Ciao tutti,
Obstacles of progress - the name of this post, was chosen on the basis that I'm feeling very inadequate at the moment. I really want to speak, to understand more clearly... but it's coming very slowly. I think this is probably due to a lack of use of the language, and of solid memories of words associated with that use, it seems like an apparition, coming and going as it pleases.
I'm trying now to recreate the same frustrating environment of immersion as I would get abroad, I've made a playlist of songs on YouTube, I'm trying to read many of the numerous children's stories that I've found, i bought an Italian encyclopaedia for children going into middle-school there, I'm doing lots of grammar exercises (especially the ruddy pronouns) and meeting some people once a week for an hour. However even this isn't enough to get past a plateau. It's hard when you're living by yourself (or even with other English speakers), you're cooking, cleaning, working a job, you want to relax or see friends... it becomes hard to find the time.
What I've realised is that I need two things... the first being better time management which involves looking at my schedule and trying to squeeze the last of the metaphorical juice out of it. I'm starting to try and have some time in the morning for critical listening and imitating the pronunciation, whilst having breakfast. This only needs to be 20 minutes a morning, but if I add that up over a week, that's almost two and a half hours. The second is that I need to be forced to use the language. I need to need it, as nearly everyone wants to learn another language, but I need to need it. There are plenty of people who go to another country and after years, they still don't know how to speak it and they are immersed, they have that advantage... . I know one guy who has been here for 5 years and still cant hold a basic conversation, and plenty of other people who're content with communicating badly after 3 or 4. I don't want to be that person. I recently got a request from some Italians to say at my place via CouchSurfing. So this gave me an idea, I could host CSers from Italy as a way of providing some immersion, even if it's only temporary, more on this later.
Anyway, I'm going to keep working hard at it, and keep you updated on the progress. At the moment it seems negligible, but this is my update anyway.
Grazie per tutto il sostegno che mi date,
Rob
P.S. Update on the pipes, my E note is too sharp so I've been wondering why it's been sounding really crap. I'm getting that fixed, also I've booked some one to one lessons so my playing is starting to fill out/take a better shape.
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Monday, 23 July 2012
Update 2, July 2012
Hey everyone,
So i guess this is my first update, and I'm really excited to set everything out in the open for you. Some of you may know that i was in Italy seeing Ele and her people for the last week and a half, and now I've returned a little more brown, and with a lot more confidence to communicate in Italian.
So where do i start? Since this blog is primarily about language goals, i'll leave the other's for a general quick update once every two months or so. I think it would be good to start with my attitudes before and after Italy. I was really struggling the week before i left because i had a lot of work to do for university and i didn't really have much time to devote to extra-curricular studies. I was very apprehensive about how well i would be able to communicate when i'd arrived as i felt i hadn't worked hard enough. I think i was also being very relaxed about my work ethic before but looking back on it now i doubt that i would have made much progress then anyway.
The exciting part begins when my plane landed in Ancona-Falconara airport, of course it was majorly exciting because i was getting to see Eleonora again after months of being apart, but i'm going to be focused here and limit myself strictly to learning gains. On arrival i decided to put my anxiety about communication behind me and just go for it, i reasoned that the only way i could possibly loose out was if i didn't try and after reading some of what Benny was saying in his blog, i decided to try out his theory. He defines the word speak, and that it's more difficult to learn how to speak another language unless you start speaking it from day 1*.
So from the airport we drove to their family apartment in a coastal town and we went to the beach. It was good to relax from the first moment and take my mind off everything here at home, so when we returned to the apartment for dinner, I made a commitment to open my mouth and speak, to attempt communication, time after time... from this very first night when i tried to talk with her parents, i felt like a child again. There was definitely a feeling of frustration at my mistakes and inability to express myself perfectly, but there was also an undeniable feeling of freedom within my grasp, an ancient gate to another world was opening up before my very eyes. Later in the week i had a chat with Ele's father by myself, and since he could speak no English i had no temptation to cheat. We talked about family, about my father and his ordeal with cancer, about my sister and her interest in horses, which led onto one of his nieces who shares that interest, and onto the prizes that she had won, the ones with the ribbons; mind you i can't for the life of me remember the word for ribbon in italian. The conversation was crude, with many mistakes and plenty of round-about ways of learning words, but i was communicating, and i was excited.
Throughout the week, i found myself learning more as i was forcing myself to speak more, i kept having more and more short and unrefined conversations with her parents and family, but the really profound thing that hadn't even entered my mind before, was that by doing this, these people now expect me to try to communicate with them in their language! It's normal for them now, and for me that's encouraging because they've become a fountain to me, and i can draw from them their knowledge and their style. Another cool thing was that i was given the opportunity to go to a birthday party for two friends of Ele, in the Appenine mountains of central Italy where i also got to use this new confidence with two cool Italian guys who i spent time with collecting branches for the fire.
Then I have also been really lucky to find a very cordial couch-surfer called Giada, she's from Turin and has graciously agreed to help me now and then with conversational italian. I met with her Yesterday in McHughes before the seisun, and i found myself yet again pushed into a small conversation that although started quite reluctantly and with frustration, ended in elation and gratitude for all the mistakes.
Anyway, it's now half six, and it's time to leave the lab. I'm just excited and glad that i can share with you my journey to achieve the impossible this summer/next 6 months
Thanks for all the support
Rob
Also i'd like to just leave you with something that might sound cheesy as fuck, but i think it's true, we climbed up this mountain to a lake (very tiny) called the lake of pilate, lago di pilato, and it near killed us at the time of day that we went up, and with just enough water, very little to eat and improvised hiking poles. By the time we reached the top, i cant say we we're overjoyed, we we're actually totally knackered but we made it, and by the time we rationed our water and made it to the bottom, we we're totally shattered but we achieved something. I feel like this is a journey in learning language too, sometimes there's lots of beautiful forest and views as you climb, then it gets tough, and the heat of the sun is on you, and maybe you want to give up. Hold on in there, suck it up, and push through, it's so worth it...
Ele took this picture
So i guess this is my first update, and I'm really excited to set everything out in the open for you. Some of you may know that i was in Italy seeing Ele and her people for the last week and a half, and now I've returned a little more brown, and with a lot more confidence to communicate in Italian.
So where do i start? Since this blog is primarily about language goals, i'll leave the other's for a general quick update once every two months or so. I think it would be good to start with my attitudes before and after Italy. I was really struggling the week before i left because i had a lot of work to do for university and i didn't really have much time to devote to extra-curricular studies. I was very apprehensive about how well i would be able to communicate when i'd arrived as i felt i hadn't worked hard enough. I think i was also being very relaxed about my work ethic before but looking back on it now i doubt that i would have made much progress then anyway.
The exciting part begins when my plane landed in Ancona-Falconara airport, of course it was majorly exciting because i was getting to see Eleonora again after months of being apart, but i'm going to be focused here and limit myself strictly to learning gains. On arrival i decided to put my anxiety about communication behind me and just go for it, i reasoned that the only way i could possibly loose out was if i didn't try and after reading some of what Benny was saying in his blog, i decided to try out his theory. He defines the word speak, and that it's more difficult to learn how to speak another language unless you start speaking it from day 1*.
So from the airport we drove to their family apartment in a coastal town and we went to the beach. It was good to relax from the first moment and take my mind off everything here at home, so when we returned to the apartment for dinner, I made a commitment to open my mouth and speak, to attempt communication, time after time... from this very first night when i tried to talk with her parents, i felt like a child again. There was definitely a feeling of frustration at my mistakes and inability to express myself perfectly, but there was also an undeniable feeling of freedom within my grasp, an ancient gate to another world was opening up before my very eyes. Later in the week i had a chat with Ele's father by myself, and since he could speak no English i had no temptation to cheat. We talked about family, about my father and his ordeal with cancer, about my sister and her interest in horses, which led onto one of his nieces who shares that interest, and onto the prizes that she had won, the ones with the ribbons; mind you i can't for the life of me remember the word for ribbon in italian. The conversation was crude, with many mistakes and plenty of round-about ways of learning words, but i was communicating, and i was excited.
Throughout the week, i found myself learning more as i was forcing myself to speak more, i kept having more and more short and unrefined conversations with her parents and family, but the really profound thing that hadn't even entered my mind before, was that by doing this, these people now expect me to try to communicate with them in their language! It's normal for them now, and for me that's encouraging because they've become a fountain to me, and i can draw from them their knowledge and their style. Another cool thing was that i was given the opportunity to go to a birthday party for two friends of Ele, in the Appenine mountains of central Italy where i also got to use this new confidence with two cool Italian guys who i spent time with collecting branches for the fire.
Then I have also been really lucky to find a very cordial couch-surfer called Giada, she's from Turin and has graciously agreed to help me now and then with conversational italian. I met with her Yesterday in McHughes before the seisun, and i found myself yet again pushed into a small conversation that although started quite reluctantly and with frustration, ended in elation and gratitude for all the mistakes.
Anyway, it's now half six, and it's time to leave the lab. I'm just excited and glad that i can share with you my journey to achieve the impossible this summer/next 6 months
Thanks for all the support
Rob
Also i'd like to just leave you with something that might sound cheesy as fuck, but i think it's true, we climbed up this mountain to a lake (very tiny) called the lake of pilate, lago di pilato, and it near killed us at the time of day that we went up, and with just enough water, very little to eat and improvised hiking poles. By the time we reached the top, i cant say we we're overjoyed, we we're actually totally knackered but we made it, and by the time we rationed our water and made it to the bottom, we we're totally shattered but we achieved something. I feel like this is a journey in learning language too, sometimes there's lots of beautiful forest and views as you climb, then it gets tough, and the heat of the sun is on you, and maybe you want to give up. Hold on in there, suck it up, and push through, it's so worth it...
Ele took this picture
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Language goals and first update
Okay,
I know this has been a long post, but it's my first one and i know they'll become a lot shorter in the future.
So as you might know, on facebook I informed a lot of you that I have a set of goals that I'm going to strive to meet. One of these is to strengthen my body by doing more exercise, especially for my lower body as I'm trying to strengthen my inner-leg. This is to counter a problem that I started getting with my kneecap being pulled up to the outside instead of naturally moving straight up upon tensing. Another reason for wanting to work out more was to please my granny and family as they always tell me that i've lost weight. If i get bigger to what i consider healthily sized, then i wont have this problem. I'm not doing this to become "ripped".
The next was to learn more tunes and in doing so, increase my skill in playing the Uilleann bagpipes (na piopai uilleann). To my shame, i was about to give them up and had considered selling them to buy or swapping them for a traditional flute. However i have had a wonderful girlfriend and a number of friends who've encouraged me to stick with it and to pick them up and keep trying and to my surprise, i've come leaps and bounds in the last month and a half and have actually been playing them in beginners seisuns. Which leads me onto my third and final goal.
This one is something I've been very casual about in the last three months as i've been learning it, and as many of you might know, it's the langauge of my girlfriend, Italian. I started to learn it because i find it fairly frustrating when i lack the ability to communicate with people, and since i was going to be spending more time seeing her family and a number of friends who cannot communicate in english at all, I thought it would be a kind gesture. **
I was thinking last night about the progress i've made on the pipes in the last two months and it's only from regular practice, so i considered what it would be like to practice Italian and really dedicate and immerse myself in it. I found another inspiring blog by a guy called benny from Cavan, Ireland [http://www.fluentin3months.com/] which helped me to remember that you cannot fail in language if you try. Communication involved trying, learning, involvement, the only way you can fail is to not try to communicate. His blog is called fluent in three months, and he describes it not as being perfect which is unattainable, but to be able to communicate well.
I had a good chat with Sriram and Fred before he left, and we chatted about fluency and language learning. I took alot of encouragement from their words and experiences and i decided to throw myself completely into this project, (when i'm not working in the lab of course). One other last experience that i'd like to mention was that a piping teacher of mine had once compared learning tunes to language; this might seem odd to you, but it made perfect sense to me; he explained the phrases that you learn, and how some phrases are similar which helps you learn more, and in the last few months I've come to learn so many tunes that I feel very confident with learning more about my new friend Italian.
So these are my goals, they are quite high, but if you have goals you'll do more that if you have none. I would like to say that there is one other goal i have that encapsulates all of these minor ones, and that isn't to better myself, it's to give you hope as a language learner or a musician, or whatever. I want to show you that i can become conversationally proficient in Italian by Christmas 2012. WHEN I reach this goal (not if) then i will continue to learn Italian to higher levels whilst trying to become conversationally proficient in Irish (a language i've always wanted to learn and hoped to see reestablished here) gaeilge - by Christmas 2013-14. You will then be able to take hope from knowing that in the space of my PhD, for someone who was never a linguist at school. If you follow this blog I will be posting updates and smaller goals that i'm working towards within the language learning process.
Remember, whether you think you can or you can't... you're correct,
Thanks for following me,
Rob
** I'm actually very lucky that a number of her good friends actually speak English almost fluently, and im very grateful that they've stepped out of their language comforts in the past so that i can participate in their conversations.
I know this has been a long post, but it's my first one and i know they'll become a lot shorter in the future.
So as you might know, on facebook I informed a lot of you that I have a set of goals that I'm going to strive to meet. One of these is to strengthen my body by doing more exercise, especially for my lower body as I'm trying to strengthen my inner-leg. This is to counter a problem that I started getting with my kneecap being pulled up to the outside instead of naturally moving straight up upon tensing. Another reason for wanting to work out more was to please my granny and family as they always tell me that i've lost weight. If i get bigger to what i consider healthily sized, then i wont have this problem. I'm not doing this to become "ripped".
The next was to learn more tunes and in doing so, increase my skill in playing the Uilleann bagpipes (na piopai uilleann). To my shame, i was about to give them up and had considered selling them to buy or swapping them for a traditional flute. However i have had a wonderful girlfriend and a number of friends who've encouraged me to stick with it and to pick them up and keep trying and to my surprise, i've come leaps and bounds in the last month and a half and have actually been playing them in beginners seisuns. Which leads me onto my third and final goal.
This one is something I've been very casual about in the last three months as i've been learning it, and as many of you might know, it's the langauge of my girlfriend, Italian. I started to learn it because i find it fairly frustrating when i lack the ability to communicate with people, and since i was going to be spending more time seeing her family and a number of friends who cannot communicate in english at all, I thought it would be a kind gesture. **
I was thinking last night about the progress i've made on the pipes in the last two months and it's only from regular practice, so i considered what it would be like to practice Italian and really dedicate and immerse myself in it. I found another inspiring blog by a guy called benny from Cavan, Ireland [http://www.fluentin3months.com/] which helped me to remember that you cannot fail in language if you try. Communication involved trying, learning, involvement, the only way you can fail is to not try to communicate. His blog is called fluent in three months, and he describes it not as being perfect which is unattainable, but to be able to communicate well.
I had a good chat with Sriram and Fred before he left, and we chatted about fluency and language learning. I took alot of encouragement from their words and experiences and i decided to throw myself completely into this project, (when i'm not working in the lab of course). One other last experience that i'd like to mention was that a piping teacher of mine had once compared learning tunes to language; this might seem odd to you, but it made perfect sense to me; he explained the phrases that you learn, and how some phrases are similar which helps you learn more, and in the last few months I've come to learn so many tunes that I feel very confident with learning more about my new friend Italian.
So these are my goals, they are quite high, but if you have goals you'll do more that if you have none. I would like to say that there is one other goal i have that encapsulates all of these minor ones, and that isn't to better myself, it's to give you hope as a language learner or a musician, or whatever. I want to show you that i can become conversationally proficient in Italian by Christmas 2012. WHEN I reach this goal (not if) then i will continue to learn Italian to higher levels whilst trying to become conversationally proficient in Irish (a language i've always wanted to learn and hoped to see reestablished here) gaeilge - by Christmas 2013-14. You will then be able to take hope from knowing that in the space of my PhD, for someone who was never a linguist at school. If you follow this blog I will be posting updates and smaller goals that i'm working towards within the language learning process.
Remember, whether you think you can or you can't... you're correct,
Thanks for following me,
Rob
** I'm actually very lucky that a number of her good friends actually speak English almost fluently, and im very grateful that they've stepped out of their language comforts in the past so that i can participate in their conversations.
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