Episode VI: A New Hope, Cavesa strikes back

[Serpent]

I really love "gramática italiana para estudiantes de habla española"

btw i also found lyricstraining really helpful for learning the spelling differences between spanish and italian

[Cavesa]

I know, the interference is very real for me.

But it is not a huge problem, it will go away in a few years of studying and practice. And the advantages of having some knowledge of three romance languages far outweight the inconveniences. It is pretty weird though, that there is no huge French interference.

Curiously, the pronunciation now goes a bit more to the Italian side, I think. It's partially due to singing, I think. And to the tons of listening practice in Italian. Years ago, when I was in Spain, several people guessed my accent to be Italian well, they just didn't know what Czech sounded like, I don't think I had a not-mine accent. But no matter which one, it is impossible for me to sound like an English native Italian second language speaker Ages ago, I had a weekend job in a small shop and had italian tourists there not that rarely. I was speaking my then horrible Spanish, they were speaking Italian, and we understood each other well

The grammar sounds good, I'll look into it. And lyricstraining is always a pleasure, I'll return to it again. And I'll use the opportunity to find some new music again.

Thanks.

[Xenops]

Thank you, Xenops! Your support helps a lot.
I wish I could become a doctor worthy of an autobiography, but I highly doubt I will

Au contraire! I think your autobiography could be interesting, as it would discuss your experiences in different European healthcare systems.

And, to be honest, not all of the autobiographies are award-winning material. They definitely vary in quality. My favorites are by Katrina Firlik, MD and Michael Collins, MD.

It might come across as pessimistic, but I'd rather have a realistic view of other countries and of medical education in general. If I go down that path, then I'll be better prepared for it. So I thank you for sharing.

[Cavesa]

The lyricstraining is fun and very helpful, even though it can sometimes be frustrating too I really had no clue I had to use numerals in one case. And I couldn't even hear the numbers, as the expectation of what could have been there and what was there was simply too different

I signed up for one of the internet preparation courses fo ECN. It is expensive, true. But perhaps that expensive nature of it (monthly fees) will force me to study more. I like the approach chosen for the exams, the realistic clinical cases, I wish we had stuff like this in our exams more (nope, teachers at my faculty create tests that are more about overly twisted grammar with double or tripple negatives, dubious use of modal verbs, and content different from what is actually being taught. Sometimes I feel like a B1 Czech speaker in Lewis Carrol's Wonderland). But the reality is crushing: I suck so much! It will take a lot of time, efforts, and money (this course costs 45 euro per month, books are expensive and with delivery fees, another course I want to switch to later is expensive too,putting time into this instead of a job etc.) to get me to the level at which I might have a chance to get a good score.

It is extremely hard to do, as I am trully fighting the burn out all the time and my brain often refuses to learn even one more fact. But this different attitude and the "gamification" could actually be helpful. Any French student would hit me, if they heard me use this word about this stuff But yes, the way this gets scored and you get the leaderboards and such stuff, it is actually a kind of an infernal Duolingo.

And I am so bad it feels like I have no chance at all. Well, we'll see.

[Cavesa]

It is a really sad day, when you are googling the Ender's ostheosynthesis instead of the Ender's game

A miracle has just happened! I found a student with whom we could prepare for ECN! We'll meet next friday for the first time and see how it goes. This is a turning point!

[Cavesa]

Ok, it is obviously useless and too negative to sum up my January-February results. I failed all my goals, all my planning experiments. I am far behind my 2018 plan. But still, I'll do a partial overview, focusing just on the good things:

1.Lots of Italian listening. So much that Italian has become the foreign language I think in (but I am switching back now, as I haven't seen an episode since last week). As you may have noticed, my writen Italian is extremely imperfect and full of Spanish But I think I speak better than I write (I am almost sure of it). And definitely, I understand and enjoy the Mentalist as much as in English or Czech (haven't tried other versions so far). This is actually the first series, with which I am this comfortable. Gotham is almost at this level of comfort. But it is definitely possible Gotham is more difficult.

I skipped two episodes in Italian as I had seen them in Czech and that made me even remember the series existed and might be fun in foreign languages. And I watched two more in English with my boyfriend. Or three? He didn't like it much, so we returned to the Red Dwarf (always an excellent choice). That means I have watched 133 episodes!

How much listening practice? I am now in season 7 and currently don't have time to watch the rest. Which makes 133 episodes watched so far, approximately 40 minutes each. Oh my god. I have wasted so much time. Correction: I have spent so much time immersed in Italian! 5320 min or 88 hours and 40 minutes.

I think the Mentalist is one of the very good series for intermediate learners (in the languages with good dubbing of course.) There are lots of subjects and places, but quite a stable group of main characters. Patrick Jane gets to unusual and much more varied situations than most detectives, and he also speaks in a different manner and about different stuff than others. The speech is usually very clear, with not much noise, and few situations with people speaking one over another and loudly (so, it is very clear it is not an original Italian series ). The used language is standard with some colloquialisms and lots of useful phrases and naturally sounding sentences and fun and clever ways to express oneself. And of course lots of the murders include everyday items as the murder weapons, prooves, or otherwise important objects There is definitely a lot you can draw from it, if you like it.

The Mentalist is not an originally italian series, it is not perfect, some of the episodes are much weaker, and it took me a few episodes to appreciate the last season. It is not a classic, or the most important series of the genre. But it is fun and in some ways similar for language learning to the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Ch.Harris. Those are not a must read worthy of a nobel price, but they are fun (at least for me) and incredibly useful to an intermediate language learner.

I think I am ready for an original Italian tv series with native speakers. I almost thought I'd never be! But this moment has just arrived, I need either harder dubbings (and can't think of what could be more difficult tha Gotham and easier than native series. Perhaps Doctor Who or Sherlock? Anyone knows the dubbings?) or the native stuff. The native stuff will be better. Any ideas, please? Even something not too great could suit me, like a mediocre crime series.

And that means one more thing. I have no excuse to watch the american tv shows anymore, it would be a pure waste of time (unless it is time spent with my boyfriend and an unusually good series. but pure waste on my own). In order to get a new excuse, I have to start watching them in German!!!

2.Kwiziq. I have written a LOT about it. I completed what they had for Spanish and am waiting for lots of new content, and then I'm likely to pay for a month. Truth be told, I am not unlikely to pay for one month of French grammar refresh, the free lessons I've done were beneficial to me. Not only I get rusty (even though I am using French quite often and have recently got someone to speak and write to in French), but there are also a few bits I have never thought about in such a way. So, I might pay for one month on Kwiziq some time.

But not now. My budget for online services is being streamed into a preparatory site for the huge french medical exam. And I need to either get a much more regular job (while studying and doing the FINAL exams at my faculty, hahaha), or to cut down my spending. Or both. I am willing to pay a reasonable price for a service bringing me a lot of value and/or enjoyment. I am lucky my dad is likely to pay at least a part of that medical course for me, he is awesome and very supportive of all my education (and the course is almost twice as expensive as Kwiziq). But I still cannot pay for the ecn course AND for Kwiziq AND WoW, AND still keep eating well AND drink lots of coffee outside. I am cutting down even the coffee spending (which is much easier now that the winter is finally ending, the coffee was one of the things making this horrible winter more bearable), eating outside, and so on. I will pay for a month of Kwiziq, not sure when, probably during the summer. I definitely wouldn't pay for Memrise, Duolingo, or other apps. That tells you a lot about how much I love it. I hope they make a German version and I'll have to cut down my coffee expenses even more to pay for a few months!

3.I'm done with the World of Warcraft in Spanish. It is over for reasons related both to points 1 and 2. 2:I need to cut down my expenses. And point 3:I have too little free time. I must choose between all my interests, my too ambitious study plans, my more valuable hobbies, my social life, and so on. and point 1 (don't stone me for this order, please): I have no excuse to play it anymore. It has taught me everything it could in Spanish. Sure, I still don't know some of the game terms (mostly those related to the multiplayer functions, as I am more of a solo gamer) but those are not important. I have learnt and practiced a lot with all the dialogues, items, funny quotes of the npc, cut scenes, and quests. And it's time to admit there is no Spanish learning for me there anymore. For speaking practice, I would have to be less shy and join a more Spanish populated server (but I want to stay on the one my boyfriend is on).

Fortunately, I have come to the phase of being bored by WoW again. It always arrives after weeks of enthusiast playing. I am not sad about leaving temporarily. I will return, when I miss it, when can find some time, and when I want to play in GERMAN! Only then will my time and money investment into it will be worth it again. I think it is impossible to lose anything from my account, if I delete the Spanish client, am I wrong? I will get to it, when I want to download and install the German one. But I don't feel ready for questing in German yet

4.I am "officially" learning Spanish again. I am now using only fun stuff that can fit in between studying. Memrise, Clozemaster, Lyricstraining. Experimenting with a sentence based dictionary and anki. I am reading a fun crime novel. I'll return to my coursebooks soon, I am looking forward to it.

A question: Do you think purely exposure cards in Anki are good for anything? I remember someone mentioning using Anki just as a reminder, to show them something again and again, not focusing on the testing part. I cannot draw vocab with sentences from this novel easily with readlang, I don't have an epub, I don't have the right to buy it, the library does have epubs but not this one, and I didn't find a link to a pirated version that wouldn't lead to an obvious fraud site. So, I am thinking of just rewriting interesting sentences (interesting by vocab I know only superficially, grammar, fun use of the language). And then reading them again and again, in the chosen time intervals. Do you think it would be helpful or a waste of time? I don't want to make translation cards for sentences. Sentences from a novel would definitely be painful in the "but my version should be correct too" way.

[jeff_lindqvist]

A question: Do you think purely exposure cards in Anki are good for anything? I remember someone mentioning using Anki just as a reminder, to show them something again and again, not focusing on the testing part.

Short answer - I only use exposure cards (it saves time). My level is better if I've worked on the content before (say, material from textbooks instead of random word lists). I don't use Anki for all my languages, and my "best" ones aren't represented there at all.

[Cavesa]

Anki looks like it's gonna be my curse and salvation at the same time in the upcoming months.

I plan to use it both for languages and medicine. And I need to make my own cards.
For languages, because I simply can't seem to find what I need in the already made decks and I want to make the decks really suit me
For medicine, because the decks I've downloaded are awesome in theory, but I am unable to learn from them, as there is almost always too much information on the card.

So, the formats of the cards I am gonna experiment with during the next months:
1.I might be making a classical bilingual vocab deck (L1 front, L2 answer), but this is more likely to be a summer project
2.I will be making purely exposure cards with sentences from novels. It's more efficient than to reread the novel ten times, I suppose
3.Sentence translation cards based on one particular resource I've bought
4.Medicine cards: I need to learn how to dissect textbook chapters into simple questions-answers. I have it easier in theory, as I am good at understanding logical concepts, so anki is no risk to this. I have a problem memorising all the facts. And there are so many!

The more difficult part: making myself stick to anki in the long run.

I am facing my usual problem, I am still learning how to learn. Which sucks. At my age and in the last year of medicine. I should have mastered this long ago.

All my successes look like either a miracle or a misunderstanding

edit:fixed a mistake

[Cavesa]

Anki is painfully boring but I need to get through this, because I can really see no other way.

I have found a few addons and need to learn how to install them and use them. I want to get rid of the Habitica one. Habitica somehow doesn't work for me now and the addon is bugged it seems. But I could do with the switch to dark background and light text. I love that, because that's how MUD clients show the games. So, the combination is something that strains my eyes less as I am used to it, and it reminds me of those happy times spent playing Also, there is a Memrise deck importer addon, but for that one, I would have to learn how to make the fill in the gaps cards, to keep the main function for which I haven't left Memrise yet. And anyone has played Ankistrategy?

For my medicine cards: I know very well, why people struggle to make short cards, I struggle too and succeed only partially. Each card takes too long to make and chopping stuff down, into SRSable pieces, that is no easy task. It is helpful and necessary. But my cards are bit of a compromise between the ideal and between the cards the coursebooks are dragging me to create.

For my sentence memorisation cards: The whole idea is based on one particular resource. It is called "mluvník" (something like "speaktool") and was published by Lingea, a publisher specialising in dictionaries. There are various languages available. The obvious choices, but also a few less obvious. The whole idea: It is a dictionary giving you example sentences with natural ways to express yourself like you would in Czech, just in the foreign language. It is supposed to help people avoid direct translating and mistakes based on one's native language. There are standard simple sentences but also idioms, sorted by czech keywords, usually gathering the several meanings of the keyword and showing the differences in the target language (such as a completely different word being used).

One of the things I like about the examples is the clear way they show the prepositions use, more examples can only suit me well. The only issue I have with this is lack of a recommendation to not use this much as a beginner, I think this should be clearer. I really think resources like this are best used by someone already getting enough native input to know "ah, this doesn't sound too natural to me".

Yes, tv series work for me well. I am just trying this as a way to make my learning even more efficient. The ease of use of these books (I have four) makes it comfortable to make sentence memorisation flashcards. And as many are using sentence memorisation tools like Glossika, or the 10000 sentences method by AJATT, I don't think this could hurt.

This is a long term project. I am not likely to type more than one page at a time, and I don't use everything. If this proves useful, my translation grammar exercise books could be another nice sentence mine for this.

Novels and tv series are better for the purely exposure cards, at least for now.

[schlaraffenland]

But I could do with the switch to dark background and light text. I love that, because that's how MUD clients show the games. So, the combination is something that strains my eyes less as I am used to it, and it reminds me of those happy times spent playing

This made me very happy indeed! I have the same memories!