Dammit, I don't know how other people are capable of writing quick updates. I always intend to be brief and then posts like this happen! I've been trying to figure out what I want to do with/about languages. I feel confident in my conviction that I have anti-talent with foreign language learning, and I know I will never make the kinds of improvements or gains that other people here make. Do I still want to pursue this as a hobby knowing that? I kind of do, even though it's probably not going to give me the satisfaction I was hoping for. Maybe I can accept that I'm rubbish at this but I'm going to keep doing it anyway.
ITALIAN:LISTENING:The one area I know I have a capacity for improvement is listening comprehension. It's taken me a lot of work, but seeing improvements as a result of my efforts is very motivating. So I'm going to continue improving this area even more, because there is always some new word or phrase or idiom to learn. My comprehension is good, but it can be better. I'm gong to continue with my Lucifer transcription project, because it's a brutal but useful exercise.
In addition, I'm going to return to what I started doing in the beginning that worked really well; anytime I hear a new or unknown thing, I'll stop to take note of it, look it up (and make some Anki flashcards, until I give up on Anki). I've been doing this with episodes of Torbidi Delitti (Swamp Murders). I long ago stopped doing this kind of thing when I reached a point where it was easy enough to watch TV extensively, but that's also the point where I stopped advancing my vocabulary acquisition.
Now, I'm including a bunch of example sentences and slight variations for each term I enter in Anki. This means that instead of making 1 card for each new word/phrase, I end up with 4 or even 6 cards. I'm finding that having multiple cards that are slightly different for each word/phrase seems to be more useful than just 1 card. It's relatively easy to do this because there are only at most 2 or 3 unknowns per episode, which then generate about 8-18 cards. I don't know if it's really a better strategy, but so far I like doing it this way.
I'm making cards for unknowns that I can easily figure out from context like the word
la federa [pillowcase], which was obvious in the episode because someone had a pillowcase on their head, but I'd never be able to summon the word when speaking, nor necessarily even know the meaning if the word were in a different context. Even when I easily figure out an unknown word in context, I forget it in 2 seconds unless I start coming across it repeatedly.
SPEAKING:Improving speaking is a lost cause, and I think I've come to terms with that. So I'm not going to spend effort trying to improve that now (or maybe ever). I can't have interesting discussions without getting stuck, causing confusion, and making a ton of mistakes, but I can communicate well enough for what I need to do, so I'm going to just accept that this is the best I can do.
WRITING:I suck at writing, don't enjoy it at all, but I think I'm capable of doing it regularly if it's in small doses. I don't believe that I will improve without getting corrections because otherwise not only will I not know what I'm doing wrong, but I won't ever figure out how to say it right. I know writing without corrections works for other people who already have a good grammar base or who are good at absorbing what they hear and read, but I don't have much of that ability, so I need some outside intervention.
I decided to try to write 1 paragraph per day using a writing prompt One paragraph isn't much of a commitment, so I'm hoping I can be consistent with it. Instead of handwriting, this time I'm typing my responses in a Word doc, and getting corrections on a copy so that I still have the original version I wrote. My plan as of now is to try to do this everyday and after a period of time (6 months? 1 year?) compare my writing to the earlier attempts to evaluate if I'm improving at all. Maybe making minor writing improvements over time will lead to minor speaking improvements. We'll see.
I'm going to list the writing prompts I'm using, and I might occasionally post my original paragraph here (my rule is that I'm not allowed to look up anything while writing). So far, I've done:
1) What would you do if you were late for an important appointment?
2) What would you do if someone accused you of a crime you didn’t commit?
READING:-I just ordered a 5th Diary of a Wimpy Kid in Italian because I found it used for a good price. This series is perfect for my reading level because there are few unknowns, and when they appear, it's easy to figure them out from context and the silly pictures.
-I'm listening to the audiobook in Italian of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close while reading it in English. I'd like to repeat this a few times, then see if I'm able to just read the Italian book with any kind of ease. If it works, I might start doing this as a regular thing.
-I have a shelf of books waiting for me...not going to lie, it's more fun to buy them than to read them. Maybe that's why I keep buying them. I put Dolores Claiborne on pause. I'll return to it in the future. For now, I'm going to see if something else I have is a little easier. If not, I'll stick with the other stuff I've mentioned.
LATIN & POLISH:I'm still plugging away at Latin (I finally finished Chapter 8 today). Polish is still on hiatus. Interesting, when I log into Netflix, some random shows that I've never watched automatically start playing with a Polish lektor and subtitles. Divine intervention?
The line "bez ojca" (without father) was said by someone one of these times, and now I have "bez ojca" constantly in my head. Maybe this is the strategy I need to finally learn cases?