Italian + Polish with comprehensible input

[Cavesa]

You are absolutely awesome!!! 1100 hours! That is great!

As to your next phases of learning Polish, I think one question offers itself: how much do you like fantasy books?

[zjones]

Thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions or congratulated me. When I return in a few weeks, I will write that review of Luca's book and check out all the great ideas you gave me.

side note: I realized that when I watched that episode of 1983 yesterday, I accidentally watched the 2nd episode instead of the first one! No wonder I was confused...an alternate reality and not even the first episode!

I actually came here to suggest that you watch 1983! Every time I see it on Netflix, I think "I need to remind Stringerbell to watch that!" Despite being happy to watch shows made in other countries, I'm worried that Netflix is introducing more foreign language shows because it increases the chance that I'll have a coup de foudre for some random language...

[StringerBell]

And yes, please do write a review of Luca's book when you are done with your Italian challenge, I'd love to read it!

*I realized that it's been waaaay too many years since I've written a "book report" and I think I forgot how to do it. Hopefully what I came up with is interesting or useful in some way.

Summary/Review of Jak Uczyć Się Języków (How to Learn Langauges) by Luca Lampariello:

First, I want to say that I really like Luca’s videos and articles. I find them both inspiring and down to earth and practical. I bought his ebook in Polish and created a “parallel text” with it, using google translate to make a document that had the auto-generated English translation which I could skim through quickly before reading that section in Polish on my Kindle.

From a learning Polish standpoint, it was relatively easy to read (especially with the crutch of the English version I created). I say that it was easy because it was on one specific topic (how to learn languages) so the vocabularly tended to repeat; as I read more, I relied less and less on the English version because the same words/phrases kept popping up. This gave me the sense of making noticeable progress in a short period of time. The other great thing about the book from a learning Polish standpoint is that the whole thing is written as a Q&A, so it's in an informal and conversational style, which I found easy to digest.

Now for the content of the book.

I started this book expecting some kind of magic-trick reveal. I ended the book realizing that the intended audience is people who are not experienced language learners. He’s writing to the general public who likely have little-to-no foreign language learning experience, so it mostly has general strategies, suggestions, explanations about his routine, a bit about his personal experiences, etc… There wasn’t much that I didn’t know already from watching his YT videos and reading his articles, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. I decided to mention a few key ideas that stood out to me. There’s a lot more in the book, but these bits are ones that I found particularly interesting. They aren’t necessarily new ideas, but reminders and reinforcement of things I’ve heard elsewhere or thought myself.

Luca divides his language learning into 3 phases: begginer, intermediate, and advanced. As a beginner, he does bi-directional translation as a way to understand basic language patterns. Translating into the target language requires declarative memory (recalling individual words) and putting them together in a sentence which involves procedural memory. According to him, the most common mistake people make when learning a language is to focus exclusively on memorizing words (declarative memory) while not focusing on using them in sentences (procedural memory) so the result is that the person ends up memorizing a bunch of words but then can’t use them in sentences. In the intermediate stage he mostly focuses on talking to people in the L2 through Skype and reading articles. In the advanced stage he’s “living” in the language; watching TV, reading books, doing things he would ordinarily do in L1.

Something interesting he mentioned is that when people see someone else doing something perfectly, they are only seeing the final result; they’re not seeing all the effort that was necessary to arrive at that result. This was a good reminder to me and something I should continue to remind myself whenever it feels like I’m working hard to achieve minimal improvements while everyone else seems to pick up languages effortlessly.

Another thing I liked was when he said that “a very talented but simultaneously lazy person who lacks motivation will achieve worse results than someone who is seemingly devoid of talent but learns with great commitment.” This is a good reminder to me because I am devoid of foreign language learning talent, but with commitment I am capable of making slow but steady improvements (at least in certain areas). This is something I need to continually remind myself.

He compares and contrasts how children vs. adults learn languages. He always says that adults are far superior (when they are using good strategies), but often adults fall into a mental trap of misunderstanding how to learn another language. They tend to think that learning a language is like building a house where you have to collect bricks (words) first to use them later to build walls (sentences). This is basically focusing solely on declarative memory while ignoring procedural memory. Even though this approach seems logical, language learning doesn’t work like that so often really intelligent and educated people get totally blocked when they try to learn a language. Luca advocates a “top down” approach where first you focus on the meaning of sentences and later you focus on individual words.

He encourages intensive reading but he also emphasizes that it’s important to use what was learned from reading. Whenever we learn a word, we should try to use it in a conversation.

Interestingly, he says that he thinks it’s a mistake to try to avoid at all costs the influence of our native language. Using our native language is a self-defense mechanism that we resort to when we can’t say something in a foreign language. What we should do is look for simplifications, think about the basic ideas we want to say and try to create simpler sentences in L2 rather than combining everything into a more complex sentence (the way we would in L1 as adults). Adults tend to avoid speaking in a very simple way because we think we’ll seem like children. But, when we use simplifications, our brains don’t have to use the self-defense mechanism of L1. It’s important to start out with simple sentences before trying to create more complex ones.

He mentioned that when we talk to someone on the street in a seemingly simple situation, for example, asking for directions or buying a ticket - the response might actually be much harder to understand than we’d expect. Sometimes it’s easier to talk about complex topics (like philosophy), where there is a clearly defined context rather than have conversations with random people on the street, who could answer with pretty much anything. He gave the example that although he can talk for an hour in Polish on Skype with his LEP about difficult topics like history or international relations when he tries to speak Polish in stores he sometimes has problems. When someone in a store says something short and quick it can be tough to understand them because there’s no context.

With regards to grammar, he says that we should first get some experience with the language and figure out some patterns then later learn the grammar rules. That said, there’s nothing wrong with reading grammar books in the beginning if you really want to, but grammar shouldn’t be the only thing that you focus on because you’ll probably end up knowing those grammar rules well, but it won’t be easy to put them into practice.

He is a big proponent of reading but makes a point of warning not to fall into the trap of assuming children’s books are always as easy as they seem on the surface because very often they were written for children but really intended for adults. We should develop reading skills progressively by starting with texts that are easy to understand, written in uncomplicated language or provided with a translation (as opposed to jumping straight into adult-level novels). After reading something like twenty books of this kind we can then go on to more difficult literature.

Like I said, there was nothing surprising or ground-breaking but I found a lot of things he mentions to be good reminders and confirmation that certain things I think or have been doing make sense. I think it was a worthwhile read and I’m looking forward to rereading it.

[StringerBell]

ITALIAN:

First, I wanted to mention that the visit with my in-laws was wonderful; I don’t have much family that is either alive or that I’m close to but I have a very close relationship with my husband’s parents; they are really warm, generous people who I love spending time with.

Unfortunately, the Italian immersion wasn’t a success from a language-learning point of view. I didn’t give up, which I’m proud of, but the more I tried to speak, the worse my spoken Italian got. I have some health issues that I think I’ve alluded to previously that affect me not only physically, but also affect my cognition and memory… which is in addition to having an almost non-existent auditory memory and a weak ability to hear slight differences. I was able to bypass this in school by taking lots of notes/writing but this weakness prevented me from doing other things like playing a musical instrument (I can’t hear the difference between notes that are close together, and as soon as I hear a piece of music without lyrics I can’t hold onto it in my memory, etc…) Not to mention some psychological factors (like performance anxiety and an unusually low frustration threshold) that no doubt are involved.

I’m pretty much the last person who should be attempting to learn foreign languages. If there were an Anti-FSI test to identify people with no language learning skills who should be kicked out of the room immediately, I would score through the roof.

After a while, seeing how much I continued to struggle to just string together a handful of words really made me feel disappointed. But then my husband said something along the lines of “don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m shocked that your comprehension is as good as it is, especially because you’ve only been seriously at this for about a year and you’ve done basically zero grammar or studying in general.” I realized that even though I struggled mightily to say all but the most basic of things, there was never a point in the past 3 weeks where I couldn’t follow the conversation.

In the evenings we watched 2 Netflix series (Tabula Rasa and La Casa De Papel) in Italian (without subtitles) and I understood everything easily. Maybe once every few episodes I missed a word or a line, but nothing that affected my comprehension. There were a few times my in-laws didn’t hear something, and I paused the show to tell them what they missed. Additionally, we had tons of conversations about a wide range of topics, and even though I couldn’t say too much, I understood what everyone else was saying.

Ultimately, my ability to understand 95% of everything I hear conversationally on just about any topic has been very useful, because it reduces the stress on my husband who previously had to translate everything (Italian > English, then English > Italian) for me, so I can’t say that developing good listening comprehension was a waste of time. And being able to say simple, basic things is also quite useful when interacting with my in-laws. So even if I can’t ever discuss the kinds of topics I’d like to discuss without sounding like Tarzan, having the skills I do have are still worthwhile; I have a tendency to see things in black and white and previously I would have said, “If I can’t speak decently then trying to learn the language is a waste of time.” Now I can accept that having some language skills is better than having none.

So, when it comes to output/production, I think that a Comprehensible Input method is probably not enough on it’s own to transform a regular person into a proficient speaker/writer, since some amount of grammar study is probably necessary at some point. However, it is powerful enough that even someone like me (who really has no business trying to learn a foreign language) can develop a really impressive level of comprehension in a *relatively* short amount of time and with relatively little “effort”.

2018 YEAR IN REVIEW AND PLANS FOR 2019 ITALIAN:

This past year I have made massive improvements in my listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and ability to read. These are the skills I’ve practiced the most and it shows.

Unfortunately, I am struggling massively with speaking. Even after having done 100+ hours of conversation in 3 months (for a cumulative conversation total of 200+ hours) I don’t see improvement in this area. In fact, I after doing a 3 week “Italian Immersion” with my Italian in-laws/husband, my level of spoken Italian tanked big time. Instead of improving, I regressed significantly; this tells me that the advice to “just speak more” is not helping me at all. In fact, I think it’s actually made me worse, which is a counterintuitive and bizzare result that probably only applies to me because I don’t remember ever reading about anyone else who got worse from doing something more. Regardless, I decided that I will take a sabatical for Italian for a little bit. Maybe I can get a nice bow wave efffect when I return to it. I’m not sure yet how long my break will be, probably a few months.

In thinking about the obstacles that I am dealing with, I was debating between various options for after my break which I then distilled into two main ones: #1) give up on the idea that I will ever be able to speak Italian and just focus on reading/listening to maintain my comprehension or, #2) attempt some grammar/formal study as well as some translation practice / consistent writing.

As of now, I’m leaning toward #2, though there is a good chance that in the long run I will end up with #1. I have an incredible aversion to grammar books/study in general. If I’d started with a grammar book at the beginning, I would have quit immediately. But maybe now that I have a strong base in the language, I might be able to tolerate some formal study to patch up my gaps. I will have to tread lightly here.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think I need to get serious about using my learning strengths to improve my production weaknesses instead of expecting my learning weaknesses to improve my other weaknesses. This means that instead of focusing mostly on listening + speaking, I would focus more on things like reading, addressing basic things I still can’t say probably with lots of sample sentence writing, some flashcard practice, some transcription practice, and consistent daily writing. Basically, I need to start emphasizing way more reading + writing.

*I have seen improvements in areas where I've intentionally done practice in the form of writing sample sentences/phrases. I have made little-to-no improvements in areas where I've been corrected verbally while speaking.

If I think about the way I learn best in English, it’s almost always biased towards reading/writing or something that has diagrams/visuals and never relies on input that is purely auditory. In English I almost always prefer to read an article than to listen to a video where someone explains the same thing.

As of now, my plans for Italian in 2019 are: take a break and then see how I feel and what I feel motivated to do.


POLISH:
I consider myself to be somewhere in the low intermediate level with Polish after 1 year of comprehensible input. When I decided a year ago to give Polish one last try using a comprehensible input approach after years of failure with things like classroom lessons, wordlists, and grammar study I didn’t have high hopes. My dream was to get to a level where I could understand native materials, but I never really believed I’d be able to speak proficiently in the language. I have a very deep love for this language, and even though I likely will never surpass a Tarzan level of production (speaking), I am feeling very confident that with time and consistency I will eventually be able to get to a high level of comprehension using CI.

In 2018 I had no other goal than to spend 1100 hours with Polish. This worked really well for me because it gave me something concrete and measurable to focus on, so I’m going to set a cumulative total goal of 2,000 hours for myself (though I don’t need to reach this by the end of 2019). My overall focus will continue to be to just spend time with the language.

The things I’d like to do in 2019 in POLISH:
-Get a grip on Verb Aspects. This is something that I think I need to dedicate some serious time to. To be honest, verb aspects really intimidate me, but I felt the same way about Verbs of Motions years ago, so hopefully I will eventually make some progress here. My plan as of now is to collect and categorize sample sentences to look for patterns and help me to understand when they are used. I did this with Verbs of Motion and it helped a lot.

-Practice conjugating verbs properly. I have no problem seeing a conjugated verb and understanding the significance, but I don’t consistently conjugate correctly when speaking. I’d like to make some improvements in this area. Maybe I’ll do something like 5-10 minutes per day practicing conjugations.

-Continue Listening+Reading. I’m planning to sign up for the RealPolish VIP club which has a lot of content including plenty of stuff with transcriptions. I’m also going to do L-R with audiobooks and revisit old podcasts to mine words that haven’t reappeared often enough for me to remember them and also to look for example sentences with Verb Aspects.

-More reading. I only recently started reading without audio. After having done a lot of R-L this past year, I find reading to be much easier since I can easily hear the words in my head/subvocalize when I read. As much as I want to dive into adult-level novels, I really need to stick with stuff that’s more on my level until my skills increase, so this year I will be primarily reading children’s chapter books (which are still challenging enough for me), in addition to whatever articles I can find and occasional forums in Polish. I’d also like to reread Luca Lampariello’s book (hopefully without the English translation I made).

-Take note of new vocabularly by writing the words/definitions down in a notebook, then try to use those words/phrases myself in some way later on instead of just using Anki. I may also use Anki to practice words/phrases that seem particularly useful, but I’d like to concentrate more on collecting useful things in a physical notebook instead of just copy+pasting into Anki. I started out by fillin notebooks with notes and dictation and I’d like to get back to it.

-Watching TV series with subtitles. This is something that I haven’t done at all and I am really looking forward to. As of now, I’ve been able to find on Netflix 3 shows in Polish that ALSO have Polish subtitles: The Sniffer, 1983, and Ultraviolet. I plan to watch these intensively. In addition to these 3 shows, I also found on Netflix 6 shows with Polish audio that sadly don’t have subtitles. However, I found a website that explains how to embed subtitles into Netflix shows (when watching on a computer) which I may attempt to do.
These 6 shows are: Bonus Family, Call My Agent, The Cuba Libre Story, Cuckoo, Fresh Meat, Tabula Rasa. (Tabula Rasa I just watched with my in-laws in Italian, so I may attempt to watch that one in Polish without subtitles). If I can’t figure out how to add subtitles to the other 5, I may try watching them with English subtitles if I get lost.

-Case Endings: I haven’t formally studied these and I’m honestly on the fence about whether I should start now or not. Through massive exposure, I have a fairly good grip on understanding/recognizing the meaning of case endings and I often know when to expect certain ones, and I can use some of them properly. But I definitely have not internalized them to the point that I can apply them consistenly. I have little confidence that studying declension tables will be a useful endevour for me but I think that I could benefit from focusing on them more in the form of collecting sentences with various case endings and looking for patterns that I don’t already know well enough to use myself. I may take a peek at some declension tables to confirm that I’m on the right track, but I don’t think I’ll focus too much on memorizing anything.

-Writing. I’d like to ideally write a small amount every day (even if it’s just a paragraph or two).

-Conversation Practice: 1 hour per week or whenever the opportunity arises. I’m not really expecting or even hoping for much improvement in this area but I have a LEP who I really enjoy speaking to, so I’m going to think of this more like chatting with a friend (or occasionally my mother/grandmother) instead of speaking practice.

[Chmury]

All the best with your goals for Polish and Italian in 2019 StringerBell! Will be reading your posts and following your progress as usual and hope you make some solid steps forward in all the areas you'd like to improve. And who knows, perhaps your efforts will rekindle my own Polish flame and I'll end up on that long Polish road once again too. Wszystkiego najlepszego!

[cjareck]

-Case Endings: I haven’t formally studied these and I’m honestly on the fence about whether I should start now or not. Through massive exposure, I have a fairly good grip on understanding/recognizing the meaning of case endings and I often know when to expect certain ones, and I can use some of them properly. But I definitely have not internalized them to the point that I can apply them consistenly. I have little confidence that studying declension tables will be a useful endevour for me but I think that I could benefit from focusing on them more in the form of collecting sentences with various case endings and looking for patterns that I don’t already know well enough to use myself. I may take a peek at some declension tables to confirm that I’m on the right track, but I don’t think I’ll focus too much on memorizing anything.

That is a problem even for native speakers. I think I wrote that already, that my children sometimes apply the case ending according to the rule but if it is an exception the result is incorrect. From time to time I spot a word that I can not declinate easily and probably make a mistake since the correct form may simply sound weird to me. So I think that you have right, not to focus on memorising. If you would try, you could discourage yourself by seeing the lack (or very slow) of progress. By the way, in speaking, you do not have time to think what to use and that will be required if you just memorise.

I wish you a happy New Year and many successes with your languages, especially Polish! Italian is on my wishlist, so maybe one day I will focus on the second part of your log

[StringerBell]

Thank you, CompImp. I will keep what you said in mind; I appreciate the encouragement and advice!