weekly comments

Madi
Kat
Margo

reflections

Ciao!

So I presented my TED Talk on Monday, and I have to say I was extremely nervous the entire day right up until I walked on stage. I realized once I was up there that no matter how much I convinced myself I was completely and entirely unprepared, I realized that I had it. The fact that all of the lights were out save for a single spotlight was really helpful because I couldn't really see anyone and I could just pretend I was talking to myself in the dark. I rehearsed a lot that day, and began to get really nervous because I couldn't add enough emotion to get things across the way I wanted to, but I think (I hope) my energy on the stage more than made up for my awful rehearsals. I never really had much confidence in myself as a public speaker, but I realized once I got up there that I had this passion that I wanted to reveal, and so I tried to let everything else go and just deliver the presentation with as much of that passion as possible.

I've never really thought of myself as a passionate person. I had things that I liked, lots of them, but I was never able to devote enough time to anything. I kind of considered myself an appreciator of all the things I enjoyed rather than someone who puts their full energy into their passion. I felt that during this project, I began to realize all of the things I was passionate about - all of the art and music and culture and stories that had always been something I'd cared about, and I was able to channel this energy and combine it into one big project that I would say I'm pretty proud of.

That being said, I don't think I've reached my goal. I don't know if I'll ever reach my goal, because language is something that I'll always be interested in and something that I'll keep pushing myself into and who knows, maybe I'll end up studying abroad (the dream) and realize some of my goals have changed. I'm working on improving myself and expanding my horizons, especially when it comes to travel, and I feel like I'll never be satisfied. I'm very proud of where I am now, though.

I felt like I've worked harder and poured more of myself into this project than any other project I've done up until now. I hope I was able to show a bit more of myself than I usually reveal, and I think I learned something new about all of the presenters simply by exploring their passions. I learned a lot about myself, too.

I've had a lot of fun exploring the things I was passionate about, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Grazie e arrivederci. :~)

p.s. i'm hoping to learn swedish or russian next. i cannot ever be satisfied with the amount of languages i'm learning somebody help me

possession and sweden

Ciao :~) Da quanto tempo (long time no see)!

My weekend has been spent perfecting things and rehearsing (a lot) for my TED Talk, along with some other assignments that I may or may not have been putting off for a bit. 

In totally unrelated news I got this bag as a birthday present (!!!!) from a company called Fjällräven in Sweden that makes these really really nice backpacks and I'm totally in love with it and I want to order ten more in various colors - the only minor limitation being that they cost around $75+ each. It's been the highlight of my weekend.

I'm trying desperately to hold back from learning Swedish instead of Italian not gonna lie

Anyway, I've been spending my week focusing on the possessive case in Italian, which entails a lot of adjectives and pronouns that are daunting to say the least. I've been using some YouTube videos and online resources to help me - I'm going to bring up my man TomTxxytu again with his super helpful video on possessive articles:

Possessive adjectives basically use definite articles in front of the adjective - "il mio professore" would literally translate to "the my professor", or you can think about it as "the professor of mine". This can make it more than a little bit confusing since the articles and the adjective must agree both in number and gender.

possibly the most helpful guide i've found so far

I've definitely found it easier to communicate with Sara as time goes on; with the internet, I can look up new vocabulary any time I want to mention something new or don't know how to say something in Italian. This is not a preferred method of learning, but one that works until I am able to memorize the vocabulary I use most often.

On that note, I've been doing a bit more research on different language learning methods and I found a website called Memrise which is a site that so many people swear by for picking up new vocabulary. It's said that memorizing the 1,000 most common words in any language will help form connections, giving you a sort of scaffolding to help as you learn more and more vocabulary. 

Memrise has special sets of vocabulary that focuses on just the 1,000 most common words in several languages, and has a unique way of incorporating gaming and typing and speaking into a cohesive format that's very intuitive to use.

Obviously, this is not going to get me speaking fluently anytime soon, but as I continue to progress with my learning I'm trying to incorporate Memrise into my routine of Duolingo, videos, and book learning. I try my best to mix it up :~) 

I really really am beginning to love this project.

Ciao,

Sarah

progress - a video encompassing my adventures in italian

Ciao amici! After about one and a half hours of editing for a video that took me 20 minutes to record, I come to you with the finished product: a short video approximately 5 minutes long. It was really, really fun to make though - I kind of forgot how much passion I had (and still have) for making awful little videos on my webcam and posting them all over the internet, a practice first established in 2009. I feel like I'd lost a bit of that passion when I went through a phase where I became too cool for making myself look like an idiot in front of a camera as an art form, but that phase has passed now. This ended up being very fun to make and probably ready to be submitted to an amateur film festival.

Without further ado, I present to you - progress.



progress from Sarah Wolbach on Vimeo.

I'm sorry if the audio gets a bit low at some points; really hope you all enjoy :~)

you can literally see the sky turn from still pretty light out to the black depths of hell in my window so be on the lookout for that

Arrivederci,
-Sarah


Comments this week:
Sarah
Jess

penpals & pronunciation - a rambling mess of a blog post

Ciao amici! 

I'll be honest and say that my motivation to continue in my learning was lacking these past few weeks - I think I pressured myself to do too much in a very limited amount of time and eventually this made me so stressed out I needed to step back and look at the bigger picture and the goals that I originally set out to achieve. I'm not going to be fluent in Italian by the end of this project. That was never my goal, and I think in recognizing that, I've found a kind of freedom to learn whatever I want. I never set out to communicate with a penpal, either, but in finding one, I've gained not only a new friend but insight into the similarities and differences of the Italian language and culture that I could never realize on my own.

That being said, things with Sara are working out great. We've chosen to write in an alternating Italian/English fashion, so I'll write a letter in Italian and she'll write back in Italian, and then we'll write in English and so on. I've learned a lot about her - she likes to read some of the books we have here in America, like Paper Towns and The Book Thief. We share similar interests - photography and writing - and I follow her blog on Tumblr where she posts some interesting stuff.

I'd love to be able to communicate with Sara through physical letters and postcards and things. The shipping to and from Italy may be expensive, but it would be great to be able to send each other little things back and forth in the mail - it makes the experience a lot more real and tangible. I'm not sure if Sara wants me to include her letters on this blog, so I'll only include my responses in Italian. I found it helpful while writing to look at my Italian guidebooks for proper sentence structure and some prompts on what to say. This was my first real attempt in writing entirely in Italian and I often found it difficult to get my true meaning across in another language, something that I think can only be made better through time and practice.

 il 22 febbraio - 

Mi chiamo Sarah. Io sono americana e studio l'italiano e tedesco. Faccio lo studente e studio in una scuola in Pennsylvania! Di dove sei? Sono di Pennsylvania. Io voglio viaggiare all'estero. Ho una sorella e lei è più giovane. Mi piace la fotografia e la lettura :~) Cosa ti piace fare? 

Mi fa piacere conoscerti!

I tried to introduce myself as best as I could using some of the phrases in my books. Sara sent back a response in Italian, and I replied in English. Here is my Italian response sent a few days later:

il 24 febbraio - 

Sì, lunedì a venerdì sono a scuola. Ho le fotografia lezione il lunedy. Mi piace l'arte e scrivere. Non mi piace la matematica. Quale materia preferisci?

Sono eccitato! Fra poco è il mio compleanno. Il mio compleanno è 22 Marzo. Sarò 15 anni. Quand'è il tuo compleanno? 

La mia stagione preferita è primavera. In inverno è molto freddo. Nevica molto qui. Qual è la tua stagione preferita?

In this letter, I practiced talking about some of my preferences to school subjects and weather and mentioned my birthday. She answered some of my questions I had about her writing, and I learned how to form contractions in Italian without even realizing it. It's been really fun getting to know Sara and I hope as I learn more and more Italian we can have more detailed conversations!

I set a goal to begin journaling this week, and I think this has helped me apply some of the vocabulary and usage I've been learning through my books and Duolingo.

An excerpt from one of my journal entries this week

One thing that has been difficult for me is pronunciation. This, again, is a skill that only gets better with exposure and time. It's hard to manage the correct pronunciation when you are reading or speaking from a written text. So I began to look for other resources where I could find native speakers pronouncing words that I was unsure of, and I found Forvo.

Forvo is a website that I had been unaware of until a few days ago when looking for the correct way to pronounce camera, the Italian word for bedroom. I browsed a few search results which eventually led me to this website - the holy grail of pronunciation. I tried it out for a few more words and fell in love. I found at least one recording of a native speaker pronouncing each word I typed in. From now on, I think this will serve as my bank of total Italian pronunciation knowledge - at least until I come to a word that is not on the website, in which case, more aimless googling will have to do.

On a totally unrelated note, I went out for pizza with my family last Saturday and noticed the posters on the walls were old Italian movie posters - and crazier still, I could recognize a few of the words. I was able to point out to my dad words like "girl" and "tiger" and I realized that though I have a long way to go, I'm not as much of a beginner as I like to think. I completely forgot to take pictures of the posters but if you go to Palermo's you'll find them in the back seating area. :~)

On another completely unrelated note, I've grown to love Italian music, specifically old, rustic, 'classic' Italian music. I've found a lot of playlists on 8tracks, possibly one of my favorite websites for music, that I'd like to share with you all. I'll insert some of them below for your listening enjoyment.

italian decadence from aliciacohim on 8tracks Radio.

(this one includes some French and Spanish but I love it regardless)-

la dolce vita. from mesogeios on 8tracks Radio.

 Another one of my favorites - I could go on for pages, but I'm going to end here.

Italia di giorno ti penso, di notte ti sogno. from Juliet Caulfield on 8tracks Radio.

I'll see you soon for another update - arrivederci!

-Sarah


Comments this week:

Abby

Zoe

Ellie

la prima settimana - the first week

Ciao amici! It's been a busy first week as I've been working on getting through a few chapters in each of my Italian books as well as listening & reinforcement from my online resources. I've found that two of the most helpful books so far have been Italian: Made Simple by Cristina Mazzioni and Berlitz's Essential Italian. These offer a good balance of natural dialogue, pronunciation guides, storylines, and grammar rules in a nice, easy-to-read format. I've also found that while Duolingo is good for review, it doesn't always include the grammar rules and is often best used for listening and speaking practice.

On that note, I've been learning a lot of the basics and really want to try to get into some sentence formation this week. I can make basic sentences and introduce myself, but I haven't applied much else. In my German class last year, our teacher introduced a journaling assignment - basically, we would write around a specific prompt or theme each week, looking up words that we didn't know how to translate and using them in sentences. I found that this really helped improve my knowledge of the language and I felt much more confident in my sentence forming skills. With this in mind, I think my goal for the next few weeks is to keep an everyday journal, writing down new words I learn and hopefully having a few pages of solid Italian writing, however basic it might be!

I bought this cute little journal a few weeks ago and have been looking for an excuse to write in it :~)

I've kept up my listening practice and have found a few interesting Italian stations if you're into that sort of stuff -

RAI Isoradio - news and information station centered in Milan; frequent traffic and news updates
Radio Cortina - this is a more localized station, but I've noticed the hosts tend to speak slower and often they'll have special radio music shows featuring a mix of American and Italian music
Radio Italy Live - probably one of my favorites. It's based in New York, but plays Italian music around the clock which tends to go a lot slower than spoken Italian and frankly it's more fun to listen to!
News in Slow Italian - this website is good for listening comprehension, because it provides subtitles and goes slower to aid pronunciation and understanding. It has a lot of premium features, but the broadcasts themselves are free.

Another resource I've been taking advantage of lately is the Easy Languages channel, host to tons of videos in different languages. They interview native speakers on the streets to get cultural perspective and awareness around the world - they have episodes in Ukranian, Arabic, Japanese, German, and Italian uploaded on a weekly basis. It's great for gaining not only new vocabulary and listening practice, but also cultural awareness of the customs and traditions in Italy.

Easy Italian 3: Life at the Border 

And yet another exciting aspect of my learning comes through the prospect of a penpal! I'm not sure if this is a definite, but I am looking at different websites that offer Italian penpals willing to write back in forth in a mixture of English and Italian. It's practice for both recipients in a language that they are learning on their own time. I've talked to my parents about it and have done some research about how to go about setting up an exchange, and it seems the best and most affordable way to maintain a penpal is through email. Hopefully I can find someone near my age willing to participate in a language exchange online!

update - I found a girl named Sara online - she's sixteen, living in Italy, and more than willing to help me out with Italian, which I appreciate a lot! I'm writing an email to her as we speak; hopefully we can send messages back and forth and I'll let you know how this all goes in an update post :~)

Grazie mille per la lettura! See you all soon!
-Sarah

Comments this week:
Madi
Margo
Kat

giorno numero uno (day no. 1)

Che piacere vederti (Nice to see you)! I'm excited (and somewhat terrified) to begin my journey into Italian. However, I'm armed with a ton of resources - some of my favorite travel blogs, YouTube channels, and some guidebooks - to help me along the way. One of my favorite blogs is Learn Italian with Lucrezia, which I'll be using to help begin my Italian journey. I've been watching some videos from Tom Txxytu and taking notes on basic things like grammar and past tense verb conjugations. Hopefully once I begin to learn basic nouns and things like colors and the alphabet, I will be able to formulate sentences.

Duolingo has also been an important component for my language learning, because it gives me an opportunity to test what I know and incorporate new words into my vocabulary while receiving feedback. It's also an app, which is useful because it means I can practice just about anywhere. I've also ordered some books from the library on basic Italian. Things are getting off to a good start!

A few of my books I'll be using for the next few weeks - I'm excited!

At the same time, in trying to combine natural as well as more methodical approaches to learning, I really hope to fully immerse myself in the language. This can be through listening to Italian talk radio & podcasts or reading children's Italian books, which some people have found to be a helpful resource for new vocabulary. In doing so, I aim not to understand the entire exchange, but perhaps pick up a few phrases and gain insight into different dialects and articulations.

The Italian intonation is something that definitely does not come naturally to me, so I'll be practicing that this first week, because speaking as fluently as possible is one of my goals for this project. I will also be laying a good grammatical foundation for the rest of the journey by a more methodical approach, using books & videos to gain understanding. With a quick trip to Barnes & Noble and the library I managed to land myself a few more books to practice grammar and a chai berry tea.

It wouldn't let me add the video player I wanted to include, but a video that I've found particularly inspirational is Advice On Learning Italian by Tom Txyytu, which can be found here.

Hopefully this first week will be a great start to my project!
Arrivederci :~)

Comments this Week:
Hannah Gruen
Jason Smith
Laura Roth