Gary's TACtivation

[garyb]

I did, however, want to give you another healthy shove towards working on Spanish sooner rather than later

Oh it's as tempting as ever. I just have the same dilemma that my Italian feels like it's finally going from quite good to very good and I want to keep up the momentum on that, but on the other hand that can be an illusion (it always feels like you need just a little more work) and it's at that diminishing returns point where I'm wondering if being very good rather than quite good is really worth the effort given my uses and needs. Ideally I'd have the time for both but I'm already struggling to find enough just for one!

Anyway there's nothing stopping me from putting Italian into low-priority mode and coming back to it later. If there's one thing I've learnt in my years of language studies it's that there's no point in planning too much for the long term. I mentioned my potential trip to South Italy next year, but I've also considered returning to Spain and maybe even visiting Portugal (and more Spanish would make Portuguese more transparent). Again, my Italian is already good for travel purposes and a few months' more work wouldn't make a big difference, it would just be fine-tuning, whereas a few months on Spanish could take my level from basic to very useful. Once things calm down a bit after Christmas and I have a little time off work, I'm going to think about priorities and maybe get more serious about Spanish.

[garyb]

Finally a weekend when I wasn't away! My focus has remained on Italian so far, I've not been tempted away by Spanish just yet. I did buy a Kindle copy of "Apocalipsis Z", a Spanish book that a few forum members are reading and that sounds perfect for me (colloquial language rather than literary, set in Spain) but I've not felt the desire to begin it yet. A book in Spanish is still a scary prospect and I'd rather concentrate on the spoken language before thinking about reading. But if I change my mind, it's there waiting for me.

My three Italian Skype partners/teachers are now mostly unavailable until further notice. I talk about reliability and availability as an advantage of teachers over exchange partners, but teachers also sometimes get busy and no longer have time: that's what happened to my last one and is now happening with the current one. At the moment it's not a big problem, I've got a few social opportunities to speak Italian and I've been doing a bit of solo work on pronunciation, speaking, and writing.

Still reading Un altro giro di giostra. It's a pleasant read, easy and fascinating, and it's long, almost 600 pages; I'm around 40% through now. I'm learning a lot about alternative medicine (the good and the bad) and Eastern history, spirituality, and culture. With the last few books I've started to feel that my Italian reading speed has finally caught up with French and I'm reading quite quickly and effortlessly apart from the odd unknown word. According to Goodreads it's taken me 35 books to get to this point. In French I've read around 20, although I've also read a lot more online content over the years plus my high-school courses focused on written language, so it's hard to compare. Anyway, reading ability isn't my primary goal and I'm still not sure how much reading really helps with speaking (I think it does to an extent but it's impossible to quantify), but it's still nice: it's noticeable progress and familiarity with the language, and faster reading means getting more input and enjoying more books in the same amount of time.

Some films:
- Mia madre and Sogni d'oro by Nanni Moretti. High quality as always.
- Scusate se esisto for my generic modern comedy fix. Not bad, quite watchable, good balance between funny and awkward.
- Il gatto a nove code by Dario Argento: watched the first half hour but it didn't interest me much, it just seemed the same kind of thing as Quattro mosche di velluto grigio but not as good, and not enough dialogue for language learning.

[garyb]

Time for one of these "talking about learning languages instead of learning languages" posts: my thoughts on my Spanish learning plan and on practising what I preach.

From my experience I have a few ideas about language learning that I mention both in my log and in other threads, and in particular all the recent discussion on SRS has made me think about how learning Spanish is a good opportunity to apply and test out my ideas on the late-beginner/early-intermediate stage. Usual disclaimer that this is just based on what works for me and I'm not criticising anyone else's methods.

Regarding SRS, I've had a mixed story with it. I used it a lot in the early days, and like many beginners I did so in a fairly unproductive way: a large number of single-word cards, just adding every unknown word without much consideration of whether it was actually worth studying. After a while I realised this wasn't very useful and I dropped it entirely. A couple of years later, I embraced SRS again and used it more sensibly (cloze-deletion and recognition cards with context, adding things selectively and not making it my focus) and it helped me get out of an intermediate plateau in French caused by too much on using and not enough studying. Since then I've continued to use it and find it useful at the intermediate/advanced stages for revising words and expressions that are useful but don't come up every day.

I made a Spanish deck quite early on, using sentences from Assimil and other sources, but I'm not sure it's actually helped much. There are many cards that I can answer instantly, yet when I was in Spain and opportunities to use these words and expressions arose, they just didn't come to mind. It seems like in this case, using SRS just made me better at using SRS as opposed to better at the language.

Anyway, these days my view on SRS is that, at least for the more transparent languages that I study, it's not very useful at the beginner stage. Another view I have is that it's important to get a good grip on the basics before trying to acquire a wide vocabulary. Some learners seem to move onto sexier advanced things when their basics aren't very solid, and I've fallen into that trap myself. SRS allows you to learn what you want to learn rather than what courses and input want you to learn, which is a double-edged sword and as a beginner it can be better to swallow your pride and admit that in a language you're not yet familiar with you don't really know what is most important to focus on. Even at a more advanced level this can apply: when I worked through Grammaire progressive perfectionnement I became aware of many mistakes I was making and things I could improve that I hadn't been aware of before.

I believe in using native input from early on, but it's important to pick your input well, at first focusing on spoken rather than written language and choosing resources that are modern and have everyday conversation rather than specialised language. The point is that the everyday language is just that: it comes up every day. If you're listening often, the important things should come up enough that deliberate revision and repetition of them shouldn't be necessary. Plus you hear them in different contexts rather than in the same one over and over; going back to my experience in Spain, the words that felt easy to access were the ones I had heard a lot in various contexts, not the ones I had studied with Anki.

So in the interests of walking the talk, I've just deleted my Spanish deck. Once I'm comfortable in everyday conversations I might think about using SRS again to help with the non-everyday stuff and tricky grammar.

I'm not going all silent-period though, I still think that productive skills need extra work and input alone isn't enough. So for that, my plan includes speaking to people (similarly to before, having conversations makes you repeatedly practise the language you need for conversations, and reveals important gaps in your knowledge so keeps you focused on the important things) and using FSI to help make pronunciation and grammar more automatic in real conversations (once again, solidifying the basics).

In more abstract terms, going from beginner to intermediate is the easy part, relatively speaking; there are various ways to do it and basically it's a case of if you put in the work you'll get the results. But it's also a frustrating stage, because you don't understand too well and you struggle to express yourself, so wanting to making it even more quick and painless is understandable and that's why I and others are putting more thought into it than it perhaps merits.

[iguanamon]

Great post, Gary!!!

[garyb]

Thanks! I'm glad that quite a few people liked my post, even if my cynical side sees that as there being more interest in the theory than the practice of language learning here .

I had a rare combination of a completely free weekend and enough sleep so I got loads of stuff done. Mostly music and housework (does playing Albéniz and Tárrega on the classical guitar count as Spanish study?) but a decent bit of language time too. I've been reading an interesting book on insomnia and I've slept better in the last few days, but it's too early to tell if it's just coincidence or it's actually working.

Italian: the thought that Spanish could take over my "primary" language position sooner or later has given me some motivation to tie up loose ends with Italian and work more on pronunciation, so I've been doing a bit of that most days. I've been reading a few paragraphs aloud each day, as well as watching vlog-type videos and repeating some of the sentences. This is a little more "extensive" than my usual pronunciation work based around individual words and short phrases, as it lets me practise more different sound combinations and the intonation of longer sentences. Seems appropriate for this stage where I've got a good knowledge of the sound system and the problems I have so I just need to work on applying that knowledge and fixing these problems. I'm seeing improvements but I'll wait and see whether they transfer to real conversation.

On that subject, still not much real conversation recently. I need to find a new tutor and/or be more insistent with my flatmate about speaking Italian sometimes and/or go out and socialise more at Italian "hotspots" like CouchSurfing meetings. If sleep keeps improving all of these things will become easier.

Spanish: Watched Jamón Jamón, a strange but good film (with English subtitles as I couldn't find Spanish ones) and an episode of Aquí no hay quien viva. The latter is feeling easier than before, I believe I'm understanding most of it as opposed to just enough to follow, and now that less effort is required just to process what I'm hearing I can focus more on the actual words/expressions and their context. It's considerably easier than a typical movie as the language is very everyday, but that's not a bad thing given what I was saying in my last post about focusing on the basics. I should maybe focus on easier series like this for a little while before moving onto films, which I currently struggle to follow without subtitles.

[Brian]

I've actually met several Spaniards who've been living in the UK for a decade or more and know barely enough English to get by. Sure, they can't get by with none of the language like native English speakers often can, but they've just done the bare minimum. So I'd say it's not just English speakers.

It never fails to astonish me the lengths some people will go to, to avoid learning a language.

As you say Gary, it's not just native English speakers who do this.

[garyb]

It never fails to astonish me the lengths some people will go to, to avoid learning a language.

As you say Gary, it's not just native English speakers who do this.

I'm aware that most people aren't language enthusiasts like we are on this forum, but it's still interesting to look at the opposite extreme: those who seemingly would benefit from knowing another language yet don't want to learn it beyond the essentials. I'd think that after a few years, the effort and difficulty of trying to get by in daily life with a low language level would add up to more than the effort and difficulty to learn it to a higher level. But like I say I think it's just that they don't really need to learn it, and "it would be nice" isn't sufficient motivation. Plus there are probably all the standard limiting beliefs/excuses about not having talent and being too old and all.

Especially regarding the Italian and Spanish people in the UK, one thing that I've had to understand is that most of them aren't exactly here by choice, and if there were better opportunities and less corruption back home they'd return in a heartbeat. There are a few who love the English language and Scottish or British culture and come here for that, but they're very much in the minority. Putting myself in their shoes, there's no wonder they don't feel the desire to learn any more of the language than they strictly need and they'd rather socialise with each other than meet the locals. Seeing it from their perspective helps me understand why their English never improves and why I tend to feel treated like a second-class citizen when I meet Italians (for example) at a party. And similarly for English speakers abroad: while I didn't find out the Englishman's reasons for moving to Barcelona, it clearly wasn't out of love for the culture, and I doubt that he was interested in making Spanish friends. All in all it's fair enough, can't judge people for having different interests.

[Montmorency]

I have known some Italians who were living and working in England, but by no means planning to spend their life here. I'm really talking about young singles, not those who had an English spouse or partner. And what they do is seek out other Italians to socialise with and they find them un-erringly, as if by radar. Then they create and live in a little Italian microcosm during their time here. They weren't especially interested in English culture, and certainly not English "cuisine", and the weather didn't exactly help either. This even included some who were ostensibly here to learn (or improve) their English. There may be some exceptions - actually I did know one - but the majority were of the first type. I don't know if the Spanish are the same.

Of course, plenty of English people act in a similar way when living abroad.

[garyb]

I have known some Italians who were living and working in England, but by no means planning to spend their life here. I'm really talking about young singles, not those who had an English spouse or partner. And what they do is seek out other Italians to socialise with and they find them un-erringly, as if by radar. Then they create and live in a little Italian microcosm during their time here. They weren't especially interested in English culture, and certainly not English "cuisine", and the weather didn't exactly help either. This even included some who were ostensibly here to learn (or improve) their English. There may be some exceptions - actually I did know one - but the majority were of the first type. I don't know if the Spanish are the same.

Of course, plenty of English people act in a similar way when living abroad.

That certainly matches my experiences, especially the point about those who're ostensibly here to learn English. While the Spanish also tend to stick to that kind of microcosm, it seems to just be because they find it easier to connect with people from the same culture, not because they have anything against others. I've met lots of Spaniards over the years and I've very rarely gotten the "we don't want to speak to you because you're not one of us" feeling that's common with Italians.

It's something I've been curious about and wondered if it's due to cultural or even political factors. It seems like different kinds of pride, like "we're proud of our culture so we want to share it" versus "we're proud of our culture so we want to keep it for ourselves". Spain seems to generally be more progressive and Italy more conservative, so the former might mean a more open attitude towards foreigners and the latter stronger connections with compatriots. Of course I'm not wanting to get too political or say that one is better than the other; I'm quite on the fence myself and I believe both sides have their merits, and moreover this is just one of probably many factors. It's just about what makes life easier for a language learner! Perhaps that's why I tend to feel more welcome and find it easier to practise my Italian in a place like Bologna than one like Rome (but again, probably many factors, like how touristy the places are).

Indeed these are just generalisations and I've met exceptions. My Italian flatmate has friends from all over the world... even Scotland! My friends in Italy have made me extremely welcome when I've visited and I never felt like an outsider. And a while ago I saw a Spanish guy refuse to speak his language with a woman who had lived in Madrid and had a very advanced level.

[Cavesa]

Gary, please don't scare me. One of the things I'm looking forward to is socializing with Italians similarily as I can with the Spaniards. Please don't tell me the Italians are like the French