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Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 2:59 pm
by StringerBell
ITALIAN: Full steam ahead!

I feel like I have a lot of different things going on at the moment so I wanted to make a list of what's in progress.

1) I am slightly more than 1/2 way through the edX course: Italian Language and Culture: Beginner (2019-2020). I was thinking that since I'm having such a hard time getting through the damn Practice Makes Perfect course book, taking this free online course would be a good way to patch up any missing parts. I'm finding that the course feels extremely easy and I have not yet come across anything I don't already know. I don't think I'm really gaining anything by doing it, other than the realization that my basic grammar knowledge isn't as bad as I thought it was, so I guess that's something.

This course is extremely well done, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has never formally studied Italian but wants to, or who is interested in a refresher/review. The dialogues are all done by native speakers, and nothing is dumbed down or oversimplified like what can often be found in introductory course books. The vocabulary introduced is surprisingly useful and not just the typical "the pen is on the table" kind of stuff. The professor also uses a lot of humor, which makes it more enjoyable.

2) I started transcribing episode 3 of Lucifer. The first two episodes felt brutal, but at 7 minutes into episode 3, this one is actually not feeling too bad. After getting repeatedly corrected on certain things (like the spelling of può darsi instead of podarsi, which is how I was spelling it :lol: ) I noticed that I'm making fewer spelling mistakes, and I'm getting better at using context to figure out what something should be, like l'ho vs. lo. I'm going to try to work on this more consistently instead of taking such huge breaks.

3) I have written one paragraph per day for the last 7 days (I missed one day because I forgot, so I did 6/7 days). I'm seeing that the key to getting myself to write (at least at this stage) is to keep the requirement short and sweet - even when it's evening and I'm almost out of steam, I can still usually manage to pop out a paragraph. My strategy this time around is to write the paragraph first in English. Then, I use the English version to help guide me when I'm writing in Italian. This is helping both me and my husband (who does the corrections) because it helps me to focus on what I want to say, and it helps him to know what idea I was trying to express when I end up creating a disasterpiece of verb tenses. When I tried to write in Italian in the past, part of the difficulty was just figuring out what to say, so getting my thoughts on paper in English is eliminating this issue.

What I'm seeing from the corrections is that my verb tenses (the more complicated ones like "I would have..." or "If I had...") are a mess. I feel like I should use the corrections somehow to improve these, but I'm not really sure how to go about using the corrections. I'm at max capacity for entering things into Anki. Any suggestions?

4) I'm looking up/making Anki cards for any unknown words/expressions in whatever Italian TV show I watch. I'm hoping that a renewed vocabulary acquisition effort will eventually lead to an easier time reading novels, and reduce the unknowns that I don't even realize I'm missing when I'm listening to TV/podcasts. Making multiple cards that use the new word/expression in different ways is helping to make me feel like I actually know these words for real, instead of only being able to recall them during an Anki session (but then not in real life).

I finished seasons 3 & 4 of Torbiti Delitti (Swamp Murders) and am now on season 5. I think I'll stick with this genre of TV show (crime procedural) because some of the vocab I'm learning from the episodes tends to repeat like: Lei è annegata/affogata = She drowned, or Lui è aggredito = He was attacked. Since this series has a lot of re-enactments, the narration tends to describe what the characters are doing, which makes it really easy to pick up words like il grembiule = apron.

5) L-R: (listening in Italian/reading in English) the novel: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Molto Forte, Incredibilmente Vicino). I'm not doing this everyday, so I've only done 3/10.75 hours. I wish the chapters were more evenly divided; for example, one chapter is 15 minutes while another is 1 hour and 10 min. Seeing that a chapter is only 15 minutes makes me think, "I can totally do this right now" but seeing that the next chapter is over an hour fills me with dread and I keep postponing it. I'm really enjoying the book and the process so I don't know why an hour commitment is such a deterrent. I suppose I could just do half a chapter, but I greatly prefer to do one complete chapter at a time.

6) Listening to the audiobook of a Diary of a Wimpy Kid Portatemi a Casa (Take Me Home). I've finished 7/10 chapters. I could have finished this a long time ago, but I keep forgetting about it. I don't have the text, so this is 100% a listening exercise. I've been relistening to chapters while driving in the car. My goal is to be able to figure out any unknown word/expression that pops up. So far, there was only one thing I had to ask for assistance because I just couldn't hear what was being said clearly enough to spell it (Ha schioccato le dita = She snapped her fingers). Everything else I've been able to figure out from context and hear well enough to spell it so that I could look it up online.

These books feel like a vacation for my brain, so I keep picking up new ones any time I can find them used for a good price. I'm planning to listen through a second time to make Anki cards of the unknowns, which is a much bigger pain in the butt to do for an audiobook, but since there aren't too many unknowns, hopefully it won't be too awful. I also find them tremendously useful for learning common colloquial expressions, like: mi sa che... (I think that...) vs. the other more "proper" ways that I know, like penso che, or really useful things like "Se fossi io a decidere..." (If it were up to me.../If I were the one deciding...)

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:48 pm
by StringerBell
I was exceptionally tired this week, so I took some days off of language stuff and have just been mainly doing low mental-energy tasks.

ITALIAN:

1) I am almost totally done with the edX course Italian Language and Culture: Beginner (2019-2020). The 4th (last) section is the part that I really need work on - when to use passato prossimo vs. imperfetto past tenses. There are certain situations were I definitely know which is the right tense to use, but I'd say about 1/2 the time I'm guessing and half of those guesses are wrong.

I was hoping an explanation from an actual Italian professor would illuminate things for me, but I have to say that I'm still just as confused. On the practice sentences in this section I scored 50% right/wrong, not any better than blind guessing. I've heard people say that I just have to pick this up from input, but after 2,000 hours of listening/reading/speaking, I'm no closer to using the correct forms consistently, so clearly that's not working for me. I think I'll try revisiting this section of the course a few times over the next weeks (if I remember) to see if I can get a better grip on this concept.

2) I'm halfway through transcribing episode 3 of Lucifer. I was thinking of suggesting some kind of TV series transcription challenge, but I seriously doubt anyone else would be interested. It would be cool if we all could produce more TV episode transcriptions in various languages since this is something that is sorely lacking, in general. Besides Buffy in French, I don't really think there's much (if anything) for other language learners to use.

3) Totally stopped doing the 1 paragraph per day writing, I was just too tired and lazy. I know I need to get back into the habit of doing it - hopefully I'll restart today.

4) I finished watching 4/10 episodes of season 5 of Torbidi Delitti on dplay and making multiple Anki cards for each new word I mined.. This is one of my go-to things when I need downtime because I find it easy to understand so I don't even have to be paying 100% attention to follow what's happening. I'm only coming across about one or two new words per episode, so it's pretty low-stress.

I have totally stopped Anki reviews for the last week...I will get back to them just as soon as I can convince myself that seeing I have 4,500 reviews waiting doesn't mean I have to do them all in one day. I just hate seeing those high numbers.

5) Have not even touched the L-R activity I was doing: (listening in Italian/reading in English) the novel: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Molto Forte, Incredibilmente Vicino). Though, for some reason I've been obsessively thinking about a big L-R challenge in the spirit of the original proposed idea of R-L as a way to make Italian reading easier for me. I keep vacillating between being psyched to do it and convinced I won't have the stamina to do it intensively nor get adequate return on investment.

6) Finished the Diary of a Wimpy Kid audiobook Portatemi a Casa (Take Me Home). I've been occasionally relistening to random chapters. At some point I'd like to try to pick out the few new words that I had to figure out from context.

LATIN:

Still doing Scriptorium 5x per sentence for all the stories in the Cambridge Course, though I skipped most of this week. I'm still in Stage/Chapter 9. It's very slow going, but I really feel like I have a good understanding of what's going on in all of the stories I've read. Trying not to get too pissed off when Latin suddenly decides in certain situations that case endings aren't necessary... if you can figure out who's doing what to whom without the case ending, why use it at all?

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:15 pm
by DaveAgain
StringerBell wrote:I was exceptionally tired this week, so I took some days off of language stuff and have just been mainly doing low mental-energy tasks.
Hope you're feeling better.
ITALIAN:

2) I'm halfway through transcribing episode 3 of Lucifer. I was thinking of suggesting some kind of TV series transcription challenge, but I seriously doubt anyone else would be interested. It would be cool if we all could produce more TV episode transcriptions in various languages since this is something that is sorely lacking, in general. Besides Buffy in French, I don't really think there's much (if anything) for other language learners to use.
1. Are there any Italian publishers producing screenplays? There's a limited number available in French.

2. The 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series seems to be its own little subculture, there might be a fan-transcription available for that.

3. Create your challenge, and see how many nibbles you get! :-)

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:35 pm
by eido
A transcription challenge would be interesting.

I started about a year ago (can't remember now) transcribing Gravity Falls episodes for practice since I noticed the fan Wikia for it didn't have every episode listed with complete transcripts. I stopped because the native speakers that ran it at the time kept going back to correct my work at my admission that I was a non-native. I had even had my submission corrected by a native-speaking friend before I posted it, but the mod there kept rearranging my work.

Now, I obviously know I'm sensitive and take criticism harder than most, but it really hurt me as someone that knew I had to grow but worked hard at producing a quality product.

It would be my dream to have a website dedicated to maintaining a database of transcripts with collaborative (yet constructive) editing. I would also love to have a YouTube channel dedicated to subtitling interesting cultural content in a variety of languages so everyone could have access to it. (High-quality subtitles, of course -- non-literal, proofread, etc.)

If you decide to open the challenge up, I'd be interested to see where it leads and might even participate myself since I watch content from creators that don't create captions or subtitles for their creations.

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2019 10:32 pm
by IronMike
StringerBell wrote:ITALIAN:

1) I am almost totally done with the edX course Italian Language and Culture: Beginner (2019-2020).

Oh my crap (as DD #1 would say), I love edX and had no idea they had an Italian course. Signed up! Grazie mille!

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2019 1:02 pm
by StringerBell
DaveAgain wrote: Create your challenge, and see how many nibbles you get! :-)


eido wrote:If you decide to open the challenge up, I'd be interested to see where it leads and might even participate myself since I watch content from creators that don't create captions or subtitles for their creations.


Ok, maybe a transcription challenge wasn't such a stupid idea after all? I'll probably propose something in the Challenges section. I still doubt that many people will want to do this even though I think it's really beneficial. Maybe eido and I will be the only two doing it... we'll see!

IronMike wrote:Oh my crap (as DD #1 would say), I love edX and had no idea they had an Italian course. Signed up! Grazie mille!


I'd love to hear what you think of it!


*******************************

I've been having the greatest LEs lately; I recently started playing a lot of verbal/conversational games that I grew up playing fairly frequently. Neither of my LEPs seem to have heard of any of them before. So far we've done:

1) Would You Rather?
2) 2 Truths and a Lie
3) 20 Questions

20 Questions was surprisingly fun to play. I couldn't guess my LEP's objects at all, but he was able to guess mine just in the nick of time (with a hint). No other common games come to mind (beside maybe Desert Island, where you have to list you favorite books, or movies that you'd bring with you to a deserted island) but that's not really a game. Does anyone know of any other games that I'm missing? I'll probably take a look online to see if there something I've never played before.

Anyway, we've started playing one of these 3 games when there's a lull in the conversation. I don't know why I didn't think to do this sooner. I highly recommend giving one or all three of these a try during your next LE.

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2019 2:14 pm
by DaveAgain
StringerBell wrote:I've been having the greatest LEs lately; I recently started playing a lot of verbal/conversational games that I grew up playing fairly frequently. Neither of my LEPs seem to have heard of any of them before. So far we've done:

1) Would You Rather?
2) 2 Truths and a Lie
3) 20 Questions

20 Questions was surprisingly fun to play. I couldn't guess my LEP's objects at all, but he was able to guess mine just in the nick of time (with a hint). No other common games come to mind (beside maybe Desert Island, where you have to list you favorite books, or movies that you'd bring with you to a deserted island) but that's not really a game. Does anyone know of any other games that I'm missing? I'll probably take a look online to see if there something I've never played before.

Anyway, we've started playing one of these 3 games when there's a lull in the conversation. I don't know why I didn't think to do this sooner. I highly recommend giving one or all three of these a try during your next LE.
There's a radio programme called 'Just a minute' that might be adaptable for a language exchange.
The object of the game is for panellists to talk for sixty seconds on a given subject, "without hesitation, repetition or deviation".

The idea for the game came to Ian Messiter as he rode on the top of a number 13 bus. He recalled Percival Parry Jones, a history master from his days at Sherborne School who, upon seeing the young Messiter daydreaming in a class, instructed him to repeat everything he had said in the previous minute without hesitation or repetition.

To this, Messiter added a rule disallowing players from deviating from the subject, as well as a scoring system based on panellists' challenges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Minute

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2019 4:22 pm
by eido
You could do the old-fashioned "story prompt" game.

Start out with a word, phrase, or entire sentence and ask your partner to start a story with that in mind. Then continue taking turns, adding to the story, until you've run out of ideas or the tale just gets too crazy.

When I was younger, me, my mom, and my sister used to play a written version of this on road trips.

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2019 6:00 pm
by cjareck
My children sometimes play the game - you say a word and the other person should say a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word
Eg. a tiger -> a road -> a date
But this is only words game and for LE something connected with stories would be the best.

Re: Polski & Italiano (+ Latin) Episode II: StringerBell Strikes Back

Posted: Wed Sep 11, 2019 9:06 am
by Brun Ugle
StringerBell wrote: I was thinking of suggesting some kind of TV series transcription challenge, but I seriously doubt anyone else would be interested. It would be cool if we all could produce more TV episode transcriptions in various languages since this is something that is sorely lacking, in general.

I had been thinking about doing that as part of the Peppa Pig Project. I thought it would be a nice collaborative effort and make Peppa Pig even more useful for learning languages. I found even just having transcriptions of some of the English episodes to be incredibly helpful and I thought it would be a good exercise to transcribe episodes in one’s target languages. And then those transcripts could help other students at an even lower level. Since the episodes are less than five minutes each and the rate of speech is fairly slow, it shouldn’t be too much work for the student to transcribe or for a native to correct.

Anyway, I agree with the others that say you should start your challenge and see if there’s any interest. I think it could be fun. I wonder if we could put the transcripts on the Wiki or somewhere. There might be copyright problems, but it would be nice to have them available somewhere to future learners.