Exciting

Just a short message. Found for myself a new learning topic for the coming month. It should all end in a document/article about the different stages that learners have to go through in order to be a self-directed learner. Decide already on articles and books to read. And.... I think it's exciting!

Italian first

OK...lets keep this thing going! I'll start with the most 'easy' learning point I put up last week.
Improving my Italian.
In a way it's a shame that after three and a half year I have such a poor Italian. There are some excuses: travelling a lot, Calabresian accent which is sometimes far from Italian etc. But excuses don't help to get better.
I do my 'learning words' quite regularly. I have this notebook already for 4 years in which I write down new words which I then also try to learn. And I do. I know many words. The problem is that many of them don't pop up when I need them. Or they pop up 5 minutes later and then the topic in the conversation already changed....

I see two main challenges
1. to have more Italian conversations
2. to understand Italians
In a way they are strongly linked. I'm quite sure that speaking Italian helps a lot to learn. During an evening with friends in which I have to speak Italian I really learn a lot. I'm not the most speaking person, I have my difficult moments in finding the right words... but in the end I feel very excited about the fact that I survived and did say the things I wanted to say.
It's tiring ...exhausting. It takes all my energy to follow Italians when they speak. And I get lost very quick. Depends a bit on who is speaking. Some Italians speak so clear, word by word, as if they are in love with their language ...I love those people. But most don't and then I'm really struggling.
I see for myself a few 'ways' to make steps.
I keep on going learning my words from my little notebook. Nothing wrong with that and it's an easy thing to do.
I have to get myself more and more into situations where I have to speak Italian. I need practice! Which is not easy. Where I live is not the most crowded place on earth and you can easily end up only talking to your wife for a day. Which is nice but Dutch.
So one thing is to take more advantage of the few people who are around. Maybe not to much thinking about how 'interesting and smart' the conversations are but going for every conversation possible. Just any talk helps. Next year I will go for 'intelligent Italian talks'!

I just had an excellent idea which I immediately put into practice. Instead of listening to all the music on my I-Tunes I put RAI-radio on! I found it and a lot of Italian coming out of my speakers now. I have to hear Italian... that helps...I think. So...did that. Put it in my favourites!

Of course also watching Italian TV helps. I do...sometimes..but not enough. Don't know. I'm not very excited about Italian TV. Should find a programme that I really like.
It's a lot about 'getting expressions' and 'ways of saying'. I'm quiet satisfied with my level of English. Enough to say the things I want to communicate. I know enough expressions and words to make a sentence easily. And I know that I make mistakes but I don't care. My aim is also not to become a perfect Italian speaker. I want to be able to express myself...well and to understand.

I'm thinking now if it would help to write more in Italian. I could for instance write this blog in two languages. I can imagine that it helps two take the time when writing to search and find words and expressions. By writing it could be that it helps you to use that afterwards in conversation. But maybe a bit to ambigious at the moment. It would probably stop me from writing this blog.... a bit too much. But I can make that a goal for later. To do that starting from after the summer, in September.

To summarise for the moment:
- continuation of learning words
- looking like crazy for opportunities to have a smany Italian conversation as possible
- listening to Italian radio when working from now on
- from September this blog will be bilingual

For now that's enough!
My second learning point for later. Much more difficult but therefor important to start on as soon as possible.

A start......

I have been thinking a lot about how to start this blog.
To be honest I still don't have a clear idea.
So just starting maybe is the best solution....

This blog should be about my learning.
But then the first thing to do would be to decide for myself what I want to learn.
To write that down here in the first blog and then to describe in all the coming blogs how successful I am, or not...
Sounds great....but.... life is not that simple.

What do I want to learn!!??
Already for years I tell everybody that I want to learn how to better structure my work.
That I want to plan my work and then do it according the plan.
But in the end I do everything on the last day.....
And it seems that I'm quite happy with that.
Or maybe the only thing I have to learn is that I should be real happy about that and stop feeling stupid and guilty when I don't follow the plan...and just stop making plans that only frustrate me.
So... not something I want to focus on here...

What I really want to learn is to speak better Italian.
I live in this country now for three and a half year and it's poor ...very poor.
I'm motivated for that.... it makes sense to speak well the language of the country you are living in... it helps me for my survival...for my social life...
So... that's a clear learning point!! Speaking and understanding better Italian!

Then there's something about expressing myself more clear. A difficult one. But I think one that makes sense to work on. Needs in the first place some thinking, some analysing. Related mostly to working situations. To colleagues but maybe even more to participants in training courses. I have sometimes this tendency to say nothing when I should say something. Sounds a bit stupid....but I think it's worthwhile to dig in a bit...

Well...that's already two learning points!!
Maybe it's not necessary to decide now on everything... it is all life long learning...

Well there is on other thing related to this blog. I want to experiment a bit with other ways to express myself. Not only by words. Trying with pictures....video...or whatever.

OK...enough for now. My next step...blog...should be about taking at least up one of these two learning points.
But...I started!!