Goal: bring Italian to a conversational level in the next three months
Current level: not quite sure. A2ish? I spent a few months focusing on Italian about a year ago, but I haven't touched it since last August. I'm fluent in French and I feel confident that (with a bit of test prep) I could pass a Spanish C1 exam, so I have a strong base in romance languages. That should give me a huge leg up in Italian. I do worry about Spanish interfering with my Italian (or - even worse - Italian interfering with my Spanish), but I hope to get past that.
Learning Resources:
- *Assimil Italian With Ease - I reserved the book from the library and it should come in tomorrow. Last year I made it through the first 50ish lessons. I'm planning on quickly reviewing what I already learned and then carrying on with the course.
*Language Transfer Introduction to Italian - I previously listened to the first 11 tracks, but I'll start again at the beginning.
*Bliubliu - I can only use it for five minutes at a time, since I don't pay for membership, but it's a very good source of short audio clips.
*Conjuguemos - quick verb conjugation drills
*Duolingo - I was about halfway through the tree, but I'll start by regilding from the beginning.
*Memrise - vocabulary from Duolingo. I'll start by reviewing the 600ish words that I learned last year, and then carry on with the course.
*Al Dente - A2/B1 podcast with full transcripts
*Italian Grammar Drills - workbook published by McGraw Hill
- *Star Trek The Next Generation dubbed into Italian (on Netflix)
*translated children's books from the library: Roald Dahl books (James e la pesca gigante, Gli sporcelli). The library also has the first four Harry Potter books.
I'm not going to make myself a complicated schedule or rotation system. I'm just going to decide what I feel like doing and put on a timer for 30 minutes. If I feel after a few weeks that I'm focusing on certain skills to the detriment of others, then I may decide to do something more structured.
I'll leave Skype tutoring/conversations for July, when summer holidays kick in and both my time and my mental energy increase exponentially.
I have no plans at all to start or revisit my old anki decks. This plan will be anki-free, at least for now.
But what about Spanish?
It's still here! I'll continue reading novels for at least half an hour every day and talking via Skype for an hour once a week. Other than that, though, I'm going to be focusing on Italian for the next few months. Come the end of the three months, I'll probably switch at least some of my focus back to Spanish TV, otherwise I'll never win the Super Challenge.
But for now, the push is on Italian.
Andiamo!