Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 151 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great and that your language learning is going well and that you're progressing with your English.
And in today's episode...
We're going to talk about another language related topic.
More specifically, I want to talk about my experience learning Italian.
So last episode, I talked about my experience learning Spanish.
And in this episode, I want to give kind of a recap of my Italian challenge.
A recap is like a summary, a short summary of something else.
So I want to give a recap of my Italian challenge because as many of you probably remember, I
I mentioned I don't know how many episodes ago, but I mentioned some episodes ago that I was doing a 100 day challenge to learn Italian, to see what type of results I could get in 100 days learning for about two hours a day.
So I am just finishing that challenge this week, and so I thought it would be good to talk about this in a podcast episode.
I was gonna make a YouTube video about this, but honestly, I don't really feel like doing that.
I'd rather just talk about this challenge in an episode.
So that's what I'll do today.
I'll talk about how I learned Italian and and what I did and what my results were after this 100 day period.
So I'm sure this will be an interesting topic for you today.
And I think that there are definitely some lessons to take away from this experience as well.
So I'll talk about those lessons at the end.
And so I'm sure you'll like this topic.
And remember that if you feel ready for my advanced podcast episodes, you can sign up for those by becoming a Listening Time family member and you'll get two new advanced episodes every month.
The link is down below.
And you can also sign up for my U.S.
Conversations podcast. if you feel ready to practice with two people speaking instead of just one.
The link is also down below in the description.
And, as always, please share this podcast with anyone else you know who's learning English, and please give it a five star rating and write a review, if you can.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is... It's listening time!
Alright, let's talk about my Italian challenge.
So just to remind everyone why I did this challenge, I was not at all interested in learning Italian.
I didn't have this desire before this challenge.
There's nothing wrong with Italian.
It's an amazing language, a beautiful language.
I love it, but it just wasn't on my radar.
It just wasn't a goal that I had.
But I wanted to do this challenge because many people come to me for advice on learning a language, specifically learning Spanish, if they're an English speaker.
And I wanted to kind of simulate learning what it would be like for a native English speaker to learn Spanish from scratch, from zero.
But I already speak Spanish and I already know a lot of Portuguese and French, so I wasn't able to do this with any of the other similar languages.
However, Italian... was a language that I had never learned.
So I chose Italian because it's similar to Spanish and I wanted to simulate this situation of an English speaker learning Spanish.
So I decided to do Italian.
And my goal was to show people what they can possibly do during the first 100 days of learning Spanish or another language.
If they're starting from scratch and what types of resources to use, how much time to spend doing different activities, things like that.
So that's why I did this challenge.
And so.
My approach, your approach refers to your method of solving some issue or whatever.
My approach, of course, was very input based because I'm a language learner who focuses on input.
That is, listening and reading.
So my approach was very input-based, in order to learn a lot of words and phrases just through hearing them again and again.
And then also to understand native speakers well.
That was my focus for these 100 days.
So what did I use?
Well, I used kind of like a beginner language course for Italian that had a lot of dialogues that I repeated.
I listened to them again and again and again.
A lot of repetition.
There were also some exercises that I did, but that wasn't the main focus of using this resource.
I just really wanted a beginner resource with a lot of dialogues, natural Italian, just to be able to expose myself to a lot of essential words and phrases and get a feel for the language.
When you get a feel for something.
This means that you kind of start to get a taste of something or start to experience it a little bit.
So I wanted to get a feel for the language by using one of these beginner courses, but it was more just to listen to the dialogues again and again.
So I had that, and I also did a lot of reading.
I used the website link, L-I-N-G-Q, link.com, because it makes reading really easy.
So I used the basic... mini stories, they call them, that are available for the different languages.
I read through all of these stories.
I saved the new words that I didn't know.
And I repeated these stories multiple times.
I listened to them because they also have the audio for those stories.
So I did a lot of reading every day.
And I also listened mainly to Italian teachers on YouTube, but I didn't use their videos where they explain grammar rules.
I'm not interested in that.
I just used their videos that were designed more for listening comprehension.
So they were talking about different topics And I listened and repeated, used the subtitles sometimes, sometimes no.
I used different types of repetition.
So, for example, for a time period I was listening to the same I forget how many minutes of the video, but I was listening to the same part five times.
And the first time I used the subtitles in Italian, and then the second time in English, and then the third time in Italian, then in English and then the last time without subtitles.
So I did that.
For another time period, I just listened four times, and I didn't use the English subtitles.
And I did different types of repetition.
And I mentioned that because I don't think there's only one way to use repetition.
I think there are multiple ways that you can benefit from repetition and using the subtitles or the transcript.
Like with this podcast, right?
Some of you might prefer to repeat the episodes by first using the transcript the first time you listen, and then without the transcript, and so on.
But some of you might prefer to listen the first time without the transcript and then the second time with the transcript.
And then the third time without the transcript again.
That's one way that I think is really good for repetition with this type of content.
But there are different preferences, and I think they're all beneficial in their own ways.
So I did different types of repetition with my listening practice and I used different levels of videos.
Of course, I started with more basic content, where the person was talking pretty slowly, but then I started listening to other teachers that actually talk faster.
And so I tried to kind of move up in terms of the difficulty of the content that I was using.
And I even listened to some conversations between two Italian people.
So I even used completely native level content a little bit.
And that was also really helpful for me.
So I did a lot of input, as you can see.
And I only did 10 minutes of grammar per day for the first 50 days.
I didn't even do it for the full 100 days.
And I only did it for 10 minutes a day for the first 50 days.
And it was very unorganized.
I just spent 10 minutes on a grammar website looking over the different explanations and looking at the examples and doing a few exercises, but that wasn't my focus really.
But I just added in that grammar because I know that many people feel like they need grammar, even though they probably don't really need to focus that much on grammar.
They feel like they need it.
10 minutes was my max.
I didn't want to spend any more time on grammar because it wasn't helpful.
It was barely helpful at all, to be honest.
It helped a little bit in the sense that I kind of recognized some of the rules that I learned from this grammar practice when I was doing my reading and my listening.
But that wasn't really that big of a deal.
That wasn't that big of a help for me, but i did that grammar because i know people will want some grammar in their language learning and, of course, if you're learning a language that's completely different from your own, i recommend that you use, you know, a grammar resource at the.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't do grammar, but I think what I'm trying to say is don't spend a lot of time on grammar.
Ten minutes was enough for me every day, and that's because Italian is very similar to other languages that I know.
If I were doing a more difficult language, a language that's not at all related to my languages, then I would probably spend a little more time on grammar.
But I would try to kind of not continue on with grammar forever just because I feel like I should.
No, as soon as I feel like I don't really need it any more grammar explanations, then I want to just stop that and then only do it later on.
If I have some specific questions with grammar, I want to look up some explanation or whatever.
But I think that for me if I learn another language that's a lot harder than Italian.
I'll do a little grammar at the beginning, but I'll try to kind of move past that pretty early on so that I don't really have to do much grammar and I can just focus more on listening and reading and eventually speaking.
And lastly, what I did was that I started speaking at about 90 days.
And I've only done one session of speaking, but I am going to do two more this week.
And then I'll be done with this challenge.
I'm not going to continue on with Italian after this, but I wanted to do at least a few sessions of speaking after 90 days, just to see if it was possible, to see if 90 days was enough for me to start using Italian tutors to have conversations.
So that's what I did with my challenge.
And what were my results?
How is my Italian now?
Well, I can understand a good amount.
I'm actually very satisfied with my comprehension.
I think that I can understand easier Italian very well, like the Italian that Italian YouTube teachers use when they talk in their videos.
I can understand them very well for the most part, unless they're using really specific words that I haven't come across yet.
And I can listen to those teachers without subtitles and I understand almost everything.
So I'm happy about that.
Obviously, I can't just understand normal Italian people talking to each other fast enough.
I can't understand that well, obviously.
I need much more practice with that.
But for example, in my first session with my Italian tutor, I understood every word that he said.
100% of what he said, I understood.
And for me, that's awesome.
I want to understand the person that's talking to me.
That's my main goal at this level of learning a language.
So I'm very satisfied with how my comprehension is. has improved throughout this challenge.
And it's only been 90 days, right?
That's not a lot.
So I think that that's pretty cool that I can understand a lot.
Obviously, a big reason why I can understand so much already is because Italian is so similar to Spanish and French and Portuguese.
So obviously, that helps me a lot.
But there are also a lot of words that aren't related to Spanish words, for example.
And I can already understand a lot of these words that don't have a similar word in another language that I speak.
So I'm happy with my comprehension.
But when it comes to speaking, I'm not really comfortable having conversations at this point.
There's a big gap between my listening and my speaking.
A gap refers to a big hole or space between two things.
But this is normal.
I think there should be a big gap at the beginning between your listening and your speaking.
That's normal.
I want to understand the other person first before I really dive in and have a bunch of conversations.
So I don't feel comfortable speaking.
I'm missing a lot of words, and I mix my languages.
I say some things that are in Spanish or Portuguese by accident, and that's normal.
However, I can start to have conversations.
I was able to have a conversation almost completely in Italian.
Of course, my tutor helped me a lot and I had to translate certain words, but I was able to start to benefit from that type of practice using an Italian tutor.
So if I were to continue on with Italian, I think that I could continue having these conversations, and they would be beneficial for me.
And I'm happy about that because again, it's only been 90-something days, almost 100 days, and I can already start to use an Italian tutor.
That's great.
However...
In reality, I would still prefer to wait longer before talking.
If I weren't doing this challenge and if I were just learning Italian because I wanted to, then I would wait longer.
I would wait more time before I start speaking because I don't feel comfortable yet speaking.
I can start to do it.
I did it during our first session but i want to feel more comfortable.
I want to have more experience with the language, more input, before i start speaking.
So i'm okay starting right now with italian, starting speaking right now, but in reality i would prefer to wait longer.
But many people to start speaking earlier and that's okay.
And maybe, if you were in my situation, you would start taking classes like this and you would benefit from them, because you can understand the other person and you can say some things.
So for some people, that might be a great time to start.
For me, I'd prefer to wait.
So those are my results with my listening and my speaking.
And there are just a few lessons that I wanted to mention here at the end, lessons that we can take away from my experience.
The first lesson is that this method works.
Using a lot of input like this, reading and listening and repetition really works.
I learned a lot of words.
I can understand a lot.
My comprehension is pretty good for only having learned for less than 100 days.
And I can even start using an Italian tutor and having a conversation in Italian, 100% in Italian.
So this method works and I will recommend it to the English speakers that have been asking me how to learn Spanish.
So I'm happy to say that this method works.
I'm satisfied with it.
Obviously, you don't just stop after 100 days.
You have to continue on with this and get a lot more practice, do a lot more speaking.
So this is just talking about the first 100 days.
So for the first 100 days of learning a language, This type of method definitely works.
I'm going to recommend it.
So I'm happy about that.
Another thing I took away from this is that I didn't like how strict my learning was.
I tried to do exactly two hours of learning every day.
And this artificial time limit is just too strict.
It made it a little bit annoying for me.
It made me lose some of my motivation, concentration, etc.
So I definitely won't do it like this in the future with other languages.
I'll have a goal of wanting to learn for two hours a day maybe, but I'm not going to time myself and say okay, I've done 14 minutes, now I need to do another one hour and 46 minutes exactly.
No, I'm not going to do that.
I'm just going to...
Have a goal but be flexible with it.
That's gonna make it easier to learn and it won't be annoying, because I won't force myself to complete the two hours even if I don't feel like it that day right.
So another lesson to take away from this is to allow yourself time, the freedom of learning how you want to learn, for the amount of time that you feel like you can learn.
Of course, try to spend as much time as possible learning if you have the goal of to learn a language, but don't be super strict and stress out about not completing the two hours exactly.
You only did an hour and 45 minutes.
That's not a big deal.
We want to allow ourselves a little bit of freedom with this.
Language learning is not the most important thing in our lives.
We can be a little bit flexible here, right?
And if we're not so strict, it will be more fun for us, for sure.
So that's another lesson. and then maybe the biggest lesson that i took away from this that i already mentioned in my last episode is that motivation is everything i'm really emphasizing this here obviously it's not everything literally not literally everything but it's the biggest key the biggest factor because I lost motivation during this challenge.
About halfway through the challenge, I was not really interested in learning Italian anymore, because I realized that I wasn't gonna continue on with this after the challenge.
So I didn't really take it seriously.
I wasn't concentrating well during my practice.
And so I was really disciplined.
I did like two hours every day, but that discipline wasn't enough for me to really learn as much as i could have learned, because i was lacking the motivation.
So discipline is definitely important, but we don't want to only focus on being disciplined, because if you don't have motivation You're not going to learn that much.
And I feel like I improved a lot during the first half of this challenge, but I didn't improve as much during the second half because I lost that motivation.
So the method was good. but I didn't have the motivation to go along with the good method.
So like I learned Spanish with a really bad method, a really disorganized method, but my motivation was so strong that I learned it well, even though I didn't have the ideal method.
So We wanna have a good method and we wanna have discipline, but we really wanna be motivated.
That's so important in language learning.
Don't just ignore this part.
I know some of you might be more focused on kind of the technical aspects of learning a language.
And I kind of am too.
However, this motivation factor is huge.
I saw this really clearly during this challenge.
So make sure that you're motivated.
I think I'm going to do a whole episode about motivation and discipline today, uh in the future, because i really want to explore this topic a little bit more after having seen, uh kind of the effect of losing motivation during this challenge.
So that's another lesson to take away.
And one last lesson is there will definitely be a big gap between your speaking and your listening when you start speaking, and But don't be worried about this.
It's gonna happen, but you'll get over it.
And when you start speaking eventually, your speaking skills will improve a lot in that gap will become smaller.
Okay, it will shrink.
So there will definitely be a gap between your speaking and listening when you start speaking, but that's normal.
Don't worry about this.
Alright, so those are the lessons that you can take away and that I took away from this challenge.
And I hope that this was interesting for you.
I hope you feel motivated to really continue on with your English or maybe learn Another language.
Like I mentioned in the last episode, if you want to learn Spanish, you can use my wife's podcast Sweet and Simple Spanish.
I'll probably leave the link down below again in this episode because I just mentioned it.
But whatever language that you're learning, I hope that you continue on, you stay motivated and you have fun with it.
Okay?
All right.
As always, remember that you can access my advanced episodes if you become a Listening Time family member.
And you can also access my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to other English speakers from around the country about different topics.
It's really fun, really educational, and it's great practice for your listening.
Both of those links are down below in the description.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.