual programmes, which is good in general, but not if you want to learn common vernacular patterns; though in drama these can also be vastly overblown to create an aura of exaggerated naturalism. So I drop in drama (films or some TV), but more sparingly than I was doing before.

I've meandered, but the point is that since doing this I don't feel as unmotivated to start and finish something. 30 minutes of a TV programme to top off other activities or to finish the evening is not a great effort.

Definitely some good points there. When I wrote about accessibility I was just thinking about minimising the effort to get to the input or study, but the accessibility of the material itself certainly also makes a difference to the (perceived) mental effort of getting started on it, so it's important to choose things that aren't offputting in that way.

I've been watching a lot of crime dramas just because they're enjoyable and easy to watch, even if there are likely much better choices in terms of appropriate language level and content at my stage. A good few hours per week of input that's enjoyable but not ideal is infinitely better than input that's ideal in theory but not attractive enough for me to actually watch any of it. Even stuff like quiz shows, reality TV, and documentaries have a lot of advantages over fiction but since they mostly don't hold my interest they're not really that useful, although maybe I could make more effort to find ones that do interest me. There's probably a wealth of good documentaries out there in German, and as a beginner I'd probably get a lot more bang for buck from them than from Tatort, but I've not really bothered to seek them out.

I can relate to putting things off then never actually watching them, and in the past I've also forced myself to go through certain books and films just because they're classics (even if relatively modern classics with modern language) and have cultural significance even though I wasn't actually very interested in them. Especially in Italian. Now I barely remember them, the language level was often too challenging to be useful or to even enjoy the experience, and I was just watching/reading them in order to be able to say that I had watched/read them.
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