Itlaian 101: And the award goes to…

This semester I was given the opportunity to learn something – just like I am given the opportunity in any other class. However the opportunity was presented much different than it has been presented in any other class. I was given the opportunity to pick something that I was interested in and learn about it using technology and online connections to help me along the way.

Obviously when you are given the opportunity to learn about anything a lot of possibilities run through your head. I wanted to choose something that I would enjoy learning about. I wanted to learn something that I could use at some point in the future. I would have loved to pick something creative like sewing or knitting, but I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money purchasing materials along the way (especially with my limited income on maternity leave). So I decided I would learn a language.

Photo Credit: Free Grunge Textures – www.freestock.ca via Compfight cc

The language I decided on was Italian. Why? Well I didn’t want to do French because I already have some experience with speaking French having gradated with a French 30 credit (even though that credit is from way back in 2004). I wanted to start with a clean slate. In my travels I have spent some time in Italy and I just love everything about the country. The food, the culture, the scenery, the cities and of course the language. I have always thought that it would be great to learn a language and be able to travel and use it someday. Now that I have been learning some of the language maybe it’s time to go back.

Throughout the semester I found a lot of resources that are very useful in learning a language online and found even more that seemed to be of little help. If you want to check out all of the resources I  reviewed in detail look back at some of my previous posts. But here is a quick list of my top resources for learning Italian online broken down into categories.

To practice site words, memory work and phrases.

WINNER: Duolingo – great tool for rote memorization and practicing words & phrases. Uses audio, text, written and spoken language. The biggest negative is the sentences that are used to practice sometimes – they don’t make a lot of sense and you wouldn’t use them in daily conversations very often.

RUNNER UP: Babbel – similar to Duolingo but is a paid service. This focuses on themes for each lesson and can be helpful in learning phrases for basic conversation or travel. Uses mostly writing and listening to complete the lessons.

Honorable Mention: Mango – A free online service provided by the library in Regina. Similar to Babbel in the sense that you practice basic phrases and conversation by listening and repeating the audio.

To listen to audio.

WINNER: News in Slow Italian  – provides slower audio with text to read along. The text is also translated into English to help with further comprehension.

RUNNER UP: The Italian Experiment – this site is good but provides limited resources. There are three audio books you can listen to and follow along with text. The text is also translated into english. It is a great site but would be nice if new material would be added.

Videos

WINNER: Learn Italian with Lucrezia  – most of her videos are fairly short and very informative which make them really nice to watch. The lessons range from beginner to advanced. She also has an instagram and twitter account that I would suggest following.

RUNNER UP: Learn Italian Words App – this app works offline and has a large variety of video lessons ranging from beginner to advance.

Social Media

WINNER: Twitter – @italianlanguage Instagram – italianwordoftheday – both accounts provide you with one word a day to practice and learn. The Twitter account gives you a word and a sentence most days to learn. The Instagram account gives you a word with a picture each day, but no sentence.

RUNNER UP: Twitter @ItalianLearn this account also gives you a word a day and you can click on a link that will take you to a sentence that uses the word and audio for the pronunciation.

Speaking with Others

WINNER: WeSpeke – a great tool to connect and chat with others online.

 

 

Italian 101: Italian on the go? Not so much.

Just realized I never published this post! Yikes!! I found it in my drafts. I think I was hoping to add to it but I will share now so that it’s included in my major project progress. It was from March 12th.

I didn’t have a blog post last week reviewing my major project progress because there wasn’t a lot of progress to talk about. Last week I was in Florida with my family taking in Disney World. I thought that I would be able to get a lot of practice in during the flights and layovers heading down and back but that wasn’t the case. On the first flight from Regina to Toronto I quickly discovered that my go to apps Duolingo and Babbel require use of the internet to use them. So on my first flight I wasn’t able to do any practicing.

Screenshot of Duolingo from my phone

Screenshot of Babbel from my phone

When we landed in Toronto I used the free Wi-fi to download some lessons from Babbel so they would be available to use on the next flight. I was able to make it through only one lesson with a very poor score I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something like 40/78. I found it very difficult to concentrate when flying. It might be from having my son right beside me who seemed to need something from me every few minutes, or all the background noise, or maybe just because I have a fear of flying and get extremely anxious on flights. I was hoping the lessons would help me relax a bit by distracting me, but I think it created more stress haha. Maybe my next online learning journey will be participating in this Fear of Flying Course. 

If you read my blog post about my detox with technology you’ll know that I was rarely on my phone during my trip. I was far too busy and exhausted by the end of each day so thinking about practicing was even too much to handle. I decided to take a few days off and hopefully my skills wouldn’t decrease too much in the days I wasn’t practicing. I was mistaken. When I got home, my fluency on Duolingo was only 13% (down from my previous high of 16%) and almost every one of my skills was missing strength bars. It was overwhelming and a little discouraging to think I would have to go back and redo all of the lessons to strengthen skills. But after seeing another classmate, Amy, with a very high fluency percent in her language she is learning I was determined to bring my fluency up. I practiced quite a bit in the few days I returned home and was able to bring my fluency up to 20%. You can see that on Sunday I did 24 lessons to get 240pts in order to bring my fluency up to 20% from 13%. I am still trying to refrain from being to caught up in the fluency percent as I think it varies a lot and to be honest I don’t think that I became 7% more fluent on Sunday from doing those 24 lessons, but I’ll humour myself and the app.

Screen shot of my fluency on Sunday March 6

Screenshot of my activity March 6-10

You can see in the picture of my activity that I have 13 hours left before I complete all the lessons. With about 30 days before class ends that would mean I have to practice about 25 minutes a day to complete the course. I know that 25 minutes a day doesn’t seem like a lot, but some days I don’t have the time to practice so it does seem like a challenge to find 25 minutes for the next 30 days to complete it, but maybe I can do it.

 

Over the next few weeks I will be looking at using different apps and websites to learn Italian. I will try to read one book in Italian and also connect with someone online to communicate with.

Italian 101: Social Media and the World Wide Web

I don’t have much to discuss this week as I haven’t tried out any new methods for learning Italian. But I did want to write so I can reflect on the last week and how I did with meeting my goals. Here are my goals from last week.

1. Practice using Babbel or Mango at least once a day completing a minimum of two lessons per day. This should help me gain some speaking confidence and learn some useful things as well. I want to try stay away from Duolingo for a lot of the reasons that Vanessa discusses.
2. Look for a Facebook group to join.
3. Check out the pen pal exchange group I came across on Twitter to see how it works.

I practiced daily with Babbel, but didn’t use Mango because I didn’t have the app on my phone. I finally downloaded it so will use it from time to time from now on. I didn’t do more than one lesson most days and that’s because the lessons took me longer to complete than I had originally thought. I wish I could devote an hour each day to practice, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day so I have to make do with what I can fit in throughout the day. I also managed to work with Duolingo on an almost daily basis even though I said I would avoid it (I just can’t seem to escape it haha!). I think what keeps brining me back to Duolingo is the simplicity and the repetition. When I work with Duolingo my confidence seems to be higher and I feel like I actually know some Italian even though I still just know words.

I did look for a Facebook group to join and joined it but nothing has been posted since February 13th, so it’s not a very active group. I will keep an eye out for posts and see how it goes, if it doesn’t pick up then I will try find another group to join. It seems that there aren’t many groups that would be worthwhile to join but I could be wrong. After searching on Facebook I decided to try and expand my PLN on Twitter and Instagram. Here’s a list of the people I am following on each platform:

Twitter: @MargieMiklas, @travelitalian1, @ItalyMagazine, @italianvocvoc, @italian_easy, @ItalianLearn, @Turismoromaweb, @LucreziaOd

Instagram: lucreziaoddone, italianwordoftheday, italian_teacher

I didn’t look into the pen pal exchange group either. I guess it’s because I still don’t feel confident enough to be a pen pal and communicate without the help of my resources. I suppose that any conversation will be better than nothing even if it is with the help of resources. My goal is to have a conversation by March 7th, so that gives me next week to attempt to connect with someone.

I was catching up with the forum/chat I was part of on Dulingo and I found some great websites that can help me learn some Italian. I plan to spend some time on these sites this next week while using instagram and twitter as well. I will continue to use Duolingo, Babbel and Mango when I can. I will be travelling this next week so as long as the kids can stay entertained or sleep on the plane I will have a few hours to practice.

The sites I was introduced to are: The Italian Experiment and Italy Magazine. I also found online radio stations that I can listen to and News in Slow Italian. I’ll try to find some time to work with these as well.

After reading Amy’s blog I thought I would try to list some of the words I know in Italian. The blue is my original spelling and the red is the corrected version. I have a lot of learning to do with word endings…does it end in e, i, o, a?? It all depends on the context so it can be tricky. I have some work to do with the spelling, but hopefully if I do this more often I will get better at it.

 

I should also mention that I tried to do a placement test for Duolingo and Mango and didn’t place any differently than I did at the start of the class which is a HUGE disappointment. But I know that I am learning. With some more practice on Mango I should be able to place further than Unit 1 Chapter 1 and as for Duolingo my fluency is up from 9% to 16% so I am making progress.

Italian 101: It’s a Roller Coaster

Life is full of setbacks. I am going to be brutally honest here. There was nothing out of the ordinary or drastic this week that happened to me (unlike Genna…who by the way is still rocking her major project!), I just didn’t make an effort to find the time to work on my learning project. I usually try to do a lesson or two before I go to bed each night, but this past week I couldn’t really be bothered. It got to a point where Duolingo sent me a notification to my phone that said it looked like their reminders to practice weren’t working so they would stop sending them. This was after three days of not practicing and to be honest it felt like a relief that those notifications weren’t going to be sent anymore. I wasn’t going to write a reflection this week because I didn’t have the best week and didn’t accomplish a whole heck of a lot. This past week has certainly been a low in my learning project. But I thought that it’s important to reflect on weeks like this especially so that I can learn from them and improve. I don’t have any particular reason for my lack of effort and motivation this past week, but here are a few things that I can say have probably affected it:

1. I am having trouble feeling like my learning has a purpose. I don’t have any real reason for wanting to learn Italian other than the fact that I have travelled there and would love to go back. With no plans to go back in the near future it makes it more difficult to stay motivated to learn the language.
2. I feel as though I continue to learn words as opposed to the actual language. Using Duolingo allows me to practice a lot of words, but they are just that…words. Sometimes the sentences I practice are practical and sometimes they are not. For example, these sentences aren’t really practical.
   

   Screenshot from Duolingo

   

   Screenshot from Duolingo

   This sentence seems a little more practical but it still doesn’t make me feel like I am learning useful aspects of the language. I guess anything is better than nothing though.

   

   Screenshot from Duolingo

3. I am having trouble retaining the information I am learning and I think it is because I need to practice speaking more. In order to practice speaking more one of two things needs to happen 1) I need to connect with people who also speak Italian. 2) I need to use the tools I have found that focus more on the speaking as opposed to reading and writing. I have tried to find people to connect with on Twitter but have been unsuccessful. I may try find a group on Facebook to join (hopefully there is one out there). I need to use Babbel and Mango way more than Duolingo to practice the practical parts of the language as well as the speaking.
4. As a follow up to 3, I know of places that I can reach out to such as forums and discussion groups on Duolingo, but I don’t feel confident enough with my speaking to use them.
5. I feel as though my learning is hard to gauge. It isn’t tangible like knitting or sewing. I can do some placement tests to see where I sit but I don’t know how accurate they are.

My goals for the next week.

1. Practice using Babbel or Mango at least once a day completing a minimum of two lessons per day. This should help me gain some speaking confidence and learn some useful things as well. I want to try stay away from Duolingo for a lot of the reasons that Vanessa discusses.
2. Look for a Facebook group to join.
3. Check out the pen pal exchange group I came across on Twitter to see how it works.
   

   Screenshot of Twitter

   4. Take the placement test on Babbel, Mango and Duolingo at the end of the week to see if I have improved since the start of my project. I will use this as a midterm assessment to see where I am at.

Here is my self-assessment on my project this past week.

Reflection Feb 9-18 Screenshot

So now that I have my bad week out of my system, I hope it is only upwards from here. I think I lost some motivation because I felt like I wasn’t gaining any ground for the amount of work that I had been putting in. I need to remind myself just like Kristina that it is all about the process and this whole online learning thing is new to me. More important than the learning itself is the reflecting aspect of this.  If my Italian language skills don’t grow a whole lot by the end of the semester my growth in terms of how to approach learning something online certainly will.

I thought I would finish off by sharing a few clips from a Friends. Sometimes I feel like this is me trying to learn Italian haha.

This one especially makes me think of my experience with the voice recognition software. I often feel like what I am saying sounds different than what it should sound like, but I get it correct. Other times I feel like I am CERTAIN I am saying it correctly but it tells me I am wrong. Guess I need to work on some of the pronunciations more.

 

Italian 101: Week 4

This week I spent my time focusing on Babbel while continuing to use Duolingo. I had to pay for the course on Babbel and it was close to $20CA for a one month subscription. I decided to do a month because it was the cheapest option in order to test it out. I didn’t know if I would like it enough to use it longer than one month so I thought I would test it out and cancel before the month is up and my subscription renews automatically.

For something that is a paid service, it is VERY similar to Duolingo. Although there is more structure for each lesson and lessons are geared towards a specific topic. I like that the lessons build on skills similar to Mango Languages. I created a few videos to share my thoughts on Babbel and show some of my progress.

This first video shows you the homepage/dashboard and explains some of the features that I like on Babbel.

In this video I show you how a lesson works. I tried to skip through the lesson in order to make it quicker for the purpose of the video, so it’s not a full lesson length but it takes you through the whole thing.

This last video shows you how to review your vocabulary using the built in review feature.

I feel like I had a really successful week. I was able to keep a streak on Duolingo achieving 50XP for six days. The picture shows only a one day streak and that’s because I finished my practice yesterday after 11pm which is after midnight on the website.

My streak on Duolingo this past week.

I moved up in my fluency by 5% moving to 9%! Although I don’t want to judge my skills based on that. I find that I am getting better at speaking Italian and reading it. I still struggle with the writing part but I think that will start to come.

Finally moved up from 4%!

Some new things I tried this week:

• I branched out on Duolingo and tried to connect with others learning/speaking Italian. I attempted to read some comments and also tried to join in but I learned quickly that I still don’t have enough skills to fully participate. I’m hoping in another couple of weeks I will be able to make more use of the chat.

Screen Shot of my chat

Screen shot of my chat

• I tried a few podcasts but didn’t have a lot of luck with them. I thought I’d be able to find some that I could listen to while running or while in the car but after skimming through 5 or 6 of them I wasn’t able to find any. A lot of them were free and had a lot of “infomercial” type dialogue at the start that really turned me away from them.
• I have added the #italianlanguage to my hootsuite feed. I am hoping to find some other useful hashtags and people to follow. I haven’t found a whole lot to be useful on Twitter yet.

My weekly assessment/reflection:

From here I plan to focus on Mango and Babbel a little more to see if I can improve my skills a little more before attempting to have more conversations with others online. I may also try to find some youtube videos that might help me.

Overall I would say it was one of my most successful weeks. I’m feeling good about my progress so far. I’m branching out and trying to connect with others who are learning Italian which is taking me out of my comfort zone a little.

Italian 101: La Mia Familia and Mango Language

This past week was spent using Mango Languages alongside Duolingo to continue my journey in learning Italian. Mango Languages was introduced to me by Brittany a fellow classmate who is learning German as part of her major project. In order to sign up for Mango I needed to have a public library card through the city of Regina. I was able to login using the link found on the Regina Public Library e-learning services site. When I logged in I was able to create my profile, select my language and do a placement test before beginning. You can find the video of my placement test in this post. If you’d like to see how to get started with Mango Languages and how it looks check out my brief tutorial.

In this video I explain how the lessons work and give a brief review of what I like and don’t like about the lesson format.

For the most part I have nothing negative to say about Mango Languages. The only thing I don’t like is the voice comparison feature. I don’t like that I have to listen for myself to see how my voice compares to the narrators voice in terms of pronunciation. I prefer Duolingo’s voice recognition software that will tell me if my pronunciation is correct or not (although I sometimes feel the software is a little off). If you are looking to practice speaking and reading Mango is great for that. There is no written practice and you do not get to read Italian and then answer in English like you can with Duolingo.

I decided to make this quick slideshow to showcase some of the skills I learned using Mango this past week. I learned a bit more than the slideshow demonstrates but if I wanted to showcase all of my learning it would have been a pretty random presentation so I decided to just focus on my family because I was pretty excited to have learned how to introduce family members in Italian.

A few things I have learned in the few short weeks I have been learning Italian:

1. I  have found that I cannot take a day off from practicing the language as it seems to fade quite quickly.
2. I continue to struggle with endings of verbs depending on the context of the sentence.
3. I am not great a pronouncing a lot of the words yet and also struggle to roll my r’s.
4. There are slight similarities between French and Italian that I have to really think hard about in order to use the correct language. These similarities cause me grief sometimes, but often it helps me because the Italian word is so similar to the French word that I can relate them and it helps me remember it.

Some goals moving forward:

1. Practice EVERYDAY! Even if it’s only enough time for one lesson. It will be better than nothing and will keep the basics fresh. Every little bit counts right?
2. Write down pronunciations and words that I struggle to remember rather than continuing to make the same mistake over and over. When I put the pen to paper it helps me remember things a lot better.
3. Explore a different app/website each week while continuing to use the Duolingo app on my phone.

What I hope to accomplish over the course of this project:

1. I want to feel confident in my basic communication skills. I will know I have accomplished this when I reach out to someone to have a conversation with them.
2. Become at least 50% fluent in Italian using Duolingo to document this percentage. I am currently still only 3% which is a little discouraging because I have completed a lot of lessons and come a long way since I started. I haven’t been using Duolingo as much because I have been focusing more on Mango this past week. I am hoping 50% is a realistic goal.
3. I want to have at least three conversations with someone else speaking Italian starting March 7.

I have also decided to create a reflection rubric to use each week after seeing some classmates create rubrics for their project. I figure this is a good way to keep me accountable and compare my week to week progress.

Next week my major focus will be on Babbel. This is a paid service so I don’t know how long I will choose to use it but I will try it out. I plan on continuing to use Duolingo and Mango as well.

Ciao!