spangliano

I am happy to say that as my first month here is coming to an end my Spangliano has become more like actual l’Italiano. I just wanted to write a brief blurb about my language learning process in the hopes that I could maybe help others on a path to mastering a new language. After thinking that my three years of high school Spanish were perhaps futile, Laura and I came to notice that we knew much more than we thought we did; almost every situation where we failed to communicate in Italian we realized that we could have effectively formed the intended sentences in Spanish. ¡Qué Bueno! However, as we (very) slowly started picking up more Italian, we started to forget which words were Spanish and which were Italian. By the end of Laura’s stay we could pretty much get any point across with any sloppy, un-conjugated, combination of English, Spanish, Italian, and miming. When I arrived on my first WWOOF farm my progress in Italian was pushed back a little further as two of the other workers were Spanish speakers from the Canary Islands, but hey, at least my Spanish has improved, too! Immersion and necessity are definitely key factors in the language learning process that are often absent in the school setting. As a Californian I had a plethora of Spanish-speaking people to practice with but because it wasn’t necessary or easy I usually didn’t. Combining Duolingo and the Pimsleur audio program with necessity and immersion has proved to be quite successful. However, sometimes I do feel a bit Foux Da Fa Fa and Colin Firth in that Love Actually scene where he learns Portuguese for love…like, actually.

Duolingo
Duolingo is a fantastic, free, program available for both the computer and smart phone that promises users to reach a conversational level upon completion. The only downside is that it isn’t available for every language, only Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. I really enjoy it and have no problem coming back to it day after day because it’s set up like a game. Who doesn’t like to level up?!  The basic vocabulary covering different animals and foods has been very useful for WWOOFing purposes. 

Pimsleur
Where Duolingo can tend to be quite formal and a bit school-like, Pimsleur has proved to be great in terms of practicality. The repetition is clutch, although initially fairly irritating, and I would say most of what I use on a daily basis comes from what I’ve learned with Pimsleur. I put all of the audio files on my phone so I can listen and practice while I work, it’s very good brain exercise to focus on the two insieme. After six hours of practice during work, repeating each lesson twice, I come to every meal able to implement more of what I have learned.The combination of both are very nice because with the added visual component of Duolingo I am able to learn the proper spelling of words and recognize what I read in my surroundings. 

Hopefully, by the end of this trip I can come back to this post and translate most of it into l’Italiano! And, as will always be the case, I’m enjoying the path to mastering this whole English thing.